Content Delivery Network is one of the most important tools when it comes to maintaining a website. CloudFlare and Incapsula are both very renown for their CDN services. Let’s discuss deeper on both CloudFlare vs Incapsula for the best CDN provider.
As for the record, this review is done with some testings and cross referencing the results with other sources to ensure that you are getting the right information.
Related read: 3 of the best Content Delivery Network providers for bloggers
Introduction to Cloudflare and Incapsula in video form
Cloudflare:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yspfTsidzs&feature=youtu.be
Incapsula:
Here are what both can offer:
- Free Content Delivery Network (CDN) with servers across the globe
- Optimizer which helps increase website loading speed
- Security features for websites which includes firewall
- Analytics that give you an insight of how many attacks, bandwidth used etc
- Other free and paid productivity apps you can mix and match
So what makes them so different? How to choose the best free CDN for my website?
Security features
If you would like to compare, both basically offers pretty good security features. If you would need to compare them neck to neck, Incapsula offers a better protection against all types of DDoS threats. Cloudflare does a pretty decent job when it comes to protections but it comes short if you are looking for a CDN which offers great defense against unwanted threats.
Winner: Incapsula
Analytics and monitoring
Both Cloudflare and Incapsula offer their users reports to show the progress of the CDN. The reports range cover much of the basic information such as bandwidth used, threat experienced by the site, the number of bots and even the number of unique visitors visiting the website. When compared, I would personally prefer Cloudflare’s report as it is more detailed and offers slightly more information that I required in just one glance. Basically, I give the winning score to Cloudflare as the layout is easier to see and users do not need to navigate any further to get additional information.
Winner: Cloudflare
Optimizer anyone?
When it comes to optimizing, Cloudflare seem to be able to optimize my sites better than Incapsula. Various tests were done after installing for 48 hours to give a fair detail of time. After running those tests, it is pretty clear that (if I would give a score of 10), I would give Cloudflare a score of 9 and Incapsula a score of 7.
Winner: Cloudflare
Which offers a better page loading speed?
I am pretty sure most of you guys are interested on this part generally. Cloudflare is definitely the winner here with a faster load of an average 0.5 seconds. As little as this seems, it is everything for many search engines and even high traffic sites. Cloudflare could have won this battle at this time of the writing because it has more servers around the world compared to Incapsula. At the moment, Cloudflare has 28 servers around the world and Incapsula has only 14 servers. This could be the main reason why sites using Cloudflare could load slightly faster than Incapsula.
Winner: Cloudflare
Related article: How To Configure CloudFlare Page Rules?
My take in CloudFlare vs Incapsula For The Best CDN Provider
Generally, Cloudflare seems to be working better out of the box compared to Incapsula. For a basic usage, Cloudflare really works well in terms of user-friendliness, moderate defense and very good loading speed for a free Content Delivery Network service.
Why not you try them today and give me your feedback?
For those using either one of them, which is your favorite one among both?
*If you like this article, could you please share this for me using the red Google+ button below?
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.