Technology has evolved a lot and we are living in a fast-moving world. From bullet trains to 5G telecom technology, speed can be noticed everywhere.
Website is vital for modern businesses and optimization drives more conversions. So a fast-loading website is also necessary for both the best user experience & conversion.
There are a lot of factors that affect website speed. But multimedia elements like images play a vital role in page loading.
Images are resource-heavy and put stress on the server. You can use an image CDN to host and serve images dynamically. I will show you some of the best CDN for images.
So let’s get started.
What is Image CDN?
I know you might have an understanding about this, as you have landed here using the search term best image CDN or similar queries. Before we discuss image CDN, let’s see what CDN is only.
A content delivery network (shorten as CDN) is a network of geographically distributed servers across the globe that deliver web content from the server closer to the user’s location.
An image CDN is specially deployed for serving images instantly. Apart from quick delivery, this system can transfer images based on shape, format, file size, and appearance dynamically.
Images are mostly responsible for website loading slowly. An average page puts a payload of 2MB on the server whereas 50% of them are images. Using an image CDN these elements put less load on the website hosting server.
After you upload an image to the CDN server the system automatically creates several copies and send them to different servers. When a user requests a webpage, the images will be dynamically served.
Instant and unexpected traffic surges can lead to outages or downtime. Content delivery networks dynamically distribute loads and handle extra spikes in traffic. One of the biggest advantages of image CDN is image optimization.
The CDN system analyzes user device size and location to serve better responsive images. Optimized images also serve smaller images and save bandwidth.
Why Do You Need a CDN for Images?
To be honest an image CDN does the same as a regular CDN server. The main difference is the enhanced features that are specially designed for images.
There are several benefits of an image CDN. So let’s check what these are.
1. Better loading time
Content delivery network deploys multiple servers around the world. Whenever someone requests a file, it delivers from the nearest server. So the response time would be low and make your website faster.
2. Improve User Experience
In this high-speed internet era, no one wants to visit a slow website. Slow loading images on a page put a serious impact on the user experience. Ecommerce websites and blogs add images to almost all pages.
If images take too much time to load then the user will leave without taking action. Image CDN delivers images dynamically you won’t face performance issues.
3. SEO Benefits
Websites should apply everything that can boost ranking in SERP. Now Google is putting more emphasis on website load time and placing in higher positions accordingly.
There are over 200 ranking factors Google considers to keep a website in top SERPs. But speed is one of the top SEO factors these days after mobile-first indexing is rolled out.
Image CDN servers make the images delivery process faster and speed up page loading. Study shows that 47% of customers expect a webpage to load in 2 seconds or less. Website conversion rate is also affected by page design and images on the page. Using a CDN can boost your organic ranking and drive more conversions.
4. Specially Designed for Images
Image CDN offers several features just for robust image delivery. The system automatically selects the most efficient format of an image. Some content delivery networks convert images to next-gen formats like WebP when needed.
The system also automatically adjusts the quality of high-resolution images. It would maintain the perfect balance between image quality, dimensions, and size. Image CDN also delivers responsive images based on the device screen size.
5. Reliable
Web servers are always associated with the risk of hardware failure and software crashes. Assume a condition where you have an eCommerce website and it goes down during the festival sale.
Because it can’t handle instant traffic spikes. You would miss thousands of sales in such an important moment.
But CDN services have many servers each having a copy of the website files. If one server goes down then data will be delivered from another server instantly.
CDN uses a load balancing technique that will distribute the load in several servers regardless of the traffic size. So you can let visitors browse the website without disturbing the user experience.
6. Better Security
Cyber threat is a major concern nowadays. So hosting companies are providing simple SSL certificates to secure the data transferred between users and websites. But it is not sufficient to hide from spammers.
Web servers with bugs let attackers steal data from the server. But content delivery networks are associated with hundreds of servers in different locations.
They use several security layers to prevent themselves from cyber-attacks. However, no server in the world that can’t be hacked. If any CDN server faces a cyber-attack, then numerous servers already there having the copy of images.
List of Best Image CDN Hosting Services
1. Cloudflare
Cloudflare is known as the global leader in the CDN space. It provides an advanced content delivery cloud platform and great performance to all-size businesses. The web-based application is used by over 4.1 million users worldwide.
Cloudflare data centers are located strategically across 250+ cities in 100+ countries. Over 10K ISP, cloud providers are directly connected to the Cloudflare network.
According to the company statement, it can reach up to 95% of the world’s population within 50 ms.
You don’t have to edit the website code to integrate Cloudflare. Just update your DNS nameservers from the domain registrar dashboard to Cloudflare. Then the service will be started automatically to handle all requests for a website.
You would get special features for image optimizations. You can resize and polish images for different needs. The one-click image optimization automatically optimizes all the images uploaded to the server.
Cloudflare speeds up your website and loads twice as fast using 60% less bandwidth.
Cloudflare Pricing:
Cloudflare comes with one free plan and three paid plans. The free plan is great for a beginner but pretty restrictive. Paid plan starts from $20 per month and offers high-end features.
If any issue arises, you can reach out to the customer support team through phone and email. You would also get access to a community forum and help center.
2. BunnyCDN
BunnyCDN is known for its affordable plans and enterprise-level security. This company is in the content delivery game for more than a decade. Now BunnyCDN is powering over 900K websites worldwide.
Intelligent load balancing feature dynamically spread over hundreds of data centers across the globe and ensure minimal chances of overcrowding.
Now BunnyCDN has servers in 87 different locations and processing 250K requests per second. So the company offers less than 30ms global latency and 99.99% uptime.
To deliver images and website files on the fly, you would get a feature called Bunny Optimizer. After configurations, it will automatically optimize your CSS files and JavaScript files for maximum performance.
The optimizer automatically resizes, crop, and compress images on the fly according to the requirements.
Bunny Optimizer automatically detects user device, compress images to WebP, and deliver it. This feature has already optimized 50 billion images so far.
If you are looking for the best image CDN that will take care of all your images, then you should consider BunnyCDN.
BunnyCDN Pricing:
BunnyCDN pricing is based on pay as you go model. But the Bunny Optimizer is a standalone tool and costs $9.5 per month. This plan includes unlimited image optimizations and request processing. You can reach out to the support team via live chat, phone, and email.
3. ImageEngine
ImageEngine is an easy-to-use image CDN that helps businesses to maintain maximum speed. This service compresses images maintaining quality and delivering from the data center closest to where your user’s location.
You can integrate this CDN with any platform and website in a few clicks. Image Engine CDN plugin is available for WordPress, Magento, etc.
Improve your website SEO and provide a blazing fast website. ImageEngine uses artificial intelligence to analyze images automatic optimization techniques.
ImageEngine automatically chooses the most effective image formats. It uses next-generation image formats like WebP, JPEG-2000, or AVIF. These images reduce payload by an average of 80% and support most browsers. The conversion will be done automatically while maintaining the best visual quality.
You can keep the images on the hosting server and ImageEngine will pull from there. Otherwise, this service also supports cloud-based storage like Amazon S3, Google cloud storage, etc. You would be protected behind a firewall to avoid any kind of web attacks.
ImageEngine Pricing:
ImageEngine offers a free trial for 30 days with many limitations. Paid plan starts from $49 per month and can deliver 100 GB of optimized images.
4. KeyCDN
KeyCDN is a simple and reliable content delivery network with years of excellence. No one wants to browse a slow website and it is a bizarre fact about today’s web users.
Over 60K customers using KeyCDN for delivering content instantly.
KeyCDN operates with several data centers in various locations that distribute cache content. Servers are connected and can handle all levels of traffic. Your website copy would be distributed across several locations and served dynamically.
You would get a powerful real-time Image processing feature for optimizing images. The system can resize images, compress, crop based on the request.
Security breaches and cyber-attacks are increasing regularly. KeyCDN comes with solid security features to prevent attacks and unauthorized access.
The company works with various peering partners to reduce the costs. It allows them to provide very competitive prices as compared to other competitors. It provides unlimited HTTP and HTTPS requests to keep the cost low.
KeyCDN Pricing:
KeyCDN pricing varies with region and amount of traffic. North American Europe plan costs $0.04 per GB until you hit 10TB. You can purchase as many points of presence (POPs) in different continents as you want to boost the load times of your website.
5. Sirv
Images play a great role in a website and provide a visually pleasing interface. Sirv is a great image management tool to improve the loading time of a webpage.
This company is in the image CDN business for a decade and now serving more than ten thousand customers.
The powerful transformation engine delivers an image in less than 0.15 seconds. No more waiting for the image to load on a website.
Sirv has deployed 18 servers in different strategic locations around the world. All the servers contain cached images and deliver to the user’s device instantly.
The perfectly managed server infrastructure achieves 99.9% uptime quicker delivery.
Product photography has evolved a lot and you are still using the 2D images? Sirv offers high-resolution 360-degree photos to attract customers. It keeps at least 3 backups of your images across multiple servers to avoid data loss.
You can keep a keyword-rich URL to improve SEO and drive more website visitors. Sirv automatically resizes images according to the visitor’s screen size.
Sirv CDN Pricing:
Sirv has one free plan and 2 paid plans. The free plan offers 0.5 GB storage and 3 sub-account access. A “Powered by Sirv” hyperlink would be displayed in 360-degree spin and zoom images.
The Business plan starts from $19 per month with 5 GB storage. It includes all the premium features and priority email support.
6. Imgix
Imgix is a powerful image processing solution that comes with a simple web interface. This is one of the best tools for small businesses and individuals looking for image optimization services. Make your website fast and deliver images on the fly.
The robust API of Imgix has over 100 real-time image operations. You can easily connect any CMS with this API to manage images.
This service allows you to upload all the images to their cloud storage. You can search images, image tagging, custom categories, color filters in this library.
Serve images with the right dimensions and best format for each browser. Imgix has a content delivery network for delivering stunning images worldwide. It enhances your website’s security by blocking cyber-attacks, including DDoS attacks, before the harm.
Protect digital assets (images) with watermark and use the tool for protecting copyright. The system automatically detects the user’s device and makes sure it optimizes with the rest of the website. Images will maintain clarity with small size.
Imgix CND Pricing:
Imgix has a free plan with 1000 images support. The basic plan starts from $75 per month with 5000 image processing and 5 sub-accounts. There would be no limit on the number of image delivery. All the images will be transformed through global CDN and support formats like WebP.
7. ImageKit
ImageKit is the best image CDN solution with a basket full of features. Over 60K customers are using this image optimization service for delivering images instantly. Reduce the page loading time to rank higher in search results and better user experience.
More than 60% of web pages don’t use optimized images which leads to loading delays. ImageKit setup takes a few seconds and works with any platform. You would have full control over the image appearance and delivery.
The AI-based smart cropping feature automatically captures the subject of the image and removes unnecessary things from an image.
ImageKit is one of the fastest image CDN in the world. Increase your mobile sales by displaying perfectly resized images. Enhance the lazy loading experience with the blurred variant of the original image.
The system automatically detects the user’s device and sends the resized image. The system keeps the image URL with your domain name which helps better crawling.
ImageKit uses AWS CloudFront CDN located in 6 regions. Restrict unauthorized file access and put a watermark on images from the ImageKit dashboard.
ImageKit CDN Pricing:
ImageKit offers a forever-free plan for beginners. It includes 20 GB bandwidth, 20 GB media storage, and more. The premium plan starts from $49 per month. You can reach out to the support team via live chat or email.
8. Uploadcare
Uploadcare is the best image CDN for images having thousands of happy customers. Deliver images in milliseconds to visitors throughout the globe with Uploadcare integrated CDN.
You can get access to 325K nodes located in 135 countries around the world.
This CDN delivers website content to visitors faster and increases user experience. Uploadcare offers a built-in image editor and optimization features. Your image files would be uploaded securely and this platform sends your files to the nearest data center.
You can easily integrate Uploadcare with third-party tools and services through API. The AI-equipped inside this platform analyzes an image and adds the correct compression level without losing quality.
The smart algorithm also detects the image background and stretches it accordingly.
Uploadcare has partnered with multiple vendors to avoid service outages. No matter how many file requests your website is sending, the robust CDN network can handle it.
Uploadcare also offers Video Encoding optimization to your video content delivery. You can adjust the video quality, size, and format.
Uploadcare offers a free forever plan. You can upload 3000 files, 3 GB storage, and 30 GB bandwidth. It allows you to choose the paid plan based on your requirement. Move the uploads, traffic, storage slider to get the exact pricing. You can reach out to the support team via email and live chat. Document conversion is also available in the paid plan.
Conclusion
So these are some of the best image CDN you can use. Website loading has become a major SEO factor and put a serious impact on user experience.
The above CDN is specially designed for image processing. You can optimize images and deliver them to users dynamically from the nearest server.
Some CDN providers deliver images in advanced WebP format that boost the loading speed of your website.
