KeyCDN Review: An easy way to speed up your WordPress site

Are your visitors abandoning your site, because it takes too much time to load?

Well, you should keep in mind that around 40% visitors abandon a site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Also, Google gives preference to faster loading sites and ranks them higher. It’s all about user experience.

In order to improve user experience and loading time of your website, one of the best ways is to use a content delivery network aka CDN.

One such CDN service is KeyCDN, which I’m going to review today.

KeyCDN is a real-time content delivery network which helps in improving performance and your WordPress site speed.

[button type=”bd_button btn_small” url=”https://www.keycdn.com/” target=”on” button_color_fon=”#ff4020″ button_text_color=”#ffffff” ]Visit KeyCDN[/button]

Before starting, what KeyCDN does and the advantages of using it, let’s understand what a CDN is.

What is CDN – Content Delivery Network

A CDN is a system of globally distributed proxy servers located at different geographical parts of the world. A content delivery network delivers web page content to a user from the closest geographically located server which helps in speeding the delivery of content.

The closer the CDN server is, the faster the content is delivered. Hence, it is very effective service in speeding up the loading time of your site and improving its performance.

Also read: Mistakes you are making that are killing your website speed

KeyCDN Review

KeyCDN works the exact way a CDN service should work. But, here are some of the highlights of this service which makes it stand out.

KeyCDN Features and Benefits

Now that you know how KeyCDN stands up with its competitors, it is time to know how it works, its features and benefits of using it.

KeyCDN supports various content management systems like, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, etc. But since I’m a WordPress admirer and user, I’m going to concentrate on the WordPress part only.

KeyCDN offers lot of features which its competitors don’t.

KeyCDN Network

Currently, KeyCDN has 25 active POP locations and looking at the screenshot, they are planning to add 6 more POPs. When the planned POP are active, it will only enhance user experience staying near to those locations and help in improving your site speed.

Admin Dashboard

The dashboard has a lot of options and is fairly easy to use. It offers you everything you will require to manage your site. I specially liked the “Reporting” tab. It has:

• Analytics – It gives you details about the used bandwidth, cache hits, success notifications and client errors
• Geo stats – It displays the top countries by the number of request and the amount of data transferred
• Top files – It shows which files are using the most bandwidth
• Real-time logs – This section helps you analyze real time website traffic
• Real-time stats – This allows you to track the CDN’s performance real time

Benefits of using KeyCDN

The first and foremost benefit of using KeyCDN is faster loading speed. On average, it reduces the loading time of your website by 40%. Which is huge if you have a slow site. As I mentioned earlier also, faster loading sites get ranking preference, you should definitely consider using it.

Free SSL is one more important benefit you get by using the KeyCDN services. It allows you to have SSL certificate for your site using Let’s Encrypt service.

You can block bad bots which hamper your site by stealing data or make DOS attacks.

Now that you know the features and benefits of using KeyCDN, let’s learn how to use the service.

Getting started with KeyCDN

To use KeyCDN services, you need to create an account. And the best part is that its a free trial subscription (1 month), so that you can test the product and decide whether to use it or not.

Coming to the point, there are mainly three steps to integrate the service on your site.

1. Creating a zone
2. Ensuring CDN has deployed
3. Integrating it using CDN enabler plugin

Once you have created an account you’ll be redirected to their dashboard. Over there, you’ll see Zones. Here, you need to add a zone. Zone basically means, you need to add your website and assign it a zone with a few other settings to do.

The zone name and zone status fields are self explanatory. In the name field, you need to give a name to your zone and in the status you need to select whether the content is publicly accessible or not. If yes, select Active. If not, select Inactive.

The zone type is something they should have explained by giving a brief info like the other two. Nevertheless, a zone type depends upon the size of files you have on your server. For files between 0 – 100 MB, you should use the Pull type. The pull zone type will automatically pull the files from your server. For files larger than 100MB, you should create a Push zone type.

For the Pull type, provide you Origin URL as asked and Save. Now, you have successfully created a zone. But it will take a few minutes to actually get it deployed. You will see the status of the zone as ‘Active’ once it is deployed.

Next step is to test whether the CDN has deployed successfully or not. A simple way to do it is by selecting a static file on your website, say an image and copy its URL.

http://www.yoursite.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/image.jpg

Now, replace the domain of your site with the zone URL you created. It should look like this:

http://zonename-4fb3.kxcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/image.jpg

When you do it, you should be able to see the same image, if the CDN is properly deployed.

Next step is to integrate it with your website. For this you need to install the CDN Enabler plugin.

In your dashboard, go to Plugins >> Add New. Search the plugin “CDN Enabler”. Install the plugin – CDN Enabler – WordPress CDN Plugin.

Now go the plugin settings. You will find the plugin in the Settings option of your WordPress dashboard.

Here, provide your CDN URL in the first field. If you have SSL encryption, check the CDN HTTPS option and Save Changes. 

Your done now.

MaxCDN vs KeyCDN

You might have heard of MaxCDN service, lets compare it with and find out the reason of why it is the best MaxCDN alternative.

[bd_table]

KeyCDN	MaxCDN
Price: No minimum, $0.04/GB/month	Price: Minimum $9/100 GB/month
5 websites/zones can be added	2 websites/zones can be added
25 POPs globally	19 POPs globally
Free SSL with Let’s encrypt	Free SSL with custom option
Free HTTP/2 support	HTTP/1.1 + SPDY/3.1
Blocks bad bots	Not available
Separate CDN enabler plugin	Uses W3 Cache Plugin

[/bd_table]

From this comparison table, it is clear that KeyCDN has an upper hand in almost every scenario.

Should you use KeyCDN

A definite YES. With the benefits and the cost it is offered at, KeyCDN is one of the best CDN services in the market.

It will undoubtedly improve the loading time of your website and improve its performance.

If you still feel skeptical about the service, give it a try by taking the free trial subscription.

[button type=”bd_button btn_small” url=”https://www.keycdn.com/” target=”on” button_color_fon=”#ff4020″ button_text_color=”#ffffff” ]Signup for KeyCDN[/button]

Note: This is a sponsored post. Whatever information provided in the article is our personal opinion and experience with the product/service.