At that $3k/mo level, you can definitely talk to CDNetworks (the CDN I currently use), which is sandwiched between two orders of magnitude of scale, CloudFlare on one side and Akamai on the other. (That said, CDNetworks seems to be much better positioned with regards to China than Akamai.) (That said, I'm actually pretty certain that Akamai would talk to you at the $3k/mo level: have you even tried calling them?)
They'd talk to you if you were a startup and $3k, but probably not so much (directly) if there wasn't growth potential. There are hosting providers who resell Akamai for smaller customers, though. (The only time I ever cared about high-end CDN involved businesses Akamai wouldn't serve, though.) I haven't gone through the normal sales route with them, but I know lots of internal Akamai people in security/ops/etc. and small customers are not really their market.
CDN itself is essentially a commodity; it's not too hard to keep multiple CDNs in rotation. There are probably 20+ big CDNs worth consideration and another bunch of resellers. (Amazon CloudFront, BitGravity, Level3, Limelight are probably the first ones I'd think of for smaller sites; Akamai is still the undisputed king for top performance.)
DNS is the thing which is more interesting to me.
I'd probably go with Route53 for cheap good anycast DNS right now; everyone else seems to either be a clown or super expensive (or bundled with other expensive DNS service). Ultimately I guess I'll end up doing internal DNS. (non-anycast DNS is also a total commodity, but good anycast dns not as much) DynECT also looks pretty good. Not sure what other anycast DNS providers there are in the <$500/zone/mo range.
> There are hosting providers who resell Akamai for smaller customers, though.
There are also many other CDNs that exist in the massive territory between CloudFlare and Akamai (such as CDNetworks, the company I had mentioned).
> CDN itself is essentially a commodity; it's not too hard to keep multiple CDNs in rotation.
For latency-insensitive use cases in generally centralized territory, I agree that CDNs are "essentially a commodity". The correct strategy would seem to be to call a number of them, and negotiate a good deal, not to assume that the one that has a printed sticker price is somehow the right choice (as some people here seem to have been doing ;P).
However, to make the counter-point to this: the cache hit ratio that is being reported by CloudFlare for evasi0n.com (note: I do not have control over that site's hosting; that's choice was due to planetbeing and pod2g) is 81% <- this is for a static single-page information site. How various CDNs handle caching, whether they cache you on disk or in RAM, what they do with regards to hot connections or pre-fetching... these all have massive performance implications on your website.
It's a totally reasonable thing for a person who is busy to "satisfice" on many priorities, vs. optimize. Maybe CloudFlare isn't optimal, but if I can get a price and sign up in minutes, and it's good enough, that might be the right choice. It's not just the time; it's that talking to a salesperson is usually psychologically draining. You'll never be able to pick up a phone and get a price in a few minutes; it's always "where is your business located", "x is the rep", "x will call you back", etc. It turns into a fiasco. You end up having CDN sales reps come to your office to meet with you to "understand your requirements". etc.
Punishing "old-school enterprise sales tactics" which try to keep price from being transparent is a reasonable choice. If you're a big content site, yes, you should go through the effort, but for someone who just wants a small service, buy from people who publish their prices.
CloudFlare isn't the only CDN which publishes pricing -- CloudFront with AWS is very transparent. Rackspace Cloudfiles is transparent. BitGravity is fairly transparent. Cachefly. etc.
Akamai is the worst at this, but Level3, CDNetworks, and Limelight don't publish pricing either.
Offering a free service like CF does is the genius of the freemium model -- even if your service is more expensive or less suitable at the high end, people who start out because it's free and easy will often stick with you as long as you're "good enough" as they grow.
I find it interesting that you bring up CloudFront, because they are also very expensive. As far as I can tell, because there are so many people of there who have a mental aversion to talking to another human and negotiating, they can charge an insane premium on an "engh" service.
Regardless, if picking up the phone and negotiating with a CDN, someone whose opinion of you is totally irrelevant and where the worst-case outcome is "we won't do business with you", how are you going to handle support on your own product, or court investors of your company?
