Find Out If You're Paying Too Much For CDN Services, For Free

While many are already aware of the CDN pricing I publish every quarter at cdnpricing.com, I am regularly asked by content owners what I charge to review their contract terms, look at their pricing and advise them on what they should be paying. For those that's don't know, this service I provide is completely free and always has been. This is something I have been doing for years and anyone can call me anytime, seven days a week at 917-523-4562 with any questions about their CDN pricing.

So why do I do this and what's in it for me? Very simply, it helps me collect industry data and more importantly, it's my job to help educate the market and try and help content owners adopt and use more CDN services. Being available to content owners 24x7 allows me to speak to and collect CDN data from hundreds of customers a year, of all shapes and sizes. So for those that come across the CDN pricing data on my blog or might have been wondering what it costs to have me review your CDN contract, call anytime, it's free.

Comments

[Thierry - SPOTi]

Dan, Great idea but difficult to compare price if you have a traffic commitment. I would rather compare price for CDN with no traffic commitment and price for CDN with traffic commitment.

[Dan Rayburn]

Why can't CDN pricing be compared when you have a traffic commitment? That makes no sense. Most contracts that are more than $1,000 a month have a monthly, quarterly or yearly traffic commitment.

[Stef]

It's interesting to know what some of the CDN's are charging, but in reality there can be a 100% difference between their formal price lists and actual contracts. I once compared that behavior to the way second hand car salesmen do their pricing and bargaining...

Comparing CDN's by traffic prices is comparing apples and oranges. I hope that buyers can look beyond a simple price comparison.

There is no CDN out there that is offering exactly the same as another. So you have to look at features, customer support, performance, scale, custom services, geo coverage, add-on services, API's, technical support, ease of use, innovation, reliability...

Some offer lousy and slow 1st line support via call centers, others offer separate support packages with direct access to senior engineers.

Some only offer http, caching and acceleration. Others offer a full pack of streaming services. Others offer many add-on services like transcoding, ad management, portal services. Some use P2P only.

Some CDN's do not offer reporting. Others charge extra for reporting. Others include good reports for free.

And many CDN's have different pricing models. Some charge for an all-in service with a relative high price per GB for traffic. Others ask a base fee for the service, support and capacity and then charge a relatively low price for volume. Some CDNs start at $0,50 per GB and then drop quickly to under $0,05 for large volumes while others look cheap when they ask $0,25 per GB but never drop under $0,10 for large volumes.

Some CDNs have an automatic price drop for larger volumes, others differentiate between committed and non-committed traffic. Some allow you to take committed bundles to next months, others don't.

And so on... there is no good definition of a CDN, most CDN's are nowhere near a commodity, so you really can't compare them on price alone.

[Dan Rayburn]

Where is anyone saying CDNs are only being compared on price alone? Customers are smart enough now to know that price is only one of the factors they use to compare one CDN to another.

[grinsandfun]

Dan -

Why do you push so much on what the pricing is... and yet you discuss how customers and the CDN's should be focusing on the value they bring? Seems skewed to always inform your readers of how cheap they might get it, vs. the differences in the platforms and technologies that the vendors can bring. Not a single CDN is the same as the other... don't you think it could be of great value to start providing a descriptive of the CDN's vs. trying to help commoditize the pricing more as you are with this..

[Dan Rayburn]

@ grinsandfun: I talk, speak and write about the questions that content owners have. Like it or not, CDN pricing is the one question I get more than any other. Whenever I speak to a content owner, I review with them a lot more than just CDN pricing. Real my blog and you'll see I'm also talking about the ecosystem, reporting and analytics, defining performance and scale and many, many other subjects that content owners take into account when trying to chose a CDN. Price is not the only way they choose a CDN, I have been saying that from day one, but the price is always a factor. And when many CDNs try to make this out to be harder than it is, don't disclose their pricing or try to charge more for something no other CDN charges for, pricing gets way more complex than it should be.

CDNs have been around for 15 years now. Why is this service still sold by many as if it's some sort of new, cutting-edge technology that's complicated to use and price out. Say what you provide, in real terms, say how you do it, in real terms, and tell the customer what it costs. If CDNs were doing this, then no one would be asking me about pricing, I wouldn't be writing about it and I probably wouldn't even have a blog. But clearly the CDNs, as a whole, are not doing this.

Why should I have to educate a customer? Isn't that the CDNs job? So ask them why they aren't doing it.

[mike]

hi guys.
great article. it was really helpful in deciding which cdn network to use.

i am shopping around for a cdn account which hoping to get 30-50 thousand viewers at times of the weekly soccer games through satellite.

what do you suggest ? in terms of video on demand, cdn account for live streaming and what kind of band witch/storage will be needed