A Pricing Guide to Online Video Delivery and Storage
That said, the pricing for regional service providers can be much different. Keep in mind that quantity does not always equal quality, and price does not equal service. Choosing the right vendor is all about what your specific needs are and what geographic regions you need to reach with your content.
So don’t be worried about not going with a global CDN and using a regional service provider who delivers content only in North America, if that is what your delivery requirements are. While everyone seems to know by name the large CDN players in the industry, many times new customers looking for smaller providers don’t know where to start. So here’s some help: Some of the regional North American service providers who focus on delivery for small and medium businesses are AudioVideoWeb.com, StreamingMediaHosting.com, UpStreamNetworks.com, and VitalStream Small Business Services (formerly PlayStream.com), to name a few. Typically their pricing starts at about $99 a month and includes some storage and delivery for that price. These providers tend to have bronze, silver, and gold delivery packages that can also be customized based on your needs. Pricing from many of the service providers can be much cheaper than you would pay to a CDN, which is great if your needs fit into their service offerings and they are more flexible when it comes to contract terms and commits.
Besides your bandwidth commit, your storage commit is the other factor delivery vendors use to determine your price. Over the past 12 months, the cost for storage has dropped so dramatically that the average price paid for storage for a 500GB monthly commit is about $2 per GB. At levels of 1TB and above, pricing is less than $1 per GB. Storage hardware has become so cheap and efficient to deploy that service providers tend to have an overabundance, and for the most part, storage is an absolute commodity. If you’re only using 25GB per month or some other small volume, expect to pay $10–$20 per GB. If you use more than 500GB and are paying anything above $4, you’re being ripped off. If the service provider uses RAID storage and is replicating it in more than one location, then it’s the same service offered by all the providers, unless your storage requirements are completely customized.
Service providers are getting a lot better at truly helping to educate customers but still need to remember that not everyone knows how this works, how they price their services, or what customers need to know to help their online video consumption grow. But with a little education, the process of buying delivery and storage for online video can be completely straightforward, and it’s not as difficult or complicated as some want to make it out to be. Still have questions about what you should pay? Contact us for assistance. No charge.