Swarmify vs Just CDN

Are you in the market for a CDN? If so, you'll love today's post where we pit Swarmify Video CDN against a typical CDN.

Nobody likes slow-loading websites. A slow website is a recipe for disaster. Why? Slow page speeds lead to poor user experience, high bounce rates, and lost sales.

If you have videos on your website, things get worse since videos are usually larger than other types of files. Yet, you cannot afford to serve slow-loading videos.

It's exactly why many websites including big brand names such as Netflix, Facebook, and Hulu rely on video CDNs to deliver content quickly.

Without a video CDN, you would have a horrible experience watching videos on sites such as Netflix. An episode of your favorite show would take an eternity to load.

If you have a high-traffic website with plenty of videos, you want to use a video CDN to serve fast videos that don't buffer or stall.

It's precisely why we created today's comparison post, where we pit Swarmify video CDN against a typical CDN that isn't optimized for videos.

But first, what is a CDN?

What is a CDN?

A content delivery network (CDN) is a series of interconnected servers across the globe meant to deliver content to your visitors in a faster manner.

When you upload content to your website, a CDN replicates said content across its network of servers.

Now, if your website is hosted in the USA and you don't have a CDN, visitors in China will experience slower page speeds than users in the US.

With a CDN, users in China will access your content from a server closest to them, instead of the server in the United States.

Visitors in Africa or South America will also access a copy of your website that is stored on a server that is geographically closest to them.

This translates to faster page speeds for every user that visits your website. As such, a CDN is a great investment for websites that deliver lots of video content.

"A content delivery network (CDN) refers to a geographically distributed group of servers which work together to provide fast delivery of Internet content. A CDN allows for the quick transfer of assets needed for loading Internet content including HTML pages, JavaScript files, stylesheets, images, and videos." - Cloudflare.

There are video CDNs, which are content delivery networks optimized to deliver video content faster than if you were using a typical CDN.

Benefits of a Video CDN

So, what are the advantages of using a video CDN to deliver your video content? Here are a few:

• Faster Video Loading & Reduced Buffering - This is the most obvious benefit of using a video CDN to deliver your content. A powerful video CDN such as Swarmify helps you to deliver videos fast, reduce buffering and offer your audience the best video quality.
• Global Content Delivery - If you're delivering videos to a global audience, you want to use a video CDN to reduce video latency, buffering, and improve the quality of your videos.
• Cost Savings - Deploying and maintaining your CDN is an expensive and herculean task for just about any business. It might seem like a great idea at first, but soon it becomes a costly undertaking. Choosing a video CDN eliminates this problem since the CDN provider takes care of everything for you at a fraction of the cost.
• Security - Using a video CDN protects your content from all manner of cybercrimes since CDN providers take security very seriously.
• Scalability - Another benefit of using a video CDN is increased availability and scalability. Video CDN providers offer you plenty of bandwidth and storage allowing you to scale up quickly when the need arises.

A CDN comes in handy especially if you are using low-budget hosting, such as shared hosting. Still, you can enjoy great benefits even if you're on VPS or dedicated hosting.

Now that you know what we are working with, let us compare Swarmify video CDN vs Just CDN. And by "Just CDN," we mean all other types of CDNs that are not optimized to deliver video content.

Swarmify vs Just CDN: Features

Swarmify video CDN is designed to deliver fast, buffer-free, and stall-proof videos to your viewers no matter where they are in the world.

We all know no one wants to wait, which is why Swarmify video CDN is optimized to deliver videos that start 12x faster than a normal CDN.

Keep in mind that attention spans on the web are growing shorter by the day, and instant start is critical if you want to keep users on your site.

Compared to a typical CDN, a video CDN is specifically fine-tuned to deliver video content.

This means you can deliver your video content to your viewers in a more reliable manner than if you're using a CDN meant to deliver other types of files.

Other Swarmify video CDN features include:

• Optimized viewing experiences across multiple devices - A typical CDN does not optimize your content for multiple devices. Typical CDNs simply try to push content to your viewers faster without necessarily optimizing videos for multiple devices. This often reduces the quality of your video.
• Continuous streaming optimization - SmartVideo prevents failures before they occur. A typical CDN doesn't have this capability since it is just that - a typical CDN.
• Easy to deploy and use - Swarmify video CDN is simple to install no matter the content management system (CMS) or website technology you're using. For WordPress lovers, check out our free SmartVideo WordPress plugin.
• YouTube and Vimeo auto-conversions - When you install Swarmify video CDN, your YouTube, and Vimeo videos are optimized, uploaded, and served from the Swarmify delivery network. A typical CDN doesn't optimize video content.
• Global reach - Swarmify has a global reach, meaning your viewers will enjoy fast videos across the globe. Most typical CDNs don't have a wide network of servers, meaning some viewers will experience slower video speeds depending on their location.
• Unlimited bandwidth & storage - Swarmify video CDN offers you unlimited bandwidth and storage, which offers you plenty of leeway to scale up whenever you need it. Many other CDNs have bandwidth and storage limits.
• Background video acceleration - Swarmify accelerates your videos in the background, which means your videos start instantly. A typical CDN doesn't offer this feature.
• Upload and serve videos from multiple video sites - such as Amazon S3, Google Drive, Dropbox, and pCloud, among others. Typical CDNs don't allow you to serve videos from multiple sources.

A video CDN has a lot of not-so-obvious benefits over a typical CDN as far as delivering video content goes. If you'd like to offer fast video experiences on your website, a video CDN such as Swarmify is the way to go.

Swarmify vs Just CDN: Pricing

When it comes to delivering video content, billing costs are often a confusing affair.

Many CDN providers don't offer straightforward pricing, which leads to surprise costs down the line.

Some companies purposefully confuse their customers about billing costs, which is just sad.

Usually, such practices leave you with unexpected and frustrating giant bills on a project which delays your progress.

But at Swarmify, we believe that "Knowing billing cycles and how much you’ll spend on video should be as predictable as the sun rising."

That's why Swarmify video CDN billing is not based on bandwidth, only video views.

Now you can forget all about the number of videos you serve, different encoding formats, bandwidth limits, storage limits, or video player licensing.

Unless your monthly video views exceed our fair usage limits (which are generous BTW), you never have to worry about extra costs.

With Swarmify video CDN, there are no eye-popping surprises or hidden fees. Our billing is straightforward, and the best part, affordable.

Many typical CDNs come with bandwidth and storage limits. On top of that, they charge video player licensing and encoding fees, among other hidden fees.

This means your bills will go up unexpectedly, and there is nothing you can do about it.

You either pay up or they will shut down your account, which ruins your brand reputation.

But that's simply because they aren't dedicated to video. They are serving all manner of content including images, JavaScript, audio, HTML pages, and so on.

While we can't estimate how much each typical CDN charges, we can all agree to base billing on bandwidth leads to excessive costs down the line.

That is especially true if you deliver many videos constantly. Things can quickly get out of hand if you're serving large video files such as online courses.

At Swarmify, our billing process makes planning your video marketing budget as easy as A, B, C. That's because you can easily tell how much you'll pay each month.

We offer three pricing plans, as shown below:

You have the:

• Small Business Plan - Perfect for moderately trafficked sites, our cheapest plan comes in at just $29 per month. You get unlimited bandwidth, storage, and encoding. On top of that, you enjoy 50k instant-start video views and background video acceleration, and standard support, among other things.
• Video Pro Plan - For growing websites that have plenty of videos. The plan costs just $59 per month for 100K instant-start video views, background video acceleration, and unlimited everything. You also get enhanced priority support and real-time analytics. among other features.
• Custom Plan - This plan is great for users with custom video needs. You must contact Swarmify for a custom quote. Here, you get custom integrations and a lot of other goodies.

As always, we always recommend choosing the pricing plan that is perfect for your business needs. If you're unsure, you can always contact us :)

Swarmify vs Just CDN: Support

When your videos are your bread and butter, you cannot afford to lose time, money, and brand reputation when your CDN goes down.

It's precisely why you should shun a typical CDN for a dedicated video CDN. You know, a company that's focused solely on video acceleration.

A typical CDN focuses on multiple file types be it images, PDF documents, HTML files, and everything in between.

As such, they can't focus entirely on supporting your video site should the worst happen. They are simply spread too thin to offer you priority support when you need it.

But we cannot say the same about a video CDN - a company that's completely dedicated to video.

A video CDN such as Swarmify doesn't focus on other media types, meaning all our staff is dedicated to supporting your video dreams.

If anything happens, we are always here to help. We offer many support channels including a help center, ticket system, and you can always catch us on Facebook or Twitter.

You must go with a video CDN provider who is all about putting a smile on your face.

They should offer enough support channels and be available to assist you when you're in need.

You'll probably never need to contact your CDN provider as much as you contact your web host, but it's comforting to know you have an astute support team at your beck and call.

Conclusion

Investing in a CDN offers you great benefits. You get to enjoy faster content loading speeds, better security, scalability and so much more.

If you work with plenty of videos, it is not enough to invest in a typical CDN. It pays to invest in a powerful video CDN such as Swarmify instead.

That way, you work with a CDN provider who is completely focused on videos. Who is your favorite video CDN?