8 ms·
Ask HN: Any users of SimpleCDN?
They seem a little on the cheap cost side-- has anyone here used them? If you know your content is going to be seen by lots and lots of users (controlled by your own rotation), then this seems very low pricing.
http://www.simplecdn.com
For one of our coming projects, I've been reviewing Akamai, etc., and stumbled upon these guys. I'd love to know if someone else had tried them and could give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down.
- mman93456 18y agoStarted using them today for a few smaller jobs. So far performance is the same if not better than what we receive from the "bigger" guys we use, and their new S3+ service seems to be working out better than Amazon S3 for delivery.
- MonsterMash545 18y agoNo problems with simplecdn for about a month, but i have just a small blog site, doing a few hundred gigs a month in shareware downloads too, but so far everything good, saving about 3x what I was paying for S3.
- davssali 18y agoYes bro, they seem to be legit, but their downside is, you could only use the (live)service as an enduser, u cant practically resale it as with other providers, it sux. I have 50 customers that want me to provide live event streaming, but it costs $75 per account with simpleCDN, too much for me, and they dont offer a re-saler kind of account. If any one know a way around this or know a program cpanle etc that can allow a single account to host other sub accounts or something then LET ME KNOW NOW...
- igorschlum 18y agoWe are using simpleCDN for a week now and we are happy. I still not have to much Giga of download, but I want to be ready for the future. The are reactive with online chat. The transfered price is low, but the setup fee depends of the amount of space we use and it's normal as the files are stored in Ram for very fast delivery.
- bseker 18y agoI've tried using SimpleCDN. They are cheap and probably for a reason. I was going to use about 10-15Mbps, for tiny files, so it seemed like a cheap solution to my bandwidth problem. - First problem, they didn't let me use the whole $15, even though it was enough for me for more than a day. They locked my account in a few hours, without notice. - My sites were down all night long. There is no phone number to reach support. I e-mailed them in the morning. They got back to me 5 hrs later. Asking for money and saying I would have used up my balance if they kept the site up. What is the point of giving $15, if they don't let you use it? - Even though I already had $13 of my credit for the evaluation period. I paid an extra $25, they opened my account. - Then 5 hrs later, they shut down my account again, without notice. Citing terms of service. I e-mailed again. We'll see when they get back. Although price is really cheap, I don't think I will ever use simplecdn again. I will try to get my $25 back. I still have $37 in my account.
- FiReaNG3L 19y agoDid you check http://cachefly.com/ http://cachefly.com/ too? I'm also shopping for a cheap CDN and this an alternative I know.
- thorax 19y agoYeah, they're on our review lists, too. The cool (insane?) part about simplecdn is that they only charge on upload, not on bandwidth usage. Not sure how they manage that, but it appears like it would turn out to give us all sorts of savings.
- jbyers 19y agoWhen we evaluated cachefly last year, setting headers was not possible -- the files were just served with etags and whatever defaults cachefly servers had. You also had to upload files manually, no pulling files from origin servers automatically. No custom headers was an absolute deal-breaker for static images, css, js. If you can't set an expires header, you've probably undone most of the good of distributing the content around the globe anyway.
- jackjohnson 18y agoWe evaluated and tried SimpleCDN - NO GO for production content. It fits more for testing and basic home-made sites. They are cheap as they should be. A bit slower than other CDNs and not flexible. Support pretty much non-existent. They do have a live person chat. That's what they use to tell you things you already know. If you have a technical question - they refer you to support, and you are back to square one.
- aaroneous 19y agohttp://www.velocix.com/compare.php http://www.velocix.com/compare.php -- I saw these guys come across my feeds earlier in the week. They're a CDN offering up to 500gb (per mo?) of caching on their edge network for free. I have no clue as to the size of their map, or quality of service, but since it's free it may be an attractive option for bootstrapped startups who don't want to pay the traditional monthly commits of Akamai, L3, LL, etc.
- thorax 19y agoI saw a note at the bottom that says the free stuff is in private beta. Has that changed?
- jbyers 19y agoHaven't tried simplecdn. This pricing seems at first glance to be too clever, but if they can do it, it's certainly less than any competitor I've seen. We use Panther Express (http://pantherexpress.com http://pantherexpress.com). More expensive, but not nearly as much as Akamai and other big guys. No commits. Fantastic network.
- danielrhodes 19y agoI haven't used them, but be careful of their offer. If you look at their pricing, the $1 is for one credit, and they charge you a certain number of credits based on the size of your file. Here's the catch: it could get very expensive for you if you have a site that is long-tail with lots of files, but on average few views per file. If you have a few files that need to be served, or a few popular ones, it's probably a good deal depending on the quality of bandwidth you need. However, CDNs are a good example of you get what you pay for. If you need Grade A bandwidth and a CDN with a ton of POPs (e.g. for video), my bet is that they won't hold up since it looks like they are more budget and new at the game.
- berkun2 19y agoWe're using simplecdn to distribute 20 training videos on out site in HD... so far so good, no complaints, videos are real long which is why we went with them.
- jackjohnson 18y agoI have used SimpleCDN for 6 months now and it was great. HOWEVER! they changed their services around within a 3 week period and everyone was forced to migrate. The problem is that the services are not compatible. Case in point: They used to offer HTTP mirroring with GZip and HTTP Expires headers. Now they have two separate services. One offers mirroring, the other allows HTTP Expires headers. No mention of GZip options on either. Their technical support is more of a moral support to keep using the services. ANY company doing this kind of ad-hock on-the-fly FORCED incompatible "improvements" I would stay away from and go with something more reliable. Don't know what yet, just stumbled on this forum as I was looking for one.
- kfarr 18y agoI loved SimpleCDN until just recently thanks to the above mentioned services changes. No advanced warning. I didn't even receive an email notice! I happened to login and they talked about new "features" which is really just a significant pricing increase. For us it's a $275 ransom to keep using the same type of services as before (HTTP mirroring, RTMP streaming). Pay up just for the pleasure of continuing your previous plan! And, as the above poster mentioned, the two new plans are an odd (and incompatible) mix. Any alternatives? I'm looking at CacheFly, but I'll have to jury rig an FTP sync (like weex) to get the same functionality as before. Plus no RTMP. :( Looks like CacheFly and SimpleCDN are the only players in the low cost/adequate reliability CDN market, but I'd be happy to be proved wrong!
- jadamoano 18y agousing new stormfrot service for two weeks now for our linux iso distro... fast dl speeds and great price so far so good. no frills, but get the job done well and much cheaper than my dedicat box at liquidweb
- hostester11 18y agoI did evaluations of all the Wowza Media streaming providers including SimpleCDN and also FLV hosting. When we tried their $15 trail and had a problem with their control panel, we were worried that we would be charged massive fees because of the type of downloading we were testing. SimpleCDN was contacted in November and December 08, and a majority of the time they did not answer their sales line. No call back. No answer on tech support line. So we called their "24 X 7" Network Operations Center and got no answer, no call-back for several days. We called them weeks later and reported the above "no answers" and apparent empty offices and NOC. The tech became very defensive and hung up the phone. When we sent a customer to SimpleCDN, they rejected his request for an upgrade and said they would refund his money because they were referred by me -- whome they had apparently blacklisted. Why? Apparently SimpleCDN has a provision in their agreement that if you ask them an embarassing question, they will not accept business from people you send. Wonder if Frank Wilson, Chief Engineer, SimpleCDN is aware that his company's phone sometimes rings off the wall 24 X 7, and that his techs penalize folks that report problems with SimpleCDN? I would expect horrible service by what appears to be an inexperienced and very hostile set of untrained employees in sales, customer service and support. If you have plenty of time to prepare, and if you are able to sustain prolonged outages without the ability to contact the CDN in a timely manor, this is the hoster for you. In our opinion, they appear to have major internal personnel and operational problems. We will be publishing the results of our tests and evaluations of over 30 Wowza Media streaming hosters.
- SimpleCDNSupp 18y agoWe are sorry to hear this, although we are not surprised by the tone and slanderous nature of this post. This "tester" is really an angry customer who is on our abuse list, residing in the Los Angeles area. His account has been suspended several times due to non-payment, as he will continually create new accounts, use free service, and then not pay. We finally tracked him down to multiple IP addresses and have banned him from creating new accounts. He also attempted to use another customer's email address and a fake credit card number, and we have contacted the FBI regarding his behavior, and a lawsuit is pending. It is in our terms of service to keep accounts private, however we are pending hearing form the FBI and our credit card provider, as we will release the name of this person to protect other companies, as we have heard from multiple CDNs they are having an issue with this individual, creating accounts (some companies have offered credit), and then non-payment and collection issues. SimpleCDN maintains an excellent industry reputation and excellent service, and I suggest if anyone has any questions to please contact support@simplecdn.com right away. Thanks, Robyn SimpleCDN Support
- DanRayburn 18y agoAt StreamingMedia.com, we hear directly from thousands of customers each year who use various CDN providers. I must get at least one call per week from angry SimpleCDN customers. They are by far the worst when it comes to support or following through, based on the feedback we hear directly from customers. Not to mention, there is not way to reach them. I have left multiple messages for them over a week period, they never returned a single call. I would suggest you try other providers who have low prices, but real support and customer services. Try StreamingMediaHosting.com, Abacast.com, StreamGuys.com and AudioVideoWeb.com Dan Rayburn StreamingMedia.com
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- SCDNaSupport 17y agoHi Dan, It seems you are on a crusade against SimpleCDN. You forgot to mention that you have refused to mention SimpleCDN without us FIRST taking out $30,000 dollars worth of advertising, and exhibiting at Streaming Media West & East. It is a dis-service to your readers to only recommend providers that ADVERTISE with you, and to talk negatively about providers who do not. It's funny that there is "maybe" TWO angry customers on this board (could be same customer), that I work support here everyday and maybe one or two people have issues with the service, that are easily rectified by changing some settings with their embedded Flowplayer, JW Media Player, etc... and yet you claim to receive a call every week from an angry SimpleCDN customer? I doubt that. We offer a $15 free trial to everyone WITHOUT requiring a credit card or any other form of payment... come try our services out. If you like them great, you can use them and pay. If you have any problems or issues... just email us, and our 24/7 support team will help you right away. If you do email, put attention Robyn, and I'll answer you personally right away. Why would they call you anyway? You don't know the first thing about CDNs, except what the companies who PAY you tell you to write about them. Just admit it... It is pay for play with you... you talk up companies that pay you, talk down ones that refuse to play your pay for play game. We are a value service, but support is ALWAYS available via email and our customer support portal 24/7. Go ahead and compare us to AudioVideoWeb.com - we are 100 times less. So it is your call... phone support with them for $1,000 per month, or email support with us for $10 per month. Stop crying Dan that we refuse to advertise in your crappy publication and your crappy blog. We are stable and profitable, and have been around for about two years now... and are now pushing about 25Gbps+ of traffic on a daily basis, spanning over 25,000 individual accounts. You can't argue with that Dan. Thanks, Robyn SimpleCDN Support
- Googleheimer 18y agoThis is getting good! It appears SimpleCDN's is losing so much money, they are publicly admitting to blacklisting anybody who calls or emails them with questions they don't want to answer. I was checking out their service, but now it looks like I am going to have to use a pre-paid credit card, and hire a lawyer -- they apparently bill people thousands when they check out their service!
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- SCDNaSupport 17y agoWe give you $15 free dollars to try the service, and you DO NOT need to use a credit card, or provide anything but your email address to get started. We don't "bill" our customers anyway, so no, we do not "apparently bill people thousands". Do keep in mind that our StormFront service has a $149 per GB storage charge. So if you do upload 10GBs of content to the CDN, then yeah, you will see a $1,000+ charge to your SimpleCDN Account. But if that was a mistake... email us and we'll take that off of your Account; all charges go to your SimpleCDN Account, and then you fund your account. Upload a 50mb file and try us out; I'm sure you'll love the service. Our use our new Lightning service, which is a CloudFront clone, and there are no storage charges at all! So you are wrong on both accounts, DAN! Thanks, Robyn SimpleCDN Support support@simplecdn.com
- DanRayburn 17y agoRobyn, SimpleCDN has never exhibited at any Streaming Media West or East show, implying otherwise is simply a lie. Here is a link to all of the exhibitors at our shows over the past TEN years: http://www.streamingmedia.com/pastshows http://www.streamingmedia.com/pastshows Point me to the show where SimpleCDN exhibited. You can't. I list over 40 CDNs on my blog at http://www.cdnlist.com http://www.cdnlist.com, of which at least a dozen of them have never advertised with StreamingMedia.com in any capacity. You can "imply" anything you like but the facts don't back it up. And speaking of advertising, why is it that your "chief engineer" reached out to me asking to advertise with us? See below. Folks, if you are looking for a video hosting provider, pick one that is professional, returns calls and does not state things on message boards that are completely false. And pick a company that you can actually call when you have a problem, not have to reply on sending them an e-mail. If any vendor is not willing to speak to you on the phone, provides no support number, then you get what you pay for. Dan Rayburn StreamingMedia.com -------------- X-HashCash: 1:20:080422:md50000000032::66RG6a/puIOEkJJl:0000B5R2 X-MDRemoteIP: 204.8.16.3 X-MDaemon-Deliver-To: mail@danrayburn.com Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:52:56 -0500 From: Frank Wilson <frank.wilson@simplecdn.com> Organization: SimpleCDN To: mail@danrayburn.com Subject: Advertising Request X-Nonspam: Statistical 48% Hi Dan, My name is Frank Wilson, and I am the Chief Engineer here at SimpleCDN, a new brand new CDN service which offers flat-rate pricing. I enjoy your blog everyday, and am interested in finding out more about how to advertise on your site(s). Please send me your media kit, etc. so that I may pass this information along to our marketing department. I look forward to sending you more information about our company in the next few days, and starting an advertising campaign to get our company off the ground. Again, thanks for the time, and I look forward to speaking with you more in the near future. Thanks, Frank
- jadamoano 17y ago
- DanRayburn 17y agoRobyn, SimpleCDN has never exhibited at any Streaming Media West or East show, implying otherwise is simply a lie. Here is a link to all of the exhibitors at our shows over the past TEN years: http://www.streamingmedia.com/pastshows http://www.streamingmedia.com/pastshows Point me to the show where SimpleCDN exhibited. You can't. I list over 40 CDNs on my blog at http://www.cdnlist.com http://www.cdnlist.com, of which at least a dozen of them have never advertised with StreamingMedia.com in any capacity. You can "imply" anything you like but the facts don't back it up. And speaking of advertising, why is it that your "chief engineer" reached out to me asking to advertise with us? See below. Folks, if you are looking for a video hosting provider, pick one that is professional, returns calls and does not state things on message boards that are completely false. And pick a company that you can actually call when you have a problem, not have to reply on sending them an e-mail. If any vendor is not willing to speak to you on the phone, provides no support number, then you get what you pay for. Dan Rayburn StreamingMedia.com -------------- X-HashCash: 1:20:080422:md50000000032::66RG6a/puIOEkJJl:0000B5R2 X-MDRemoteIP: 204.8.16.3 X-MDaemon-Deliver-To: mail@danrayburn.com Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:52:56 -0500 From: Frank Wilson <frank.wilson@simplecdn.com> Organization: SimpleCDN To: mail@danrayburn.com Subject: Advertising Request X-Nonspam: Statistical 48% Hi Dan, My name is Frank Wilson, and I am the Chief Engineer here at SimpleCDN, a new brand new CDN service which offers flat-rate pricing. I enjoy your blog everyday, and am interested in finding out more about how to advertise on your site(s). Please send me your media kit, etc. so that I may pass this information along to our marketing department. I look forward to sending you more information about our company in the next few days, and starting an advertising campaign to get our company off the ground. Again, thanks for the time, and I look forward to speaking with you more in the near future. Thanks, Frank
- spaceclaim 18y agoThey do look pretty good, but I don't think they are a real company. It looks like they are a one or two person company running out of Mail Boxes Etc. Read this story for more info. http://www.jacobrosenberg.net/2008/08/09/simplecdn-revolutionary-business-model-or-just-a-pyramid-scheme/ http://www.jacobrosenberg.net/2008/08/09/simplecdn-revolutio...
- mediaman453 18y agoWe just used then this past weekend to distribute a campaign video which had 10 million downloads. Worked like a charm. I asked a sales person about that blog, and he said it was posted from an engineer at AOL's CDN trying to drive them out of business. The article is a total lie, and we have had nothing but great service from SimmpleCDN. I would recommend. He did say the address is their billing remittance address, so if you need to send them payment, you are all set! I remember when I used to dial up for that special "You Got Mail" sound on AOL... good times, good times.
- kospeslgurness 18y agojbyers... i just switched to simplecdn from cachefly because simplecdn does https and allows you to do gzip and cache-control. I second mediaman453, dont know what article is talking about, great expereincecc soo far great service emails you back at all hours of the night is crazy