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FYI Update from Vimeo CEO posted Friday https://vimeo.com/blog/post/improving-policy-on-video-bandwidth/ https://vimeo.com/blog/post/improving-policy-on-video-b

by kfarr 5y ago

FYI Update from Vimeo CEO posted Friday https://vimeo.com/blog/post/improving-policy-on-video-bandwidth/ https://vimeo.com/blog/post/improving-policy-on-video-bandwi... (disclaimer I am a Vimeo employee)

Aeolun 5y ago
Am I the only one that thinks 2TB is pretty low for a plan that costs $75/month?
- detaro 5y ago
  Bandwidth pricing is always a difficult topic. E.g. one comparison: 2 TB traffic out of AWS CloudFront is $85-120/month (first TB free, per TB cost as listed for the second TB, depending on region), and that's traffic only, no storage, processing, ... Of course AWS traffic is not exactly cheap, but Vimeo is an all-in-one service handling more than just traffic.
  - candiddevmike 5y ago
    There are plenty of cloud providers without insane bandwidth fees, or Vimeo could host their services on premise. Netflix doesn't stream content from AWS, Vimeo needs a more cost effective architecture.
    - detaro 5y ago
      I didn't claim Vimeo uses AWS.
      - candiddevmike 5y ago
        I was just pointing to an example of not streaming from the cloud. Vimeo uses a combination of GCP and Fastly I believe https://cloud.google.com/customers/vimeo https://cloud.google.com/customers/vimeo
  - smileybarry 5y ago
    But that's CloudFront, one of the most expensive CDNs out there. (And that's before considering customers like Vimeo can get special rates, even 50% off is common) Another example on the opposite end is a host like Hetzner, where you get 20TB of traffic at 10Gb/s uplink for any cloud VM at $5+/month (or any root server at $40+/month). Comparably, AWS EC2 is $0.17/GB IIRC. On another note -- it looks like Vimeo are using Akamai.
    - detaro 5y ago
      Cloudfront is an example for "premium B2B service", which apparently Vimeo wants to be too. So they clearly have cheaper underlying prices, and then have costs for non-bandwidth and and want to make money on top. Same way that AWS is not for everybody that means that clearly Vimeo is not for everybody who is not willing to pay premium, but for the market, it's not totally out of order.
      - moralestapia 5y ago
        What's the point of "premium" if you only want bits delivered at an acceptable rate? Bunny CDN would give you 2TB for about 20 bucks/month. I know you'd then have to use your own website/player but that's not really a big deal, most people that use Vimeo have a website anyway, it's not that hard to code an <embed> tag ... I don't think this was a good move by Vimeo, but maybe they're doing so bad (financially, as I think their product is great) that they don't really have a choice.
        omnimus 5y ago
        The problem with comparing themselves with cloudflare/bunnycdn is that Vimeo is making big chunk of their money on "pro" creators who pay 20 bucks for what would be 0,5 usd costs those CDNs have. They have few videos with few streams - but Vimeo is their portfolio. They are limited by monthly upload sizes but thats all. I really think this shift is not smart one for them. Because these creators will move especially once they realize they would pay 3usd on cloudflare. And cloudflare/bunny smartly include pretty similar upload area and even videoplayers/iframes so there is not much difference to vimeo for these "creative pros".
- deleted 5y ago
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- tyingq 5y ago
  It is low for just bandwidth, but I imagine the assumption is that it also represents the relative scale/cost for transcoding, storage, etc, as well. It still isn't cheap compared to diy, but that's what you're paying for, I guess.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    I was trying to say the amount of bandwidth does not correctly relate to the other components. Someone uploading things at that plan will very quickly hit 2TB in bandwidth. The plan itself may still be reasonable.
Pooge 5y ago
Do you think this will lead to the downfall of Vimeo? How are you and your colleagues interpreting this move?
brycelarkin 5y ago
I don’t believe her when she says this is because of bandwidth. Given Vimeo’s scale, they must have insanely low data out fees. The only way I can see what she’s saying being true is if there’s gross incompetence at the company and their cloud architecture is highly inefficient.

by kfarr 5y ago

Aeolun 5y ago

Am I the only one that thinks 2TB is pretty low for a plan that costs $75/month?

detaro 5y ago
Bandwidth pricing is always a difficult topic. E.g. one comparison: 2 TB traffic out of AWS CloudFront is $85-120/month (first TB free, per TB cost as listed for the second TB, depending on region), and that's traffic only, no storage, processing, ... Of course AWS traffic is not exactly cheap, but Vimeo is an all-in-one service handling more than just traffic.
- candiddevmike 5y ago
  There are plenty of cloud providers without insane bandwidth fees, or Vimeo could host their services on premise. Netflix doesn't stream content from AWS, Vimeo needs a more cost effective architecture.
  - detaro 5y ago
    I didn't claim Vimeo uses AWS.
    - candiddevmike 5y ago
      I was just pointing to an example of not streaming from the cloud. Vimeo uses a combination of GCP and Fastly I believe https://cloud.google.com/customers/vimeo https://cloud.google.com/customers/vimeo
- smileybarry 5y ago
  But that's CloudFront, one of the most expensive CDNs out there. (And that's before considering customers like Vimeo can get special rates, even 50% off is common) Another example on the opposite end is a host like Hetzner, where you get 20TB of traffic at 10Gb/s uplink for any cloud VM at $5+/month (or any root server at $40+/month). Comparably, AWS EC2 is $0.17/GB IIRC. On another note -- it looks like Vimeo are using Akamai.
  - detaro 5y ago
    Cloudfront is an example for "premium B2B service", which apparently Vimeo wants to be too. So they clearly have cheaper underlying prices, and then have costs for non-bandwidth and and want to make money on top. Same way that AWS is not for everybody that means that clearly Vimeo is not for everybody who is not willing to pay premium, but for the market, it's not totally out of order.
    - moralestapia 5y ago
      What's the point of "premium" if you only want bits delivered at an acceptable rate? Bunny CDN would give you 2TB for about 20 bucks/month. I know you'd then have to use your own website/player but that's not really a big deal, most people that use Vimeo have a website anyway, it's not that hard to code an <embed> tag ... I don't think this was a good move by Vimeo, but maybe they're doing so bad (financially, as I think their product is great) that they don't really have a choice.
      - omnimus 5y ago
        The problem with comparing themselves with cloudflare/bunnycdn is that Vimeo is making big chunk of their money on "pro" creators who pay 20 bucks for what would be 0,5 usd costs those CDNs have. They have few videos with few streams - but Vimeo is their portfolio. They are limited by monthly upload sizes but thats all. I really think this shift is not smart one for them. Because these creators will move especially once they realize they would pay 3usd on cloudflare. And cloudflare/bunny smartly include pretty similar upload area and even videoplayers/iframes so there is not much difference to vimeo for these "creative pros".
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tyingq 5y ago
It is low for just bandwidth, but I imagine the assumption is that it also represents the relative scale/cost for transcoding, storage, etc, as well. It still isn't cheap compared to diy, but that's what you're paying for, I guess.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  I was trying to say the amount of bandwidth does not correctly relate to the other components. Someone uploading things at that plan will very quickly hit 2TB in bandwidth. The plan itself may still be reasonable.

Pooge 5y ago

Do you think this will lead to the downfall of Vimeo? How are you and your colleagues interpreting this move?

brycelarkin 5y ago

I don’t believe her when she says this is because of bandwidth. Given Vimeo’s scale, they must have insanely low data out fees. The only way I can see what she’s saying being true is if there’s gross incompetence at the company and their cloud architecture is highly inefficient.