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SimpleCDN looks like it's already done something like this ("easy API, democratizing the CDN"). While I'm not a customer of either SimpleCDN or CloudFront yet,

SimpleCDN looks like it's already done something like this ("easy API, democratizing the CDN"). While I'm not a customer of either SimpleCDN or CloudFront yet, this looks easy enough to deal with: http://www.simplecdn.com/solutions#UploadBuckets It's also MUCH cheaper than CloudFront: http://www.simplecdn.com/pricing Also from that page: "There are no contracts or monthly minimum fees, etc." It looks like they don't have nearly the reach that something like Akamai or Limelight has (but comparable to CloudFront currently): http://www.simplecdn.com/noc For a small to medium sized project, this is what I would personally sign up for rather than CloudFront.

vaksel 18y ago
the difference is that cloudfront is backed by Amazon. So this means 2 things: a) it won't be going out of business any time soon b) if AWS goes down, usually so will the main amazon site. So you'll have hundreds of techies working to fix your issue. Its mostly a trust issue...everyone heard of akamai, everyone heard of limelight, everyone heard of AWS.
- auntjemima 18y ago
  AWS is a separate wing from the Amazon site, they buy their own servers and datacenters. There have already been numerous S3 and EC2 outages. You won't get any support at AWS unless you pay for a premium contract. And, unlike SimpleCDN, there is no SLA with CloudFront yet. While everyone has indeed heard of AWS, they are not in the same category yet with Akamai and Limelight just because they released a CDN product. In each case, for the sake of a discount solution, you are probably sacrificing reliability, bulletproof contracts/SLAs, and a TON of presence locations vs. something like Akamai. I like my brands just as much as anyone, but I think you're taking just as much chances with SimpleCDN vs. CloudFront. And with SimpleCDN you get better prices and an SLA that offers refunds for outages (which is better than nothing).
jasonkester 18y ago
Are you sure you're reading the right pricing chart? Comparing these: http://www.simplecdn.com/pricing http://www.simplecdn.com/pricing http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/ http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/ http://aws.amazon.com/s3/ http://aws.amazon.com/s3/ storage: Amazon: $0.15/GB, simpleCDN $5.00/GB (ouch!) transfer out: Amazon: $0.17-$0.22/GB, simpleCDN $0.09/GB transfer in: Amazon: something, simpleCDN: nothing requests: Both: $0.01/10k requests So yeah, you might save a few pennies on bandwidth, but SimpleCDN would kill you on storage it seems. They do seem to offer another product that they call "SimpleCDN S3+", that I assume is their equivilant of S3, since the prices are about the same. Is that what you were comparing?
- Logitech213 18y ago
  SimpleCDN's S3+ service is much cheaper than S3, with the same pricing for storage and $0.059 for transfer. The other points you are missing are FEATURES. SimpleCDN supports RTMP streaming. HTTP streaming of FLV and MP4 files are also supported. As is gzip compression (A BIG Bandwidth Saver - 60% to 70% size savings on CSS and JS.) and the ability to set expires headers. S3 and CloudFront does NONE of this. Repeat, NONE of this. So lets say you had a website with lots of scripts, images, some videos, etc. So lets say it is 10GB worth of stuff. $50 a month for storage. Okay that is more... but then if you are pushing 10TB per month, that would be $1700 on S3, and $890 on SimpleCDN. So big deal for the $50. Plus gzip compression will save you more. Did I mention RTMP Flash streaming? S3 is like something out of 1999. Oh and SimpleCDN will mirror files from ANY HTTP website. With CloudFront you have to use S3. AND pay for S3 transfer to CloudFront. Stupid. How often does CloudFront drop its cache of your files? Think about it, ALL CloudFront locations constantly caching your files and re-caching from S3, costing even more bandwidth. Stupid.
  - jasonkester 18y ago
    Uh... at the risk of repeating myself... are you sure you're reading the right pricing chart? According to SimpleCDN's website, their S3+ service is not a content deliver network. It has US and EU locations, just like S3. So sure, it's cheaper than S3, but the thing they offer that competes with CloudPoint is potentially bit more expensive than CloudPoint, depending on the disposition of your content. And I think you missed the part where you don't get charged for moving things around between S3 and CloudPoint. And the part where you can set your caching however you like, just like you would for any file you serve from a traditional webserver.
- Logitech213 18y ago
  S3+ has multiple locations, but it uses the multiple locations AT THE SAME TIME, it is like a mini CDN, unlike S3 which is only delivered from a single location. Amazon DOES charge you for transfer between S3 and Cloudfront... you have to pay transfer TO EACH EDGE SERVER at standard S3 transfer rates.
- Logitech213 18y ago
thorax 18y ago
We trialed SimpleCDN in some simple cases for files I've had on it, and the performance was pretty bad as measured by Pingdom across the world. I love the idea and wanted them to be good, but it simply couldn't perform for us and always seemed to be serving from some place in the central U.S. Maybe they've gotten better in the past few months, but they didn't do much for us except for give us a reliable alternative hosting location. The performance never seemed to improve worldwide-- almost as if they don't have many edge servers.
holriz 18y ago
SimpleCDN looks great at first glance and is a great offering.. BUT it doesn't perform reliably for a commercial project...we have had outages already this week 'stream not found' and today we can't even get a 256kb stream from the network..

vaksel 18y ago

the difference is that cloudfront is backed by Amazon. So this means 2 things: a) it won't be going out of business any time soon b) if AWS goes down, usually so will the main amazon site. So you'll have hundreds of techies working to fix your issue. Its mostly a trust issue...everyone heard of akamai, everyone heard of limelight, everyone heard of AWS.

auntjemima 18y ago
AWS is a separate wing from the Amazon site, they buy their own servers and datacenters. There have already been numerous S3 and EC2 outages. You won't get any support at AWS unless you pay for a premium contract. And, unlike SimpleCDN, there is no SLA with CloudFront yet. While everyone has indeed heard of AWS, they are not in the same category yet with Akamai and Limelight just because they released a CDN product. In each case, for the sake of a discount solution, you are probably sacrificing reliability, bulletproof contracts/SLAs, and a TON of presence locations vs. something like Akamai. I like my brands just as much as anyone, but I think you're taking just as much chances with SimpleCDN vs. CloudFront. And with SimpleCDN you get better prices and an SLA that offers refunds for outages (which is better than nothing).

jasonkester 18y ago

Are you sure you're reading the right pricing chart? Comparing these: http://www.simplecdn.com/pricing http://www.simplecdn.com/pricing http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/ http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/ http://aws.amazon.com/s3/ http://aws.amazon.com/s3/ storage: Amazon: $0.15/GB, simpleCDN $5.00/GB (ouch!) transfer out: Amazon: $0.17-$0.22/GB, simpleCDN $0.09/GB transfer in: Amazon: something, simpleCDN: nothing requests: Both: $0.01/10k requests So yeah, you might save a few pennies on bandwidth, but SimpleCDN would kill you on storage it seems. They do seem to offer another product that they call "SimpleCDN S3+", that I assume is their equivilant of S3, since the prices are about the same. Is that what you were comparing?

Logitech213 18y ago
SimpleCDN's S3+ service is much cheaper than S3, with the same pricing for storage and $0.059 for transfer. The other points you are missing are FEATURES. SimpleCDN supports RTMP streaming. HTTP streaming of FLV and MP4 files are also supported. As is gzip compression (A BIG Bandwidth Saver - 60% to 70% size savings on CSS and JS.) and the ability to set expires headers. S3 and CloudFront does NONE of this. Repeat, NONE of this. So lets say you had a website with lots of scripts, images, some videos, etc. So lets say it is 10GB worth of stuff. $50 a month for storage. Okay that is more... but then if you are pushing 10TB per month, that would be $1700 on S3, and $890 on SimpleCDN. So big deal for the $50. Plus gzip compression will save you more. Did I mention RTMP Flash streaming? S3 is like something out of 1999. Oh and SimpleCDN will mirror files from ANY HTTP website. With CloudFront you have to use S3. AND pay for S3 transfer to CloudFront. Stupid. How often does CloudFront drop its cache of your files? Think about it, ALL CloudFront locations constantly caching your files and re-caching from S3, costing even more bandwidth. Stupid.
- jasonkester 18y ago
  Uh... at the risk of repeating myself... are you sure you're reading the right pricing chart? According to SimpleCDN's website, their S3+ service is not a content deliver network. It has US and EU locations, just like S3. So sure, it's cheaper than S3, but the thing they offer that competes with CloudPoint is potentially bit more expensive than CloudPoint, depending on the disposition of your content. And I think you missed the part where you don't get charged for moving things around between S3 and CloudPoint. And the part where you can set your caching however you like, just like you would for any file you serve from a traditional webserver.
Logitech213 18y ago
S3+ has multiple locations, but it uses the multiple locations AT THE SAME TIME, it is like a mini CDN, unlike S3 which is only delivered from a single location. Amazon DOES charge you for transfer between S3 and Cloudfront... you have to pay transfer TO EACH EDGE SERVER at standard S3 transfer rates.
Logitech213 18y ago

thorax 18y ago

We trialed SimpleCDN in some simple cases for files I've had on it, and the performance was pretty bad as measured by Pingdom across the world. I love the idea and wanted them to be good, but it simply couldn't perform for us and always seemed to be serving from some place in the central U.S. Maybe they've gotten better in the past few months, but they didn't do much for us except for give us a reliable alternative hosting location. The performance never seemed to improve worldwide-- almost as if they don't have many edge servers.

holriz 18y ago

SimpleCDN looks great at first glance and is a great offering.. BUT it doesn't perform reliably for a commercial project...we have had outages already this week 'stream not found' and today we can't even get a 256kb stream from the network..