RSS FeedFlat Rate or Per GB Transfer
It is really getting interesting on the bandwidth structures available to web based companies now. Amazon’s S3 service is lowering their prices even more than before, they were cheap at $0.20/GB transfer. It is getting to the point where even with a screaming deal on an unlmited transfer plan with a capped Mbps transfer you might want to make the switch.
With some plans you can get unlimited transfer but you can say use 100Mbps at any one time for a flat monthly rate. This can seem like a good deal when you are doing a lot of constant trasfer where you aren’t going to go over the 100Mbps and are just doing a lot of data. The thing is you are capped for high traffic times and no matter if your traffic goes up, stays the same, or goes down you are getting charged the same amount. So when you are doing 90Mbps everyday it is a good deal but when you are doing 10Mbps it becomes a waste of money.
So you look at an option based on GB transfer and they will charge you monthly depending on how my transfer you do. Benefit here if your traffic goes up, hopefully are making more money, the bill goes up but if your traffic goes way down so will the bill. You aren’t tieing yourself to a flat rate you might not be using. The thing in the past was that with GB transfer costs of $1.50/GB, that you find with some CDN networks and a more average $0.50/GB, you are just coming out a lot higher on the cost than with the flat rate. Now with Amazon’s less than $0.20/GB you need to relook at your contracts. Might be time to make the switch.
WordpressTags: Amazon, Bandwidth, CDN, Hosting, S3
While $0.20/GB transfer does look cheap compared to, say $1.50/GB, content distribution networks also have the unenviable task of educating up and coming site administrators in a world of oversold hosting services.
On a per GB transfer basis, they have unbeatable pricing. The problem comes when a site actually tries to drive that amount of traffic through the network.
Content delivery networks are all about real network usage and not hypothetical pricing limits.
That’s the long way of saying that to the uninitiated, even Amazon S3 looks espensive.
December 10th, 2007 at 12:17 amI agree that you cannot look at the price along, they company I worked for at the time did not use them for our primary download network.
We used Panther Express which is a high quality CDN network at a low price. S3 was more for a failback if there were issues with the CDN or for traffic that didn’t need a high quality connection but did need a cheap price.
You need to look at all the pieces of the puzzle and see what works best for you. We found that for the services we received the $1.50/GB was not worth it when we could get the same/better service from a CDN for sub $0.50/GB transfer.
December 10th, 2007 at 9:47 amThere are a few CDN providers offering even lower transfer rates - as low as $0.10 per 1Gig. However, as your article says 0.20$ is very low pricing as well.
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March 2nd, 2008 at 10:03 aminteresting site man
March 6th, 2008 at 11:01 amGood time. And ,
July 5th, 2008 at 6:57 am