Pay as you go CDN
13 Aug 2018

Pay as You Go CDN – Affordable and Cost-Effective Solution

Content delivery networks, and especially pay as you go CDN models, have been gaining increasing popularity over the past decade. With exceptional user experience, fast page loading speed and seamless website performance becoming more and more significant as time goes by, the importance of identifying and utilizing an effective and cheap CDN becomes mandatory.

It’s also important to note that with the rising popularity of the technology, all other utility aspects such as easy integration, fast deployment, seamless collaboration between vendors and clients and reduced costs are improving simultaneously.

Nowadays, any person with next to zero technical knowledge can make great use of content delivery networks thanks to improved coverage (most CDN providers currently have access to servers spread all over the globe), geolocation routing technology, which allows CDN’s servers to identify the visitor’s location and load both static and dynamic content ultra-fast, easy integrations with any website (specifically designed plugins enable this feature) and ultra-fast SSD drives (these accelerate the content delivery even further and can even break the current threshold of under 2 seconds page loading time).

While choosing a CDN that suits your business needs perfectly may seem overwhelming to newcomers, it really isn’t that complicated. We have covered some of them previously and today we want to focus on another key element – pay as you go CDN, which is only offered by a small number of vendors.

What is Pay as You Go CDN and How Does it Work?

Originally introduced by mobile service providers, pay as you go (PAYG), also known as pay-as-you-talk, pay and go or go-phone works by the client pre-purchasing credits in advance of service use. Unlike monthly payment models, where you pay a fixed amount of price for a fixed amount of service that can be used during 30 days, the above-mentioned credits are used to pay for the services at the point where the service is accessed or consumed.

What this basically means is that you only pay to the telecommunications company whenever you talk on the phone, access the internet via your phone or send text messages. Also, there is no predefined limit on any of these actions – if you’re only using the service for, let’s say 50 hours a month, you only pay for those and not for the whole month.

This exact same model is applicable to CDN. If your vendor supports PAYG, you only pay for the services when one of the servers, also known as points of presence (PoPs), loads your website’s content for a visitor. If your pre-purchased credit expires, your account simply gets put on hold until you purchase more credits.

The benefits of pay as you go CDN can be enormous, especially for an organization that is new to CDN and doesn’t have a good idea about how much data they need to purchase. Here are some of them:

  • No monthly fees – If you decide to purchase a monthly payment plan, you may be faced with the issue of having a lot of unused data left over, which is basically a waste of money.
  • Precise cost calculations – You’ll know exactly how much you’re spending per each geographic location and region, which will help you adjust your strategy accordingly.
  • You’re not tied to a contract – If you use a monthly payment plan and run out of data, you won’t be able to purchase more until the month is over, which can be devastating for a business.
  • Free to walk away anytime – Lastly, you can simply stop using the services of your CDN vendor whenever you feel like it, without having to deal with contracts, overheads and cancelation fees.

What Makes CDNsun Pay as You Go One of the Top Choices on the Market?

While many CDN vendors offer PAYG, what really sets CDNsun apart from the competition is the full control over all the PoPs – enabled and disabled – that every user receives. This feature not only helps adjust costs perfectly to fit your business strategy, budget and needs but also allow room for flexibility and practically unlimited scalability. The cost is calculated according to the CDN traffic delivered through each enabled PoP.

Let’s take an example.

Suppose you have delivered 50 TB of data via CDNsun services and out of those 50, 15 TB was delivered through New York, 10 TB through Odessa, 5 TB through Dubai and 25 TB through Madrid. Now the cost of each PoP is publicly displayed on our website and can be easily calculated. We also have included a cost calculator for your convenience.

After having access to this information, you can adjust your budget and strategy accordingly. For instance, if the cost of pay as you go CDN proves to be too high for a specific location that gets a lot of visits, it might make sense to set up a native host for that area. Or, you could use this data to adjust your marketing strategy and increase the focus towards the areas that provide most website visits. Those are just two quick examples, but there is a whole lot more practical use to knowing where your customers are and how to reach them.

Furthermore, your pre-purchased credits will be available for a whole year and prolong validity after each successful deposit. Our users also get access to Grace Limits, which stands for the negative amount of credit that your account can go to. The Grace Limit is adjusted according to the pricing plan – the higher the plan, the higher the Grace Limit. In all cases including approaching and overstepping the Grace Limit, suspension of the account, purchasing more credits and reaching the validation date, every single client receives a series of notifications and emails to warn/remind them about all of these events.

Moreover, in case you’re absolutely perplexed and don’t have a clue where to start, how much data you may require or which geolocation will generate most website visits, you have the option to test-drive CDNsun for 30 days for free. Finally, our customer support team and technical experts are available 24/7 to assist you with anything you might struggle with during the trial period including integrations, utilizing pay as you go CDN to its best capabilities and how to adjust your pricing plan to fit your business needs and strategy, completely free of charge.