What's the best CDN for image hosting on a high-volume web site?

Question

Akamai is way too expensive. Photobucket is not reliable. Is there a great content delivery network that I can use just to host my images?

We deploy images programmatically via FTP, so there is some programming behind the scenes.

Having some sort of reporting about the reliability of the service, whether it's raw logs files or a web-based admin screen that shows http errors, would also be important.

Has anyone worked with edgecast?

Answer 1

I use snapfish for all my online photo needs. Easy photo album setup and more. They also make it very easy to have copies of any of my photos printed and mailed to me at a very reasonable rate.

Answer 2

I've been using Amazon's S3 to serve site media for a while -- it's been wonderful, even with "streaming" (ahem) video files >600MB.

While it's not a proper CDN, it's dirt-cheap and can be used with most web frameworks and FTP clients (eg., Cyberduck).

Answer 3

I'd use Amazon S3 storage - it's very cost effective and offers a broad range of features and a great API if you need access to more complex features like security. Agree that Akamai is waaay to exy, I've also used LimeLight, which is not bad value, but only offers FTP for uploading.

Answer 4

Rolling your own (exactly as many servers and/or colocation centers as you need) is more economical than Amazon S3 past a certain amount of throughput.

Answer 5

I have worked with Amazon S3, CacheFly and have been very happy with SimpleCDN. Check it out here: http://www.simplecdn.com.

This is one of our sites that is using the CDN to serve the images: http://www.stinelumber.com

We do no FTP or manual transfer of the images. We allow our client to upload images to our web server and simpleCDN pulls it from our server if they do not have a copy of the image. Good stuff.

-Calvin Fabre

Answer 6

Amazon recently started offering CloudFront, which is a CDN on op of S3. The original files are stored on S3, and via the CouldFront API you request an URL for the object. Any request from a visitor to that URL is then served from the closest datacenter.

As with all Amazon AWS services you only pay what you use with no minimum. I'm sure there is a point at which they become too expensive but the combination of pay-as-you-go with the automation of the Amazon API's is very nice indeed.

Answer 7

I've run some pretty big sites off of Panther Express with great results and support. I wouldn't have any problem recommending them.

Answer 8

I am using and i highly recommend this free image hosting service : http://xtupload.com . They are completely free moreover their offer unlimited bandwidth , disk space , a advanced online editor , image spin up , gallery etc ... so do not waste your time and money and enjoy the free service

Answer 9

there are many providers out there. check out www.cachefly.com www.valuecdn.com I understood that you require CDN for static content, right?

Answer 10

Agreed - there are a myriad of suppliers out there. If you want the benefits of one of the leading CDN's (limelight) but without the cost and commit downsides we have found http://www.mydeo.com to be excellent - they also have an API should you wish to use that for the programmatic automation...

Answer 11

You should check out http://www.AISO.net, they can host your images all within RAM or DISK using their different platforms and they have FTP support as well, I would check them out.

Answer 12

I am using MaxCDN and I am very happy with them! They only charge 9.9 cent per GB transfer and they currently offer a signup special where the give you 1TeraByte for $10.

Answer 13

I second the MaxCDN recommendation. It's simple, fast, and cheap. Ryan Kearney has a good comparison of CDN providers: http://blog.ryankearney.com/reviews/content-delivery-networks/

Answer 14

I am using this http://cdnpic.com/

Answer 15

I've been sampling all the biggie CDNs for some time now for potentially hosting a video streaming site i'm working on with some friends.

All the top dawgs have something pretty interesting to offer that others seemingly lack. I've found the two most complete solutions for what we're doing to be Amazon and Edgecast. Like somebody else had mentioned earlier, Amazon's appeal is in the no frills approach, by simply delivering what you ask for at a competitive price. Edgecast does it for me in that they have a neat-o concept with their approach to load balancing, and being able to deliver content from the reaches of the globe quickly.

Just my two cents...

Answer 16

http://scaleengine.com is 0.04 per GB from their edges and they are only tech freebsd guys.

Answer 17

Hello, I share photos and images on mediafire.com and www.isphotobomb.com , but I prefer this last because is cool and more simple.

Recards

Answer 18

Perhaps, you can try other cheaper CDN solution provider such as InstantCDN. Check out their URL

http://instantcdn.asia/order/