BytePlus CDN

How to Achieve Cost

Efficiency with CDN

Miniguide
Introduction
From E-commerce to the Media and Entertainment
industry, a top-of-mind concern has to do with cost.
Indeed, cost is the single biggest concern that can
significantly impact operations and profitability,
which is why achieving cost efficiency —or the ability
to do more with less—is the Holy Grail
for all businesses.

Pressure Cooker
Environment
Cost is rising across all industries. For example,
E-commerce businesses are now faced with
increasing costs for shipment and fulfillment,
customer acquisition, and fuel in last-mile deliveries.
For Media & Entertainment businesses, content
production, licensing fees, distribution costs, and
advertising are all adding to the already hefty price
tags. Finally, for Enterprise Technology companies,
developing and maintaining cutting-edge technology
solutions requires substantial investment in research
and development. Attracting—and retaining—top
talent, too, is an increasingly pricey endeavor.

Under such tremendous pressure on all fronts,

businesses must find ways to reduce costs to
survive and thrive.

Delivering Content from Anywhere to

Everywhere — in a Cost-Effective Way
This is where Content Delivery Network (CDN) comes into the picture.

A good CDN can help reduce costs for businesses in various ways,
primarily by optimizing content delivery, enhancing website performance,
and improving user experiences. Also, by minimizing the load on the
origin servers, optimizing data transfer, and offering scalable, pay-as-
you-go pricing, this cost-effective approach allows businesses to scale
their online presence without incurring exorbitant capital expenses.

Ultimately, in our increasingly digital landscape, how competitive your

business is depends on how fast you can deliver uninterrupted, high-
quality content from your network of servers to everywhere in the
world—and all of this comes at a price. What a CDN does, is to help
businesses achieve cost efficiency in the long run. Your choice of CDN
could be the pivotal factor that sharpens your competitiveness and
drives the business into greater profitability.

2
STRATEGY
Assessment of Current CDN Costs
01 Begin your CDN optimization journey with a thorough examination of your existing costs.

Step 1: Evaluate Your Existing CDN Costs

Don’t be afraid to dive deep into your bills and contracts to break expenses down into individual
components. Could you be overspending on certain aspects of your CDN services? Which
services cost the most? Are there any hidden fees that you might be missing? Check if you may
be paying extra for exceeding storage costs, different pricing based on geographic location,
HTTPS/SSL fees, customization costs or even support services.

Step 2: Identify Areas for Potential Cost Optimization

Trim away the fats. Are there redundancies or inefficiencies in your current setup?
Can you identify areas where you can reduce spending without compromising performance?

Pro Tip: It is not just about slashing costs – it is also about analyzing the relationship between CDN expenses and
overall performance. Sometimes, investing a bit more in the right places can lead to substantial improvements in
user experience and operational efficiency.

STRATEGY Optimizing CDN Resource Utilization

02
Enhance your CDN usage by tailoring it to match your unique business needs.

Step 1: Analyze Your CDN Resource Usage Patterns

This includes the bandwidth, requests, and storage. Are some resources underutilized while
others are maxed out? This step helps you pinpoint areas for improvement.

Step 2: Define Content Delivery Rules

You can specify how the CDN should handle the distribution and caching of your website or
application’s content. This minimizes latency and optimizes the allocation of resources by efficiently
delivering content — so there is increased user satisfaction, plus reduced business costs.

Step 3: Think Long Term

Cashflow and operations are important. However, as your online and multimedia content grows
in quantity and complexity, your data requirements will grow along with them. Different platforms
and devices also require different delivery methods, putting more strain on your CDN – making it
imperative to make a strategic business decision that weighs more than buying a service; but
also down to the dollars and cents.

A CDN should also be simple to manage and scale as your business expands. Look for providers
that offer an intuitive control interface, automated resource allocation, straightforward scaling
options, and easy integration to train and onboard administrators – so your team adapts swiftly
to changing demands in a seamless and hassle-free way.

3
STRATEGY Leveraging Caching and Content
Optimization
03
What is Caching? What is Content Optimization?
Caching is like the magic wand of CDN optimization. Content Optimization works by compressing content
It involves storing frequently accessed content closer and delivering it in modern, efficient formats.
to end-users, thus reducing the need for repeated Additionally, content lazy loading is a technique to
requests to the origin server. ensure that resources are loaded only when they are
needed, which in turn conserves bandwidth.

How does it reduce cost?

Caching is like the magic wand of CDN optimization. It involves storing frequently accessed content closer to end-
users, thus reducing the need for repeated requests to the origin server. Compressed content requires less bandwidth
to be delivered, and less bandwidth means less data transfer cost. Also, such optimization can enhance user
experiences with faster, more efficient content delivery.

STRATEGY Multi-CDN and CDN Load Balancing

04 As the saying goes: ‘Don’t put all your eggs in the same basket’—the same applies to content delivery.
Here are a few advantages of implementing a multi-CDN strategy.

Performance Security
Distributing content across various CDN Each CDN provider has its own security
providers during peak times decreases measures and expertise, so by using
the load on each one. This translates to multiple providers, you can benefit from
faster content delivery, sparing users from different security measures for different
frustrating latency or buffering issues. usage scenarios.

During non-peak times, traffic can be With BytePlus CDN, it has its own Web
allocated according to performance or Application Firewall (WAF) that intercepts
cost-efficiency for specific regions or attacks across multiple dimensions.
types of content.

Reliability/Resilience Cost
A multi-CDN strategy ensures when After choosing your preferred CDN
one provider faces a hiccup, traffic providers that match specific business
smoothly shifts to others, keeping your goals, you can next pick from the various
digital presence uninterrupted, and pricing structures in the market for a
ensuring credibility for your business. best cost-efficient model tailored for
your needs.

4
 Take note! Managing multiple CDNs can be tricky, which is where CDN load balancing comes in. Distributing
traffic evenly across multiple CDN servers or providers helps prevent the overloading of any single server. Load
balancing ensures that each server operates efficiently without experiencing excessive traffic, reducing the
chances of performance bottlenecks or service disruptions.

STRATEGY Monitoring and Cost-Performance Analysis

05 It is always good to maintain a watchful eye on your CDN performance and costs. Here are some metrics
to pay specific attention to:

Bandwidth usage Latency

This metric measures the amount This is like the speedometer of your
of data transferred over your CDN. CDN and measures the time it takes for
It tells you how efficiently your CDN content to reach users. As a rule of thumb,
delivers content. the lower the latency, the better the
user experience.

Error rate Cost/Gigabyte

This metric measures how often requests This metric calculates the cost of
fail. A high error rate indicates potential transferring 1 GB of data over your
issues that need to be addressed. CDN. You want to strike a balance
between cost and performance.

Performance Monitoring 101

Strategy Description
Set up Alerts Create alerts for approaching CDN usage limits to avoid budget overages.

Analyze Cost-Effectiveness Gather comprehensive data on CDN expenses, including:

1. Subscription fees
2. Data transfer costs
3. Infrastructure expenses
4. Maintenance costs
5. User feedback
6. Bounce rates
7. Page load times
8. Conversion rates

Conduct Comparative Analysis Compare current CDN provider’s cost-effectiveness. Explore alternative options
such as different CDN providers or in-house content delivery solutions.

Measure CDN Effectiveness Assess how well the CDN contributes to achieving business goals.

Optimize Implementation Strive for a balance between cost-effectiveness and performance in CDN
implementation.

5
Next Steps:

More Questions?
This is not the end of your CDN adoption journey.
In fact, there are nuances at every stage of the
implementation that business and technical buyers alike
must be aware of. While this is a good starting point
that answers some of the most common CDN-related
questions, we highly encourage you to get in touch with
our CDN specialists at BytePlus to learn more.

Feel free to contact us at

https://www.byteplus.com/contact
Let’s start a conversation.

Learn more about

BytePlus CDN
BytePlus CDN positions small and medium businesses
at the forefront of the digital revolution. By delivering
alwayson web services, increasing speed, reducing
latency, and reinforcing security, BytePlus CDN
provides the tools businesses need to lead in the
digital age. It is the first step in a broader journey with
BytePlus, opening the door to a suite of products
designed for digital success.

Discover what BytePlus CDN can do for you.

https://www.byteplus.com/en/product/cdn