shinywhitebox docs
Storage and Transfer Costs
One-Click Publishing is a paid service, based on credits. There is a charge for storage, and a separate charge for transfer. Here's how it's calculated:
24 credits per GB stored (on average) per month.
24 credits per GB transferred (in, or out of the server).
Executive Summary
It's cheap.
With low (home, family type) usage a user can expect $5 of hosting credit to last them at least six months and more likely a year. Heavy users (business) defined as transferring over 100GB per month can expect to spend $24 per month.
Detailed Usage Scenarios
Lets provide a real world scenario. Please note that while this might look complex, we don't expect you to be doing this or thinking about it - what we're really aiming to do here is explain in detail how the charging works (for those that are interested) and show how inexpensive the service actually is.
1) Base plan - What do I get for $5 worth of hosting?
Lets say you choose the least number of hosting credits. Here's an estimate of how long they will last you:
- Low usage: ~1m long videos: You'll get from six months to a year or three of usage.
- Medium: 5-10m long videos: You'll get from a few weeks to about six months.
- Heavy: 20m long videos with over 100 views per month. Expect $5 to last you two weeks.
The numbers above assume continuous viewing. In reality, people look at videos when they are first posted and the number of hits over time then drops. As such, you can really expect to get more than what is listed here. We've kept the above as it is for simplicity however.
2) Large number of Views
Lets turn the example on it's head, and look at it from a per-video / per-view angle.
I record a video, which is 15m long and upload this use the "All iDevices" option. The encoder creates two videos, one for the iPod/iPhone and one for the iPad/Apple TV. The total combined storage for these videos comes to 271MB.
Over a month, I receive 100 views, which tails off to 15 views the next month. The total cost is therefore:
- .26 GB (for the two video files) * 2
- .264 GB (for the views, first month) * 100
- .264 GB (for the views, second month) * 15
The total is 30.96 GB stored/transferred over two months. This equates to 743 credits used (calculated at 24 credits per GB). You can buy 100 credits for $1. So that's a grand total of $7.43c USD. Keep in mind we're talking about a large number of views (on average) here. According to research compiled by reelseo, 70% of views receive less than 20 views.
End result: A spend of about $7 USD for this usage.
3) The "70% case" - 20 views over a month
Using the same video, but with 20 views over a month, yields:
- .26 GB (for the two video files)
- .264 GB (for the views, first month) * 20
For the 70% case, the total stored/transferred over the month comes to 5.82GB, for a cost of 139 credits (or $1.39).
Please note that there's no guarantee that your video will encode to exactly the size mentioned in this example. Final video size depends on a myriad of factors (size, frame rate, movement, content, length etc).
Note: These figures were correct at the time of writing. shinywhitebox reserves the right to change it's charging plan without updating these figures. They are for example only. You should log into your account to view the latest prices.
Note: The number of views was based on data from reelseo.com and reflects real world usage from YouTube.
How the above figures were calculated
Below we've included the matrix we used to come up with the above estimates. Across the top you have the number of views (in a month) and down the left the average length of a video in minutes. The resulting entries tell you how much (in USD terms) Y many minutes of video will cost if they have X number of views.
Notes:
- Pricing is subject to change at any time (and this example may or may not be updated to reflect it).
- This example data can only estimate likely costs, and not the real costs you may incur.
- Is based on uploading both an iPad and iPod variant of each movie, and users viewing a 50/50 mix of these.
- Was correct as of 8th Dec 2010.