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Amazon S3 + Cloudfront Pricing

by BerkayOzturk
11 replies
Hi,
Im working on a project where i want to sell my video courses online. I was trying to find a way to securely stream my videos. I saw that using s3 & cloudfront with FV Flowplayer (RTMP setup) works perfectly when i use proper bucket policies.

Pros:
+ People cant find the links of my videos (Source code is encrypted).
+ If they find the link, it wont play outside my website because of the bucket policy i use.
+ They cant download the video using Video DownloadHelper
+ The team of flowplayer plugin will help me to setup a fallback system for mobile devices.

Cons:
- People can pirate my videos using screen recording softwares (Meh... I did my best, no problem.)

BUT here comes the biggest problem. COST I dont really understant how amazon charges for streams. Can someone give me real life examples? I dont have a big budget so im actually afraid that its going to cost me much.
If we make a pricing comparison, which one is better? Vimeo (Lack of security) or Amazon (Better security).

Thanks!
#amazon #cloudfront #pricing
  • Profile picture of the author johnlagoudakis
    Hi Berkay,

    I also sell my own video courses online and I use Amazon S3.

    In my opinion, you don't want to be too concerned about security. I'd recommend using a membership site to host your videos privately to paying members, but you don't need to go beyond that.

    Those that pay are not going to wildly circulate your stuff, because they had to pay for it.

    Those that don't buy your stuff don't get into your membership area.

    Having said that, you can secure the permissions of files that are uploaded to Amazon S3 and have them displayed only to people that access it via your membership area.


    Hope this helps
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  • Profile picture of the author Chris Chicas
    Just to give you a brief example... I simply use aws s3 for storage and some downloads, not many.

    With the introductory plan which is 5 gb's of free storage... after that I pay about $1.00 for every 5 GB's of storage with some occasional downloads.

    And the free introductory plan also includes 20,000 requests within that 5gb free tier.

    Yes, it's kinda confusing at times but it's pretty cheap compared to any other hosts. You can also look into Google, they offer a new competitive plan also.

    The best way to find out if for you to test it out, but it shouldn't be too much if you are now doing massive storage/downloads, etc.
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    • Profile picture of the author BerkayOzturk
      The thing is, there will be LOTS of hd video courses on my website and hopefully lots of customers. Thats why im afraid amazon can go out of control with prices. Im on a strict budget (Im saving my budget to spend on professional teachers to teach on my courses.), are there any users who use amazon to stream videos on this forum? I would really like to know how much they pay per month.

      thanks for the answers
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  • Profile picture of the author oda
    Its pay as you go mate, so everyone will be different.

    if your selling video then cost will not be an issue as you have collected money before people use the bandwidth and you get charged.

    My amazon Bill last Month was $1.01 Just for the record, Don't know, why that's Just what it was. Biggest bill ever in 3 years was $35 and that was for some pretty serious data transfers as I hosted my digital products there.

    Just go and do it mate, as I said you'll have money coming if your selling access, so unless your price is like 2 cents a video you will be good.

    GO GO GO

    Oda
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    • Profile picture of the author BerkayOzturk
      Originally Posted by oda View Post

      Its pay as you go mate, so everyone will be different.

      if your selling video then cost will not be an issue as you have collected money before people use the bandwidth and you get charged.

      My amazon Bill last Month was $1.01 Just for the record, Don't know, why that's Just what it was. Biggest bill ever in 3 years was $35 and that was for some pretty serious data transfers as I hosted my digital products there.

      Just go and do it mate, as I said you'll have money coming if your selling access, so unless your price is like 2 cents a video you will be good.

      GO GO GO

      Oda
      Thanks for your answer man, but its not that simple I will be uploading HOURS and HOURS of hd content and lots of people will be watching them So the traffic will be pretty busy. Also i have to pay for course instructors and i have other expenditures to consider. So i must know the possible price ranges. I would love to use Vimeo (cheap as hell) but amazon is so tempting because of its better security.
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  • Profile picture of the author Joan Altz
    I would use Vimeo for that and not worry about the pirating. Just do some searches now and then on your material and send a DMCA complaint where you find the videos. You're not going to stop it all anyway. I've tracked a bunch of guys who pay top dollar for memberships and then grab the videos and sell the whole course to their own members as "group buys".
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    • Profile picture of the author BerkayOzturk
      Originally Posted by Joan Altz View Post

      I would use Vimeo for that and not worry about the pirating. Just do some searches now and then on your material and send a DMCA complaint where you find the videos. You're not going to stop it all anyway. I've tracked a bunch of guys who pay top dollar for memberships and then grab the videos and sell the whole course to their own members as "group buys".
      Thanks for your opinion, yes, i will also use DMCA for takedowns if i face serious piracy problems.

      Any other opinions/comments people?
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  • Profile picture of the author Sid Hale
    Amazon has a calculator to help you estimate monthly costs for each of their services at

    Amazon Web Services Simple Monthly Calculator
    1. Select your region,
    2. Select the service (i.e. S3 or CloudFront)
    3. Fill in the blanks

    Hope this helps.
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    • Profile picture of the author BerkayOzturk
      Originally Posted by Sid Hale View Post

      Amazon has a calculator to help you estimate monthly costs for each of their services at

      Amazon Web Services Simple Monthly Calculator
      1. Select your region,
      2. Select the service (i.e. S3 or CloudFront)
      3. Fill in the blanks

      Hope this helps.
      I know but its kinda complicated for me

      Originally Posted by onegoodman

      I think amazon cloud service may make a good sense for big companies, but small business owners shall stay away from their way lol
      Thanks a lot for sharing your experience with me! It looks like i would need to go on with vimeo but its security is SO BAD. Really confuesed again
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      • Profile picture of the author Sid Hale
        Hi Berkay,

        Originally Posted by BerkayOzturk View Post

        I know but its kinda complicated for me
        So I think you're saying that you're stuck on step 3 (filling in the blanks).

        All they're doing is asking for you to estimate the amount of data you will be storing and the volume of monthly data transfer.

        The first is easily calculated from the # of files you will be uploading and the average size of each of those files.

        Estimating Monthly data transfer volumes requires that you understand your customer base in terms of what level of activity/interaction each will represent, which videos will be most popular (and therefore consume the most bandwidth), whether there will be repeat views (of the same video/s) by the same customer, and if so... which ones, their bandwidth consumption per view, etc.

        I know that last bit sounds like a lot, but if you don't know that (or can't come up with pretty reasonable estimates), you're not ready to begin uploading the videos anywhere. You can't even price your service in a manner that will give you any assurance that it will be profitable without understanding how much resource will be required to deliver that service.
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  • Profile picture of the author onegoodman
    My personal experience with Amazon was pretty bad.

    I moved my E-Commerce website, there was an issue in the setup ( when i was done moving the website ) i was charged twice by amazon for $350 and $250ish and my website was not a live yet, needless to say i was on the 1 year free trial plan. I didn't use the bandwidth yet. The 1 year free trial plan seemed very promising but they claimed i already over used my resources, i would really like to know how but no explanation of that was provided.

    Also, it is needless to say that for these rates they wouldn't even help me transfer my site or easy access to the support team.

    I reached amazon support ( while i really like amazon support because they still customer centric i hate the fact there is no chat support ), after few emails back and forth over few days, yes expect several days for each reply. They took majority of charges off ($350 ), i shut down my account and moved the site to the cloud service with more straight forward plan ( the same site now cost me less 1/6 of the charges amazon was charging me and it is actually life with full support and more storage and bandwidth.

    I think amazon cloud service may make a good sense for big companies, but small business owners shall stay away from their way lol
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