"rovidx_media" wrote:
I'm glad they were reasonable with you. I just got my email this morning, and they want $1000/month. We only served 115k views in the last 30 days (which is a fraction of when we opened, as we were getting over a million views per month).
So for us, it would be cheaper to host on S3 w/ CloudFront.
The key is bandwidth. First, go look at the info on the films you're hosting on Vimeo, and take a look at the file sizes - if you're using their recommended bitrates, your filesizes are HUGE. (We stream at about 10-20% of their recommended bitrate, and the results look fine). Next, get them on the phone and talk with them, and ask how many TB you're streaming per month. They don't have that metric available in their dashboard, but they're happy to provide that info to you if you ask.
If you don't need their CMS, or their system to generate XML for you, there are folks like Universal CDN and Highwinds that can offer much lower streaming prices.
Keep in mind that Vimeo and others like them don't own their own servers - so they're at the mercy of their CDN when it comes to price, and if they're being honest with me (and I have no reason to believe otherwise - I've worked with them since they started, and have a good relationship with many of the folks in the organization), they haven't negotiated hard enough with their CDN.
