Comparing the cost of ScaleEngine Edge/CDN to Amazon CloudFront/S3
| Service Type | ScaleEngine | Amazon AWS |
|---|---|---|
| Edge Distribution, Per GB (Up to 10TB) | $0.06 (ScaleEngine Edge) | $0.12 (Amazon CloudFront) |
| Edge Distribution, Per GB (Up to 50TB) | $0.05 (ScaleEngine Edge) | $0.08 (Amazon CloudFront) | Edge Distribution, Per GB (Up to 150TB) | $0.04 (ScaleEngine Edge) | $0.06 (Amazon CloudFront) |
| Edge Requests, Per Million, USA | $0.75 (ScaleEngine Edge) | $0.75 (Amazon CloudFront) |
| Edge Requests, Per Million, Europe | $0.75 (ScaleEngine Edge) | $0.90 (Amazon CloudFront) |
| CDN Distribution, Per GB (Up to 10TB) | $0.08 (ScaleEngine CDN) | $0.12 (Amazon S3) |
| CDN Distribution, Per GB (Up to 50TB) | $0.07 (ScaleEngine CDN) | $0.09 (Amazon S3) |
| CDN Requests, Per Million, USA East | $0.85 (ScaleEngine CDN) | $1.00 (Amazon S3) |
| CDN Requests, Per Million, USA West | $0.85 (ScaleEngine CDN) | $1.10 (Amazon S3) |
| File Updates (Per Thousand), USA East | $0.00 | $0.01 |
| File Updates (Per Thousand), USA West | $0.00 | $0.011 |
Amazon's Edge service (Cloud Front) has some significant limitations. It requires that you use Amazon S3 or EC2 as the origin, which means that you have to use Amazon's proprietary API to upload and manage your files. ScaleEngine allows you to make use of your own origin, our storage network, or our Origin Web Cluster (OWC) to store your content. Access to our storage network and OWC are available via ftp, sftp, rsync or http, allowing you to integrate with your existing systems and easily transition to and from our service, preventing vendor lock-in.
Amazon's CDN service (S3) also has some fundamental limitations. S3 does not provide any type of access control, or even basic referrer blocking. Without the ability to block requests based on the referrer header, your S3 buckets can be used by other people without your authorization, allowing them to hot link your content and leave you to foot the bandwidth bill. You are also unable to inject cache control headers to instruct clients to cache the content locally to prevent unnecessary downloading or even the additional if-modified requests.
*Comparison of prices from 2011-07-31. Subject to change without notice. For informational purposes only.