ApsaraVideo VOD offers two billing methods: resource plans and pay-as-you-go. You can select a billing method based on your usage of different features. This topic provides an example of how to estimate your usage and select a suitable billing method to save costs.
Background
User A is an entrepreneur in Hangzhou who leads a team that developed an online education platform. He wants to host videos on Alibaba Cloud. He has about 1,000 existing videos that use nearly 1 TB of storage. He expects to add 100 new videos and about 100 GB of new storage each month. The course videos are mostly 20 to 40 minutes long and are managed by category. To ensure a good viewing experience on all devices, he plans to offer two definitions: standard definition (SD) 480p and high definition (HD) 720p. The platform currently has about 400 users, with an average of 1,000 video views per day. The ratio of views on mobile devices to PCs is about 3:1. User A wants to know which billing method offers the best value.
Case study
Based on this scenario, User A requires the following ApsaraVideo VOD features: video upload and storage, video transcoding, and accelerated playback. The downstream traffic from video playback depends on the number of views, video duration, and bitrate. The cost calculation is based on the following assumptions:
Video duration: The course videos are 20 to 40 minutes long. We use an average duration of 30 minutes for the calculation.
Definition distribution: Based on viewing habits, we assume that videos are played in SD 480p by default on mobile devices and in HD 720p by default on PCs. We ignore cases where users manually switch the definition.
Storage size: The calculation includes both existing and new videos. After transcoding, each source video is converted into two videos with different definitions. Therefore, the total storage used is three times the size of the source video. We ignore the impact of the output resolution and bitrate on the video size. If the resolution and bitrate of a transcoded video are higher than those of the source video, the actual size will be larger.
The usage and costs calculated in this example are estimates.
Pay-as-you-go
Unit prices are subject to change. For more information, see ApsaraVideo VOD Pricing.
Calculation rules
If User A uses only the pay-as-you-go billing method, the average monthly costs include the following:
Storage costs: Unit price of storage × Storage amount
Traffic costs: Unit price of traffic × (Number of views × Video duration × Video bitrate) / 8 (to convert bits to bytes). Costs for mobile and PC are calculated separately based on their view ratio.
Transcoding costs: Unit price of transcoding × Transcoding duration
Calculation method
Storage costs
Unit price of storage: CNY 0.12/GB/month
Storage amount: (1,024 × 3) (for existing videos) + (100 × 3 × N) (for new videos) = 3,372 GB. N is the month number. For the first month, N=1.
Therefore, the storage cost for the first month is 0.12 × 3,372 = CNY 404.64. Note that storage costs will increase in subsequent months as new videos are added.
Traffic costs
Unit price of traffic: CNY 0.24/GB
Traffic: Includes SD traffic for mobile and HD traffic for PC.
SD traffic for mobile: 750 (views) × 0.0009 (SD bitrate in Gbps) × 30 (average duration in minutes) × 60 (seconds/minute) / 8 (to convert bits to bytes) = 151.875 GB/day
HD traffic for PC: 250 (views) × 0.0015 (HD bitrate in Gbps) × 30 (average duration in minutes) × 60 (seconds/minute) / 8 (to convert bits to bytes) = 84.375 GB/day
Therefore, the average monthly traffic cost is: 0.24 × (151.875 + 84.375) × 30 days = CNY 1,701.
Transcoding costs
Unit price of transcoding:
SD (LD): CNY 0.0217/minute
HD (SD): CNY 0.0326/minute
Transcoding duration: Includes existing and new videos, for both HD and SD.
Existing HD videos: 1,000 videos × 30 minutes = 30,000 minutes
Existing SD videos: 1,000 videos × 30 minutes = 30,000 minutes
New HD videos: 100 videos × 30 minutes = 3,000 minutes
New SD videos: 100 videos × 30 minutes = 3,000 minutes
Therefore, the average monthly transcoding cost is: (0.0326 × 30,000) + (0.0217 × 30,000) + (0.0326 × 3,000) + (0.0217 × 3,000) = CNY 1,791.9
Total cost
398.64 + 1701 + 1791.9 = 3891.54 CNY/month
Subscription resource plans
Calculation rules
If User A purchases only subscription VOD resource plans, the average monthly costs are calculated as follows:
Storage cost: The average annual cost associated with a storage plan.
Data transfer fee: The cost associated with a data transfer plan, averaged annually.
Transcoding costs: The average monthly cost of the annual transcoding plans. Transcoding plans cover H.264 transcoding for LD, SD, and HD specifications. The plan's duration is based on the deductible duration for H.264 LD. The deduction ratios for LD, SD, and HD are 1:1.5:3.
For more information, see Deduction ratios.
Calculation method
Based on the preceding pay-as-you-go calculation method, the average monthly resource usage cost for User A is as follows (assuming no rapid business growth):
Storage usage: (1,024 × 3) + (100 × 3 × 12) = 6,672 GB = 7 TB/year
Traffic usage: (151.875 + 84.375) × 365 days / 1,024 = 85 TB/year
Transcoding duration: Includes HD and SD videos.
HD videos: (1,000 videos × 30 min) (existing) + (100 videos × 30 min × 12 months) (new) = 66,000 minutes/year
SD videos: (1,000 videos × 30 min) (existing) + (100 videos × 30 min × 12 months) (new) = 66,000 minutes/year
Based on this usage, User A can purchase the following plans: one 5 TB/year and two 1 TB/year storage plans for a total of CNY 6,975; one 50 TB/year and four 10 TB/year data transfer plans for a total of CNY 15,700; and two 100,000 minutes/year transcoding plans for a total of CNY 2,604. The average monthly cost would be: (6,975 / 12) + (15,700 / 12) + (2,604 / 12) = CNY 2,106.58/month.
For resource plan pricing and purchase options, click Resource Plans.
Summary
A comparison of the costs for the two billing methods shows the following:
The subscription resource plan billing method offers significant cost savings. The more resource plans you purchase, the greater the discount.
You can also combine subscription resource plans with pay-as-you-go billing to maximize resource use and minimize costs.
Related topics
You can use the ApsaraVideo VOD pricing calculator to select billable items and billing methods and estimate your ApsaraVideo VOD costs.