Ask IH: What are you using to host images and videos?
Hi fellow indie hackers,
Cloudinary and imgix are well known alternatives, but they're too expensive for my bookmark service (users can have thousands of bookmarks). I've been using Backblaze as my image storage but it is missing a few things like compression, optimize image formats and resizing capabilities. Is there an alternative that doesn't make me pay $80/month?
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You can make your own with AWS Lambda or another serverless provider. By uploading to a serverless function, you can generate and send all your formats to your backblaze bucket.
You can also use libraries like:
Really just depends on how you want to host it, plus whether the framework you use already has integrations.
It won’t be as painless and you’ll have to do maintenance, but you’ll have a cheaper solution than Cloudinary.
Based on our research a few months back, Backblaze was the cheapest option out there among the major vendors. Cloudflare R2 looked interesting, but it is still not out of beta I think and it is pricier than Backblaze although on paper cheaper than S3.
Cloudflare has an image storage service. Check them out. I am not sure how it compares in pricing, but I would imagine it will definitely be cheaper than Cloudinary
Here's a longer discussion on this if it's still relevant. The takeaways seem to be that it's clunky and not a good tool
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29474743
I saw that pop up. Based on that thread, I am going to be staying far away from Cloudflare images. If I ever need a image hosting option again.
There is no discussion of the specifics for images you asked about, but if the priority if keeping costs down you should check out some of the alternatives in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28774782) like Wasabi (not an endorsement, haven't tested)
Wasabi is interesting. One gotcha I’ve heard about is they will charge each object a 90-day minimum fee. Otherwise, the pricing is competitive