Uploadcare Video CDN Adds Seamless Uploading and Streaming as a Native CMS Capability

Content comes in all shapes and sizes. And while video is just one form, it’s arguably the most immersive (we’ll save AR/VR and the infamous “metaverse” for future analogies).

Video delivers a lot – not just in terms of its storytelling value, but also around its brand impact. According to Animoto, 91% of businesses now leverage video as a key marketing tool, and 96% of marketers (the highest proportion in the past nine years) see it as a critical component of their overall digital strategy.

Why is video marketing taking a front seat? Because that’s where the eyeballs are. 

In Q1 of 2024, it was reported that online videos had an audience reach of 92% worldwide – a staggering figure to say the least. Within that, almost 15% were Millennials, spending 10 to 20 hours a week devouring videos on YouTube and social platforms via their mobile devices.

There’s no question about the scale and potential of video. But unlike other forms of content, it’s big and expensive – and performance is always an issue, particularly with streaming. Between buffering and quality degradation, consumers are often frustrated with their video experience, which can negatively impact brand sentiment. 

But wait… there’s a CDN for that.

Uploadcare, a file management and content delivery platform, just unveiled a new product called Uploadcare Video CDN. Armed with this powerful layer, users and businesses can accelerate their time to market for on-demand video uploads and streaming – all without the complexity of managing multiple solutions. It's also available as a native CMS or DXP capability, helping users deliver high-quality video content with greater ease.

Uploadcare’s Video CDN allows you to easily enable native video streaming for your website or app, empowering users with fast uploads and instant video playback. You can swiftly integrate its on-demand video-handling infrastructure in minutes and enable immediate playback for your users. With Video CDN, you can also eliminate “stuck” uploads and long processing times and do it all at an incredibly affordable price. 

"We're proud to launch the Uploadcare Video CDN at a time when businesses are seeking more efficient, cost-effective ways to manage video content at scale," said Igor Debatur, CEO of Uploadcare. “In turn, audiences get a seamless viewing experience on any device right after upload. It's never been easier to integrate video streaming into your website or application.”

Let's take a closer look at Uploadcare – and why you should care about its Video CDN.

Playing the CDN “long game”

If you’re not familiar with Uploadcare, the company has blazing trails in the content delivery space since 2011, providing a complete file management platform and a CDN for user-generated content. At its core, Uploadcare offers a robust file API and SaaS experience for uploading, managing, processing, rendering, optimizing, and delivering content.

Uploadcare was conjured out of necessity. As the story goes, a pod of web developers with image processing creds ran into problems with uploading and file management – and decided to create an all-in-one solution that worked at scale. Since then, Uploadcare has grown rapidly, garnering clients like PandaDoc, Buffer, UserTesting, Zapier, and more. 

In terms of market growth and trajectory, the company received its last seed round in 2019, and was acquired by Tiugo Technologies in early 2024. We’ve covered some previous purchases by the tech goliath, which also picked up TinyMCE – a rich-text WYSIWYG editor with built-in AI capabilities – and ButterCMS, an API-first headless content management system.

It’s worth a nod to the importance of CDNs in a composable, API-first era. They significantly improve performance by distributing online content across a multitude of servers positioned across global geographies, allowing users to access data from the closest server. This translates into faster load times, reduced latency, and better overall UX. While CDNs can also be used to manage high traffic spikes, they also provide additional security features against nasty DDoS attacks by distributing traffic loads across its independent network. 

Uploadcare’s focus as a content delivery platform goes beyond the typical definition of a CDN. It also provides AI-powered smart storage, which includes object recognition and malicious content detection. The company’s product portfolio also features a plug-and-play file uploader as well as a URL API for image optimization and document and video conversion.

CDNs have long been tethered to content management systems, and as such, Uploadcare has worked closely with CMS and DXP platforms to leverage SDKs and develop extensions for the likes of WordPress, Contentful, and Decap CMS. Uploadcare even calls Webflow a customer.

A full-featured video CDN

Uploadcare’s new Video CDN takes uploads and playback to the next level. With a plug-and-play widget or API, you can quickly integrate uploads for videos of any size – from devices, Google Drive, Dropbox, or other sources – and enable instant delivery through a multi-vendor global CDN without any additional processing. 

Video CDN enables seamless uploads and instant delivery with no additional processing. Source: Uploadcare website.

Uploaded videos are immediately available on Uploadcare's CDN, accelerating your time to market for video content. You can also save precious developer time and effort with Uploadcare’s streamlined approach to file upload and delivery integration.

Reduce costs and optimize resources

Video CDN can also dramatically impact your data transfer costs by eliminating manual formatting via adaptive bitrate streaming and intelligent, bandwidth-optimized delivery. This means you can automatically serve optimal video resolution based on bandwidth conditions and device – and drive down your costs.

Uploadcare can reduce the costs for high-volume video streams. Source: Uploadcare website.

Not only can you minimize the financial impact of high-volume streaming for large, unoptimized files, but you can stop wasting resources on manual video encoding with on-the-fly formatting and size conversion. These changes are also cached in their CDN instead of creating a new file for each conversion, reducing storage fees. And speaking of storage: along with Uploadcare’s default capacity, you can also connect your Amazon S3 bucket for additional backup resources.

Improve security and workflows

With Video CDN, Uploadcare has paid specific attention to the security implications of video content with a host of features. You can protect proprietary or sensitive content with signature tokens, giving you control over which users can upload files and how long that access is available. Uploadcare also automatically filters infected files with ClamAV, an open source antivirus engine, and provides granular controls for file validation.

There are some key capabilities for streamlining workflows, leveraging Uploadcare’s all-in-one solution – allowing you to minimize the costs and overhead of efficiently managing multiple solutions for handling your videos, images, or documents. As a result, you can release content faster. A lot faster.

Enhance UX

From a UX perspective, Uploadcare gives end users instant video playback through an elegant, integrated video player – all available right after upload with no buffering or quality degradation. With an enhanced experience, you can expand customer reach with videos that are accessible on any device and at any internet speed. You can also increase your viewership and reduce bounce rates by delivering consistently high-quality video content with a delightful experience. 

The Verdict

As a CMS practitioner with product development experience, I can’t emphasize enough the value of CDNs in content delivery. They check multiple boxes and continue to prove their essential role in composable architectures. 

With the explosive rise of video marketing and consumption, Uploadcare’s new Video CDN is a performance booster that is sure to benefit website and app developers – and the brands they represent. Uploadcare offers a free trial for Video CDN, making it a little easier to test drive. They also offer a range of subscription plans, from basic to custom for enterprises.

That said, if you’re new to adding CDNs, there are a few things to wrestle down with the setup (I inspected some of the npm packaging details for the plug-and-play player, the video processing operations, etc. and there’s some homework) – but it’s all well-documented and underscores the platform’s market maturity. You should also look at how the adaptive bitrate streaming is calculated and how resolution options are generated from the original source. 

I was able to connect with Uploadcare’s CEO, Igor Debatur, about the announcement and asked him to expand on its implications for content management systems and digital experience platforms. 

“Uploadcare Video CDN enables CMS and DXP platforms to offer seamless video uploading and streaming as a native capability without infrastructure or development overhead,” he explained. “This unlocks a powerful new use case for customers, helping them deliver high-quality video experiences effortlessly. By integrating video, CMS and DXP providers gain a competitive edge, attracting more users and expanding their value beyond traditional content management.”

What I really like about Uploadcare is how they stand behind their products. With over a decade of operational excellence under their belts, they can confidently boast a battle-proven commitment to efficacy and 99.99% uptime performance. They also provide dedicated support and free migration services (a nice “bennie” you can inquire about), as well as SOC2 and HIPAA compliance. 

For Uploadcare, it all reinforces the delivery of great content – and a superior customer experience.

It's also what puts the “care” in their name.

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