Why there isn't a free option for Video Streaming?

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Hi Cloudflare,

Why isn’t there a free option for video streaming? An option with 1 free video of a few seconds will be enough to test and see how it will benefit me and how easy it will be to use in a project. Most of the Cloudflare products sound fancy, but in the real world they are so faulty that errors overwhelm any benefit.

I would really like to see a video stream free option as low as 1 video of 10 seconds. so I can host and compare it with a cheap vps stream.

Thanks

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Is the feedback post even relevant here since it is run by users mostly?

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It is relevant to an extent, especially if it catches enough attention. Your feedback throws unasked destructive criticism; you don’t show how most of the products are faulty, and even then, it’s offtopic to the feedback post.

There isn’t a free trial because streaming is expensive by default; Cloudflare already gives away a lot of products for very reasonable prices; if you only need a video that’s a few seconds long and it’s relevant to your site, you might host it on your site behind the CDN and call it a day.
Its improbable CF will chase you over a video that’s only a few seconds long.

If you want to try the streaming feature, it’s $1 per 1000 minutes watched and $5 per 1000 minutes stored if your video is only a few seconds long and you want to try the platform. I doubt you’d even reach $1.

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Hi @jnperamo

Thats not true Cloudflare has a minimum billing, which means it is going to charge a minimum of $5–$6 dollars, which is not very helpful for testing. So, back to my feedback/question: why not offer a tiny free tier or trail for video streaming so one can test the real world performance and quality without having to add billing etc.

This is my experience using Cloudflare and my feedback. When hosting websites on cloudflare pages, instead of speeding up, it slows down the website loading. This is a known issue discussed by many in this form, including myself. You just need to read the previous comments. An example of a faulty product that I refer to is:

Zero trust: After successfully adding the code received in the email, instead of redirecting the user, it asks permission to download the file and does nothing, which means one will lose customers without knowing. So, using zero trust might help improve security but will increase the bounce rate of genius users. (it is faulty as it is not doing what it claim it will do and provides no explanation or report on when and why a login was failed)

Thanks

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I’m unsure about this, @Laurie might be able to clarify it; however, I would find it odd that consuming a few cents would end up charging you $5-6.

And this, is most of the time, user error. Backend throttling Cloudflare due to requests from a few IP Addresses, nocebo effect out of unrealistic expectations, poorly optimized images, poor coding practices, and so on.
Until now, there isn’t any evidence showing CF slows down websites; there might be exceptions, however, in general, sites experience performance gains.

For example, our site was slowed down once we used pages, however, this turned out to be our mistake because we were using massive images that our origin initially optimized for us.

Under no scenario should your users have to access a zero-trust endpoint.
ZT’s entire purpose is to limit access to endpoints only you and your employees or contractors have access to.

I checked the “advertising” page and to me, it seems pretty clear what it is for, if you have suggestions or can point out what made you think it was ok to expose it to users, the team can look into it, maybe there have been similar misunderstandings in the past?

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Hi @kepona2732,
Stream does have a $5.00 base monthly fee. You can review the documentation here:
https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/360016450871-Billing-for-Cloudflare-Stream
You have the following options when ordering the stream services:

Screen Shot 2022-06-23 at 8.42.46 AM
Screen Shot 2022-06-23 at 8.42.46 AM1692×1044 71.6 KB

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Hi @Laurie

Thanks for your response. I am aware of Cloudflare’s existing plans. If you actually read my question, it is why is there no free trial or free test for this service? Is it because users do not renew or abandon the streaming service? It would be great if you had a very limited free version, such as one video lasting only a few seconds, so that users could add the video, test it, and see if it actually loads faster than Vimeo or Dropbox, for example.

Again, thanks for your response, but it was really arrogant and unrelevant: :frowning:

Thanks

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Laurie wasn’t answering your question about a free tier.

She was answering the question from @jnperamo to confirm if Stream billed pro-rata or if it’s rounded up in blocks.

The billing team don’t determine if a product does or doesn’t have a free tier. The reply couldn’t be further from arrogant and was relevant to the question she was asked directly.

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Hi @kepona2732,
Sorry that you feel that way, there is no contractual obligation when ordering stream beyond the one month for $5.00 to test the product, which you can cancel prior to renewal anytime during the month and still have the services for the duration of that 1st month.

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Hi @KianNH

Thanks for clarifying that i wondered what were those responses as my question was something else.

Thanks

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Hi @Laurie

Thanks for your response, what i am wondering is why there is no free tier. is it because of the low retention rate? Does a comparision of performance Cloudflare stream vs youtube, vimeo exist?

I am unable to understand how it works what can be customised, what actuall loading issues be there etc. so i think i will wait until someone release a video review or Cloudflare introduce a tiny free tier to test.

thanks

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URL: Stream

HLS manifest: https://cloudflarestream.com/e1f3aad0255e44a726d53ef19db8e185/manifest/video.m3u8

iFrame embed:

<div style="position: relative; padding-top: 56.25%;"><iframe src="https://iframe.videodelivery.net/e1f3aad0255e44a726d53ef19db8e185?poster=https%3A%2F%2Fvideodelivery.net%2Fe1f3aad0255e44a726d53ef19db8e185%2Fthumbnails%2Fthumbnail.jpg%3Ftime%3D%26height%3D600" style="border: none; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; height: 100%; width: 100%;" allow="accelerometer; gyroscope; autoplay; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture;" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></div>

I’ll take it down in a week or so.

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Thanks @KianNH

Adding iframe from external source makes CPS much more dificult to handle. Are there any benefits when everything is on Cloudflare for example: website hosted in Cloudflare pages and videos hosted on Cloudflare stream can i link the video via myexample.site/myvideo instead of iframing external Cloudflare url?

Is there some examples on type of modification to the video player and how to manage the subtitles in Cloudflare videos?

Thanks again for taking the time to help.

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using Cloudflare stream can i have a path like example.com my domain and the video to be hosted on example.com/my-video-1 thanks

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