Choosing the right file management platform depends on your specific use case. Filestack, Cloudinary, and Uploadcare are the leading options in this space, each offering unique strengths. Filestack provides faster, more reliable uploads and better storage integrations. Cloudinary excels in upload analysis, file search, product gallery, file transformation, and AI features. While Uploadcare is best suited for SEO-focused applications.
Filestack, Cloudinary, and Uploadcare are all capable of meeting your requirements in many use cases, providing you with high-quality features. However, the primary distinction among these services lies in their pricing. Since pricing is an important factor in your decision, it’s important to carefully evaluate the pricing models of each platform to determine the most cost-effective solution for your specific needs. Factors such as storage, bandwidth, and transformations should be considered, as they can significantly impact the overall cost. Additionally, any unique features or integrations required may sway the decision towards one platform over another.
This article compares the pricing structures of Filestack, Cloudinary, and Uploadcare to help you identify the most cost-effective file management solution for your project.
Pricing Model Overview
The three platforms offer multiple subscription plans with varying features. Some features are available as add-ons that require an additional purchase. If you need a specific feature, you should check which plan it’s included in and whether it comes with any extra costs.
In addition to that, you should also consider the specific limits on transformation, upload, storage, and bandwidth for each plan.
Filestack
Filestack pricing model is transparent making it the simplest and most cost-effective solution in many use cases. Filestack offers three different plans. Each plan has a transparent bandwidth, uploads, transformations, and storage limits. When you exceed those limits, you are charged a small transparent overage rate that decreases with higher usage. Some add-ons have their own specific limits and prices, which are clearly displayed on the marketplace. This makes it easy to estimate your monthly costs. Filestack also offers volume discounts for higher usage tiers, providing cost savings for enterprise customers. You can try any Filestack plan free for 21 days.
Cloudinary
Cloudinary’s pricing model is complex. Each Cloudinary plan has a limited number of credits. Credits are calculated by combining your usage of transformations, storage, and bandwidth.
The Cloudinary’s credit calculation methods can consume your credits in various ways, which may not be immediately apparent. Let’s explore how Cloudinary’s credit system can potentially trick you:
- Cloudinary doesn’t mention uploads in the definition of credits may make you think you have unlimited uploads. However, Cloudinary counts each image and video asset upload, with or without an incoming transformation, as a single transformation. This means most images that you deliver result in one transformation for the initial asset upload and one transformation per image transformation URL delivered (or eagerly generated).
- Cloudinary’s Transformations and Bandwidth usage are calculated within a rolling 30-day window. This means the metrics are updated daily, but never actually reset. In contrast, Filestack’s Transformations and Bandwidth usage reset at the end of each month.
- Cloudinary counts transformations for videos, animated files, and multi-page files based on their dimensions and number of frames. Here are some examples:
- Animated images (e.g. GIF)- 1 transformation, plus an additional transformation for every 10 frames.
- Animated images to video – Every 5 frames = 1 transformation.
- Multi-page PDF assets – 1 transformation plus an additional transformation for every 10 pages.
- SD Video – 1 second = 2 transformations
- HD Video – 1 second = 4 transformations (Frame contains over 921,600 total pixels, e.g., 1920 x 1080)
- Derived above 4K with AV1 codec – 1 second = 960 transformations
- Audio – 1 second = 0.1 transformations
- To use Cloudinary’s management, analysis, optimization, transformation, and delivery features, your assets must be stored with Cloudinary. This will consume your Cloudinary storage limits. Alternatively, with Filestack you can apply transformations and optimizations to files stored on your custom source.
Furthermore, Cloudinary doesn’t offer overage fees, if you reach the plan limit, you’ll need to upgrade to the next plan.
Many Cloudinary add-ons have separate plan tiers. The add-on usage limits differ based on the add-on plan you subscribed to.
Cloudinary offers a free plan with a small number of credits to test the platform.
Uploadcare
Uploadcare’s pricing model has clear limits on storage and bandwidth, and API calls for each plan. However, all other API requests, such as file uploading, image optimization and transformations, video processing, document conversion, outgoing webhooks, and others, are combined under “Operations”. Each pricing plan has a limited number of Operations. The number of Operations required for a task varies based on its complexity. For instance, image background removal typically consumes 750 Operations. Similarly, the number of Operations needed for file uploads depends on the file size. Uploading a 20 MB file requires 3 Operations, while a 250 MB file requires 8 Operations. Moreover, outgoing requests (webhooks) are considered as 1 Operation. Furthermore, Uploadcare calculates your Operations and rounds up to the nearest thousand. So, if you’ve executed 1700 operations, it will be counted as 2000.
When you consume all your Operations, you can continue using the service and pay a fixed overage fee for the additional usage.
Like Cloudinary, Uploadcare offers a free plan with a small number of operations to test the platform.
What is the most cost-effective file management solution?
In summary, Cloudinary and Uploadcare pricing models can make it challenging to estimate costs, as the credits and operations are consumed based on various factors. In contrast, Filestack’s transparent pricing model with specific limits on transformations, storage, and bandwidth can make it easier to plan and manage your content management costs.
Moreover, Cloudinary has a smaller maximum file size limit, which may require you to upgrade to a higher plan to increase it.
Before making your final decision, determine the expected cost for your use case on each platform. Take advantage of the free plan and Filestack’s trial period to test out the different options. Unlike a limited free plan, Filestack’s free trial allows you to test the specific plan you’re interested in, with all its features. So, why not give it a try?
Senior web developer with a profound knowledge of the Javascript and PHP ecosystem. Familiar with several JS tools, frameworks, and libraries. Experienced in developing interactive websites and applications.