Cloudinary

Great Cloud Storage Provider

Comments: I primarily use Cloudinary for cloud storage for web applications I build and deploy on Heroku. Since initially using it, I’ve begun storing many types of files within it.

Pros:

Cloudinary’s powerful API allows any developer to easily implement file storage for any kind of internet-connected app quickly. It’s API takes it a step further and allows for transformations when retrieving photo type files.

Cons:

The onboarding process could be improved. At first, it wasn’t easy to find the information needed to connect to the API. Once you know where to find it, things are much easier.

Flexible and dynamic digital asset management platform

Comments: Cloudinary is a highly flexible digital asset storage and distribution plaform.

Pros:

Cloudinary provides end-to-end solution from digital asset storage, asset size optimization to image resizing by automizing these processes.

Cons:

For plus plan, 225 GB bandwidth for $89per month is pretty high.

Very easy to implement, too costly for what it is and unfortunately a terrible support.

Pros:

Very easy and quick to implement. Great technical solutions which covers all kind of image delivery aspects. Simple but effective user interface. A lot of online resources and best practice cases.

Cons:

I am using their service with two different projects for a couple of years now. To be fair I have to fully differentiate between the use cases and the expectations one might have as a user. - We have implemented Cloudinary in an application with millions of images and I must say the value for money is not great compared to some of their competitors, especially if you do not use all their features. Though that is something one knows in advance and can very well factor in. But what is not acceptable to us is the fact that e-mails go unanswered for a couple of days and the support on the business side is very weak. Be prepared paying thousands of dollars without any support. - For one project we are still on the free plan and their is actually nothing to complain about as it technically works perfect and it is superbe value for money. To my point Cloudinary is great for very small and small projects but if your intention is to integrate Cloudinary in a business solution which might need support once a year think again.

Loaded features, but complicated and unorganized documentation

Comments: Been using it in production for about 1-2 years now, but have since moved on to another image service for ease of use (Imagekit.io).

Pros:

Easily able to transform images and generate various versions of it for content creation. A decent form is available for support questions, but turnaround time can be long.

Cons:

Cloudinary's documentation is loaded with content, but not well organized and can be difficult to find what you are looking for. It's similar to the disorganization like AWS documentation. The search tool is not easy to use and does not find the relevant information you are searching for. There is no discord server available where one could get instant feedback or help with issues. Not easy to use with modern SSR platforms like Nuxt/NextJS.

The DAM which grows with your requirements

Comments: Our clients often need a centralised DAM which can store large quantities of assets. One client wished to run a competition which required them to upload a video from a website, Cloudinary proved the perfect service to integrate with. The development team quickly integrated with the platform and issues during testing were ironed out with the help of the Cloudinary support team. Based on this experience we have rolled out the platform to several other clients over the past 18 months.

Pros:

- Great support from the Cloudinary development team - Willingness to enhance the product based on your requirements - Good features which can be deployed when required - Good API and widgets available for developers - Competitive pricing

Cons:

- Some features can be confusing to activate such as automatically transcoding videos - Annual pricing offer was not clear in sign-up process - Web interface needed some experimentation to learn