Cloudinary Alternatives in China

Mar 27, 2021



What is Cloudinary?

Cloudinary is an end-to-end image and video-management solution for websites and mobile apps. They cover data from image and video uploads, storage, manipulations, optimizations to delivery.


Does Cloudinary’s CDNs Work in China?

We consulted with Cloudinary’s technical team regarding a solution for improving access speed in China with their service, below is a screenshot of their response.

Cloudinary's Solution for CDN in China
Cloudinary's Solution for CDN in China

Simply put, Cloudinary’s only solution for China will require a subscription to their Enterprise Premium Package. Their solution to access Chinese CDNs will cost upwards of $30,000 USD per year.



Cloudinary Case Study

As a case study, we used a media asset being hosted by Cloudinary servers using a regular account. Below are speed test results of the Cloudinary media asset link across mainland China.

Cloudinary Media Link Speed Test in China
Cloudinary Media Link Speed Test in China

As you can tell, the access speed from Cloudinary managed data are very slow and in some regions unaccessible. These slow speeds can be attributed to Cloudinary’s lack of content delivery network (CDN) nodes inside of China.

IMPORTANT: If you are a developer working outside of China, it can be difficult to observe the speed when visiting your site abroad. To check your sites performance in China, feel free to reachout and our team is happy to provide a free full speed test.



Best Alternative to Cloudinary in China

There are many Cloudinary’s alternatives in China such as AWS S3 China, it gives you full control how you want to host your assets. As of writing this blog, AWS S3 in China only has two regions. So when you host your assets with S3 in China, you might not get full 31 provinces and municipalities in China up to a usable speed.

On the other hand, 21YunBox provides CDNs by default without additional cost, which means you don’t need to do extra work, when you build your website through 21YunBox Build, all your build artifacts will be served in all of the 31 provinces and municipalities in China.

For a 21YunBox case study, we used a media asset link from a current user, Ethereum China’s to run a similar speed test to the test above.

Media Link Speed Test Hosted with 21YunBox
Media Link Speed Test Hosted with 21YunBox

As you can see, the media assets hosted on 21YunBox’s local CDN nodes drastically improved the access speeds across China, which also helped to improve Ethereum’s SEO keyword ranking over night.


Get Started with 21YunBox

If you have a web development background, please refer our documentation to get your websites setup on Chinese CDN.

Don’t have development background? Share this article with your web development agency or in-house technical team. They will be able to get you equipped with 21YunBox’s local and fast CDNs in minutes.



Avoiding Pitfalls in China

When launching a site in China, your team will face some localized challenges. 21YunBox makes it easier with the technologies that your in-house or external teams are already familiar with.

If you are unsure if your website has any load or compatibility issues, we are happy to help. Just contact us for a free consultation.


Ready to make your app work in China?

Get Started Questions? Talk to an expert.