Nodecraft Switches Cloud Providers to Save Big with Bandwidth Alliance

Nodecraft’s cofounder calls decision a “Total No-Brainer”

In the old days, if you wanted to play a game online you were subject to the whims of whomever ran the server — whether it was the choice of levels you played, game duration, or even the rules. Today, thanks to Nodecraft, anyone can play on their home turf without needing an IT department to do it.

Nodecraft gives users an easy way to set up their own game servers, with support for hits like Minecraft, ARK: Survival Evolved, and Counter-Strike. From parents who want a family-friendly Minecraft server for their kids, to gaming ‘clans’ practicing their tactics together, Nodecraft makes it easy for its users to create the experience they’re looking for.

One of the best things about Nodecraft is its flexibility: you can play Minecraft on your server one day, switch that server to run ARK the next — then return to the original game, with all of its settings and data intact. It’s a delightful experience for gamers, but behind the scenes it involves considerable storage space, and, crucially, a lot of bandwidth.

Until recently, Nodecraft stored customers’ server instances on Amazon AWS’s S3.As Nodecraft’s popularity increased, however, its server bills were growing at an uncomfortable rate. AWS was charging Nodecraft not just for the storage space it was using, but also for so-called ‘egress’ fees, charging Nodecraft for transferring that stored data to customers.

As Nodecraft co-founder and CTO James Ross puts it, “Not only were we paying high egress fees, but S3’s pricing model lacked transparency. It was a nightmare trying to manage the at times 30 or more different variables impacting our bill.”

Enter the Bandwidth Alliance.

Launched in Fall 2018, the Bandwidth Alliance is an initiative started by Cloudflare in tandem with over a dozen leading cloud providers to make the Internet fairer and data more portable. In short, partners in the Bandwidth Alliance have agreed to waive egress fees for transfers between other partner networks — either in their entirety or at a steep discount.

Nodecraft chose to shift its storage to Bandwidth Alliance member Backblaze. As a result, Nodecraft completely eliminated the egress fees it was paying — representing huge savings in the long run - and additionally benefited from the lower costs of Backblaze’s innovative, pay-as-you-go B2 cloud storage service compared with AWS’s competing service.

“We saved 85% on our monthly data storage expenses thanks to the Bandwidth Alliance,” said Ross, “with significant savings on storage fees on top of no longer paying egress charges.”

How does that work? Nodecraft stores its data on Backblaze’s B2 Storage and delivers that content to customers via Cloudflare’s network, which has over 200 points of presence around the world. Because Backblaze and Cloudflare are both members of the Bandwidth Alliance, there is no charge to transfer data between them. And those savings are passed on to Nodecraft.

Nodecraft reinvested these savings into further growing its business. “We hired an additional developer, and can now afford to retain customers’ game data for longer periods, which has increased our customer satisfaction.”

“The cost savings of the Bandwidth Alliance can be huge,” according to Ross. Especially if your cloud storage is with a provider who is charging you more than you may realize for your egress. We now have the peace of mind of not having to worry about high and unpredictable fees.”

Along with the benefits of the Bandwidth Alliance, Nodecraft is leveraging Cloudflare’s network in many other ways: Ross says that the company uses it “for pretty much everything”, from DDoS protection to the performance boosts of Argo Smart Routing.

To learn more about the Bandwidth Alliance and how you can start saving - visit our overview here.