launchly

I'm getting a 503 error on your site right now. Interested in taking a look though as I've actually used cloud based video encoding in the past via FlixCloud.

Well your site looks really nice. I love the color palette you used although that is highly personal/subjective.

As I mentioned, I have actually used what I assume would be one of your primary competitors, FlixCloud, on another production site. I chose them because of their pricing and easy to use API. I believe there was a gem available for using their API so you may want to invest some time creating a kick-ass gem for Ankoder. You will likely also want to create libraries for other languages so you can attract users from a wider base.

It has been awhile since I played around with it but I remember I was ultimately able (with some hacking) to get FlixCloud to download videos that my users uploaded to S3, transcode them, and then post them back to S3. I assume this is something I could do with Ankoder as well?

I looked over your pricing and it seemed mostly comparable. I didn't plug in numbers but it seems like you MIGHT be a bit more expensive than FlixCloud since you charge more for uploading video than they do even though you are cheaper on the download side. In my case I was only going from whatever was uploaded to one output format. I suspect if I was trying to convert to multiple output formats and downloading them all then you might wind up cheaper than FlixCloud in that case.

Another thing I noticed (and I'm not sure if you can do anything about it since you probably don't have the codec) is that you don't support some of the output formats that FlixCloud/On2 support. Specifically "On2 VP6-S (HD) for Flash (FLV) & Sun JavaFX (FXM)".

Either way, yes this is certainly something I would (and have) pay for.

Potential customers are anyone that is doing infrequent video transcoding work like I was on my previous site. I cannot see big players (YouTube, Vimeo, Justin.tv, etc.) in the video space using a service like this though as they likely need tighter control over their transcoding for obvious reasons.

I would have no concerns over using this service. I think you will need to find a way to differentiate yourself and hopefully price is not the only way to do that. You are possibly lagging in the codec support area. Maybe you can beat the competition on customer service, API support, and reliability?

I think the design is good, and the navigation/usability is solid. I don't know enough honestly about what it is you are offering in order to know whether i would buy it or not. I think i'd have to be specifically looking for it.

So I will be honest here. I was pretty lost about your site from your description, not sure why since when I looked at your image on your site about what you do you seem to explain the same thing. However, an image can say 1000 words and yours certainly did for me. I understand what your site does/offers just by that - thanks for putting it up top.

I like your design and yes, I think if I needed this service, I would certainly pay for it.

Concern with this service would be privacy. How private are the videos? Also, where are the converted files located? On your side? or ...?

This is crazy, but your 'User Friendly Interface' section is creating an illusion. It looks crooked to me, but I know it's not. I think it might be the angled pages in the boxes, not sure, but I would consider reworking that as that's the 'User Friendly Interface' section.

Cool looking site. Very easy to navigate. I don't currently have a need for it, but I would definitely check you out if I did.

As j maite indicated, your diagram.jpg image is excellent. Make sure it stays in an easy to find location.

The link from your main logo goes to different places depending on when you click on it. Some places it goes to www.ankoder.com, and others it goes to app.ankoder.com. Since you have to be logged in to view app.ankoder.com, this seemed like a fail.

I did not see a sitemap.xml file. Your title tags should have the site name last.

I liked your API guide and blog entries.

Good luck!

Hi, I am the Marketing Director at HeyWatch.
Thanks for this good article.
That is true, Ankoder is a promising service.

[edited]

Please do not advertise competing services on launchly launches. It is fine to mention them in passing (e.g. to make a launch aware of a potential competitor) but do not directly promote your services like this. - admin

Great looking site. The functions you are offering seem very useful. Personally, I could not afford $.02 / mb of video converted because if my website suddenly becomes popular, I will not be able to pay much more than $300 / month to keep it running. I think the service is too expensive for what I'm doing (providing space for artists and musicians to upload their videos) and I have my own server at $300 / month which already converts video at upwards of 50 frames / second.

I think your services could match with a build-a-community-from-a-box-and-we'll-host-it type of website who's users and media uploads can spike and lull at any time.

My concerns about using this service.... how much work is it to integrate my site with your service. Also, what happens if my site becomes super viral. Will I be able to fork out the costs?

1) Yes, I would probably pay for it if we decide to allow users to upload videos in the future if possible. I will save a few thoughts around this in answer 3.

2) Customers should be pretty straightforward and could potentially be any medium sized website that allows user to upload videos. Your service will expand their ability to show the videos on different devices and would save them time on the technical side.

3) It is probable that my company will allow users to upload videos in the future. I am not a currently a video expert so I would recommend explaining predominately on your site why a website would want uploaded videos converted to all the different formats. What will your service provide the end users? Based on your main image it will allow videos to be viewed from many unique devices but I would explain this and put details around it so more people understand why your service is necessary.

One final thought I wanted to share. Since you have already spent a lot of time and effort with the cloud and Amazon why do you not improve your offering a be a one stop cloud stop for video hosting. Allow a customer to use your service to upload videos to your cloud on S3, then convert the files to whatever format is needed and then also host the files for the customer on Amazon (of course for whatever they charge you). I know that would be a lot more complex but I think you would get a lot more customers with this sales pitch. If I was going to get into the cloud to host my videos I would want a turnkey solution that would not require me to use your service to upload and convert and then I would have to setup an account with Amazon and manage the video files once converted. If I was going to outsource it I want to outsource the entire video process.

Great idea.

One thing I couldn't figure out right off the bat was whether the converted videos are hosted in the cloud or sent back to my site.

Also, would you consider tiered pricing - i.e. a discount if someone is pumping more than 100GBs per month through your service?

* Pricing, would you pay for it?

- I might prefer to buy a CUDA capable grafics card which does the job quite fast and cheap as well

* What are your concerns if you are to use this service?

- Uploading/downloading takes (likely) longer than coding it myself