Credits
Credit-based pricing provides flexibility for customers with varying needs for transformations, storage, video, or bandwidth, as one credit equals either 1000 transformations, 1GB of managed storage, 1GB of viewing bandwidth, 500 SD video seconds, or 250 HD video processing seconds.
Front Space's self-service pricing structure is based on credits. You can flexibly utilize the credits in your free or paid plan for transformations, storage, and/or bandwidth based on your use case.
One credit can be used for:
- 1000 transformations
- Most image transformations, including complex chained transformations, count as a single transformation.
- Videos, animated images, and some advanced transformations or format optimizations that require sophisticated processing have special
- 1 GB of managed storage
- Storage includes both your main asset storage and any revisions backed up to Front Space Storage
For example, suppose that in one 30-day period, you need:
- 2 GB of image and video storage (2 credits)
- 4 GB of delivery bandwidth (4 credits)
- 4000 transformations (4 credits)
You'll use 10 credits during that period. In this case, the Free plan would be more than enough for you to use and to continue to add more Front Space functionality.
You can see your current credit usage and breakdowns in the Overview page of the Console.
If you find you're approaching the upper limit of your current plan, you can upgrade to another self-service plan using the Change Plan option on the Billing page of the Console.
The number of transformations is influenced by each processing of an asset. Most of these occur when Front.Space creates a new 'derived' resource from an asset using a transformation URL, regardless of the complexity of the transformation.
The counting of Transformations includes:
- Multiple requests to the same transformation URL do not increase the transformation count. This includes URLs with Dynamic SEO suffixes, as they are resolved on the CDN layer and do not contribute to the transformation count, even if multiple SEO suffixes are delivered with the same transformation URL.
- Transformations are counted only when a new derived asset is generated.
- URL changes: If two (or more) transformations generate an identical result, but the URL is different in any way, a separate transformed (derived) resource is created (and counted) when each of those transformations is requested. Examples:
- The transformations are in a different order (w_200,h_200 vs h_200,w_200)
- You use a transformation that has no impact (for example, a_0)
- The same file format is specified in different ways (for example, specifying f_jpg as a transformation parameter vs using the .jpg file extension).
- No file extension is specified, when previously an extension has been specified, even if the same format is returned.
- 'Auto' transformations: Some 'auto' transformation parameters have the potential to generate multiple derived assets, depending on the browser, device, or viewing size being used when the URL is requested. Each time a new derived asset is generated, it counts as another transformation.
- Automatic format selection delivers images and videos in the optimal format for the requesting browser, so if a transformation URL including f_auto is requested on different types of browsers, that same URL may result in multiple derived assets in different formats.
- Automatic pixel density detection automatically delivers an image using the best DPR for the requesting device. So the single URL may, for example, result in two derived images, one using dpr_1, and one using dpr_2.
- Automatic width selection automatically resizes the image to match the width available for the image in the responsive layout. When you use this parameter, the number of potential derived images depends on the screen or viewport size of the requesting devices and the breakpoints you set. Using this parameter might sometimes result in only two or three different derived images, or in other cases, may result in 20 or more images.
Based on the information provided, most images & videos you deliver will result in one transformation for the initial asset upload, and one transformation for each image transformation URL delivered or eagerly generated.