Black Friday VSL traffic: what breaks on each host

Treat the month as three ordinary weeks plus one week at a multiple of a normal week. Spike plays equal your monthly plays times (3 + the multiple), divided by 4, rounded to the nearest whole play.

A multiple of 5 doubles the month. A multiple of 10 multiplies it by 3.25. Minutes watched and gigabytes delivered scale with that same jump. The video you have already stored does not get bigger because the week was busy.

Your video's length, and how much of it people watch, become a dollar figure in that calculator. The rest of this page covers how each host reacts when that number jumps. Dollar rates for each host are on the calculator.

These three bill for plays, and each cap behaves differently. One keeps the video online and bills the extra plays. Another does the same. Once the trial plays are used up, your card is billed for the plan you picked. The third stops playback unless you turn overage on from a paid plan.

The annual plans list 2,000, 5,000 and 15,000 plays a month. Beyond that limit, each additional play is billed.

A muted autoplay that starts on load counts as a play. A hero that autoplays on mute uses a play on every visit, before anyone unmutes. Older help articles still quote gigabyte limits that contradict the plan details. The estimate here uses the play allowances. The Vidalytics pricing review goes through the plans in more detail.

The English pricing page lists 2,000, 6,000 and 30,000 plays. Overage is billed at the end of the billing cycle.

Once you use up the trial plays, your selected plan is billed. The VTurb pricing review goes through the three public plans.

On the free plan, playback stops at the allowance listed above. Paid plans include an optional toggle that bills plays past the allowance.

On a paid plan that switch is optional. Turn the switch on, and those rates apply. If you leave it off, playback remains paused until your allowance resets or you upgrade. A muted autoplay counts only after the viewer unmutes. The TrackPlay review covers the rest of the player.

Choosing which cut sells, while the traffic is high, is a separate job. For that, see the video split testing guide.

I'd start with a host that keeps the video online, because paused playback wastes ad spend. I'd skip a free plan that pauses at the cap.

Both of these raise the delivery bill as minutes add up. A landing page that preloads the hero is already adding those minutes.

Client-side preloading and buffering count as delivered minutes on Cloudflare Stream. A hero that buffers on every visit uses those minutes before anyone watches.

One r/CloudFlare post said a Stream invoice showed 50,000 minutes against 1,000 that had been reserved. Treat that as one account's report and expect the published delivery rate, then read the Cloudflare Stream alternatives if you want another provider.

The Mux estimator tells you to count buffered or preloaded video even when nobody watches. A short sales video can stay within the free minutes. The multiple above shows when the month goes past those free minutes.

The Mux alternatives page lists the other services people consider for this job.

Bunny Stream charges for storage and CDN traffic, and encoding and the player are included. You pay for the gigabytes served, and the file keeps playing as the play count rises.

A Bunny Stream thread reports extremely slow delivery and a low cache-hit rate on HLS segments. The thread describes a cold cache. The cost per 1,000 plays page compares this host with two others. The Bunny Stream review covers the rest.

The Wistia plan table stops at the included bandwidth, with no self-serve rate beside it. That is why the calculator leaves the cell blank.

A modest video can still fit in that allowance. When people watch a long video most of the way through, minute and gigabyte charges start to add up. Wistia is a marketing host. Use the VSL player picker when the sales letter has to tie each purchase to a visit. If you are choosing a marketing embed, compare Wistia and Vimeo.

• Play-metered account. Enable overage plays, or accept the cutoff your host already publishes.
• Your own numbers. Enter your actual plays and how much of the video people watch, then set the multiplier to the busy week you expect.
• Hero preload. On Cloudflare Stream or Mux, add the minutes a landing page will buffer before anyone presses play.
• Cache. Slow Bunny Stream delivery in that thread lines up with a cold cache. Place storage near the audience, then let the first requests warm it.

My take: I would judge the host by what happens at the cap. If paused playback would waste the ad spend, I would stay with a host that keeps the video online and bills overages, and I would skip a free plan that cuts off. If I cannot absorb an unexpected bill at the end of the month, I would leave overage off and accept the cap. I'd judge that week by the surge I actually expect, before I raise the ad budget.

An unexpected bill at the end of the month and a stalled player are different outcomes, and the ad budget keeps running either way. Who can play the file is covered in the secure video hosting guide. See our other guides.