With another year down, we are extremely grateful for all that has been achieved so far and a 2021 recap is a must. When we look back at how far we have come as a service provider, our customers and all stakeholders are the true assets who have put their trust in us. To pay back for their utmost faith, the team at 5centsCDN works tirelessly to keep the innovation alive. The new features and up-gradation of older ones is an ongoing process in here. 

While building a product/services company, we always look towards the next feature, the next upgrade, and the next campaign. But we’ve decided to take a break from that and look back to cherish what we’ve achieved during the past year. For many organizations, this past year has been quite a hiccup because of the Pandemic but in the end, what matters is how gracefully they have overcome the challenges. 

Features recap 2021 

Here’s a quick recap of all the major changes that were made in the services and how we turned things around for our customers across the globe;

• Introduced cloud storage location in Asia region
• Akamai Edge Rule 
• Upgraded ticketing system 
• Updated Video Encoding v3
• Bandwidth rollover
• PlaybackURL’s with CNAMEs
• Livestream Origin Server in Australia
• In-house developed Scheduler with EXTENSIVE features and API

And so much more. 

As far as the major achievements beyond the new features are concerned, we have seen some pleasant numbers when it comes to revenue, queries, and other improvements. 

• 50 PB CDN distribution is another gem in our crown
• We received up to 25 billion HTTP requests
• Edge locations have been introduced
• With great services, we managed to grab 50+ amazing reviews
• Based on valuable feedback, we launched 7 major features
• We were totally up to date with technical developments around us hence made 100+ crucial feature improvements
• 1+ live origin and 10+ edge locations have been launched
• To keep up with the latest developments, we have revamped our entire website
• A new dashboard with a user-friendly interface is another upgrade. 

While compiling this 2021 recap, we’re certain that this year will go down in the history of the most productive virtual work environment where digital streaming services made a huge comeback. And content delivery network providers that made the most out of this opportunity emerged as the winners. 

Let’s have a deeper look at all the powerful advancements in 5centsCDN’s dashboard and the website each month of the year. 

January 

Keeping the tradition alive of staying ahead of the content delivery game, 5centsCDN came up with some exciting yet useful new features for their broadcasters. Although the first month of the year was a bit slow, especially with the pandemic and its effects, we managed to offer Akamai Edge Rules for our users that determine the next step when a request meets certain criteria. 

February 

We picked up the pace and made a lot of changes to our existing features. Apart from that, innovation and technological advancement were also part of our plan. Keeping that in mind, better content formatting with updated Transcoding v3 was offered to our valuable users. 

The ability to keep track of all the happenings with the service Activity Log was enabled followed by the reactivation of the Ticketing System on popular demand to resolve issues quickly.  Moreover, full mode EmbedCode for DVR Playback URLs and DVR Status – PlaybackURL generation on Double-clicking on the cell was a big update. 

March 

Moving toward the end of the first quarter, we came up with some major updates in March. Not only did we enable the bandwidth rollover for the 7th of each month but also added a feature for the viewers to see their Bandwidth Addon Purchase History as well.

Prorated Bandwidth for new services, scheduled playlist with live stream ingest, the ability to convert video files to HLS while transcoding apart from AES-128 encryption for video files when transcoding to HLS have been the main focus during the first month of the year. 

April 

The 2021 recap of the first quarter seems powerful, right? We took things a little slow and focused more on our website revamping. Meanwhile, some powerful features were launched i.e. Scheduled Playlist w/ Live stream ingest and the ability to convert Videos files to HLS when Transcoding.

May 

Moving along, a number of ideas were floated among the team regarding new features during the month of May. And after thoughtful consideration, we picked the best ones for you. We introduced API v3, Raw Logs and offered users to enable SSL on all CNAMES as a SAN via Let’s Encrypt

June

While getting our social media platforms back to life after a while, we managed to bring a valuable update for our broadcasters and views. The Option to Retry Stuck / Failed Video Transcoding Jobs. 

July 

We ended the second quarter with some services updates. Without a doubt, nothing compares to the high-quality content delivery paired with a user-friendly dashboard to navigate your journey. Being in control of your files and overall content is what focused on during the month of July. Introduced and updated Push Zone API File Uploading (Openstack swift/ S3 compatible), File Manager Folder Upload followed by Horizon file manager. 

August 

Along with some invaluable new additions to our features list, we made some useful and long-due updates to our existing ones during the month of August. It was a step towards making continuous efforts to keep improving our services for you. Some most valuable features that must deserve to be mentioned in this 2021 recap post are the search option for clients to easily navigate to Streams, ScheduledPlaylist, Simulcast Platforms & Push/Pull Zones via Search. Pagination on StreamsList & ZonesList pages along with thumbnail support for Livestreams & DVR was also added to the dashboard. 

Furthermore, we improved optimized CDN dashboard loading time, Stream hard delete period reduced from 7 to 2, and Max DVR Retention increased to 90 days for your convenience. 

September

To keep our promise of hard work that leads to innovation, growth, and better services, another month passed but left us with some of the most useful CDN features. We offered customers to get the PlaybackURL’s with their CNAMEs which was a major gem in our crown. 

Other than that, detection & reporting of file errors before file transcoding and the Introduction of VoD server in the Asia region were huge milestones as well. Along the way, we also offered advanced zone EdgeRules for standard/volume/premium plans and enabled Clients to view backend errors from CDN partners on the Dashboard. 

October 

Stepping into the last quarter of this difficult year, we constantly worked towards improving our services. In light of that, we released some amazing features for our valuable customers to take your content delivery experience to a whole new level and the top of the list is SimpleDNS. 

Other than that, ScheduledPlaylist using in-house developed MediaServer was launched as well. We offered out users to set the file-level start & stop and ScheduleOnTime was updated along with the Repeat For feature. We closed the month by enabling our users to see the currently playing Scheduled Playlist file from the dashboard.

November 

Our aim to come up with a solution that is accessible to everyone regardless of their budget or other limitations has been consistent throughout the year. The efforts made in this direction are clearly visible through our new and powerful feature updates. November was the month for the Feedback and we let users send feedback directly and feature requests from CDN Dashboard.

Apart from improved Scheduled Playlist reliability we offered ScheduledPlaylist features i.e. on pressing restart, the stream resumes from the scheduled file rather than from start.

December 

Finally entered the last month of the quarter as well as the year with some special updates in 202. Nothing beats the high-quality content delivery paired with seamless operational features. With this goal in mind, we achieved advanced Zone EdgeRules for Standard/Volume Plans and launched Livestream Origin Server in Australia. 

Also, Traffic Director, SimpleDNS Failover, and SimpleDNS w/ Dynamic URL are now added to our list of might features. 

This was all the 2021 recap for you and while we cherish all these updates in the past year, the motivation and enthusiasm to do even better in the coming years are beyond measures. The team couldn’t be more proud of what we have achieved and grateful for the overwhelming reviews we have received from our users. 

While we work hard to provide unmatched CDN in the future, how about you enjoy your uninterrupted streaming and browsing using our content delivery network services? 

See you around!