Tinify’s membership in the CDN Alliance showcases its commitment to the CDN industry and support for standardized practices.
Amersfoort – October 18, 2023 – Tinify, renowned for its image compression technology, proudly announced its membership in the CDN Alliance, an independent non-governmental organization dedicated to connecting and supporting the global CDN (Content Delivery Network) industry. This strategic move firmly establishes Tinify’s presence in the CDN market.
This development follows Tinify’s recent transition from its beta version to the final release of its CDN service, marking the beginning of a new era after two years of beta testing.
According to CTO Remco Koopmans, the decision to join is motivated by the CDN Alliance’s capacity to provide CDN industry players with a valuable opportunity to voice their ideas and be heard, which would otherwise be hard to accomplish without a central hub.
“CDN Alliance is well-known for its activities, which allows us to engage with CDN experts and actively collaborate with them as members of a community”, explained Koopmans.
This is particularly significant for Tinify, as it operates not only as an image CDN, offering image compression on the fly, but also as a multi-CDN, integrating multiple CDN providers into a single solution to ensure comprehensive global coverage. To this extent, effective communication with various CDN providers is pivotal to Tinify’s operations.
However, as COO Matthijs Plat pointed out, this can be challenging due to the varying standards and definitions employed by different CDN suppliers, making seamless integration into a unified solution a complex task. The CDN Alliance is actively addressing this issue by advocating for standardization and regulation.
“They are making progress in favor of standardization, and we are eager to be a part of these efforts,” said Plat.
CDN Alliance’s Chairman, Mark de Jong echoed this sentiment: “We are very excited with Tinify joining the CDN Alliance with their expert knowledge in image compression and multi-CDN. Looking forward to working with Tinify and other members on activities and in working groups in relation to CDN and Content Delivery.”
About Tinify
Tinify, also known as TinyPNG, is a company dedicated to improving website performance through image optimization. They are well-known as pioneers in image compression and have extended their services to include a high-speed Content Delivery Network (CDN) for optimal website delivery.
“We are very focused on performance because the websites we build have very large quantities of images and they have to be very high-resolution. To give you an example, we serve up about 200GB of images alone from one website. So it didn’t just speed up the website when we use Tinify CDN, it was speeding up that import process.”
STAFFLINK is a leading Australian company that provides digital solutions for the real estate industry. With a dedicated team of professionals, they help real estate professionals improve property management operations and increase productivity.
In the online world of real estate, a big challenge is cramming in tons of high-resolution images for potential house buyers to view. Unfortunately, these images that are large in size contribute to sluggish website performance – imagine eager visitors seeking their dream home, only to be met with the frustrating spinning loading icon. To conquer this challenge, STAFFLINK uses Tinify CDN to build faster real estate websites.
Key results:
Efficient image handling: With Tinify CDN, STAFFLINK optimizes their clients’ image delivery process. Instead of manually resizing images for various screen sizes, they now upload raw images to their Amazon S3 bucket and let Tinify handle resizing and compression. This streamlined approach reduced manual efforts and improved efficiency.
Faster website load times: By serving optimized images through Tinify CDN, STAFFLINK significantly improved the loading times of their clients’ websites. This enhancement is particularly crucial for real estate websites, where high-resolution property images are integral to the user experience.
Simplified workflow: STAFFLINK no longer needed to spend time on image compression and resizing, allowing their developers to focus on other aspects of website development and optimization.
Cost-effective solution: Tinify CDN’s competitive pricing structure appealed to STAFFLINK as the initial pricing tier provided an affordable entry point, making it feasible for them to scale their usage as needed.
Background: Looking for efficient image delivery
STAFFLINK’s project manager Matt Neal explained that uploading and storing images on Amazon S3 prompted them to explore the need for a reliable Content Delivery Network (CDN) to optimize image delivery. During their search, Tinify CDN came up as a solid option:
“I’ve been using Tinify’s website to compress images since 2014. It does a really good job, it’s fast and free. Then I came across Tinify CDN when I was looking for alternatives to serving large amounts of high-resolution images.”
According to Matt, Tinify CDN was exactly what the team was looking for – it had the usual characteristics of a CDN while offering the option to compress and resize images on the fly:
“Our property listing pages typically present around 30 high-resolution images each. If we served them in their raw format, we’d literally have about 100 MB worth of images on one single page load. That’s just not possible.”
Solution: Implementing Tinify CDN to automate image resizing and compression
Before implementing Tinify CDN, managing hundreds of property uploads involved a time-consuming process of resizing and compressing images:
“It’s a very long process dealing with hundreds of properties a day. Before, we’d wrestle with downloading, converting, resizing – you name it – so we were able to cut all that out. The first load might have a tiny delay as Tinify CDN works its compression magic, but all the heavy lifting is on its end, not ours.”
With an Image CDN like Tinify’s, STAFFLINK streamlined its image processing workflow, resulting in a significant speed boost in page loads. They solved the challenges tied to handling large images by automatically serving compressed, properly sized visuals. According to Matt, this is a “pretty big deal”:
“We are very focused on performance because the websites we build have very large quantities of images and they have to be very high-resolution. To give you an example, we serve up about 200GB of images alone from one website. So it didn’t just speed up the website when we use the CDN, it was speeding up that import process.”
In addition, Matt says that Tinify CDN stands out from other providers due to its straightforward configuration. While considering alternatives, he found that many were either too complex or restrictive in terms of customization: “I spent maybe 30 minutes to an hour trying to get another CDN to work. And there were a whole bunch of issues. So then I went with Tinify, I tested it and it worked straight away.”
Conclusion
STAFFLINK, an Australian digital solutions provider for real estate, implemented Tinify CDN to automatically resize and compress hundreds of their clients’ property images. This results in quicker website loading times for STAFFLINK’s clients, positively impacting the experience of potential homebuyers. For STAFFLINK, Tinify CDN allowed them to simplify their workflow with just a few clicks, saving them from the trouble of resizing and compressing images using many time-consuming tools.
Need a way to make your image-heavy website load faster? Give Tinify CDN a try with our free trial!
Immer, a Dutch-based web development company, specializes in creating online platforms and websites primarily using Drupal’s content management system. The company’s core goal is to optimize website performance and deliver a seamless user experience. With this, it was a no-brainer for them to explore various Content Delivery Network (CDN) options, and ultimately sign-up for Tinify CDN.
Key results:
Simple configuration: Tinify CDN requires minimal technical changes, making it suitable for a small team like Immer. With it working quietly behind the scenes, Immer’s team of 10 employees can focus on other aspects of web development without investing time in complex setup and maintenance.
PNG and WebP format support: Tinify CDN stands out by compressing images on the fly, reducing file sizes by up to 80% without noticeable quality loss. At first, its focus on PNG compression was a crucial factor for Immer, and later, when they made the switch to WebP, they found it just as advantageous.
Why implement a CDN
In short, a CDN ensures that users around the world experience reduced latency and faster content delivery without any delay. This is possible because a CDN speeds up online content by delivering it from a network of servers located closer to the end user – the shorter the distance that data has to travel, the better. In this way, implementing a CDN is an easy way to improve website performance, as it requires minimal technical changes to configure it, and performance gains can be seen immediately.
Immer’s founder Michael Mol explains that the company considered factors such as pricing, features, and support for their technical requirements when looking at CDN options. While there were other alternatives available, Immer was already familiar with Tinify’s image compression services, which they had previously tried out for free. Eventually, this was the defining factor for their choice:
“Obviously, we looked at alternatives, even free and cheaper options, but Tinify CDN had some great support for PNGs which sparked our interest.”
Michael Mol, Founder of Immer
Tinify CDN sets itself apart from other options by not only enhancing load times but also compressing images on the fly. For a company like Immer, this was important as they also build websites that are image-heavy. When using PNGs, which are typically larger than other image formats, the ability to upload and automatically display the compressed versions of the original images guarantees an even more optimized website. This is done by reducing the file size by up to 80% with unnoticeable changes in quality.
For Michael, this feature is particularly useful for one of their customer segments: “For instance, we have customers in publishing, and these websites can have a lot of images, which compromises how fast a website loads for people who visit it. That’s where Tinify CDN comes in.”
Tinify CDN’s simplicity
Michael says that even though they didn’t have specific benchmarks, they noted instant improvements on website speed. Furthermore, as the team switched to using WebP – a next-gen format that reduces file sizes by up to a third compared to JPEG and PNG images – Michael highlighted the fact that Tinify CDN could compress this format even further.
Nonetheless, on day to day, Tinify CDN is but an unassuming cog in Immer’s machine, working quietly behind the scenes. For a small team like Immer, made up of 10 employees, it is important to not waste time on complex configurations. For Michael, simplicity is key:
“That’s what we expected from Tinify as well: it should just work, running in the background.”
Michael Mol, Founder of Immer
Does your team value simplicity? Read more about how you can improve your company’s website speed with just a few clicks here.
Conclusion
Tinify’s reputation for effective image compression and the unique benefit of supporting PNG compression were key factors in Immer’s decision-making process. For this web development company, Tinify CDN’s ability to improve web speed, coupled with efficient image compression and support for new formats like WebP, has been useful in maintaining their website performance.
This blog post will walk you through the process of installing Tinify CDN on your WordPress website. It only takes a few minutes and you have the chance to try it out for 14 days with no credit card details required. By the end of this, your website will become faster and perform better for users!
One of the main advantages of using a WordPress website is the user-friendly interface that makes it perfect for both beginners and advanced users to manage their websites. Whether you have a small personal blog or a large enterprise website, WordPress allows you to scale your website by adding new content and integrate third-party services to extend the functionality of your website as your requirements evolve.
This is how WordPress users can easily compress their images with our popular TinyPNG plugin to make their website faster on the go. But besides this, if you’re a WordPress user looking for even faster page load speeds, you can also take advantage of Tinify CDN – it only takes a few clicks!
Long, story short: Why use a CDN?
Is your WordPress website suffering from slow loading times? Or has your traffic volume increased? Does it contain large media files throughout its pages? Do you have an international audience? If you replied yes to any of these questions, then implementing a CDN is likely beneficial.
CDNs improve website performance by reducing data travel distance and caching content in various geographic locations. A website that doesn’t use a CDN is dependent on a single server, in a single connection. This means that the further the users are from your location, the longer it takes for your content to load.
For example, when a person somewhere in Europe visits a website located in the US, the data has to travel a very long distance through servers, which consequently adds up to a longer loading time. However, when a website uses a CDN network, the data of the website will be loaded from a server closer to the user – in this case, somewhere in Europe. This drastically improves the performance of your website.
Tinify CDN is both an Image and Multi-CDN. This means two things: firstly, our CDN offers the ability to compress on the fly. Large images become the smallest size possible with no loss in quality, and this change, invisible to the eye, makes your website automatically faster. Secondly, we work with multiple Content Delivery Networks which ensures the greatest possible global coverage.
1. Sign-up for Tinify CDN’s trial
Visit the Tinify CDN website and sign-up for an account. We give users the chance of trying it for free for 14 days, so no credit card details are required. You just need to provide your email address and website url.
If you’re already a Tinify user, you can also sign-up for a trial on your dashboard by clicking on the “CDN” link on the side-bar.
2. Obtain your Tinify CDN endpoint
After signing-up, you’ll get a welcome email so you can log-in to your Tinify account. Once you do it, you can access your CDN dashboard. There, you’ll find your CDN endpoint, which looks like this: “https//xxxxx.tinify.com”. This is a sort of personal “configuration code” that allows you to connect your WordPress website to Tinify CDN. Copy this CDN endpoint as you’ll need it later.
3. Download the WordPress CDN plugin “CDN Enabler”
Go to your WordPress dashboard and click on the “plugins” option on the side-bar. To configure a CDN in WordPress, you’ll need to download a plugin such as CDN Enabler.
4. Configure the CDN on your WordPress account
After installing and activating the plugin, click on “Installed Plugins” on the side-bar and select the “Settings” under the CDN Enabler plugin.
This will lead you to another page where you’ll see a field called “CDN Hostname”. Copy your Tinify CDN endpoint into this field. The last step is simply to click on the button “Save Changes”. That’s it!
How do you verify if Tinify CDN is working on your WordPress website?
After enabling the CDN, visit your website and inspect the source code of the page. Look for the URLs of your static assets, such as CSS files, JavaScript files and, of course, images. If the URLs of those assets contain the Tinify CDN domain, it means the integration has been successful!
Watch the instructions video:
Choose one of the 3 Tinify CDN plans
Once you’re done with your 14-days trial, you can sign-up for one of our plans: Basic, Business and Enterprise. The basic subscription is made for personal websites and blogs, while the business plan caters to professional and e-commerce websites. If you have specific business needs and demand more support, you can contact us so we can create a tailored enterprise plan for you.
Do you have any questions about Tinify CDN or its implementation? Shoot us an email at support@tinify.com.
Much like everybody else these days, the Tinify team has been obsessed with ChatGPT to answer the most pertinent – and sometimes not so much – questions. So, when we asked this AI tool if CDNs – in particular Image CDNs – are popular, we got in return: “yes, they are very popular”.
However, our personal experience tells us that being popular doesn’t mean that everybody understands it well. In fact, over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been interviewing some of our users only to realize that CDN is still a foreign concept to some of them.
In today’s blog post, we asked our developers’ team to answer some of the users’ doubts about CDN. By the end of it, you should be able to assess if your website needs one and if Tinify CDN meets your needs.
Should you use a CDN?
“I think I should use a CDN – but I’m not sure.”
This one goes for the ones that have heard about CDN but can’t fully grasp its benefits. By now, you probably already know that a CDN improves the performance and speed of online content by delivering it from a network of servers located closer to the end user. In practice, this improves the load times of web pages, images, videos, and other types of content, which is great for visitors. But, does your website need more improvement?
The long answer to this question is as follows: if your website has slow loading times, high traffic volume, or large media files, then you probably need one.
A CDN reduces the distance that data has to travel, which works perfectly when you have users who are located far away from your server, by caching your content in different geographic locations and thus reducing the amount of time it takes for the content to load.
Even if you aren’t focused on an international audience, a CDN helps to offload your server by caching and distributing the load across multiple edge servers, which in return avoids downtime and reduces bandwidth costs.
The short answer is simpler, though. If you think you should use a CDN, you’re probably right. It can’t hurt to give it a try, since the benefits of using one are clear.
Now, the question is, out of all CDNs out there, which one is right for you?
If you got here because you already compress your images, it means that you should take a look at Image CDNs. Unlike other CDNs, Image CDNs are designed to handle image-heavy websites – e.g. photography and design portfolios, as well as blogs and e-commerce.
Large image files are one of the main reasons for a slow website and ultimately, this hurts your SEO. For some, resizing and compressing images isn’t enough to improve their website speed, and the missing puzzle might be to host images on a CDN.
In addition, it’s important to remember that incorporating effective SEO strategies not only improves search engine rankings but also enhances user retention. This is because a website with a faster loading speed reduces bounce rates, which is the percentage of visitors who leave the website without exploring beyond the initial page. Put differently, if your website is swift and easy to navigate, not only will it receive recognition from search engines, but it will also increase the likelihood of users reading your content and taking action to make a purchase.
The main advantage of an Image CDN is that it distributes content over servers around the world, which means that it offloads the work of serving images from the main server. But more than this, an Image CDN gives you other advantages related to image handling, such as the ability to automatically optimize and resize images on the fly.
This is what Tinify CDN is all about. As an Image CDN provider, we offer a compression algorithm that delivers the same results as Tinify’s website and API. Additionally, our content distribution servers enable even faster website speeds.
For website owners with regional or global audiences, it is worth noting that Tinify CDN is a Multi-CDN, so instead of relying on one CDN provider, we work with different Content Delivery Networks that ensure great coverage around the world. In practice, this means that we analyze which CDN has the fastest server to the user or offers the best response time. It’s important to note that relying on a single CDN provider may not provide optimal coverage worldwide, as they may not have servers in every country or region. However, by combining multiple CDNs, the likelihood of achieving excellent global coverage increases, allowing you to cater to the performance requirements of every visitor.
When considering costs, Tinify CDN starts with a basic plan of 15$ (best for personal websites and blogs) but we give users the chance to try it for free for two weeks, with no payment details required.
In the end, how to understand if it was worth signing up for a CDN?
You should be able to evaluate if acquiring a CDN makes your life and the performance of your website better. Here are some ways to measure this:
Website Speed: Measure website speed before and after implementing a CDN using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or WebPageTest. If there is a significant improvement, then signing up for a CDN was worth it.
User Experience: Track user behavior using tools like Google Analytics to see if there is an increase in user engagement, such as longer time on site, lower bounce rates, and increased conversions, as well as an increase in traffic from different regions. If there is an improvement in user experience, it might be due to a faster website.
Server Load: A CDN reduces server load by caching static files, reducing the number of requests to your server. If you see a decrease in server load, then signing up for a CDN was worth it.
Cost Savings: A CDN can reduce bandwidth costs by serving cached files from edge servers. If you see a decrease in bandwidth usage, then a CDN was a good investment.
Is your current CDN the smartest way to go?
“I already use a CDN… But optimize my images first with Tinify.”
During our user interviews, we found that some API and Web Pro users accustomed to compressing images are unfamiliar with Tinify CDN and use other Image CDN providers to speed up their websites. We recognized that this adds unnecessary complexity to their workflows, which could be streamlined if they switched to Tinify CDN.
For example, we came across instances where customers were compressing images with our free drag-and-drop tool and then synchronizing them with some other CDN provider. Another user was compressing images with Tinify API but optimizing their website with different tools and CDN providers. While this may not be a significant inconvenience for a few images, it can become a hassle for multiple images that require different versions and design tweaks.
Tinify CDN provides a solution to streamline this process by eliminating the need to download, compress, and upload images again. By continuously uploading the latest pictures, users can automatically display the most compressed version of their images to their website visitors.
So, ask yourself: should I continue using my existing CDN which adds extra steps to my workflow, or can I switch to a more efficient CDN to save time?
If this speaks to you, consider signing up for Tinify CDN. With it you have access to:
Automatic image optimization: Tinify CDN compresses images on websites, reducing file size by up to 80% for faster loading and less bandwidth consumption.
Resizing made easy: Users can change the width, height, and aspect ratio of images through the URL, automatically cropping away uninteresting parts.
Optimizing more than images: Tinify CDN can optimize static content, JavaScript files, and CSS stylesheets without requiring any changes from the user.
Easy integration: Tinify CDN can be easily integrated into existing websites and applications using plugins or APIs.
Despite being popular, some people still don’t understand if they need a CDN.
If your website has slow loading times, high traffic, or large media files, an Image CDN could be helpful.
If you already resize and compress images, Tinify CDN might be the way to go, since it offers a compression algorithm for images and content distribution servers to boost website speed.
But long story short, if you think you might need one, you might as well give it a try – we offer a two-week trial, with no payment details necessary!
Lastly, if you already have a CDN that doesn’t automatically compress images, consider if you should switch to an Image CDN like Tinify CDN.
There’s a saying that the longer a cow stands, the more likely it is to lie down. The same goes for CDN services: the chances of them failing increase the longer they are online. There is why companies are now relying on Multi-CDN.
A CDN ensures that content is stored closer to your users. Your website will load faster and that has a positive influence on the conversions, page views and customer satisfaction.
