I use the product for all of my web development projects. For instance, I used it to create a photo-sharing website.
External reviews
External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
Easy-to-use product with efficient documentation
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
Cloudinary's AI features, like ad copy and image transformation, have significantly streamlined my projects.
What is most valuable?
The platform is very easy to use. The documentation is excellent, and the implementation involves only a few simple steps. It is accessible to users with varying levels of expertise.
What needs improvement?
The platform's API features need enhancement.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cloudinary for about a year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the product stability an eight.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The product is scalable.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I have not used the product's paid subscription, as the free tier is sufficient for most users.
What other advice do I have?
I recommend Cloudinary to others and rate it a nine.
An online platform to manage images and ffers a free-tier to benefit beginners
What is our primary use case?
I use Cloudinary to create an online platform to manage images. I’ve handled over a thousand images. Additionally, I use Cloudinary to store similar components, treating them as object storage.
What is most valuable?
A developer who wants to work with an automated demo project might typically store images as blobs in the database or an external folder. However, this approach can lead to issues with managing and retrieving the images. Cloudinary offers a solution by providing an easy-to-use platform for managing media files. It’s user-friendly and accessible, making it a good choice for new and experienced developers.
Unlike other object storage platforms like Google Cloud Storage or IBM Cloud Object Storage, Cloudinary offers a more straightforward and often more affordable solution. While other platforms can have a steep learning curve and may charge based on the number of requests or storage used, Cloudinary provides a free tier that is quite generous.
For instance, I worked with a client to set up an online auction platform and uploaded many files. Despite the substantial data, I received no issues or notifications from Cloudinary about overuse, highlighting their effective and scalable service.
What needs improvement?
It blocked our account, prevented us from uploading files, and showed a message about file adjustments. It wasn't well integrated with the project's storage and didn't streamline the application.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cloudinary for over a year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
While developing my application, I was able to easily scale to multiple instances, and this scaling did not negatively affect my Cloudinary account. I can effectively store and manage my application’s media. However, when integrating the Cloudinary API, I must ensure proper installation and configuration.
I rate the solution’s scalability a ten out of ten.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Cloudinary provides a free plan for developers wanting to get started or explore its capabilities. The free plan includes access to the app's API, which is useful for developers looking to experiment and understand the platform's potential.
What other advice do I have?
Cloudinary provides an API that can be integrated into server- and client-side applications. You can connect the API to your server-side application for backend operations, and for front-end developers, Cloudinary also offers a way to integrate directly into client-side applications. You don't need to create a new website or backend system to use Cloudinary; you can seamlessly incorporate it into your existing client-side code.
I recommend using Cloudinary. For one, it offers a generous free tier that can benefit beginners and small projects. Cloudinary's free plan provides ample resources for managing and optimizing media, which can be ideal when working with a low budget.
Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
Easy for beginners but comes at a high price
What is our primary use case?
I use the solution in my company while developing an app. I use it as a way to store our company's images for the websites that I made.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that I like that the tool takes care of transforming the images. For example, you can have an image that is 15 MB in size, and Cloudinary can take that image, upload it to the servers, and compress it. When developing the websites, I can get the images stored in Cloudinary in any format that I want and resize them as I wish.
What needs improvement?
The high price of the tool is an area of concern where improvements are required.
Cloudinary's documentation part has certain shortcomings when compared to the ones provided by the other tools on the market, so I think it needs to be improved. The documentation part is not that easy to follow, especially for beginners.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cloudinary for a year. I am a customer of the tool.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I haven't faced any stability issues with the product over the year that I have used it. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I don't remember about the product's scalability part, but I think the tool has limits. When you go through the tool's plans, you will see that the solution has plans like 250 credits, which accounts for 250 GB or something. After that, you have to contact the tool's support to scale more. I am not sure about the tool's scaling ability. If one day, my business had 600 GB of storage, and I needed to scale it up, then it wouldn't be easy for me. I have to contact the solution team and figure it out. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.
Around six people in my company use the product.
How are customer service and support?
The tool's support team is very prompt. When I gave the tool's support team a clear description of my problem, they gave me the help I wanted and directed me to the solution to my issue. The team is good when it comes to response time and knowledge. I rate the tool's support a ten out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have used AWS, but it was not focused on specializing in images. It is just a storage tool.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The tool's pricing is very high. If you are an established company, I think it is worth the money since getting images on the web with the highest quality is very hard, but Cloudinary is good at handling such areas.
What other advice do I have?
To use the integration capabilities of the product, I use the product's documentation to integrate it with my other tools, like Node.js.
I have not used or integrated with the AI capabilities of the product.
I would recommend the tool to people who are starting out because Cloudinary has initial plans in which it gives you 25 GB of storage, which is very good for someone who is just starting out and needs to assess their business.
Considering the expensive nature of the product, I rate the tool a seven out of ten.
Scalable platform providing an efficient way to manage images
What is our primary use case?
I primarily use Cloudinary to upload images to the cloud and retrieve URLs.
How has it helped my organization?
The platform has improved my projects by providing a fast and efficient way to manage images. It has been practical and has worked well every time I use it.
What is most valuable?
The product's most valuable feature is the ability to upload images quickly and retrieve URLs. It integrates well with code, providing a seamless experience.
What needs improvement?
The product could be improved by being more user-friendly for beginner programmers.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The product is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The product is scalable.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was a bit complicated. However, after some time and research, I found it manageable.
What about the implementation team?
I implemented the product myself.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The product's free tier licensing plan is beneficial for individual developers to learn about its functionality.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Cloudinary a ten out of ten.
An easy to use and stable solution for website assets
What is our primary use case?
I worked for an e-commerce agency, and we used to use Cloudinary for our website assets.
How has it helped my organization?
Cloudinary is very easy to use, especially for users or for developers.
What is most valuable?
The most important advantage of using Cloudinary is that it is very easy to integrate with the SDK, especially with Node.js.
It's a very stable application and can be more stable with Nord.js. Js developers like to use Cloudinary instead of other inventories.
What needs improvement?
We have been using the free plan for a long time. Cloudinary's first paid plan is quite expensive, around one hundred dollars, which is more expensive than competitors like Dropbox. Dropbox's first plan is cheaper than Cloudinary's.
The only challenge was the security token. I faced some challenges that were harder than the usual integrations. There is a type of integration in Cloudinary that allows you to make your URLs secure and accessible only with a specific token.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cloudinary for three years.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We use Dropbox, DigitalOcean in Ventura.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is easy. It's also easy to set up the SDK and manage the account.
What other advice do I have?
I recommend Cloudinary for easy integration. Cloudflare is a competitor for a small business.
Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Saves time and resources and has a clear dashboard
What is our primary use case?
I use Cloudinary to save files for our application, especially when users want to upload or change profile pictures. We save all those user profile pictures on the product. We also have an option where doctors can give documents to patients. We save those generated PDF prescription documents. We use Cloudinary to save our uploaded external resources so we can handle and keep them in their own buckets.
What is most valuable?
I like the tool best because it's straightforward and doesn't have too many complicated options like AWS. The dashboard is clear - you create a directory, get credentials, and then use those in your Node.js or Java application to access resources. With AWS, you have to consider many things, like bucket policies and user permissions. It doesn't have these complications. Everything on Cloudinary is clearer than other platforms I've seen. It is very easy to use. It's easier than the AWS platforms I've seen. Even general developers can use it, while AWS needs more experience.
The solution saves time and resources in several ways. It's easy to get started with, saving time from the beginning. You can implement file uploads in about thirty minutes without complications. The SDK and APIs provided to access their resources are simple and not complicated. Cloudinary is also a popular platform with good documentation and community support, making it easy to find solutions to problems.
What needs improvement?
I think Cloudinary has room for improvement, depending on the project you're working on. Changes might not be needed if your project fits what Cloudinary already offers. But if your project needs some changes, you can make them.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the product for four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
In the two years we used the tool, we never had any issues with stability or bugs. Based on stability, I would give it nine out of ten or even ten out of ten because we didn't face any issues in two years. But saying ten out of ten might not be fair, so I'd say nine out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The tool is scalable. For example, you can expand your resources from five gigabytes to ten gigabytes. But you have to pay for the expansion whether you use it all or not, unlike AWS, where you pay according to usage.
In our organization, we have about 200,000 users using Cloudinary. Some had profile pictures, others had documents shared between users and doctors, and some uploaded pictures of their sick animals or pets.
How are customer service and support?
I can't evaluate the technical support team because we never needed to use it. We didn't face any crucial issues that required support in two years, which is good. Everything was clear.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup of Cloudinary is very easy, not difficult at all. Our company created an account, and we could create teams and invite team members.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We decided to quit using Cloudinary after two years because we were getting a lot of users, and it was becoming expensive. Cloudinary had fixed charges, so if we agreed to pay 500 USD per month, it would be the same whether we used high or low resources. They would notify us if we exceeded our limit, but not if we used less—however, AWS charges according to usage, which became more cost-effective for us as we grew. With AWS, you might pay 100 one month and 200 the next, depending on your usage.
What other advice do I have?
I faced a challenge when we needed to migrate from Cloudinary to AWS when we hit almost 500,000 users. I initially tried to migrate files manually, creating an API to fetch files from Cloudinary and upload them to AWS. After migrating about 100,000 files, I discovered Cloudinary has a feature to migrate resources to other platforms easily. I had spent almost a week doing things manually before finding this efficient solution. I was amazed when I discovered I could do it with a simple command, moving everything from Cloudinary to AWS in minutes. But at the beginning, it was quite hectic.
I would recommend Cloudinary to others, especially medium businesses or companies with fewer than 500,000 users.
I advise first-time users that everything is easy, and your employees don't need special skills to get started. There's also a large community of Cloudinary users, so you can easily find documentation and solutions online if you get stuck.
Useful to store files and documents
What is our primary use case?
I use the solution to host files and documents. I use it when I have an application where I want to store files online. I use the Cloudinary server to host the files, and I use the API to integrate the platform with my back end to save files and documents.
What is most valuable?
One of the best features of the platform is that we have a generous free tire that I can use for some of my projects without worrying about the platform's cost. The free-tier version is one of the biggest pros of Cloudinary. The API integration in Cloudinary is quite easy and straightforward.
What needs improvement?
I believe there is some scope for improvement in areas like the dashboard, specifically the user dashboard and the browser where you can navigate the platform. Sometimes, it can be a little bit difficult to navigate the platform. I think if the tool can improve the navigation around Cloudinary's console and make it more intuitive, it would be more helpful for users.
I want the UI for the console and dashboard to be better.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cloudinary for two years. I am a user of the tool.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I don't have any server issues. The website I use Cloudinary for is still running, and there has been no downtime with the API or server.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is scalable solution.
I work as a freelancer, and I mostly use it to share files with my clients. I know that two of my friends also use Cloudinary. I remember that Cloudinary was introduced to me by someone from my past.
How are customer service and support?
On some occasions, I have spoken with the product's support team. The solution's technical support was quite prompt in their responses. I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
How was the initial setup?
For the cases in which I have used Cloudinary, I just use the API. The truth is the documentation is quite good, and it is straightforward to integrate the API with whatever framework or language you are using to write your application.
The solution is deployed using the cloud services offered by Cloudinary.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The tool is quite cheap because it gives a certain amount of free gigs for trials. If you are just starting out, the tool is actually free. You don't have to pay any fee, except if you have a large volume of files and documents you want to host. If you are just starting out, you don't need to pay anything to use Cloudinary. When you eventually want to scale, then you have to pay to use to get more for a little more space on the platform.
What other advice do I have?
The tool's documentation is great, and everything is seamless.
I suggest others try using the product because it provides a generous free-tier version that you can use for test purposes. If you are still in developer mode, you can use it as a dev server to host files. If you don't want to write in the back end and you just have a front-end application, you can easily store your files on Cloudinary and access them without having to spin up a server. It is quite easy to use, and the generous free-tier version makes it more appealing to use.
Beginners who want to learn to use the product can look at the free documentation on the product's console. If you have any issues, Cloudinary has a huge community. Many engineers and developers use Cloudinary. In case you run into any issues, you can find something online or on YouTube that can help you fix it. Overall, it's quite easy to use.
I had only had good experiences using the platform apart from when I had the issue, and I contacted the support. They were quite prompt with their responses. I have not had any issues with the platform.
I rate the overall tool an eight out of ten.
Has a default configuration that makes images load faster without losing quality
What is most valuable?
The tool has tools designed for the average user, and the onboarding process is very easy, especially for aspiring junior developers. I love Cloudinary's automation feature. It automatically optimizes assets, so I don't have to do anything. When I store an image, their system already optimizes it. Its CDN is very powerful. The solution also has a default configuration that makes images load faster without losing quality. We haven't faced any issues in integrating the tool with other platforms.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with the product for three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I've never had any issues with stability or bugs. The first project I used Cloudinary with is still working. Their API references are amazing backward compatibility, one of their strengths—unlike some other APIs, they don't break easily.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Looking at its credits, I think Cloudinary can be scalable. However, when you compare it to the AWS S3 bucket, you have more options for scalability with AWS. However, the solution is still good. I rate the solution's scalability a seven out of ten. My company has 1000 users.
How are customer service and support?
I haven't contacted technical support yet.
What was our ROI?
I think Cloudinary is worth the money for its features. If you have a large user base or need advanced features, it's worth going with its paid plans. Otherwise, you might be better off sticking with their free tier or using AWS storage if you want to scale.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend Cloudinary to other people. It's especially good for those who aren't very technical, as it's a good starting point. It's also great for scaling up to mid-sized businesses. I would recommend it for these cases. Their enterprise plan might be great for large businesses, but I'm not sure about that as I don't have experience with it. I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.
Handles media-specific tasks like re-encoding uploads with easy setup
What is our primary use case?
We use Cloudinary to store various media related to the vehicles, such as engine sound recordings and images of the vehicle from different angles, including the interior. Recently, we've also started storing short engine videos, around 15 seconds. Additionally, vehicle documents are stored on the platform, and the front-end team uses it to handle user uploads.
How has it helped my organization?
The Cloudinary Dart package is poorly implemented. It works for simple use cases but fails when implementing more advanced features, like handling signatures. It appears to be outsourced, and several important elements are missing. For instance, some necessary class exports are absent, meaning if you need a class to create a request, you must import it manually. It relies on hard-coded strings, making it nearly unusable for anything beyond basic tasks. While it might work without signatures or advanced features, it's unreliable for more complex use cases.
What is most valuable?
Unlike Firebase Storage, Cloudinary handles media-specific tasks like re-encoding uploads. For example, when users upload a video from an Apple device, it's often encoded in a proprietary Apple codec. Cloudinary automatically reduces the file size and re-encodes it into a more open format suitable for the web or other devices. We had issues with our engine sound recordings when using Firebase, as it would simply accept the file and make it available without validating the audio. After switching to Cloudinary, it validates the files, and if any are corrupted, the upload fails with an appropriate error message. This validation helped us identify corrupted audio files we couldn't play before.
What needs improvement?
The main issue with the package is how it handles errors. It swallows errors and throws its own, but without preserving the stack trace, making debugging nearly impossible. It ends with a vague argument error, without any clue where or why it happened.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cloudinary for one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Cloudinary does experience occasional downtimes or unavailability, slightly more often than Firebase. But you can't really compare the two, as Firebase is backed by Google and has servers all over the world. This is understandable, given that Cloudinary is a smaller company, and their pricing reflects that difference.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
50 users are using this solution.
How are customer service and support?
We’ve always been able to find answers either directly in the documentation or, in the worst case, by searching online. Cloudinary has a support forum where more complex or uncommon issues are discussed. If you Google the error message or code, you can easily find the right fix.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We switched from Firebase to Cloudinary mainly because Cloudinary was already used in other departments. As part of addressing technical debt, we questioned why we were still using Firebase when Cloudinary was available. Previously, media from vehicle inspectors was uploaded to Firebase; then, the backend would re-upload it to Cloudinary, duplicating the work. To streamline this process and cut costs, we eliminated Firebase and uploaded media directly to Cloudinary.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was easy because we rewrote much of it ourselves. I submitted a pull request to fix some signature-related issues, but we uncovered more problems with the code afterward. As a result, we created a class tailored to our needs, and it's been working well since then. The main problem lies with the Dart package itself. The product documentation, features, and API are pretty clear so we can implement them without issues. The documentation is acceptable; the Dart package caused the trouble.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is reasonably priced.
What other advice do I have?
If you're working with documents like JSON or TXT files, I'm not entirely sure Cloudinary would be the best fit for that. But it's an excellent option for dealing with media files, mainly due to its media validation. Cloudinary will check for corrupted video or audio files and can re-encode them into different formats without much effort—you modify the URL, and it handles everything server-side.
Overall, I rate the solution a seven or eight out of ten.
Available for free and is intuitive for users
What is our primary use case?
The first time I discovered Cloudinary, I mainly used it to store my images. If you are on our website, where people must upload images, then instead of storing the images in a database, I stored them in Cloudinary, which gave me a link to the image. The link is what you store in the database, and it becomes easier. Cloudinary added a new AI feature, and it is amazing. When I tried it out, it was powerful, and I used it in a project and loved it.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of the solution revolve around image storage. I think that is what is cool about the tool, and I use it the most. The AI is promising. There are so many things you can do with the tool. You can edit images, and you can refine images to make them clearer. The tool supports searches, meaning you can search the elements inside the image. If there is an image of a landscape, you can use certain options to search for that image. You can search for all the images that have particular areas from your image. It could get you all the images with the particular aspect of the image you provide or choose, which I think makes working easier.
What needs improvement?
I don't know what needs improvement in the product since there are so many features that I would not like Cloudinary to change. It offers a very good setup phase. The AI does not offer image generation. If Cloudinary can add a way or a model that can generate the image, then you won't need to upload images to it. You can just provide a prompt through AI, then generate the image and manipulate it the way you want. I think the changes in the AI can make things a little bit faster.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cloudinary for two years. I am a customer of Cloudinary.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Considering that there are many users with many images, they want to change the platform and the design. If you are not going to put all the images in Cloudinary, then it will be easy if you have to update all the images. It can cause a little bit of uptime. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
I have not faced issues with bugs or any breakdowns in the tool.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a six to seven out of ten.
There are around a few thousand in the company who use it.
How are customer service and support?
I have not had any issues that caused me to contact the product's support, but I can say that Cloundinary's LinkedIn page is very active.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously, I used to store the images in the database.
How was the initial setup?
According to me, the product's initial setup phase was easy. I don't know what kind of person will be using it, but if it is a little bit technical, then it is very easy. One just needs to do some setup phases in Cloudinary Generative AI Playground, making it a very, very intuitive tool. I think there is very good documentation about the tool's setup phase. If you are a technical person, it should be easy. If you are new, you can just go through the documentation. It is a very intuitive tool.
The deployment process would take less than two minutes to be completed.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It has a free plan.
What other advice do I have?
Cloudinary's automation features save time and resources. The image search feature is very intuitive and can save you a lot of time if you want to get an idea of the image you want to look for but don't know anything about that exact image. You can just use the items in the image to look for an image. Another one is if you are working on a project and the images you have there are not that clear, then you can easily, with a few clicks, make them clear. I think that that saves you the effort of going to an image editor to refine it. With the images in the background, you can just remove that part from the image on the fly. You also get the refill features. If your image is smaller and you want a bigger one, you can use the AI tool to add more elements to the pictures.
So far, I have not seen anything challenging in the product. There is not too much technical stuff you need to know to use it.
The AI features that I have used the most in the product and found to be beneficial include areas like the image refill functionality, image background removal, and the image definer so that if your image is not that clear, it can clear the image. You can change the color and elements in the image. If there is a book with an image that is white, and you want a book with blue pages, you can just tell the AI to make the pages blue. You can remove a few objects from the image.
Considering how easy it is to use the product and since I have used it in some of my projects, I can recommend it to others.
I rate the tool a ten out of ten.