“With CDNetworks local points of presence, our Australia‐based
merchants get the same performance as in North America. Neither
Shopify nor our customers have to invest in datacenters or co‐hosting.”
‐ Dale Neufeld, Director of Technical Operations, Shopify
CDNetworks Reaching China with Your Website and Brand - The Hard Truth
Shopify Boosts the User Experience at Over 40,000 Online Stores Worldwide with CDNetworks
1. Shopify Boosts the User Experience at Over 40,000 Online
Stores Worldwide with CDNetworks
CASE STUDY ____
“With CDNetworks local points of presence, our Australia‐based
merchants get the same performance as in North America. Neither
Shopify nor our customers have to invest in datacenters or co‐hosting.”
‐ Dale Neufeld, Director of Technical Operations, Shopify
__ __________
Can small businesses compete online to sell products against the online mega‐stores?
Today they can, thanks to the turnkey ecommerce website platform provided by
At a Glance Shopify (www.shopify.com). In just seven years, Shopify’s innovative Software‐as‐a‐
Service (SaaS) platform has helped more than 40 thousand small businesses sell over
COMPANY: Shopify
22 million products to online consumers around the world.
FOUNDED: 2006
Today, Shopify powers online retail sites including small business such as Github and
HEADQUARTERS: Ottawa, Canada The Chive to big ticket businesses including Tesla Motors and General Electric. Shopify
INDUSTRY: Retail & Software‐as‐a‐Service credits its success to a laser focus on helping emerging businesses grow into successful
companies. Shopify achieves this by creating great technology and making it affordable.
WEBSITE: www.shopify.com
The company delivers the technology through its SaaS platform, which removes the
SERVICES: Provide comprehensive
hassle of running online store infrastructure, so online merchants can focus on what
ecommerce websites for small businesses
to successfully sell their products online
they do best ― building and selling their products.
CDNetworks SERVICES: The Challenge
Content Acceleration
As Shopify’s customer base of online merchants grew across the globe, the company
Key Results recognized the need to ensure the best website user experience possible for shoppers
in a multitude of different countries. This led Shopify to underpin its website content
Streamlined page load times for more
than 22 million products delivery capabilities with the service of a content delivery network (CDN).
Optimized online stores performance Unfortunately, the CDN service provider lacked a cloud delivery presence in Australia, a
globally, including those in Australia fast‐growing market for Shopify. To accommodate the needs of Australia‐based
and New Zealand merchants and their end users located in Australia and New Zealand, Shopify searched
Leveraged CDN capabilities to attract for a way to ensure op mal website performance in both countries ― without
prospective customers incurring massive infrastructure build‐out costs; the cost to expand data center
capabilities in the region was prohibitively expensive.
Realized 100% uptime of their CDN
infrastructure At the same time, website traffic was growing for Shopify in the US and Europe. To
continue its differentiated capability of delivering high‐performing websites, Shopify
network engineers sought an affordable solution that could ensure fast website
delivery anywhere in the world.
Key Objectives
To achieve optimal website performance for all its global clients with one solution,
Shopify sought a CDN service provider with infrastructure in Australia and the rest of the
world where Shopify merchants operate. “We needed a single solution to address the
existing large volume of site traffic in the US, Canada, and Europe while at the same
time allowing for global growth, particularly in Australia,” says Dale Neufeld, Director of
Technical Operations at Shopify.
CDNetworks | 1 2013‐03
2. Shopify also needed to ensure that pricing would remain stable, even if its platform
usage grew internationally. “This meant finding a service provider that wouldn’t jack up
prices just because our international traffic started to grow.”
The Solution: A CDN Built for Global Operations
“CDNetworks has helped us achieve After evaluating the capabilities and pricing of several CDNs, Shopify selected
our goal of successfully entering CDNetworks to enable its SaaS platform around the globe. “We chose CDNetworks,
emerging markets with our flagship because they had the people and infrastructure in all the countries we needed,”
platform applications.”
explains Neufeld. “Moreover, they were able to provide evidence of superior site
performance in our core and growing markets.”
Dale Neufeld, Director of Technical
Operations, Shopify 100 Percent Uptime
Since adopting CDNetworks, Shopify merchants have enjoyed 100 percent uptime of
their content delivery network service. Not only does this optimize the end‐user
experience on their websites, it also helps Shopify grow its business. “We can attract
those customers who want to focus on their business, not on the IT needed to run and
optimize their website,” says Neufeld. In fact, as Figure 1 below illustrates, Shopify has
found that current and prospective merchants value Shopify’s CDN capabilities so much
that the company incorporates a description of CDNetworks in its website marketing.
Figure 1. Shopify Differentiates its Services by Marketing CDN Capabilities
Differentiating via CDN Capabilities
Today, Shopify’s SaaS platform continues to lead the global ecommerce market among
small and emerging businesses. In fact, nearly 30 percent of Shopify’s merchants
operate in markets outside of North America. According to Neufeld, Shopify welcomes
its growing popularity around the world. “With CDNetworks local points of presence,
our Australia‐based merchants get the same performance as in North America. Neither
Shopify nor our customers have to invest in datacenters or co‐hosting,” says Neufeld.
“We're able to focus on core infrastructure improvements because we know the
content (static assets) is being delivered without a hitch.”
CDNetworks | 2 2013‐03