Why use an audio hosting service?

Pier Bover

April 19, 2023

You want to add audio to your website. What's the best solution?

One option could be to self-host your audio files and solve the whole thing yourself. This path gives you full control but, depending on your needs, can be slow to set up and expensive to maintain.

The alternative is, of course, using a third party service like Wavekit. This offers numerous advantages we're going to explore in this article.

Get started faster

With a third-party service, you will have audio running on your website in a matter of minutes. Basically, upload your .wav files and paste the HTML code of the audio player into your website.

This not only reduces any tech and decision complexity but gives you everything you need, and more, out-of-the-box: storage and streaming infrastructure for your audio, a dedicated customizable player, a management system, and play metrics to check how your content is doing.

Simplified management

Audio hosting services offer easy-to-use tools that don't require technical expertise. This allows anyone in your team to manage your audio content without having to nag the devs. Even for technical users, it's fewer things to worry about regarding compatibility and security issues.

Handle traffic with ease

Streaming high-quality audio consumes more resources than serving HTML or images. This might slow down your website in moments with increased traffic, such as when releasing a new product.

Offloading audio streaming to a third party will save precious resources when they are most needed. The last thing anyone wants during a product launch is a slow website, especially your users.

Low latency, worldwide

The internet allows you to reach a global audience, but it can be challenging to deliver a fast experience to users dispersed in many regions.

Your audio content hosted in London will be fast for your UK and EU users, but it will take longer to reach someone in Los Angeles or New Zealand. Audio hosting services will use several strategies to speed up their service regardless of where the user is located.

This is an area we've spent a lot of time optimizing at Wavekit. Check this article to see how we compare to other audio hosting services.

Reduce infrastructure costs

Leveraging an external service to host audio might even allow you to downscale your own infrastructure. Maybe you won't need that expensive WordPress host with lots of storage and bandwidth.

We've even seen users being able to reduce their internet presence to a simple static site using Wavekit for audio and other third-party solutions for payments. Static sites have many advantages in terms of security and can typically be hosted for free.

Wrapping up

Obviously, we're biased, but we believe for most projects, Wavekit is a better audio hosting solution than self-hosting.

It will help you get started faster with a fraction of the cost and all the listed benefits. We offer a complete solution, so you don't have to deal with all the intricacies of setting up an audio hosting service.