As a wise ice queen once sang, "The cold never bothered me anyway!". Our engineering team certainly took that sentiment to heart when they were working on the latest updates to our coolest pricing lever ever — Automatic Cold Storage.
Since we launched Automatic Cold Storage into beta last year (with a healthy dose of 90s nostalgia) and then into general availability in July, we've been thrilled with how much money it's been saving you. But we've also been listening to your feedback, and today we're excited to announce two major improvements that make Automatic Cold Storage even cooler.
No more waiting to chill out
Previously, assets had to wait until 30 days without being viewed to qualify for the infrequent tier (40% discount) and until 90 days to reach the cold tier (60% discount).
But why wait to save money?
Starting today, newly created assets that are eligible for cold storage will immediately move into the cold storage tier, and they'll stay there until the first time they're watched. That means you can start saving up to 60% on storage costs the moment you upload a video, not months later.
Even better, if you're already using Automatic Cold Storage, and are eagerly waiting for your not-yet-watched videos to transition over to the cold tier, we've made sure that those videos will accelerate their transition too, without you needing to do anything. Assets that have not been watched since upload have automatically been moved to cold storage.
This update is great for customers building video systems where new content uploads are mainly held for archive, audit, and analysis purposes, like meeting recordings, surveillance footage highlights, educational archives, or compliance recordings.
When the asset is first watched, a new cold storage lifecycle is triggered, and the asset will transition to infrequent storage 30 days later, and then cold storage 90 days later if it continues not to be streamed.
No more thawing required
One of the trade-offs with the original version of Automatic Cold Storage was that when viewers accessed a cold asset, they might experience slightly longer startup times as we retrieved it from storage.
Our engineering team has been hard at work optimizing our storage systems, and we're thrilled to announce that those startup time penalties are now completely eliminated! Assets in cold storage now start just as quickly as those in standard storage, with no QoE impact for your viewers.
That's right — all of the cost savings with none of the performance tradeoffs.
Getting started
If you've already opted into using Automatic Cold Storage, you'll see these new savings appear on your next invoice. All New Pay as you go or Starter plan accounts will continue to have Automatic Cold Storage enabled by default (now with these amazing new improvements).
If you're an existing customer who hasn't enabled Automatic Cold Storage yet, head to your organization settings in the Mux Dashboard and click "Enable" on Automatic Cold Storage.
Contract customers, chat with your account team about how you can enable these enhanced storage savings.
What's next?
This is just the beginning of our pricing journey in 2025. Our team is already hard at work on a whole slate of cost optimizations we'll be rolling out in the coming months. We've heard loud and clear that cost predictability and efficiency continue to be top priorities for you, and we're just getting started.
Stay tuned for more announcements that will help you build better video experiences while keeping your CFO happy. Have a specific area where your CFO wants to see us focus our efforts? Let us know.
