Jodel & Leaseweb: Network for a Start Up Company

Founded: 2015

Headquarters: Berlin, Germany

Size: 11-50

Products in this case study:

CDN

Dedicated Server

Network

The Customer

Jodel is a social media application founded by Alessio Borgmeyer in 2015. The platform is aimed at encouraging people to interact with each other locally in meaningful ways. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from, what matters is what you say.

Jodel is a young and dynamic social media startup based in Berlin, Germany. The Jodel platform allows users to anonymously share messages, photos and videos with other users in the same location. Users can respond to a Jodel, vote on it and share it. The company gathers no personal data on its users; in fact sharing personal information in the platform is prohibited. It’s all about connecting with your local community and sharing news, questions, events, stories, and jokes.

Jodel has millions of users around the world – with its largest user base in Europe and The Middle East.

The Challenge

As a startup, Jodel has certain financial constraints. While they are still proving their product and growing their user base around the world, cost containment is paramount. Initially, Jodel was using the infrastructure of a major public cloud platform, but they quickly realized this model was unsustainable as this was draining their funds. They needed to find a more cost-effective solution which could also offer the performance they needed.

The other main challenge for Jodel is performance. Due to the dynamic nature of the application, there are a large number of global users and traffic is unpredictable. The infrastructure needs to be elastic and perform consistently to maintain a good user experience for people using the app. A key requirement for Jodel is that the backend is able to move data at extreme speeds.

The Solution

Leaseweb came recommended from employees within Jodel who had previously used Leaseweb's services. It was clear from the first meeting that Leaseweb would be a good fit, as there was a good level of understanding about their requirements and challenges. Startups require a slightly different type of service to more established businesses, and Leaseweb has gained expertise on this matter through working with various companies in the Leaseweb Startup Program.

The Leaseweb solution was to deploy high-performance Dedicated Servers to take over from the public cloud and drive costs down. Jodel has a requirement for speed, so the Dedicated Servers were fitted with additional 'extra fast' NVMe SSDs. This allows for more IOPS, higher throughput and lower latency.

Jodel is also utilizing Leaseweb CDN, which in combination with the Leaseweb Network, offers rapid content delivery. The Leaseweb CDN includes access to ultramodern SuperPoPs to help deliver the visual content that populates Jodel.

Key requirements

Cost containment – public cloud costs were spiraling out of control
Elasticity – enabling unpredictable bursts
Performance – moving data at extreme speeds
Rapid content delivery – giving a high-quality user experience
Redundancy – including Backup systems

Our solution

Improved price/performance – over 50% cost reduction
On-demand resources – extra capacity reserved to give elasticity
Leaseweb Dedicated Servers with ‘extra fast’ NVMe SSDs – giving improvements on disk latency and utilization
Leaseweb CDN and Leaseweb Network – rapid delivery of multimedia content

The Support

In the transition from the public cloud platform to Leaseweb’s Dedicated Servers, the customer was concerned about not being able to maintain the same level of elasticity. It was important for Jodel’s infrastructure to be able to support the unpredictable usage of their application, and if the number of app users suddenly started rapidly increasing in an area, they needed to be able to accommodate that.

From the beginning, it was agreed with the customer that Leaseweb would keep extra servers in reserve for Jodel so that extra capacity could be accessed on-demand in order to simulate the elasticity requirement. Leaseweb have adopted the preferred communication methods of the customer, using the messaging app Slack to stay connected with their team.

"It’s a very fast environment at Jodel and we didn’t think a company as big as Leaseweb would be willing to go and operate at the speed we work at. The support team are super available and have had no problems with any of our weird requests which is amazing."

Luis Soares, CTO, Jodel

The Outcome

Leaseweb has been able to successfully simulate the elasticity of the cloud for Jodel with their Dedicated Servers, by keeping extra capacity available and enabling rapid deployment. By switching to Leaseweb’s Dedicated Servers, Jodel has reduced their infrastructure costs by over 50%. They are also experiencing a boost in performance as indicated by improved IOPS, data access times, disk latency and utilization.

Jodel is now able to continue expanding without having to worry about their costs spiraling out of control. They still maintain parts of their infrastructure in the public cloud, but they make sure they choose the best tool for the job. Jodel is now using Dedicated Servers for performance and the cloud for testing and specific managed services.

Since Jodel started working with Leaseweb, they have increased the number of users, features, data load, and data access. They are now looking to expand even further across Europe as well as extending to the US. Jodel is also looking to give more power to its community and would like to open up its platform to developers in the near future.

"Leaseweb has enabled us to do many of the things we wanted to do before at a much lower cost. We have extended our runway and can now try new features like videos and ads simply because our costs are now under control and we have the breathing room to experiment with things and redesign our architecture. They have given us more time and space which are the most important things for a startup."