How we reduced CDN costs for the largest online store in the United Arab Emirates

Awok.com is the largest online store in the UAE. It was founded in 2013. In just a few years, it has become one of the market leaders in online shopping in the Middle East.

Why Awok.com decided to change CDN provider

Each month, Awok.com is visited by millions of customers who are browsing over ten million webpages showing the goods.
95 % of the audience are residents of the United Arab Emirates and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
To withstand a serious load on the resource, a reliable CDN provider with a node in the region was much needed.

“We had a contract with another CDN provider, but despite the quality of the services provided the price did not suit us.”

Anton Shuleshov

Head of IT, Awok.com

The company’s technical experts began looking for a new CDN provider with a top-shelf performance and more favorable rates.

How the CDN service switch was made

It is critical for an online store to enable its customers to choose and buy goods instantaneously, without delays. Any degradation of service and even a short-term failure in its operation reduces website traffic and sales.

Thus, it was required to switch the provider in such a way that Awok.com visitors won’t notice it.

“Unfortunately, the architecture of our web application did not allow us to take advantage of such great feature as object prefetch, so we gradually redirected traffic to Gcore’ CDN cache servers in Dubai and thus ensured the smooth operation of Awok.com website.
We were looking for a CDN provider with the best value for money. Gcore meets these requirements, and the availability of a server in the United Arab Emirates was the deciding factor in choosing the contractor.”

Anton Shuleshov

Head of IT, Awok.com

3 reasons why Awok.com chose Gcore:

  • Favorable price
  • First-class performance of a CDN node in Dubai
  • Seamless redirection of traffic from the previous vendor infrastructure

Subscribe and discover the newest
updates, news, and features

We value your inbox and are committed to preventing spam