Poki is a leading web games platform that offers free online gaming to more than 30
million users monthly from☀️ around the globe. In doing so, Poki also helps game
developers bring their games to the market and monetize them☀️ through online
advertising. The platform optimizes game discovery by giving gamers personalized
recommendations based on the games they already like.
Poki☀️ strives to ensure that all
the games on its platform are instantly playable across the web. Download performance
is a☀️ critical factor in keeping users coming back for more. Casper van Wezel, Head of
Technology for Poki, says, “We've found☀️ that loading times are directly correlated to
the number of successful game plays. Fast-loading games lead to more game plays,☀️ which
lead to happier users and better financial results.”
The Challenge
Bringing games as
close as possible to users is a critical☀️ part of Poki’s strategy. With 1.1 million
hours of play per day and users playing in numerous native languages including☀️ German,
Chinese and Turkish, Poki needs to satisfy a globally-distributed, high-traffic
audience. Offloading the workload from its origin servers is☀️ essential, as is
optimizing the transfer of
and dynamic game data.
However, with its previous CDN
provider, Poki was experiencing☀️ unresolved issues in edge communications with users.
Determined to give both users and developers the best performance possible, Poki
reviewed☀️ a panoply of CDN players to find the solution it needed.
The Cloudflare
solution
Poki began leveraging Cloudflare's CDN service for its☀️ image and game files.
It then also moved its on-the-fly image resizing and HTML serving completely to
Cloudflare. With Cloudflare☀️ Image Resizing, Poki serves resized
that are
optimized for each visitor's device, keeping
as lean as possible without
☀️ compromising the user experience.
Dynamic game content that cannot be cached is served
by Cloudflare’s Argo Smart Routing. Casper van Wezel☀️ says, “Our data shows that
Cloudflare’s Argo Smart Routing product outperforms competitors.” The global Cloudflare
network enables Argo to detect☀️ real-time congestion and route web traffic across the
fastest and most reliable network paths, helping Poki optimize performance for users
☀️ everywhere.
Win-win for Poki and its gamers
Poki now sees significant download speed
improvements thanks to the reliable, high-performance Cloudflare infrastructure and
☀️ functionality. As Casper van Wezel says, “Along with improving our existing US
infrastructure, our users in South America are experiencing☀️ huge speed increases,
because they are now served not with the cheapest edge location, but the fastest.”
Poki
thus optimizes its☀️ website performance, which is vitally important for our user
experience and for keeping users engaged and active.
