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Hosting and performance

When you publish with PandaSuite, your app and all its media are hosted and delivered for you. You do not set up a server, plan bandwidth, or optimize your files by hand. This page explains how delivery works, how your app behaves with a large audience, and what you actually control.

Your media is optimized automatically

When you import a media file into the Files window, PandaSuite re-encodes it for delivery. You do not need to compress, resize, or optimize your media beforehand. Import your best-quality source and let the platform prepare the right version for each viewer.

  • Images are delivered at the right size for each device and screen density, including Retina and high-DPI displays. A project setting, Image Resolution, lets you choose between Optimized and Responsive depending on how your layout adapts (see Images).
  • Videos are re-encoded to the Quality you select on the Video Player or Fullscreen Video component, from SD (240p) up to UHD 4K (2160p). PandaSuite caps the result at the source resolution, so a video is never upscaled beyond its original quality.
  • Audio is re-encoded to the bitrate you select.

Importing a large source file does not slow down your published app. What reaches each viewer is the optimized version, not your original file. There is no need to prepare lighter assets before uploading.

Upload the highest-quality source you have. The only media decision that affects delivery is the Quality you choose on each video, not the size of the file you import.

How your published app is delivered

A PandaSuite-hosted web app and all of its assets are served from a global content delivery network (CDN). Copies of your content are cached at edge locations close to your users, so the app loads quickly wherever they are. Videos are delivered the same way.

PandaSuite’s hosting currently runs on Cloudflare’s global network. You do not manage any of this: there is no server to configure, no scaling setting to tune, and no bandwidth plan to buy.

Performance with many simultaneous users

Because your content is delivered by a CDN and each visit plays independently, a large audience opening your app at the same time is absorbed by the network, not by a single server. For a solo-playback experience such as clickable videos, a quiz, or an interactive story, there is no “number of players” limit in the multiplayer sense. Thousands of people can open the app at once.

What actually shapes each viewer’s experience is the video quality you choose and the amount of media on each screen, because every device downloads what it plays. Before sending a large audience to your app:

  • choose a video Quality suited to the experience and to your audience’s typical connection (a story watched on phones rarely needs 4K);
  • keep each screen to the media it really needs.

This is about choosing the right delivered quality, not about compressing your source files.

Solo playback scales without extra work on your side because it is served as static content. If you later add accounts, saved progress, leaderboards, or payments, those features write data for each user through an external service. That service, not PandaSuite hosting, is what you size for a traffic spike.

Offline access and caching

How your app keeps working without a connection depends on where it runs:

  • Web app and PWA: a published web app can cache its content with service workers. The Full download option downloads every resource on the first visit, so the app keeps working offline afterward. Users can also add the app to their home screen for an app-like, full-screen experience.
  • Native viewers (iOS, Android): each media file is downloaded the first time it is needed and stored on the device, so it is available offline the next time. You can also publish with every asset packaged up front for a complete offline launch, which is useful for kiosks or venues without a reliable network.

When to use external video hosting

PandaSuite’s built-in video hosting is the simplest path and covers most projects, including high-traffic ones. Consider a dedicated streaming platform with the URL Media Player component only when you need:

  • a very large video catalog that you do not want to store inside the project, or
  • true adaptive streaming, where quality switches automatically based on each viewer’s connection.

PandaSuite-hosted videos are served as one file per selected quality and do not switch bitrate automatically during playback.

Self-hosting an exported package

Everything above applies to apps hosted by PandaSuite. If you instead export a web package and host it yourself, you become responsible for your own server, bandwidth, and, if needed, a CDN. The exported package includes the optimized media, but the automatic CDN delivery and scaling are part of PandaSuite hosting, not of the static files you export.

See also