Last updated: August 18
# How Silatus is supercharged by Transloadit and Uppy
#### Joseph Grabski
Content Lead · Rochester, United Kingdom · Show bio
[](https://x.com/joe%5Fgrabski)[](https://github.com/Missing-Tech)
It is hard to think of something being talked about more in tech at the moment than AI. With the industry rapidly growing, time-to-delivery is crucial. That is why the state-of-the-art AI-powered research engine [Silatus](https://silatus.com/) turned to Transloadit and Uppy when it needed a file-uploading solution.
## Results at a glance
* **2 weeks**To ship file uploads with Uppy, versus an estimated eight weeks in-house
* **2 weeks**To ship the Transloadit pipeline, versus an estimated six weeks in-house
* **≈50% lower**Projected cost versus separate virus-scanning and conversion services
**Evidence note:** Silatus co-founder and CEO Christopher Pratt supplied these estimates for the November 2023 case study. The time comparison uses Silatus’s two-week sprint length and contrasts the team’s completed integrations with its own in-house forecasts. The cost comparison reflects vendor quotes available to Silatus at the time; it is not an audited market benchmark.
Silatus started in 2022 with a clear mission: to make research feel like magic. Christopher Pratt created the best-value research engine available. Since then, Silatus has been able to serve over 30,000 users and they estimate that they have saved a collective *70,000 hours* of people's time.
And they are not stopping there! Silatus wanted to expand the feature set, and offer user uploads, whilst maintaining its competitive pricing, starting at only $14 per month. As Silatus' co-founder and CEO [Christopher Pratt](https://www.linkedin.com/in/prattcmp/) succinctly explains:
> We wanted to make it extremely easy for our users to bring their files – wherever they were – to Silatus in a controlled, privacy-aware and secure manner. Since we are a very lean startup, **we needed a solution that we could integrate quickly**, connect to the major remote cloud providers, and operate efficiently at scale with a great end-user experience, whilst still being able to offer our service for under $20 a month.
>
>  Christopher Pratt
While there are many different options on the market, the team at Silatus eventually decided to go forward with Transloadit and [Uppy](https://uppy.io/). Christopher explains what made this choice so easy in the end:
> "**Transloadit and Uppy checked every box**. Uppy has a great UI and UX, and it was super easy to integrate with. Transloadit came with all the capabilities we needed, like virus scanning, file conversion and file size testing, plus other advanced capabilities that we're excited to take advantage of in the future, such as AI image descriptions, automatic text translation and video encoding."
## The customer is always right
Whilst the developer experience is always important, what ultimately decides a product's value is its value *to the customer*.
> "Our customers are thrilled that we brought file uploads to Silatus so quickly, that it connects to all of the cloud storage services they use, and, most importantly, that **it just works.** File uploading has been a smash hit for us."
Annie Spratt on Unsplash
## Transloadit saves you time
Typically, a feature like this would be something a team could deliberate over for months, without even accounting for any speed bumps along the way. All of that is time taken away from other aspects of the product, which startups can't afford.
Christopher explains how Silatus was able to completely avoid this worry, by using Transloadit and Uppy's ready-made solution:
> "If we opted to run a customer file upload solution, it would have taken four sprints – or two months. Uppy took only a single sprint, or two weeks, *a quarter of the time*. Similarly, to build an in-house file processing pipeline would have taken an additional three sprints – or one-and-a-half months. Transloadit helped cut that down to one sprint, or two weeks, to get from investigation to production."
And that just covers the time saved. Rolling Uppy with Transloadit can help save on extra third-party services, too.
> "Had we used a third-party service for our virus scanning and file conversions, **it would have cost double what Transloadit offers.**"
Silatus' journey with Transloadit has only just started, and we are excited to see what the future holds. For more case studies just like this one, see the[full list](/casestudies.md).
\#open-source#handling-uploads-service#reliability#uppy
### 👩💻 Join 20k+ developers
Sign up for our [monthly newsletter](/newsletters.md) to receive direct links to 3 exclusive tech — and 2 product updates. No less, no more.
Your email:
Get access
## File uploading and encoding. Made simple.
Transloadit streamlines file handling for developers, trusted by brands like Coursera and The New York Times. We’re known for a reliable API, top-notch support, and a strong commitment to open source, with projects like [Uppy](https://uppy.io) and [Tus](https://tus.io) setting standards in file processing.
[Sign up](/c/)[Book a Demo](https://survey.typeform.com/to/kRg47Xi5)
No credit card needed · 5 GB included in the free plan
Cancel anytime