Adobe After Effects is a software application for motion graphics, visual effects, and compositing developed by Adobe Systems. After Effects is an industry-standard tool for visual effects and text animation. Many artists and post-production professionals rely on After Effects to generate visually stunning work for films, videos, or television. After producing hundreds or thousands of frames, you definitely need a video and animation-based tool like After Effects for your post-production process. If you are looking for an After Effects render farm that supports you in this intricate and cumbersome part, you’re in the right place. In this article, Radarrender shows you the 5 best After Effects render farms.

iRender farm is a render farm platform built as an IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) in Vietnam. They specialize in providing high-performance machines for rendering. It’s one of the simplest and most friendly After Effects render farms for users. You just need to get access to their powerful machine via an RDP file and use it as your personal computer. In addition, iRender provides a free tool called GpuHub_sync to transfer your files to the remote server which makes customers save their time and money to use a render farm.

Unlike the other render farms, you need to install After Effects on the remote server, but just one time only, all software will be saved and available for the next usage. CPU configuration is one of the superior strengths of this After Effects render farm when they offer customers a dragon CPU for AE. You can select AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3955WX @ 3.90GHz. If you look for a particular specification for CPUs, clock speed matters more for After Effects. Fast clock speed at least 3.2 GHz or higher is recommended. Actually, there are few render farms supporting CPU machines at the base frequency higher 3.2GHz. iRender farm is a great brand name in this field supporting high-computing CPUs at the base frequency up to 3.9GHz, max turbo frequency up to 4.5GHz. 

I have to say that iRender farm is the best render farm supporting After Effects. However, their pricing is higher than other render farms. The cost is from 7.2$/hour to 30$/hour.

Rendereffects is a cloud rendering service focusing on an exclusive software application: Adobe After Effects. This After Effects cloud rendering platform makes rendering After Effects projects in the cloud fast and easy. First, you need to prepare your project by compressing your collected files folder using zip or rar format (rar works best for large files and then submitting project details. As soon as you submit your project details, you will be forwarded to the Upload page. Simply click the “Browse” button to upload your files and wait for Rendereffects rendering your job. 

Rendereffects supports only CPU rendering with After Effects. There are hundreds of Xeon Cores, less than 3.0Ghz, 20-32 Cores per node in their farm. Nearly 500GB DDR4 RAM and 6TB SSD storage in each node. Now they offer 3 kinds of service packages for users as follows: 

• No rush: the most economical option for After Effects rendering. Ideal for projects with more relaxed deadlines.
• The priority: The perfect balance of computing power and priority to meet most deadlines. At least twice as fast as No Rush rendering
• Priority rush: Meet the most critical deadlines with maximum compute power and front-of-the-line priority rendering.

This render farm is suitable for small companies and individuals working with After Effects. They don’t have too complicated projects and no need to customize the projects. Timing is what they care about, so this After Effects render farm will meet their needs.

RenderNow is the UK cloud rendering service based on SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) that aims to bring down the overall cost and time of rendering, from small scale projects to feature-length animation, insuring your animation or still images are rendered and complete to meet your deadline. RenderNow provides a service for anyone who has a project which requires substantial render power to reach a deadline. They have our own dedicated render farm in-house which comprises of top of the range, custom-tuned hardware. 

In terms of your demands, they are now supporting After Effect software that is rendered via CPU. Specializing in powerful CPU machines, this After Effect render farm offers a large number of Dual Xeon CPU lines, less than 3.0 GHz, 64GB RAM, 24 cores at the price of 0.013$/GHz. If you are on a tight deadline, RenderNow would be your choice. It is because they can help you to speed up rendering your heavy job within a couple of hours, of course, at a high cost.

TurboRender is a cloud rendering service coming from Russia. They established in 2013 and have been helping customers save rendering time. TurboRender is an online render farm that is based on SaaS (Software as a Service) platform. This company has 800 powerful servers with installed and configured specific software. Users can speed up the rendering process many times and get the finished result faster with a couple of clicks. TurboRender is perfect for individuals and teams because it is easy to use and offers a reasonable price from 0.87$/hour (CPU) to 2.62$/hour & 4.37$4/hour (GPU). 

Regarding After Effects software, they offer 2 versions which are 2019 and 2020. Besides, a lot of plugins are supported with After Effects, please read more at the following image and see whether TurboRender supports your plugins. Rendering After Effects jobs needs CPU power, TurboRender offers CPU Dual Xeon E5-2670 64-128GB RAM, 2.6GHz 

ForRender is a cloud rendering service that is based on SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) and PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service). It is called a SaaS model because they support detailed software and plugins where you just need to upload your files and For Render will do their rendering responsibility. This render farm is also considered as a PaaS model when they provide remote servers for users with a particular CPU machine configuration.

When it comes to After Effects software, this render farm offers you CPU rendering. Every single CPU server is equipped with 2x Intel Xeon E5-2670, 2.6GHz (Sandy Bridge) and 64 or 120 GB RAM. You can select to rent via CPU or GPU servers, depending on what is needed, while the calculator part will help to estimate how much time it will take to render your project. The cost starts at 0.0038$/hour/Ghz for Low priority package, 0.0075$/hour/Ghz for the Standard priority package, and 0.012$/hour/Ghz for the High priority package. But you have to queue and wait for your turn to render a job, the higher package you choose, the less time you have to wait.

To sum up, rendering with After Effects need a high clock speed CPU (or processor base frequency – Ghz). iRender farm is the best After Effects render farm when offering Intel Xeon W-2245 @ 3.90GHz but at a high cost. Other top After Effects render farms such as TurboRender, RenderNow, Rendereffects, or ForRender also offer a great & high-computing CPU but the clock speed is less than 3.0 GHz. Depending on your requirements, if you have a tight deadline, you should consider choosing iRender farm, however, if you are in no rush, you should take other render farms into account.