Choosing from a range of live streaming platforms for your organization's webinars and live events can feel like navigating a maze.
With hundreds of options in the market, it has become a real challenge for content managers and communication professionals to find a suitable platform for their needs. The high investment costs of the platform make the decision-making process a bit more difficult.

The stakes are even higher since the repercussions of choosing the wrong platform lead to a disrupted workflow, hefty data migration costs, and security vulnerabilities. Trust us, you wouldn't want to end up purchasing the wrong kind of live streaming platform.

Given the risk of choosing the wrong platform, companies are looking for live streaming solutions with extra caution. However, because of the wide acceptance of live streaming in recent years, businesses are becoming more confident in having a dedicated live streaming solution at their disposal.

Did you know that 70% of digital video audiences in the United States prefer watching videos on their smartphones? This highlights the importance of secure live streaming on multiple devices.

There are multiple requirements for live streaming platforms which vary depending on the use case. In this blog, we will discuss finding the right live streaming platform, the criteria to evaluate a live streaming platform, and the pros and cons of the major players in the industry.

How to Choose the Right Live Streaming Platform?

Choosing the right live streaming platform depends on your needs and goals. For business and professional needs, it is advantageous to have a dedicated livestream that gives you more control over your stream in terms of security, engagement, and viewer experience.

Certain requirements are crucial for small to large organizations that are looking for a secure live streaming solution for corporate communications, meetings, webinars, educational needs, or knowledge sharing of products and services.

For example, as the viewers are watching live content, organizations are concerned for safety and security. On certain platforms, you have the functionality to restrict access while at others you don’t.

Firstly, identifying your own needs is important to determine the right requirements. Although it is necessary to find a platform that tick marks all the requirements, it is equally important to perform a cost-benefit analysis in terms of functionality, reliability, and scalability.

The trade-off between compatibility and integration effort, security and accessibility, scalability and specialized features is always running through the mind when you are looking for a platform. Coming out of this dilemma is simply by understanding the functionality that you require from live streaming platform.

Let us look at the evaluation criteria for live streaming software in detail.

Criteria to Evaluate Live Streaming Platforms On

As an event manager or a corporate communication professional looking for a streaming solution, it is essential to understand your organizational needs and objective while evaluating the live streaming platform capabilities. The buying criteria is based on live streaming software features and capabilities to get required functionality. Some essential features and capabilities are discussed below.

Data Security

Live streaming platforms should protect the stream at each stage, whether at rest or in transit through encryption protocols. Security features like single sign-on (SSO) support help authenticate viewers and IP and geo-restrictions prevent unwanted audience belonging to a certain region from becoming a part of your ongoing live stream.

All in all, secure video streaming platforms help in creating an exceptional viewing experience and helps prevent reputational risks to the business engaged in live streaming their virtual event, webinar, training session, or something else.

Scalability

Having a scalable live streaming platform is a must-have. After all, when you live stream a virtual event or webinar, it is naturally expected that a large audience will follow. However, a sudden spike in Internet traffic can cause your live stream to crash or experience occasional stops. Scalable live streaming helps you handle increasing viewer numbers without compromising the quality.

Scalability is highly important for businesses and corporate professionals who anticipate rapid growth or expect to host large-scale events. The best live streaming platforms offer robust infrastructure and adaptive bitrate streaming technology to accommodate fluctuations in bandwidth and user demand, providing a consistent viewing experience for all participants.

Category Access Rights

Advanced live streaming platforms should have storage capabilities for large volumes of video data. This means no matter the volume of data, you can fit all of it into one single platform. Given the sheer amount of video content, you should be able to create unlimited categories and sub-categories to organize videos.

Granular permissions should be available for each category and sub-category. The storage should ensure data integrity and long-term accessibility. Additionally, it should have efficient metadata management for quick search and retrieval of content.

Deployment Models

Multiple deployment options such as on-premises, SaaS, cloud, and hybrid should be available to cater to various requirements. Each organization operating in a certain industry has its unique infrastructure which results in different requirements and deployment preferences.

For instance, companies dealing with highly sensitive data might opt for an on-premises solution since the data is stored within the company's databases. On the other hand, less sensitive video content within a company can be hosted on a SaaS offering.

Interactivity and Engagement

To make livestream engaging, we need to have options like live chat, social media feeds, and an interactivity pane to upload quizzes, surveys or any other media. With a control room to moderate participants and run the live session from a centralized location, well managed interactivity can be ensured.

Live Analytics

For corporate livestreams, it is essential to monitor the engagement and live stats of users and see reports on how a livestream is performing, how users are engaging with the livestream and the media shared. These extensive user and media level stats and reports will help to discover any issues, enhance audience understanding, and find elements that lead to higher engagement.

Custom Branding

Private corporations should livestream with their own branding and have a branded portal to enhance company identity and improve communication with the target audience. Few live streaming platforms provide a fully white-label platform with extensive branding.

Custom branding really helps by providing a familiar appearance that reflects the corporation's brand values and improves user trust. It also ensures a consistent experience across different touchpoints reinforcing the same message.

To know more about features, read our detailed blog on live streaming platform features to look for.

Best Live Streaming Platforms in the Market

Since we have already highlighted the criteria required for a professional corporate livestream, let us quickly evaluate top-performing players based on that. Here is a list of players discussed in detail below:

• EnterpriseTube

• Kaltura

• Dacast

• Brightcove

• Livestream by Vimeo

• IBM Cloud Video

• StreamYard

EnterpriseTube

EnterpriseTube is a Gartner-recognized live streaming platform. It offers a vast range of AI features that enhance searchability and media accessibility. Some of the pros and cons of EnterpriseTube are:

Pros

• Multiple deployment options (On-premises, SaaS, private cloud, and hybrid)
• Strong security through password protection, tokenized URLs, SSO, encryption, IP restrictions, and much more.
• Detailed analytics available for livestream and VOD in form of dashboards as well as user-level analytics showing how each user is interacting with the media shared.
• Offers extensive custom branding features including white labeling.
• Offers AI-powered search features like faceted search, OCR, metadata search, automatic tags, and more.
• There is no limit on creating subcategories as many levels deep as you want within the category. It also allows users to specify granular permissions for media within categories and subcategories.

Cons

• Only a desktop application is available at the moment. Mobile application is on the roadmap and currently in process.
• Only offers limited video editing features. You can only trim and clip videos at the moment.

Pricing

• Offers three standard pricing packages that can be billed monthly or annually. Starting with as low as $89/month for 50 authenticated users, ideal for small companies with 100 GB Bandwidth and 40 GB Storage per year.
• Live streaming is an additional feature and is offered on a pay-as-you-go basis, based on the usage.
• It also offers customized plans for large corporations.

Kaltura

The Kaltura platform is the world's first open-source online video platform. Kaltura focuses on training and learning. However, it also caters to other business cases like corporate communications and virtual events.

Pros

• It offers extensive integrations with CRM and Marketing Automation platforms.
• It has a high number of features available for lecture capturing.
• It offers multi-screen video capturing.
• It allows the creation of categories, but a particular media cannot be added to more than 32 categories.

Cons

• It does not offer a hybrid model or share any information about the private cloud.
• Less tech support is provided due to the ticket-based system. Additionally, no chat or phone support is available.
• It does not offer a limited sharing option.
• It does not incorporate social feeds such as Twitter or Yammer for interactivity.

Pricing

No information is available on the website.

Dacast

Dacast is a popular live streaming platform that offers its video streaming solution to multiple industries, such as media and entertainment, education, etc.

Pros

• It offers custom branding and is a white label platform.
• It offers real-time analytics such as consumption time, consumption per device, and top-performing content for livestream.
• It offers security features, including password protection, encryption, and geographic restrictions.

Cons

• It does not provide live chat functionality within the platform. Third party integrations would be used which would make it challenging.
• It cannot host media such as PDFs, PowerPoints, etc.
• It does not have a built-in video editing tool.
• According to customer reviews on TrustPilot, Dacast’s internal software is no longer compatible with mp3 files. It is only optimal with mp4 format.

Pricing

• Offers three pricing plans starting at $39/month with 2.4 TB bandwidth and 500 GB storage followed by $63/month and $165/month.
• Offers a custom pricing option as well.

Brightcove

Brightcove is an enterprise live streaming platform that caters to the media, broadcasting, entertainment, and sports industries.

Pros

• It uses API for low latency to improve content delivery.
• It is HTML5 compliant, so it is compatible with web and mobile devices.
• It offers vast live streaming protocol support such as RTMP, RTP, RTP-FEC, and SRT.
• It provides extensive video conferencing platform and other integrations.

Cons

• It offers a limited deployment option, which is their cloud. No facilitation for on-premises or hybrid models.
• It provides limited live analytics such as total views, unique viewers, views by device, and views by country for monitoring.
• It also does not offer user-level analytics to track each user's performance and progress.
• Low technical support is provided in standard plans.
• Category access rights are not extremely extensive. Each account has a 1000 folders limit, Sub-categories, also called nested folders, cannot be created.

Pricing

No information is available on the website although Brightcove is known in the market to have a high price point.

Vimeo

Vimeo's live streaming solution is geared toward independent content creators. However, it also caters to enterprise use cases, such as corporate communications, learning and development, etc.

Pros

• Detailed analytics are available after the stream. Limited live analytics are provided during the stream.
• Offers interactivity in the form of polls and chat on livestream.
• Offers custom branding features to your streams but is limited to logo, colors, and video player.

Cons

• Geographical restrictions as video cannot be delivered to China and other countries like Cambodia, Cuba, Crimea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, etc.
• It has limited category access rights management as you can only create folders up to 10 levels.
• Vimeo is only confined to video content.
• Premium support is not provided on any purchase plan. Many Vimeo users have complained about uptime issues and poor support.
• Vimeo setup takes time, and customer reviews show disappointment due to the implementation phase.
• According to some customer reviews, the portal is not user-friendly and easy to use. The labels aren’t clear and sometimes the interface changes resulting in difficulty for the user.

Pricing

• Pricing plan including livestream starts at $65/month with 2 seats, 2 TB bandwidth and 5TB storage.
• Offers custom pricing option as well.

IBM Cloud Video

IBM's cloud-based live streaming solution is powered by IBM Watson - its artificial intelligence (AI) technology. It addresses the need for video corporate communications, executive town halls, marketing product launches, and more.

Pros

• It is suitable for large enterprises only.
• It provides good security features, including SSO, email authentication, and user tracking.
• Easily integrates with organizations’ current infrastructure.
• Device compatible as it streams on the web as well as mobile phones.
• Live chat and Q&A options are available for interactivity.

Cons

• Pricing is too high and not suitable for small to medium-sized enterprises.
• Limited deployment option (Does not offer private cloud and hybrid)
• Limited live streaming protocols as it only includes RTMP, Fragmented MP4, and HLS.

Pricing

• Along with custom pricing, it offers three pricing plans for video streaming starting at $147/month with 1 TB storage, followed by gold plan at $736/month, and platinum plan at $1,477/month.
• For enterprise video streaming, it’s basic plan starts with $855/month and go as high as $5349/month.

StreamYard

StreamYard is one of the popular live streaming platforms. It offers multistreaming option to social media feeds and other platforms.

Pros

• Multistream to various platforms at once.
• Custom branding features are available.
• Multiple presenters' functionality is available.
• Virtual wait rooms or green rooms are available.

Cons

• It is a basic platform which provides live streaming for social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube etc. with not much advanced functionality for a corporate livestream.
• It does not have a very advanced infrastructure for live streaming, as it streams to social media. For corporate internal livestream, it is done through custom RTMP feature.
• Limited enterprise-grade security. It only offers stream sharing link, SSO and encryption.

Pricing

No information is available on the website. According to SaaSworthy, the business plan costs $79/month with on-air webinars for only 1000 viewers and pre-recorded streams for only 4 hours.

Conclusion

In order to select the best streaming platform, we first identified the criteria at which an excellent live streaming platform must fit for a professional corporate livestream experience.

We recognized that essential live streaming software features and capabilities include security, deployment capabilities, live interactivity, custom branding, analytics, integration, archival, and category management and access rights.

The future outlook of live streaming is promising because of growth and adoption across various industries. With technological advancements such as ultra-low latency streaming, 5G connectivity, and integration of AI, seamless global connectivity is on the rise.

Among many platforms, including Brightcove, Kaltura, and IBM, EnterpriseTube stood out based on its advanced features, high support, and focus on the use case. Still have any doubts, check out the EnterpriseTube portal yourself by signing up for a 7-day free trial.

People Also Ask

What factors to consider before choosing live streaming platforms?

The key criteria to look at before purchasing a live streaming platform include security features such as tokenized links, limited sharing options, password protection, encryption, and SSO integration. Other factors are deployment capabilities, interactivity as in quizzes, surveys, sharing media during the live stream, analytics to monitor, and custom branding.

What are live streaming platforms?

Live streaming platforms are dedicated software applications that stream video content to a large audience in real-time for immediate consumption.

How is critical information secured in a live stream?

Live streaming platforms protect information through various security features ranging from encryption, streaming protocols, geo-blockings, single sign-on for authentication and authorization to role-based accesses, limited sharing and password protection. Security level depends on the robust mechanism of the livestream software.

What are the best live streaming platforms?

The best live streaming platforms are:

• EnterpriseTube
• Kaltura
• Dacast
• Brightcove
• Vimeo
• IBM Cloud Video
• StreamYard

What software is used for live streaming?

EnterpriseTube is used to live streaming video content. It makes live streams interactive using live chat, Q&A, FAQs, etc., and offers granular video analytics.