If you’re looking for the best live streaming software to host virtual events that thousands of participants can view on your website and popular platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn, this article is for you.
Research shows that live videos hold audience attention 10-20x longer than recorded and on-demand videos. This is why some of the world’s biggest brands like Coca-Cola, Toyota, and Apple, regularly live stream their company events, product launches, and marketing campaigns.
Live streaming is equally effective for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and course creators. For example, many successful online course sellers hold live Q&A sessions and stream weekly audience engagement videos.
But before you go live, you need to find the best live streaming software that’s right for your business.
In this article, I’ll share some of the most popular live streaming software platforms and help you make the right choice.
Let’s get started.
Table of Contents
The Best Live Streaming Software (2022) | Our Top Picks
Restream – The best overall live streaming software for multiple platforms.
StreamYard – The most user-friendly product with the best interface.
Castr – The most customizable video player.
Onestream – The best end-to-end streaming software
Crowdcast – The most pocket-friendly live streaming platform.
What To Look for In The Best Live Streaming Software?
With live video viewership skyrocketing worldwide, numerous live streaming software platforms have popped up over the last few years.
But what should you look for in live streaming software when evaluating different options?
Here are the key factors to keep in mind.
Live Stream Quality
- Does the live stream service have the necessary technology to support HD streaming even on light connections?
- Will your viewers be able to see the actual quality of your stream?
- Does your video frequently break on a live stream service?
- Does the service automatically adjust data consumption based on the user’s device and connection?
Viewer Limits
- Are there are any limits on the number of people who can view your live stream?
- Does the service have a banned or unsupported country list where viewers cannot see your stream?
- Is there are a duration limit on streaming or watching your video?
Accessibility
- How can viewers watch your video?
- Do they need to download a new app or register for an account?
- Or can they access your video from a public link?
Viewer Engagement Features
- Does the service offer features like live chat, emojis, file sharing, etc.?
- Can you share CTAs or links with viewers?
Are there any templates or video frames for different occasions?
Integration And API
Can you share your stream on platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, etc.?
Does the software have an API to enable custom integration with other software?
All of these questions will help you objectively evaluate a live streaming platform.
9 Top Live Streaming Software | Features, Pricing & Free Trial
So, what are the best live streaming platforms right now? Let’s find out.
1. Restream
Restream is among the world’s most popular live-streaming software, with more than 8 million monthly broadcasts and 600 million monthly viewers.
It’s a multi-streaming platform that allows you to broadcast your videos live to more than 30 different social media sites, online groups, and streaming platforms.
Restream natively integrates with live streaming software such as OBS Studio, SLOBS, Elgato, XSlit, and many others. You can start a stream right from your web browser using your webcam, system video, or streaming software.
Restream simplifies live streaming on multiple platforms by allowing you to update the stream meta for all sites from your streaming dashboard and generate alerts for your Twitter, Facebook, and Discord audiences.
You can engage your Restream audience using live chat or by inviting guest speakers during your stream who’re visible to all your audience. Using these features, you can easily host online conferences or interview shows for your audience.
In short, Restream is one of the best live streaming software for beginners and seasoned steamers alike.
Restream Pricing and Free Trial
Restream offers three different plans for individuals and a couple of advanced plans for businesses that need live streaming capabilities.
For individuals, Restream also offers a free plan that allows streaming on 30+ platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, etc., with screen sharing, captions, on-screen comments, and many other features.
The Standard plan starts from $16/month and offers stream recording up to 6 hours/stream, custom stream integration, and many other advanced features.
The Professional plan is designed for regular streamers and empowers them with additional storage, more extensive audience engagement features, and customizations.
Overall, Restream’s pricing plans are quite affordable and offer excellent value for money.
2. StreamYard
StreamYard is another top-rated live streaming platform used by celebrity entrepreneurs like Gary Vaynerchuk and thousands of other satisfied users.
It is a highly intuitive product with an exceptionally well-designed user interface that’s easy to navigate and use even for first-time users.
StreamYard allows you to broadcast high-quality live stream videos on multiple platforms from your account dashboard. It integrates with all the popular streaming software and also provides custom integration via its API. However, its multi-streaming features aren’t as robust as Restream.
StreamYard stands out because of its audience engagement features. For example, it allows you to include multiple on-screen participants in a stream who can interact with your audience.
Similarly, it provides you an attractive instant messaging panel alongside your steaming window from where you can message your viewers and answer their questions. You also get emojis and custom graphic elements to help you host an entertaining and engaging live stream.
StreamYard Pricing and Free Trial
StreamYard offers three attractive pricing plans for different types of users.
First, it offers a free plan for individuals and professionals trying to explore live streaming on a small scale. The free plan comes with screen sharing, comments, green screen, and multi-screen features.
The Basic plan starts fro, $16.67/month (billed annually) and allows you to remove StreamYard branding from your videos and add your logo and backgrounds. Plus, you get unlimited streaming, pre-recorded streams, and up to 4 hours of stream recording.
The Professional plan starts from $35.67/month and provides up to 8 hours of HD streaming along with audio recordings and many advanced features.
3. Castr
Castr is a feature-rich live streaming software trusted by 200K+ content creators, professionals, and businesses worldwide. It is a complete solution for creating, hosting, promoting, and monetizing live streams on more than 30 different platforms.
Castr gives you an embeddable video player to use on your website, social media profiles, and any other hosted platform to broadcast your live streams.
You can fully customize your stream’s appearance by adding your logo, changing the background, and using different color themes for your video player.
Apart from live streaming, you can also use Castr to schedule pre-recorded videos for your audience so that they can view them when they’re most active online.
You can record your live streams and offer replays to your audience or sell your video as a paid session. Similarly, you can enable monetization on your live streams and allow only paid members to watch your content.
Plus, you get detailed viewer analytics to understand your audience composition and behavior.
However, Castr’s audience engagement features aren’t as robust as other platforms in this list. You’ll also need a video encoder like OBS to stream videos with Castr.
Castr Pricing and Free Trial
Castr offers different plans for individuals and businesses. For example, you can opt for its multistream plans or All-in-one plans that include multi-stream features, video hosting, embeddable player, and many other features.
Each paid plan comes with a 7-day free trial as well. However, Castr doesn’t offer a free plan.
Here’s what its paid plans cost per month (billed annually)
The All-in-one Entry plan starts from $37.5/month and offers 30+ stream destinations, 2 concurrent streams, and unlimited cloud storage.
The higher-priced plans offer more storage, bigger file uploads, and concurrent streams, along with several other features. But the Entry plan is sufficient for any beginner to mid-level streamer.
4. Be.Live
Be.Live is a popular live streaming platform designed for entrepreneurs, bloggers, and content creators looking for multiplatform streaming features.
It’s an intuitive live streaming platform with easy-to-use features designed for complete beginners. Be.Live allows you to host unlimited live streams in HD with up to 8 on-screen hosts.
You also get file sharing and video sharing options with your audience. Plus, viewers can comment on your stream and use emojis to react. You can also add CTA buttons and links in your video streams to drive action.
You can fully customize your live stream’s appearance by adding your logo, changing the theme colors, and using different backgrounds.
Be.Live supports direct integration with YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Twitch, etc. You can also use custom integrations to broadcast your live stream on various other platforms.
Once your live broadcast is over, you can edit your video in the Be.Live video editor for free and trim or crop the unnecessary parts to create a polished recorded session that you can offer as a paid program or a lead magnet to your audience.
Be.Live Pricing and Free Trial
Be.Live offers a generous free plan for beginner streamers that allows up to four hour-long streams thrice a month for unlimited viewers.
For the more advanced features, you need to sign up for one of Be.Live’s premium plans.
The Standard plan starts from $24.99/month and offers unlimited streaming, video recording, custom branding, and live sales features with four on-screen participants and up to four multi-stream destinations.
The Pro plan costs $37.5/month and offers higher storage and multi-streaming limits designed for bigger audiences.
5. OneStream
OneStream is among the best live streaming software because its comprehensive video broadcasting features and extensive integrations allow you to multi-stream to more than 40 different social media platforms simultaneously.
With OneStream, you can live stream pre-recorded videos and schedule them 60 days in advance on 40 different platforms. You can also set up a playlist to automatically stream your content on a fixed schedule.
Since it’s an entirely cloud-based solution, you don’t need to download any software or additional application for streaming. Your video streams are recorded to your media library, from where you can configure replays or add them to a playlist.
You also get features like auto-captions and live chat to create a more engaging video experience for your viewers.
OneStream also links up with other streaming tools via RTMP to enable broadcasts on supported platforms.
Overall, OneStream is among the most impressive live streaming services on this list and one of our top picks as well.
OneStream Pricing and Free Trial
OneStream offers three paid subscription plans along with a limited feature Free plan.
As a free user, you get unlimited streaming for recorded videos of up to 5 min. However, you can use real-time streaming or multiplatform streaming features.
Here’s what OneStream’s monthly plans cost.
OneStream’s Basic plan costs $10/month and allows unlimited streaming and multicasting for pre-recorded videos. Each stream can be 15 min long. You also get 5GB of cloud storage for recorded videos.
Their Standard plan, priced at $39/month, offers the most value for money and allows real-time streaming and multicasting for up to 1 hour.
6. Livestream by Vimeo
Livestream by Vimeo is a popular enterprise live streaming and web conferencing solution. It is ideal for large organizations and distributed teams looking for secure live video broadcasting features.
This is why companies such as LinkedIn, Deloitte, Nikon, and many others use Livestream for online conferences, seminars, team events, product demonstrations, and consumer engagement.
It comes with multi-platform streaming features along with an embeddable video player you can use on your website or landing pages. You also get audience engagement features such as graphic overlays, live Q&As, polls, and emojis.
If you’re looking to drive your viewers to a specific page or URL, you can use in-video CTAs as well.
Overall, Livestream by Vimeo is a robust live streaming solution for corporations and enterprise companies.
Livestream Pricing and Free Trial
Livestream by Vimeo offers three premium plans for different business types. Vimeo Premium is for medium-sized businesses looking for live streaming features only.
Vimeo Premium costs $75/month and offers features such as multistreaming to Facebook, YouTube, and custom platforms via RTMP. Plus, you can access an embeddable player, live overlay graphics, live chat, and analytics.
Vimeo Enterprise and Vimeo OTT are designed for enterprise businesses looking for more custom live streaming options with higher security and dedicated support. You’ll need to contact Vimeo’s sales team to get a quote for these plans.
7. IBM Video Streaming
IBM Video Streaming is an end-to-end live streaming solution for corporations, distributed teams, and entrepreneurs. It offers live streaming of on-demand and real-time video content in the highest quality.
IBM’s secure video platform does not have any caps on video bitrate and resolution, which means your content goes live in its original HD quality. Similarly, IBM ensures uninterrupted streaming at the best available quality by using multi-CDNs.
You can use IBM Video Streaming for hosting online conferences, corporate events, employee team, meets, sporting events, or anything else you want the world to see live.
To enhance your audience’s viewing experience, IBM offers engagement features such as emojis, pools, live chat, and Q&A. You also get a customizable channel page along with a mobile-compatible video player that seamlessly broadcasts your live video on any device.
Overall, IBM’s video streaming solution is an excellent choice for corporations and companies looking for a reliable live streaming partner.
IBM Video Pricing and Free Trial
IBM Video Streaming offers four different paid plans for various business needs. You can also go for their 30-day free trial plan that comes with limited features to help you experience the product.
Here’s what the premium plans cost per month.
The Silver plan starts from $99/month and offers up to 100 viewer hours of streaming, 1 TB of storage, viewer engagement features, and access to APIs and SDK’s for multiplatform streaming.
The Gold and Platinum plans are designed for bigger organizations with more extensive live streaming needs. They offer next-level security with advanced audience engagement features and dedicated support.
8. Crowdcast
Crowdcast is among the most popular live-streaming applications in the world. Millions of viewers join Crowdcast streams to watch live and recorded sporting events, entertainment shows, corporate meetups, online courses, and other live events.
Crowdcast is ideal for hosting live paid events like conferences, courses, training, and coaching programs. It allows you to directly charge for your content through Stripe integration.
Its strengths are simplicity and ease of use. You can create live events with Crowdcast in a matter of minutes. Your streams are automatically recorded and available to share with your audience once a live session ends.
You also get various audience engagement features and multiple fully customizable landing page templates to boost your session sign-ups.
However, Crowdcast isn’t the best multiplatform streaming service because it only offers that feature to its advanced plan users. But you can broadcast it to custom platforms using streaming tools like OBS.
Crowdcast Pricing and Free Trial
Crowdcast offers four different paid plans for its live-streaming services. All plans come with a 14-day free trial. However, it doesn’t offer a free plan like some of the other services I’ve featured in this article.
The Starter plan allows 2-hour streaming sessions for up to 50 live attendees. You’ll be charged 15 cents for every additional attendee. The live sessions come with auto-recording that your audience can access separately afterward. You can also access the RTMP studio to broadcast using OBS, Wirecast, and other platforms.
The higher-priced plans offer more live attendees, longer sessions, a higher number of integrations, and multistreaming to Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch.
9. Dacast
Dacast is an end-to-end video hosting and live streaming platform designed for businesses that regularly leverage video broadcasting for marketing and customer engagement.
It offers a host of live streaming and video hosting features that allow you to produce high-quality videos and monetize them the way you want. For example, you can charge your viewers for your live sessions or monetize your video with advertising.
Dacast comes with an embeddable HTML 5 video player that allows you to broadcast your videos to any device. It ensures the highest quality video streaming through smart load management and CDNs.
You also get a comprehensive video editing suite with Dacast using which you can customize your video’s appearance, add branding elements, and trim unnecessary content.
One of Dacast’s unique strengths is its ability to broadcast your on-demand videos in China without buffering. This is an excellent feature if your target audience is in China.
Overall, Dacast is an impressive live streaming software with lots of powerful features for high-quality streaming.
Dacast Pricing and Free Trial
Dacast offers three diverse monthly subscription plans that all come with a 30-day free trial.
All premium plans offer unlimited streaming, concurrent viewers, and video hosting.
The Starter plan costs $39/month and offers 1.2 TB per year with full HD broadcasting. Unfortunately, you don’t get a paywall with this plan, but you can include it as an add-on.
The higher-priced plans offer more storage, bandwidth, and monetization features. The Scale plan is specifically designed for large organizations with extensive video streaming requirements, including dedicated support and advanced security.
What’s Your Pick for The Best Live Streaming Software?
I handpicked some of the best live streaming software platforms for you in this article. All of them are great products with high-quality features and customizable video broadcasting options.
So, you won’t regret choosing any of them.
However, since you still need to purchase one of these platforms, here are my top picks to make your decision easier.
Restream – The best overall live streaming software for multiple platforms.
StreamYard – The most user-friendly product with the best interface.
Castr – The most customizable video player.
Onestream – The best end-to-end streaming software
Crowdcast – The most pocket-friendly live streaming platform.
Which one is suitable for your business? That’s up to you to decide.
By Jawad Khan for Learning Revolution
See also:
10 Best Membership Site Platforms And Software (2022)
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