These days, pretty much all companies need to stream or record online video content. You can stream webinars for employees and customers, marketing material, interviews, etc. Or you might be in the streaming business and selling webinars, tutorials, and other video content directly to the general public.
Supporting your own streaming and video hosting can be expensive, however. Most companies rely on third party platforms, but this can tangle you up in their branding and consumer expectations. For example, people have certain expectations of YouTube, including the way comments work, the way it is monetized, etc. This dilutes your brand and makes it harder to showcase your content as truly yours.
The other alternative is white label video streaming services. In this blog you will learn what a white label service is, why you should consider using one, and meet some of the best video solutions out there.
What is White Label Video Streaming?
A white-label solution means that the platform provides everything you need. They host your videos, run the streams, provide access software, etc. With a white label platform, their brand is stripped from the content. Providers make their money through your subscription and do not add advertising to your videos unless it is for your own monetization. You have no risk of being “demonetized,” as can happen on the more public platforms. Most provide both real-time and video on demand, and some offer simulated live video. They help you keep complete control over your own video content.
They typically provide access to their own CDN and bandwidth. This means you can pay one inclusive price to get the video services you need, often with iOS and Android mobile apps for your customers or employees as well as TV apps for smart TVs and streaming devices such as Roku.
They also cover the IT side of things so that you can focus on the core of your business. White-label solutions are customizable, offer integrations to the software you need and are the best solution for the majority of companies that need to move away from public platforms such as YouTube. They also often include video editing and templates that help you make videos quickly as well as a CMS for video management.
What Are the Best White Label Solutions Out There?
JW Player
JW Player provides a truly comprehensive suite of video services that include both live streaming and video-on-demand. Live streams can easily be recorded and added to SVOD, AVOD or internal services, although the only video monetization offered is typically advertising. The platform includes a high-quality web player as well as mobile apps and OTT apps so your customers or employees can view the content on any device, wherever they are. They also offer excellent content protection and DRM, including end-to-end encryption.
Their service is also designed for 24/7 broadcasting or narrowcasting so it easily scales up to a larger company’s needs. Video content can be integrated into a variety of applications and platforms using a flexible API. The service can have a bit of a learning curve, but makes up for this with the level of control it gives you over your material. One downside is that monetization is advertising-based, but the sheer customization and control, again, more than makes up for it. It also offers a great viewing experience with customized, branded apps.
24i
24i is aimed primarily at smaller broadcasters looking for a white-label solution for pay TV and OTT. The service provides end-to-end, cloud based services, but the focus is narrower than some other services.
They have limited options for internal streaming, such as webinars for employees. They do, however, provide a personalized SaaS package that includes viewer analytics and potentially AI based personalization. 24i is a good service if you are broadcasting and streaming a library of content to the general public or subscribers, but may lack the flexibility for other use cases of some other platforms. It is a good white label OTT platform, but may not be the best solution for video marketing or employee training.
Brightcove
For larger enterprise companies, Brightcove can be a good solution. It offers a great solution for building your own company TV channel that provides all users with relevant content and training. It’s easy to use with a great API and good integrations. It is also optimized for all devices. And, of course, they have solutions for marketing and external channels as well. They even have their own streaming channel about digital media to demonstrate how good their service is.
It has good interactive capabilities, which do make it particularly useful if your need is internal communication and training. The big downside is that Brightcove is known for being expensive and may be beyond the reach of many smaller companies.
Dacast
Dacast is a professional streaming platform that provides secure hosting, monetization, and a good service for streaming live events. It includes an all-device HTML5 player that means you don’t necessarily have to create mobile apps. However, there are advantages to having apps, including integration with other services and further customization. They do have a good API.
Dacast offers a lower-cost subscription that makes them suitable for companies that are new to video streaming, that still includes VOD, simulcast, live encoding, analytics, etc. This may make it an affordable option, although once you have scaled past 24 TB a year you will need to start going into their custom plans. This may make Dacast better for smaller companies. You also have to buy a package at low volume, which may include features you don’t need.
Dalet
Providing video and audio broadcasting capabilities, Dalet is designed for small news and sports organizations, but works well for corporations too. It is for OTT businesses and provides an overall OTT solution that provides 24/7 broadcasting. Their Dalet Flex service provides a collaborative media platform designed to make sure that your content gets to your audience faster. It has a central library and a collaboration system, making it more valuable for larger organizations.
And it is definitely for larger organizations. Dalet is on the pricier side in comparison to other solutions with the plans starting at $7,000 a month for 20 users and going up from there.
IBM Cloud Video
This is part of IBM’s overall suite of offerings through Watson Media, meaning Cloud Video may work well for people who are already using IBM products. It is also self-hosted. This increases the burden on IT, but some companies may be more comfortable with this option. IBM also offers branded options, but their white label service is truly white label. You can customize the channel page, or disable it completely. It works well with both internal and external audiences.
It also lets you disable all branding if you feel it is interfering with the user experience. It also includes video watermarking that ensures that your brand stays with the video. Or not, if you choose to remove the brand altogether. Be aware that they can limit viewer hours per month as well as storage space. For third party integrations, you have to pay for a custom package. Live captioning is also gatekeeped at the most expensive level. There is a thirty day free trial.
Kaltura
Kaltura is for people who want ultimate customization and don’t mind putting in the work. It is open source and aimed at developers, meaning it is a long way away from plug and play. That said, if you have really odd and unique needs, Kaltura may be a good option. It includes solid options for town halls, meetings, and other conferencing needs if you need something more flexible than Zoom. Pricing on Kaltura is based entirely off of usage…that is to say you pay for each video hosted rather than buying a package or plan.
If you need options such as simulive (streaming pre-recorded content live), slide sync, or creating video in unusual places, Kaltura will work well. However, users have noted that it can be more complex than other options and they pay per use pricing can become costly.
Muvi
If your primary need is to stream training, Muvi started out as a service for education providers. This means it is pretty good for providing access to a library of on-demand videos, but it does also have low latency live streaming.
One advantage of Muvi is that it also has solutions to stream music, podcasts, and audiobooks, both live and on-demand. If you also need a pure audio solution, Muvi may be your best choice. It has its own native mobile and OTT apps, which allow for one click deployment across major platforms while providing complete design customization. However, their API integrations are limited and users have mentioned a steep learning curve.
Panopto
Panopto is heavily focused on training to drive engagement and it includes measures of viewer behavior. This is definitely a specialized option. It allows you to create a secure video library from which your employees (or potentially customers) can select their training on demand. It has strong security features designed to keep just anyone from streaming your content.
It has one of the strongest video CMS systems out there, with a powerful search and the ability to organize it. In fact, you can search for things said during a video. This makes it perhaps the best content delivery system. It is easy to use, but is definitely designed for internal audiences. It is used by some leading universities for online seminars and lecture capture. It also has training-focused features such as in-video quizzing.
As a specialist product, this particular white label streaming service seems like it is mostly for companies that don’t do as much outward-focused video but are all in on VOD training for their employees.
StreamShark
The focus of StreamShark is on companies that need to stream video globally (although like many solutions, they will not deploy video in China). If you have customers scattered through the world, their global CDN will help make sure that video streams well to everyone. They focus heavily on live streaming events, including multistreaming, but also provide good video on demand services and simulated live streams. The system uses SSO to restrict videos (for example to employees or existing customers) as well as email whitelisting. You can also force users to give their email to watch a video, which is useful for lead capture.
Stream Shark isn’t the cheapest option, with plans starting at $199/mo, so it may not be worth it for smaller companies that don’t need all of its features and privacy controls.
Uscreen
Uscreen is designed for educational content and is often used by schools. If your primary need is to screen training, Uscreen is great. It is also well designed for people who want to monetize their videos, such as people who sell webinars and tutorials as a main product.
It offers turnkey apps, solid analytics and a good video CMS that ensures that updates are rolled out to all users. You can customize the apps and put your own branding in them, including apps for both mobile devices and smart TVs or streaming boxes. It even has the ability to make your own Apple Watch app to use as a branded remote control. If your primary interface is through an app, Uscreen is a good choice, with solid security features to protect your content and users.
However, it may not be the best choice if you want to disseminate marketing information widely as they charge per subscriber, meaning it can get very expensive if you aren’t passing those costs on to your audience. It may be more suitable for tight internal audiences or for selling content.
Vidyard
Vidyard is a specialized service designed entirely for sales and marketing. This means it’s not suitable for producing training or sales videos, but works well for businesses who only want to use video for outreach.
It has a solid, secure content management system that allows videos to be either password protected or published, and is designed to let you share videos across social media and through email.
Because it is intended for marketing, it has really solid analytics that help you track leads. It can also be used for internal training content and external webinars, but the focus of the service is clear. For example, the primary integrations are with LinkedIn, SalesLoft, and SalesForce. It does have one unique advantage; it has a free tier which allows you to upload and edit up to 25 videos and share them. However, to get access to the customizable CTS and those analytics, you have to get a custom plan.
Vimeo
Vimeo is one of the highest quality white-label streaming solutions out there. It produces very high resolution videos. However, the pricing is per user, meaning that it scales up in price very quickly, and the starter plans limit you to uploading 60 videos a year. Because of this, Vimeo is often seen as a premium offering. Also, you have to have Enterprise level to be able to moderate the live Q&A, which does not appear to be a feature that should be an optional extra. It is designed to work well with all of your video streaming technology.
It does offer some good workflow integration and is very good for both external and internal audiences. You can also use Vimeo to post videos to TikTok. However, it does not provide the ability to make apps. The marketing features are, though, higher end than some systems.
VPlayed
VPlayed by Contus also offers heavy customization, with the ability to add and remove features and integrate with third-party tools. You can purchase “permanent ownership” of the platform, which is tailored to your needs.
The system uses the HLS video player which offers seamless streaming across multiple devices as well as encrypted streaming. You can monetize through TVOD, SVOD and AVOD and insert ads yourself, allowing you to advertise your own products or, as your service grows, sell advertising space to others. Their analytics are very good. Many people consider VPlayed to be the best solution out there, although there are definitely downsides to them.
For example, they offer less assistance to new users and aren’t transparent about their pricing. Although VPlayed offers “lifetime updates” it is unclear what technical support they provide.
Wistia
Wistia is a video platform made for marketers. It is designed to make it easy for non-experts to create and edit videos, and allows for recording through a screen and webcam recorder, although this will not give you the quality of professional gear. You can also trim and edit your videos. It has a good cloud-based CMS and is designed to embed videos in websites.
It also has good video SEO and marketing automation as well as analysis. It is primarily designed to let marketers put together things quickly, and unlike some of these options, is not designed as a broadcast service. However, if you are looking for short videos to put on your website or social media, Wistia is an option that comes with a very shallow learning curve and is extremely user-friendly. It is also very reasonably priced, especially if all you want is quick video marketing.
Wowza
Wowza provides a simple, integrated video platform that can integrate into your app and service. It is designed to be completely seamless and to let you broadcast easily to any device.
It offers both VOD and live streaming, with its own inbuilt content management system as well as CDN. It also provides viewer engagement metrics, digital rights management, embedded calls to action. It uses a HTML5 Player to stream reliably to any device.
It also includes features for video monitoring and surveillance. You can purchase a self-hosted infrastructure or you can get a cloud subscription, but then you have to pay for usage. Wowza also has one major downside: It has limited support for monetization so, while it is great for training and marketing content, it might not be the best solution for making money off your video content.
Which One Should You Choose?
Each of these services has something going for it. They range from affordable services designed to let marketers post customer testimonials to services that are used by small (and even not-so-small) broadcasters.
When choosing a white label video streaming platform, consider the following:
- Your budget.
- Your primary use for videos. If you only want training or only want marketing, then a specialist services may be more affordable than one which covers all of the bases.
- Your reach and whether you need a global CDN or can handle something more local.
- Your available resources in terms of personnel and training. Do you need a plug and play service designed so just anyone can use it, or do you have the people who actively want to learn a more complex system?
- How much tech support and “hand holding” you need.
- The number of videos you are likely to produce and whether they will be for internal or external audiences.
- How much security and access control you need to keep random people from viewing your videos.
JWPlayer is a great choice for many businesses. It is not the easiest to use, but is very reasonably priced and offers high levels of customization and branding. It provides both live streaming and VOD options.
If you are looking for a white label VOD platform or streaming service, consider JWPlayer and talk to us about your options.