Live streaming platforms have enabled users to connect with their audiences more impactfully and effectively. These platforms deliver content in real-time, allowing users to share a range of live events happening with remote users through interactive live streaming.
Latest statistics from 2024 show that internet users globally spend a lot of time watching video content on the internet. Of these users, 27.6% spend time watching live video content weekly. According to Backlinko, Twitch, a popular live streaming app in the US has 240 million unique visitors every month.
Moreover, this increase in demand is not limited to entertainment use cases. Here is a surprising webinar statistic: Research reveals that webinars are attended weekly by around 54% of B2B professionals.
Both your organization's internal teams and external stakeholders might prefer watching live streams for various purposes. It would be best if you did not lose out on the countless benefits of live streaming platforms.
There are countless live streaming platforms on the market. Choosing the best one can be a very strenuous task – the answer is not straightforward.
This article will help you choose a live streaming platform that is best for your corporate needs and goals. Let’s dig right in!
What is a Live Streaming Platform?
Live streaming is when you create and share videos with your audience to watch in real time. A live video streaming platform has the complete infrastructure to allow you to deliver an optimized live video feed in real time from a recording device to a player at the user's end.
Here is our simple definition of live streaming:
"The process of transmitting video content in real-time over the internet."
Live streaming platforms have become rapidly advanced and feature rich. Today, live video platforms are equipped with many additional features. They offer 360-degree solutions by providing live and on-demand capabilities, allowing users to record their live video streams and so much more.
The concept is quite like video conferencing. But unlike video conferencing tools, live video streaming allows one-way communication, with interactive integrations like live chat, quizzes, and other elements.
Live streaming can also accommodate a much larger audience, depending on how scalable your live streaming platform is. This gives you the power to stream large-scale events in broadcast-grade quality, with your stream accessible globally.
Read our blog on what live video streaming is, how it works, and the process behind it.
Essential Questions to Ask Before Choosing the Best Live Streaming Platform
It is necessary to understand what is offered by live streaming platforms and how you will go about choosing the best one for yourself. Here are some important questions you might stumble across on your way to finding the perfect online video streaming platform:
- Why should I not use Zoom to carry out my live streams? Well, the question should be: Is Zoom a live streaming platform? The answer is simple: Zoom is not a live streaming platform – just an online meeting solution that can go as far as supporting small-scale live webinars.
- Why go for a broadcast-grade live streaming platform? Want an audience in 1000s or more? Reach continents near and far? Without disruptions? A broadcast-grade secure live streaming platform is the way to go.
- How do you securely livestream for your internal teams to discuss business-critical confidential information? Enterprise-grade security is a must-have in your live stream platform. End-to-end or comprehensive encryption, role-based access controls, two-factor authentication, and paywall protection are some security features you can look for.
- What other factors to consider when choosing a streaming platform comparison? Ease of use, optimized streaming for adaptive bitrate and device-agnostic streaming, and interactivity are some critical factors for ensuring an excellent online video streaming experience, to name a few.
Features to Consider when Choosing Live Streaming Platforms
There are various types of top live streaming platforms out there, and to compare them, here's a list of the features that we think are important:
Ease of Use
One of the most important factors to consider when choosing a live streaming platform is that it must have an easy and adaptable user interface. So, even as a newly inducted user, you can orchestrate the capabilities and utilize the features to the fullest.
Optimized for Varying Internet Speeds
On G2 and TrustRadius, we found a large pool of reviews from unsatisfied customers of top live streaming platforms. Interestingly, we found out that most of the low-rated reviews complained about frequent buffering, limited integrations, complex interfaces, lack of multi-platform support, and not having bandwidth-adaptive functionality.
Most top live streaming platforms don't offer capabilities for video streaming optimization, making the playback experience a mess with continuous buffering and loading errors.
It's essential to look for automatic video transcoding in live streaming platforms, where multiple video quality options (240p, 720p, and so on) are created for users to choose from.
There can even be automatic quality selection using adaptive bitrate streaming (just like YouTube).
For corporate networks, it's essential to look for a solution that intelligently routes videos through means of an eCDN, or else your network will be overloaded.
Security
Cybersecurity Ventures predicts cybercrime damage will go up to $10.5 trillion annually by 2025.
It is essential to secure your online video streaming by limiting and managing access based on your user groups and protocols.
This is especially important if your live stream has confidential data – a breach of which could lead to a violation of compliance, loss of reputation, competitive disadvantage, and so on.
Scalability
Your organization might need to increase the number of participants in online video streaming. There could also be random surges in viewership. Such foreseen or unforeseen instances require you to stay prepared and atop things.
Therefore, it's essential to look for a platform with a live streaming cloud infrastructure that uses intelligent load balancing to scale up servers as viewership increases. It's all done automatically, without you having to stress out.
Interactivity to Convert Passive Viewers into Active Listeners
Being able to create engaging and captivating content is your first and foremost priority while conducting a live event.
For that purpose, choose a video streaming platform with different interactivity options, like Q&A windows, live chat functionality, quizzes, polls, surveys, and so on.
Modern Live Streaming Tech Infrastructure
A live video streaming platform that is equipped with advanced and robust capabilities will allow you to enjoy a load of features and privileges. Enterprises need a platform that uses the latest technologies to ensure compatibility with all devices, browsers, and streaming servers.
An important thing to look for is either the HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) protocol, MPEG-DASH, or Microsoft Smooth Streaming for streaming, as most operating systems and devices support these streaming protocols.
Deployment Flexibility
This is not an essential consideration unless you are a large enterprise that operates under strict compliance and security requirements or prefers directly managing cloud services.
However, if you are an organization with stringent security needs or are operating in highly regulated industries like healthcare or in regions like China or Europe, you would most certainly look for a secure online video streaming platform that meets compliance standards.
It must also allow you to host video data and the live streaming infrastructure in your Azure, AWS, or any other secure cloud of your choice. Your organization’s chosen video streaming platform should support on-premises video streaming in your own data center.
Read | AWS Services for Live Streaming
Before we compare: There are two ways to conduct an online video streaming platform comparison:
You can either opt for a live streaming platform - one where you connect an encoder and broadcast your stream.
Or you could use a simple webcast solution - like the one offered by Zoom.
The 9 Best Live Streaming Platforms of 2024
Considering the factors that we discussed above, here is a compiled list of the best nine live streaming platforms.
These are top live streaming platforms using modern streaming protocols, and you need to push or pull a stream through an encoder. This helps you show the feed from multiple cameras, insert a video during a live stream, or stream a live meeting between panelists.
VIDIZMO
VIDIZMO EnterpriseTube is an easy-to-use live video streaming platform - a Gartner-recognized enterprise video platform (kind of like YouTube for enterprises).
Its top-notch secure live streaming capabilities for both internal and external audiences make it helpful in conducting enterprise-wide private live streams.
Within live streaming itself, the platform offers a breadth of functionalities with multitudes of benefits.
You can choose to stream securely inside an organization or broadcast live events to large audiences publicly. Do everything from educational webinars to company town halls to industry conferences with VIDIZMO.
It offers a video portal where you can host multiple live streams, and users can join the ones that they want.
You can play a stream from an incoming HLS URL, or schedule pre-recorded webinars or on-demand videos to stream live at a particular time.
The US State Department Uses VIDIZMO for Secure Internal Live Streaming - Read More on This Story
Top Features
- Scalable live streaming: The automatic cloud load balancing to handle random surges in viewership. This makes it one of the top live streaming platforms for catering to large audiences - even in 1000s or more. You can set access permissions to ensure that any private stream is not accessible by restricted parties. You can limit access to specific individuals, groups, entire departments, the entire organization, or the public.
- Offers both on cloud and on-premises streaming: For on-premises live streaming, you can stream internally on your intranet without the need for users to be connected to any external network. This is commonly referred to as streaming on an air-gapped network.
- Benefit from leading technologies: These include the compatible HLS protocol, automatic transcoding, adaptive bitrate streaming, and CDN to ensure smooth playback to a global audience on all devices and browsers under all bandwidth conditions.
- Sync authorized users’ identity: Put in place authenticated access and users’ profiles within the organization with your SSO or IAM system through integrations and SCIM.
- eCDN technology: With the advanced eCDN technology, cache videos on internal servers and distribute them locally or internationally without worrying about geographical limitations. With VIDIZMO’s eCDN, you can also host video streams in strict regions like China.
- Online meetings integrations: You can live stream online meetings through Zoom, MS Teams, Cisco Webex, etc., through RTMP. Allow the audience to engage through live chat, Q&A, and interactive elements such as quizzes, handouts, and surveys.
- Video insights and analytics: Video data is tracked to generate analytics presented in easy-to-read dashboards – allowing geographical heat maps, device usage, engagement metrics, and individual logs.
- Stress-free live stream backups: You can set up backup live streams for your users to switch to if the main live stream fails by any chance.
- Multiple sources of live streaming supported: VIDIZMO lets you enjoy live streaming from drones and CCTV cameras, among many other video sources.
- End-to-end encryption for compliance: All live streams are end-to-end encrypted, keeping in line with FIPS 140-2 standards.
Securely live stream while fulfilling all the major regional and industry compliances like GDPR, HIPAA, CJIS, and many more.
VIDIZMO’s complete enterprise video
is suitable for your organization if you want to stream on-demand videos (for trainings or recorded work meetings) and conduct frequent live sessions (such as a town hall).
Record these sessions and then publish them to your on-demand video library instantly. These on-demand videos can be restricted to an internal audience, to specific users or groups, or can be set to allow anonymous users access to the videos.
Custom brand the video portal and the video player through which the stream plays – add a logo, use your brand colors, and make other changes through custom CSS.
You can choose to use VIDIZMO as a separate live streaming platform or in combination with on-demand streaming.
VIDIZMO helps XcitED, one of the most significant EdTech startup events, to go live virtually - Read the Complete Case Study
YouTube
With immense market penetration, YouTube is the most popular online video streaming platform in the entire world, with more than 2.49 billion monthly active users.
Being the second most visited website globally, it allows your live stream to reach a large audience. This makes it highly suitable for public broadcasts, primarily by influencers and content creators looking to monetize their content.
With all the significantly positive qualities mentioned below, YouTube also comes with its share of drawbacks, primarily for businesses – especially for streaming private live content. Some of these issues include latency issues, privacy limitations, limited analytics features, compliance issues, limited scalability, and restrictive live streaming time.
YouTube live streams can be viewed by anyone out there, and the streams aren't the most secure – not at the level most businesses require. This is not a good option if you need to stream confidential information to an internal audience.
Moreover, there are various stringent compliances applicable to video data that YouTube's public platform fails to meet, such as YouTube videos not being obedient to Europe's GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).
Additionally, according to YouTube terms and conditions, when uploading content on their site, you are giving them rights to essentially distribute and make countless copies of your content, too. Therefore, enterprise-level security requirements are not met by YouTube.
However, some essential factors can really streamline the entire experience for small-scale live streams for users like influencers.
Top Features
- Free: It is free to use – cost-effective for small creators
- Monetization: Monetizing a YouTube live stream is also possible by allowing ads to be run during the live streams.
- YouTube live: If your video is featured on YouTube Live, it is recommended to viewers if YouTube's algorithm deems it worthy of their interest. This increases the possibility of reaching out to a larger audience. Great for a marketing use case!
- Recorded live streams: Live streams can be recorded and made available as an on-demand video for your audiences.
- Live DVR: It offers live DVR, such that those joining midway during a stream can rewind and view what they missed.
- Third-party websites: There are third-party websites that allow viewers to download your content from YouTube. This means your content files can exist in someone else's database.
- Basic video analytics: It supports basic video analytics such as the number of views, direct engagement, and so on.
- Adaptive bitrate: YouTube’s adaptive bitrate technology allows it to adjust video quality depending on temporary fluctuations or changing bandwidth conditions across different viewers’ ends.
Livestream
Livestream by Vimeo was a video-sharing platform initially created for creative professionals. As its lifecycle progressed, it veered towards catering businesses for on-demand video streaming for external audiences.
Vimeo acquired a live streaming platform, "Mogulus," and merged it with Vimeo's on-demand video streaming services. It is an ad-free alternative to YouTube, with an enterprise version available. However, Vimeo's online video streaming service is only available in Vimeo premium, enterprise, and OTT plans.
The platform has a few drawbacks, though. With just a 2.6 rating on a 5-point scale on Trust Pilot, it is undoubtedly expected not to get the most optimal experience from Vimeo. It does, however, have lots of public users and has proven to be one of the most popular platforms for UGC (User-Generated-Content).
Vimeo is a simple online video streaming SaaS application with no options to choose where your data is stored and how it's handled – no cloud deployments or on-premises deployments. Large organizations may require this.
Vimeo’s livestream service is not famous for its customer support. You might hit a snag with the service but not find any reliable or timely technical assistance.
If you wish to store a considerable number of videos, you must subscribe to the highest-paid plan.
Top Features
- Simultaneous streams: You can run your live streams on multiple social platforms simultaneously through SimulCast.
- Interactive streams: You can keep your viewers engaged with the interactivity provided with live Q&A, live polls, audience chat, email capture, and custom calls to action.
- Basic security: There are basic security options available, but only in the Vimeo enterprise package. The package offers crucial security features such as SSO integration and IP/Geo-blocking.
- Analytics: You may even keep track of everything with the analytics of each live video you stream.
- Stream up to 12 hours: Each live stream can be run for up to 12 hours.
Learn more about Vimeo and alternatives here.
Kaltura
Kaltura is another enterprise video platform that supports live streaming functionality.
You must note that Kaltura’s live streaming platform is open-source software – requiring a great amount of technical expertise to stitch together this platform, deploy it, and conduct a live stream. Having an in-house tech team dedicated to doing it all is a must.
However, that results in the platform being customizable with enterprise-level security.
The platform offers its services in diversified packages and plans, catering to either business-level or individual-based needs.
The self-service customer support feature means no professional services team and no phone/chat support is available for queries and consultations – your team will have to go over the detailed documentation to understand the platform and run it.
With so many complexities, also keep in mind that the deployment time for Kaltura’s live streaming platform is longer than you might like it. So, plan ahead of time!
Top Features
- Internal and external streaming: Supports both internal and external streaming.
- Easy to use: Kaltura is known for its brilliant interface that is straightforward to use.
- Content creation tools: Equipped with powerful content creation tools, Kaltura is a good platform for content creators’ live streams.
- Third-party encoders: Kaltura is one of those live streaming platforms that support third-party encoders for live streaming, allowing users great control over their live videos and making the experience more dynamic and agile.
- Detailed admin panel: The detailed and thorough admin panel navigation makes Kaltura a good choice for tech-savvy and expert users.
- Third-party integrations: It offers a well-rounded user experience as it integrates well with third-party software.
- Enterprise-grade security: Meets compliance requirements and ensures security for large-scale organizations hosting live video streams.
- Private live streams: Private live streams within an organization's admissible screens are also possible.
Dacast
Dacast offers the essential capabilities needed to carry out live video streams. It's a great video streaming platform if you need to stream to large public audiences or monetize your content through integration with a paywall.
It does lack the features to securely stream videos internally and is also not the best for recording and streaming your recorded sessions as on-demand videos later.
It also lacks certain live streaming features, such as a live chat and the ability to set up backup streams.
It is a simple live streaming SaaS application. However, Dacast does not allow you to choose where your video data is stored and how it's handled – no cloud deployments or on-premises deployments.
Large organizations will have a tough time working with Dacast. It might get the job done, but it will remain a basic streaming tool for larger organizations. It’s a decent option for small or mid-sized audiences.
With Dacast, event scheduling is not possible, and it lacks
live interactivity elements (like live chat and Q&A) – so viewers can't engage as you would expect them to.
Top Features
- Advanced analytics: Advanced analytics are provided to keep track of your videos' engagement trends.
- Embedded videos: Embedding live streams is possible, using Dacast URLs and their exact paths with parameters. However, authenticated embedding is not possible.
- Content monetization integrations: For content monetization, you can integrate with a paywall.
- Live stream ads: There are multiple features offered as well to include advertisements in your live stream.
- Low latency: Dacast offers low-latency streaming in its standard set of features.
- Live chat integrations: It does not provide a live chat feature within its platform. However, you can integrate 3rd party, live chat providers. This might be a bit of a problem since this requires organizations to deal with an extra party.
Learn more about Dacast and alternatives here.
Brightcove
Brightcove offers a live video streaming platform used by media, broadcasting, arts, and entertainment organizations. It is an external audience-focused simple video platform, only available as a SaaS application.
Hence, Brightcove, too, doesn't give you the option to choose where your data is stored and how it's handled. It also lacks many features for private internal live and on-demand video streaming.
With Brightcove, private online video streaming is barely possible, with very minimal options. The only way you can restrict access is by controlling the registration of users on the platform.
Top Features
- Automatic transcoding: High-resolution live stream automatically transcoded.
- Social sharing: Clip and share live content for promotion on other platforms like social channels.
- Scalability: Scalable live streams for bigger events.
- SaaS deployment: Only SaaS deployment is available.
- Interactive video for improved user engagement: The platform offers excellent marketing opportunities to businesses with its HapYak interactive model that allows video hosts to add clickable links, CTAs, and much more.
- Content monetization: Brightcove integrates content monetization paywalls before online video streaming starts.
Learn more about Brightcove and its alternatives.
Panopto
As an education-focused platform, Panopto touts itself as catering best to e-learning use cases with internal live-streaming functionality.
Marketing their platform as a secure option, many educational institutions and schools use Panopto for online learning.
Top Features
- Interactive streams: Engage students through interactive live elements like live chats and quizzes.
- Customized user permissions: You can assign users specific video permissions for different content.
- Live stream recording: You can record live streams to make them available as on-demand videos after the live ends.
- Live stream branding options: It offers basic live-stream branding options like logo placement. However, the platform is not white-label and will not allow you to create custom player templates.
- Education-centered: The platform primarily focuses on supplying solutions for educational institutions, and it is more tailored toward institutions of that type.
- Content Monetization features: It is equipped with a limited number of content monetization features through the InPlayer integration.
StreamYard
StreamYard is an excellent choice for public live streaming to a large audience.
You can multi-stream to up to 8 channels, including social media platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Twitch, or a custom RTMP destination. With an almost 5-star rating on G2 with 240+ reviews, this one deserves a review.
StreamYard is excellent for someone who isn't well acquainted with encoders and the complexities of a professional broadcast.
It is an excellent pick for content creators and businesses wanting to conduct simple public webinars on their social channels but don't want to leave out an audience from specific platforms.
It offers a simple interface to initiate a professional broadcast, add videos from multiple sources, stream a pre-recorded video, and so on. All of this can be done from your browser.
For broadcast-grade live events or internal private streams, this video streaming platform may not be suitable. It is also mainly a live streaming service, not designed for on-demand video streaming. StreamYard also lacks eCDN technology, so geographical barriers may be a challenge for organizations that want to make their stream globally accessible.
With StreamYard, you can't live stream a video from Zoom, MS Teams, Cisco Webex, and other video conferencing tools. It also has limited security features, so it might not be the best for security-sensitive video streams hosted by enterprises.
Top Features
- Free service: It's free, and you can get started on carrying out a live stream today.
- Simultaneously stream to 8 channels: You can simultaneously stream to 8 channels like YouTube, Twitch, LinkedIn, Twitter, or a Custom RTMP source. If you want, your live recording can be made available on the social channels you are streaming on.
- Private chat: You can create a private chat for hosts to interact with each other and ensure everything goes fine.
- Inter-channel comments: You can view comments from the different channels in one place. For greater control, feature the top comments that you like or want to answer.
- Number of participants: There's a limit of up to 10 participants in a single broadcast.
IBM Cloud Video
Founded in 1911, IBM is a well-known name in the tech industry. They have been innovating for quite a while and are also proficient in the online video streaming industry.
It comes as no surprise that IBM Cloud Video has managed to make an efficient live-streaming video platform as well. However, technologies like SSO and controlled content access are not available, so the security aspect of this streaming platform may be limited.
Top Features
- AI-driven: With its AI (Artificial Intelligence) driven platform, you can reach audiences via embeds, open URLs, or password-protected channels.
- Live chat: This platform also offers live chat, which is essential for viewers to interact actively with the hosts of live streams. This allows them to ask questions, give answers, give suggestions, etc.
- Interactive polling: With polling functionality, audiences and hosts can interact better.
Learn more about IBM Cloud Video and its alternatives.
Small-Scale Webinars
If you are looking to conduct a small-scale private webinar, the above options of top live streaming platforms might not be considered fit. Here are our recommendations for the two best webinar solutions.
Zoom
Zoom offers a webinar solution that allows you to host up to around 1,000 meeting panelists and a maximum of 10,000 viewers.
The panelists can talk amongst themselves while the viewers will be in watch-only mode for the entire meeting. The advantage of using Zoom is that it is super easy to conduct a webinar, and most people are aware of how to use it. They are also working on improving their security.
There's no need to set up an encoder, and you can quickly get started. You can record webinars and make them available as on-demand videos. However, Zoom is a meeting solution not designed to manage on-demand videos.
Read More | Managing Recorded On-Demand Webinars in Zoom
After going through TrustRadius, we found that a few users were complaining about video playback issues when their internet speed was low or when they were on specific devices. This happens because Zoom doesn't offer transcoding that most live streaming platforms do.
GoToWebinar
GoToWebibar is an alternative to Zoom for conducting a live stream, where you can stream with up to 1,000 participants and 3,000 viewers.
It offers live polling and Q&A for interactivity. You can also schedule pre-recorded live events or webinars for up to 20,000 attendees.
Like Zoom, it does not offer transcoding, HLS delivery, or eCDN support, which are required to optimize delivery for various bandwidths and devices.
Wrapping It Up
Looking for the top live streaming platforms that offer more than just live streaming? Need video content management, video sharing, recorded meetings management, on-demand, and online video streaming as well?
VIDIZMO EnterpriseTube is a complete video content management system for both live and on-demand streaming that eliminates the need to use separate platforms for separate video use cases.