Top 6 Brightcove Alternatives

It is a well-established fact that videos are the key to reaching out to the masses and converting them into customers. One popular platform that you might have heard of is Brightcove. This popular cloud-based platform enables users to upload, broadcast and monetize video content.

Brightcove has a strong customer base as an OTT video provider or live video streaming service. However, their other features like video hub, video customizations, interactivity, etc. which are sold as ‘add-ons’ actually come by default in most other tools. Some of the other disadvantages are:

1. Their pricing options are not listed upfront and the 24*7 support comes at an extra cost. They prompt you to reach out to the team to get the costing. With each customer paying a different cost, the probability of transparency issues cropping in goes up.
2. Some users have also said, “The customization portions of the video players require learning a unique language and do not provide a GUI for player design”.
3. The platform also does not have features like screen recording or video creation. This is a major drawback for anyone who is just starting and needs an end-to-end solution.
4. Another major road bump is that Brightcove is bent towards enterprise publishers and content generators. For someone who is just starting, it might be a good idea to look for Brightcove alternatives that offer more support.

In this blog post, we will take you through the top six Brightcove alternatives that will help you narrow down on the best platform for your business needs.

StoryXpress

This cloud-based video platform is a dream come true for all businesses. Video creation, recording, editing, and uploading in a completely white labeled environment, are some of the many offerings by StoryXpress. StoryXpress has all the tools to make your videos look like your brand and work for your business.

The platform caters to the needs of sales, customer support, human resources, and marketing teams of B2B businesses of all sizes. It also facilitates and eases internal communications.

Key Features

• Screen and Webcam Recording: StoryXpress lets you record your webcam and desktop’s screen simultaneously or individually. You can also draw attention to specific points on the screen using the highlighter tool while recording the screen.
• Upload and Share Videos: StoryXpress offers options to share your videos on social media platforms or emails. You can also host your videos in a completely ad-free environment.
• Integrations with SaaS Tools: StoryXpress integrates with SaaS products such as ActiveCampaign, Book Like A Boss, Calendly, CampaignMonitor, and many more. This allows the HR, marketing, and sales teams to work more efficiently.
• Video Analytics: StoryXpress provides all its users with detailed analytics that give feedback on how engaging your campaigns have been, which parts in a video have been repeatedly watched, and which parts need improvement.
• Video Editing Tools: Apart from being able to trim, crop and blur your videos, you can also add intro-outro clips, create customized thumbnails and add CTAs to your videos.
• Email Based UTM Tracking: This feature helps you track specific video views via email addresses. This will help you enhance your email marketing strategy.
• Lead Generation Forms: StoryXpress allows you to add lead generation forms and CTAs to your videos. This enables your audience to reach out to you when they are the most engaged with your brand.
• Thumbnail A/B Testing: StoryXpress enables you to try two variations of thumbnails for the same video to see which one receives more clicks.

Pricing

There are four plans that StoryXpress offers:

• Free - $0
• Individual - $8/ month
• Business - $79/month

Why is StoryXpress Better Than Brightcove?

1. With StoryXpress you can create videos by recording your screen, this feature is not available on Brightcove. Brightcove does not allow you to create videos from scratch.
2. StoryXpress has a ton of customization options available for its users. For example, you can create GIF thumbnails, allow customers to block your calendar after the video, heat maps for lead scoring, and many more. These features are not available in Brightcove.
3. StoryXpress offers a completely white-labeled experience. Brands can customize the video player as per their brand colors and add their logo to the player.

Vimeo

With a focus on the delivery of high-definition videos across all available devices, Vimeo aids users to create, stream, edit, track and monetize videos. Headquartered in New York, this platform works well for enterprises, small businesses, and creative professionals.

The Vimeo team presents itself as a one-stop solution for live broadcasting and video hosting. They provide a host of resources like blog posts, videos, help centers, and customer stories for their users to learn more about their platform. They indeed, have their user journeys thought through!

Key Features

• Live streaming: Allows high-quality live streaming
• Screen recording: Enables users to record their screens to create videos
• Creating videos from templates: Templates are available to help create videos faster.
• Hire a video professional: Allows users to post a job and hire freelancers to complete it.
• License stock footage: Access to in-built stock footage that is extremely useful to create videos.

Pricing

There are four plans that Vimeo offers:

• Plus - $7/month
• Pro - $20/month
• Business - $50/month
• Premium - $75/month

Why is Vimeo Better Than Brightcove?

1. Vimeo supports platforms like MAC, SaaS, iPhone, iPad, and Android whereas Brightcove only supports SaaS.
2. Vimeo has an inbuilt feature to add captions to videos. Whereas, Brightcove prompts you to work with one of their partners to help you add captions to your videos.
3. Vimeo allows you to upload multiple files at a time, however, with Brightcove you can upload only one file at a time.

VPlayed

VPlayed is a top-tier video platform with super-rich video streaming features supporting businesses of all kinds. The platform holds huge integration, cloud migration, and monetization opportunities to benefit business owners and content creators.

With full-on customization options, its own branding for white-label streaming, and robust security features, VPlayed has it all. The platform stands out as a remarkable OTT platform provider from ideation to maintenance support, prioritizing customers on the front and delivering superior quality throughout.

Key Features

• Live broadcasting: delivers real-time live streaming, on-demand videos, and a complete power-packed streaming experience as an all-in-one streaming solution.
• 100-plus integrations: With high scalability and advanced technology, VPlayed allows multiple integrations with different applications.
• Video CDN: The platform enables quicker and seamless delivery of videos at high quality with a best-in-class content management system. 
• DRM Security: This platform offers its customers robust security features like video DRM, geo-fencing, and IP restrictions to safeguard video assets.

Pricing

When it comes to pricing, it depends on the needs of the customer, and the deciding factor is based on requirements from both ends, so we urge you to reach out to the VPlayed team for more information and clarity on the pricing.

Why is VPlayed Better Than Brightcove?

• Unlike Brightcove, VPlayed brings end-to-end customization and complete source-code offerings to its customers, making them own the product, regardless of the industry.
• VPlayed as an experienced OTT solution brings multiple accessibility to different gadgets, whereas Brightcove offers lesser OTT streaming business features.
• VPlayed has its own array of OTT features and various security functionalities at affordable prices, whereas Brightcove leaves the same at a higher price.

JW Player

In the words of the JW Player team, they claim to be “the most powerful & flexible video platform”. They support this statement by providing a world of services to their users, right from multi-bitrate and adaptive streaming to monetization and video-on-demand (VOD) hosting.

Still wondering why JW Player has made it to our top five list? Let me give you another reason! Player bidding, the first step towards header bidding is directly integrated into the video player with absolutely no additional ad scripts. This makes the video header bidding process so much smoother.

Key Features

• Player Bidding: This feature that creates a link between your video inventory and your advertising demand sources, increasing competition for your inventory to increase your ad yield is in-built into JW Player. This option is not offered by Brightcove.
• Yield Optimization: They have a yield optimization team that provides feedback on implementation, data analysis, and content strategy for your videos.
• Monetization: With a host of ad integrations, they guarantee the best ad-fill rates.
• Audience engagement: They offer various in-built tools like ‘article matching’, ‘recommendations’, and ‘insights’ to increase audience engagement.
• Live streaming: Allows high-quality live streaming

Pricing

There are three plans that JW Player offers:

• Trial - 30 days free
• Starter - $10/month
• Enterprise - Custom pricing

Why is JW Player Better Than Brightcove?

• JW Player can report real-time signals from users. This helps in the efficient prediction of video viewability. Along with this, the platform also reports other factors like user location, engagement, and contextual signals on all ad requests. This feature is not available on Brightcove.
• JW Player has not just its pricing options available upfront but also offers a 30-day free trial. This offer does not stand good on Brightcove.
• JW Player has player bidding integrated into their video player. This extremely attractive feature is not available on Brightcove.

Kaltura

This feature-rich video platform strives to be a leader in the Online Video Platform (OVP), Cloud TV, and EVP (Education Video Platform) markets. The platform is currently used by enterprises, service providers, media firms, and educational institutions.

Kaltura customers vouch for the platform by claiming that the features and the integrations available are fantastic. They also keenly talk about the fabulous visual experience from the user end. And that is exactly how we want our customers to feel, right?

Key Features

• Live broadcasting: Be it live streaming, on-demand videos, or corporate communication videos, they offer a complete end-to-end solution for all streaming.
• Integrations: Integrations with key platforms have been enabled by Kaltura. If you are looking to integrate leading Learning Management Systems (LMS) or SaaS platforms, they have you covered.
• Video conferencing: This platform has redefined online meetings to be less stressful. From interactive whiteboards, sharing notes, chatting, and offering a shared content playlist, they have it all.
• Security: This platform offers its customers with utmost importance of the privacy of their data in compliance with industry standards.

Pricing

We understand that on most occasions, pricing ends up being a major deciding factor when choosing a platform. With Kaltura, they encourage you to reach out to the team, and based on the usage and requirement, they will come up with a specially designed price for your brand.

Why is Kaltura Better Than Brightcove?

Kaltura can be integrated with several key platforms, due to which you do not need to disrupt your existing workflow. Some of the major ones are Sakai, PowToon, NEO LMS, Embedly, Waybook , and Brightspace among many others. None of these are available with Brightcove.

Kaltura also offers a 30-day free trial for its consumers, this will give you a deeper insight and hands-on experience with the product even before you invest any money. Brightcove does not offer any free trials.

Kaltura allows its users to add captions to their videos using the in-built Kaltura Management Console (KMC). You can also edit these captions once they are uploaded. Brightcove directs you to work with one of their partners to add captions, it isn’t an in-built feature on their platform.

Flowplayer

Launched in 2013, this platform caters to large and small-sized businesses. They have made a name for themselves in the video industry majorly due to their white-labeled streaming options and monetization solutions.

Flowplayer also offers a lot of other features, some of the prominent ones being, live analytics, real-time data, and the option for the users to build their player by using Flowplayer’s plugins and their already available standard HTML5 video API.

If you still feel that you need something more from this platform for you to shortlist it, then read on, you are about to get hooked!

Flowplayer allows you to stream a simulive session for your live webinar. This way you have the option to play your pre-recorded video during the live session and the webinar participants can join in for the Q&A session.

Key Features

• Live streaming capabilities: Offers high-quality live streaming options.
• Monetization: They work with a host of ad servers to offer high add-fill rates.
• Real-time video analytics: You get instant feedback on how your videos are performing as they are being viewed.
• Android and iOS SDK for mobile app development
• Dedicated customer support: Along with a 14-day free trial policy they also have a dedicated customer support team to answer all your queries.

Pricing

There are three plans that Flowplayer offers:

• Standard - $25/month
• Professional - $100/month
• Enterprise - starting from $500/month
• Both standard and professional options offer free trials.

Why is Flowplayer Better Than Brightcove?

• With support for Google DFP, AdX, Google IMA, SpotX, and FreeWheel, Flowplayer promises its users the highest adfill rates and a complete 100% of the revenue. This is not something Brightcove guarantees.
• Flowplayer also offers free trials on two of their pricing options, Brightcove has no free trials.
• With the support of header bidding, Flowplayer ranks higher than Brightcove.

Dacast

Dacast has made it big in the video industry by leading the hosting services of both live and on-demand videos. They also offer cloud-based live streaming features and OTT video streaming across all devices. The live streaming content delivery network (CDN) offered by Dacast acts as a catalyst to help videos reach viewers across the globe.

Dacast presently has a varied portfolio of customers ranging from small to medium-sized businesses, TV stations, sports, government, and many more.

Key Features

• Mobile streaming: Allows streaming of your videos to smartphones, smart TVs, and tablets.
• White-labeled experience: Allows users to add their logo and brand colors to the videos.
• Video Security: Offers a host of video security tools that a user might need while bulk uploading videos.
• Video transcoding: Enables video transcoding that providers your customers the best video viewing experience
• China video hosting: allows you to send non-buffered videos to China.

Pricing

There are four pricing plans that Dacast offers:

• Starter - $39/month
• Event - $63/month
• Scale - $188/ month
• Custom - Price to be decided as per requirements

Why is Dacast Better Than Brightcove?

1. Dacast supports platforms like SaaS, iPhone, iPad, and Android. Brightcove only supports the SaaS platform.
2. Dacast allows bulk uploading and subtitling of videos, both of these features are unavailable in Brightcove.
3. Dacast offers a white-labeled experience to all its users. This isn’t available on Brightcove.

Have You Decided?

The video market is choco-blocked with options and narrowing them down can be overwhelming. However, it would be a great idea to take a step back and make sure you have your goals and priorities decided before you begin choosing a platform. This will help you create your list of shortlisted platforms faster.

Also, it might be a great idea to consider platforms like StoryXpress that not only offer free trials, but also a ton of other features to host, create, edit, manage and monetize your videos.

If you feel that you are ready to begin your video journey, book your free demo session here and we will help you pave your path to success!