Recently, Livestream introduced something new called Livestream Producer Account. You might be wondering how it compares to the Ustream’s Watershed offer. Both of them are designed to be used by people who are experienced web developers. Each service will allow a user to stream video through their services. There are several differences between these two offers.
Price
Livestream Producer: $45.00 / month – unlimited bandwith. No overages, ever.
Ustream’s Watershed: Well, it depends. Ustream is going to base the price on how many monthly viewer hours you use. For $49.00 / month, you can use up to 500 monthly viewer hours. If you go over that limit, you will be charged $0.40 per additional viewer hour for that month.
If you have a bigger audience, then you can choose from $179.00 / month for 2,000 monthly viewer hours. If you go over that, you will be charged $0.30 per additional viewer hour. Or, you can pay $879.00 / month for 11,000 monthly viewer hours. If you go over that, you will be charged $0.20 per additional viewer hour.
How does Ustream calculate viewer hours? It is based on the number of viewers and is calculated to increments of seconds. The example they use is that 10 viewers streaming for 30 seconds is 5 minutes of usage.
Is it embeddable?
Livestream Producer: Not currently available
Ustream Watershed: Yes.
Analytics and APIs?
Livestream Producer: Not currently available
Ustream Watershed: It has analytics. Website dashboard reporting provides a variety of data and graphical metrics to measure success. The main page says it has “robust API integration solutions”.
Storing Recorded Video on their site
Livestream Producer: Bandwith and video storage on the New Livestream platform is unlimited for the life of your plan.
Ustream Watershed: You get 500 GB / month of video storage included in whatever tier of the monthly payment plans that you are using. If you need additional GB you will be charged $0.30 / GB.
Is it ad free?
Livestream Producer: Yes. You can do live streaming without any advertising.
Ustream Watershed: As far as I can tell, it is ad free.
Integration with social media
Livestream Producer: There is a New Livestream for Producers iPhone app which can be used for live encoding and real-time posting from your iPhone. Livestream Producer does integrate with Facebook. Users can “like” posts, comment on posts, and receive notifications of upcoming events.
Ustream Watershed: No support for mobile applications. No integration with Facebook or Twitter. Limited chat functionality.