Kaltura Review: Pros, Cons, Pricing and Alternatives in 2024
Published On October 29th, 2024 Media & Monetization
The streaming industry with the arrival of many streaming platforms continues to upscale each and every unit of video viewing online.
One among them and most open, flexible and collaborative video hubs in the market is Kaltura. With over 1.2 billion viewers by 2024 the worldwide streaming service subscribers have grown more
Kaltura is one of the popularly-established OTT platform and it created a huge impact in the streaming space.
Catering to many use cases Katura provides live and on-demand video SaaS solutions to plenty of businesses around the world.
When it was found in 2006, the streaming experts believed that the video was going to be more powerful and engaging than the text.
They saw video as a medium to exchange information, collaborate, work & entertain and a part of any organization.
In this blog, we will talk about what’s all about Kaltura, and how they have been impactful in making videos accessible, and lots more
Let’s discuss..
Table of Contents
What is Kaltura?
Kaltura is a centralized video hosting hub for streaming, focusing on Cloud TV for operators and media companies, online video platform, Education Video Platform and Enterprise Video Platform.
It was initially found in the fall of 2006 and later launched in San Francisco on september 18, 2007.
History-
During that time, the company had started its journey with 20 employees and had received $2.1 million a fund raise from business angels and Californian VC fund.
Kaltura is said to be the leading video cloud, powering the volume range of video experiences.
Its products are used by millions of global organizations, media companies, streaming service providers, edu-based institutions, etc.
They provide a medium online to engage with hundreds of contents for viewers at home, work, school, or on-the-go.
Moreover, the professional streamers of Kaltura have initiated the first open-source video platform project, that’s essential to one of the biggest online video developer communities known globally.
They continue to decentralize video at any corner powering overall video experience.
Some of the Exclusive Kaltura Features Include:
Video player – The advanced HTML5 video library provides content owners with the most advanced media delivery technology stack available.
Kaltura’s smart-player technology distributes your content to the right player, right device anywhere, all with a single embed code.
Robust CMS – The centralized video content management system of kaltura video platform assists with ingesting, managing, publishing, and streaming content. Every video use case is said to power any media content at the learning curve of digital transformation.
Monetization – The smart video monetization suite provides a set of revenue-generating tools available from a single provider.
The suite includes all forms of OTT monetization, ads, subscription as well as transaction management apart from in-player advertising, & SSAI.
Live Streaming – Kaltura’s live streaming platform enables streamers to broadcast real-time events or 24/7 channels to any screen. It simplifies live streaming by providing a wide set of potentialities and scalable configuration.
Video analytics – The high-tech video analytics dashboards and tools provides its users with more data, higher granularity and deep insights on viewer’s behavior.
As content broadcasters you can get clearer picture of your video stories such as on-demand streams that can work better for you.
Custom Branding – You may customize your content for the purpose of branding. For instance, you might want to adjust virtual rooms “look and feel” for specific events.
Kaltura webinars and virtual rooms support changes in banner colors, logo, room thumbnail or stage background design, etc.
Kaltura Review
The prime benefit of Kaltura is its wide range of streaming features and its extensibility. Besides the API, the streaming platform is supported by a variety of plugins.
These can add functionality for payments, advertising, analytics and more.
On the plus side, consumers can change almost any functionality that they prefer to customize, even though the platform gets a little bit complex.
Also, at the same time this can be a downside for some users since usability in complex mode comes with difficulty.
In addition to that, it seems Kaltura is yet to reach the most pioneer stage to create most polished OTT platform.
As compared to others, Kaltura might not be as easy to use as it looks. And specifically for those who are new to live streaming.
Let’s explore some of its..
Advantages & Disadvantages
Advantages of Kaltura
Overview and explain advantages in bullet points like in the reference below
The video streaming capabilities at Kaltura are designed around major 3 concepts. And they comprise of quality, security and flexibility.
You can leverage excellent playback across devices and at changing network conditions.
At the same time you can control the level of security protected for your streams and its viewer access.
Moreover, video delivery solutions guarantee a flawless viewing experience for your target audience – one any device, worldwide.
Let’s see some of its other perks..
- Live streaming – As content owners, you can take advantage of cloud transcoding with encoder processing capabilities, in different resolutions, codec and bitrate.
- Ad stitching – Streming with kaltura player has becomes lot more easy as it supports HTML video ads and overlay ads. It is VAST-compliant and is supportive of custom SWFs, etc.
- Real time analytics – It enables to track and display analytical data for bandwidth usage or video content usage. Apart from that it capacitates with historical data of live event activities, etc.
- Multi-device compatibility – There are different devices that range from traditional laptop, desktop, smartphone or even your home smart TV app. These stream at various resolution, bitrate levels.
- eCDN Integration – Enable your streams with scalable and secure video delivery behind the firewall added with Kaltura eCDN. Its easy to ensure seamless video distribution using Kaltura-powered integrations with popular range of industry leading video content delivery network.
Disadvantages of Kaltura
Despite having many perks in the Kaltura platform there are also some demerits that are faced by its customers. Even though, it pretty much provides its assistance to users, still they do face downtime sometimes a month.
Also there seems to be a worry when it comes to hosting services. Moreover, users find it as a challenge to upload their videos that are private and institutionalized. They don’t realize that they are sharing worldwide and are subjected to ads.
Let’s see some of its other cons…
- Content Management System – Unlike other competitive platforms, Kaltura provides limited permissions to the video owner to download any content.
- 100% Customizable – Apart from customizing media entry display, there is no possibility of customizing websites or apps entirely since its a SaaS-based platform.
- Limited revenue models – Although there is a basic package of streaming capabilities, Kaltura streaming lacks the ability to monetize via coupons, or credit methods.
- DRM – Kaltura Digital rights management solution incurs additional paid licensing fee and requires special configuration for setup along with DRM license-keys.
Let’s move on to.
Kaltura Pricing
Video hosting and streaming through Kaltura VPaaS is largely sold that involves a pay-more only as the costs arise business model.
Generally, they are focused on larger organizations. Plans usually stand at a pricing of $1000 every month and they get to increase from that point. Although most Kaltura pricing plans are inclusive of custom pricing.
The VPaaS product which uses pay-as-you-go approach with monthly billing it counts up to:
- $0.17 per GB of bandwidth
- $0.25 per GB of storage
- $2.25 per GB of transcoding (output)
- $0.11 per content entry managed & more
Also, VPaaS platform offers bulk contracts that are billed annually.
Upnext, we can discover some of the..
Top 6 Best Alternatives for Kaltura
The top 6 kaltura alternatives like VPlayed, Dacast, Wowza, holds the best of streaming features and functionalities like video DRM, video AES, video CDN, these list of companies offer video streaming services at it’s best, dig deeper to know more,
The following is a list of companies that offer video streaming services:
1 VPlayed
A Pioneer video streaming platform
VPlayed is the top streaming platform provider for content owners and business owners facilitating supreme streaming features.
VPlayed is known for serving the best Ott platforms in the current market with high compatibility in all worlds- Android,iOS & Web apps.
When compared to Kaltura, VPlayed’s live streaming solution is highly customizable, budget-friendly and a leading marketing solution.
Some of its exclusive features are:
- Full -source offering with customization features
- Unified streaming platform like AES encryption, Video CDN and multiple monetization models.
- A complete built-in CMS to manage, organize and to upload videos easily.
- 10+ revenue models to make video streaming money.
- SEO friendly marketing tools and social sharing to increase brand visibility.
2 Dacast
Stream with integrated video services
One of the best alternatives to Kaltura, the team of Dacast offer a secure, & feature-rich solution for any genre of professional needs.
The live video streaming platform provides integration to Facebook which isn’t part of Kaltura.
While it is understood that an ideal option works better for many customers, there are several other options to explore further.
Some of its exclusive features are:
- Dacast is completely embedded with streaming protocols like Akamai CDN
- The features of the platform ensures different subscription for premium functionalities
- Platform provides analytical tools to fasten the performance of video streams
- This streaming hub lets you upload, manage content & start broadcasting live
- During monetized video views they can see payment option directly in player
- Dacast video API uses the RESTful standard for allowing access to all streaming features.
3 VIDIZMO
Premium video platform for any media business
Vidizmo is a vod platform that makes digital media management much more easier.
It is an intuitive solution for organizations put up in various industry verticals. Some of them include health, sports, and many more.
The experts of Vidizmo have designed it to simplify content storage, management and analyzing videos for numerous purposes. The digital media can be completely customized with security and user access.
Some of its exclusive features are:
- The platform provides ease of use to increase video consumption
- They successfully assist in delivering video projects from start to end
- Provides video access and sharing on a granular level, groups, etc
- Customize integrations on-cloud or on-premise solves unique challenges
- Platform helps you to solve multiple video issues with 100+ packed features
- Streams as many content as you like with ultimate scalability infrastructure
Recommended Reading
4 Uscreen
Distribute content with end-to-end video monetization solution
Our next kaltura alternative talks about the leading video monetization platform none other than Uscreen.
It allows video creators or media owners from all industries to launch a profitable subscription service to monetize their content anytime online.
Uscreen allows communication flow both ways for delivering your audience with an added level of transparency. Naturally, people prefer to pay for a service that lets them know the business story behind it.
Some of its exclusive features are:
- Monetizes & manages on-demand videos in all-in-one platform
- Provides feasibility with branding apps to download & stream
- Operates on monthly subscription base with no revenue-sharing
- Get maximum liberty to upload content in bulk and organize videos
- Pick ready-to-use themes for customizing according to your brand
- Launch branded video streaming apps & distribute to any device
5 Brightcove
Unleash professional-grade streaming at any scale
Brightcove is one of the premium video streaming solution as compared to reviewing Kaltura. In terms of streaming functionality Brightcove rivals with Kaltura when it comes to endless streaming possibilities.
The product is priced based on features that you demand according to your business objectives with added benefits.
Some of its exclusive features are:
- Live streaming provides flexible integrated streaming architecture
- Platform delivers unique monetization facility to reap high profits
- Integration of video platform with social media extending reach
- Capacitates you with real-time analytics on video ad performance
- Ensures optimal ad placement & supports multi-screen captions
- Ability to schedule video launch time based on geographics
6 Wowza
Scalable live video streaming service
Wowza is a streaming engine service that can deliver video content to a wide spectrum of devices that includes TVs, mobile, computers and even set-top boxes. Furthermore, it can deliver video content upto 4K ultra HD resolution.
It is a powerful solution for transrating, transcoding as well as transmuxing. It is utilized in delivery of live as well as on-demand streaming.
Some of its exclusive features are:
- Get accurate number of viewers country-side along with viewing location
- A 24×7 billing option is available to customers running their streams all time
- An ideal solution for passthrough streaming with IP camera feed to Youtube live
- Allows seamless CDN distribution of your realtime streams to publish smoothly
- Customizable branding can be implemented for your videos for future purpose
- Engage your audience by knowing their viewing interests with real-time analytics
Conclusion:
Although Kaltura operates in similar video markets, it still has fundamental differences as compared to other platforms. This can mean a lot to a customer like you, since you can make a perfect decision based on its prime technicalities.
Kaltura’s video platform requires a great deal of configuration and functionalities for creating essential & custom-made video solutions.
In this time, you can get to capture ideas from other competitive solutions that can be used for lifelong purpose and keep upscaling in the business streaming industry in no time.
If You’re Ready To Incorporate Over The Top Platform Into Your Video Content Streaming, Get In Touch With Us Right Away.
Monika Gopinath is an accomplished digital marketer with over seven years of experience specializing in the VOD solution provider Industry. I am a passionate writer and avid blogger. I enjoy sharing insights on digital marketing, industry trends, and vod platform.
