You want to stream your event and are suddenly faced with a number of important questions, the first of which may be "Which platform should I be streaming to?" Below we take a look at some of the options available to you and the factors that may help you decide.

Does your content need to be gated?

Gated content is content that requires a user to perform some action to gain access to the content. The most common forms of gating are taking payment and asking for information. For example, you may want to live stream a show that you want to charge for. Another example is streaming a free workshop to only those who have provided you with information you need to build your database, such as name and email address.

For un-gated content, the most widely used platform globally is YouTube and you can get up and running on YouTube in a few hours. Since this article is aimed at content creators, performers, coordinators, organisers, instructors or anyone looking to gate their content, we will focus on those options only.

So, you want to gate your content. Great, let's look at the various options you have.

There are of course many features and subtleties which are outside the scope of this article, but we will look at the most important factors.

What options do you have for initially restricting access to your content and then also for sharing of your content by your audience?

YouTube allows a stream to either be publicly listed, unlisted, or private. Private streams are by invitation only, and so this is not appropriate for most events. Unlisted and public streams can be shared by viewers to their networks and the video can then be watched by anyone with the link. It is important to realise that a viewer can ALWAYS get the link and share it, whether the video is public or not. There is no payment gating available on YouTube.

Facebook allows for audience filtering based on age or location but to have more specific restrictions, you will need to create a private group, add specific people to that group and then live stream to that group. There is no payment gating available on Facebook.

Vimeo Premium is Vimeo's streaming plan. This allows for restricting access based on a password. If you want to add paywalling, you may need to consider their OTT platform which is a different service entirely.

Quicket allows you to capture payments and any number of custom information requirements from your audience when they reserve their spot to watch your stream. If your stream on Quicket is gated, even if audience members share the link, the recipient of the link will still be forced to go through the gating process on Quicket (i.e. payment or info collection) to gain access. You can also entirely un-gate access to your Quicket stream meaning anyone can access it and share it.

It is worth noting that you can embed a Vimeo livestream on a different platform (such as Quicket) and lock the domain so that viewers can only view the content through that external platform. This is a good hybrid approach if you want to stream on Vimeo Premium but require information or pay walling from viewers on a platform like Quicket. In such a case, even if an audience member shares the link, the recipient will still need to go through the external platform to access that link, effectively protecting the access.

If you embed a YouTube live stream on a platform like Quicket, you still cannot stop people sharing the link to the YouTube video directly, because YouTube does not have a domain locking feature.

Once you have figured out how you will restrict access, are there any other monetization options available?

YouTube allows various monetization models with various eligibility criteria, the most popular of which is allowing ads on your video content. You first need to be accepted in the YouTube Partner Program, which has criteria such as having more than 1,000 subscribers and having more than 4,000 public watch hours in the last 12 months.

Facebook allows you to collect donations while streaming provided you have a Facebook Page registered as a Charity, and have then done an enrollment application to Facebook. For this, you may need appropriate documentation depending on where you are in the world.

Vimeo allows you to connect a Stripe account to collect donations on your stream if you have a Stripe account. It is important to note that Stripe only allows processing in certain countries, which can be seen on their website.

Quicket allows you to add a donation button to your live stream page, which allows viewers to donate in the currency of your event without leaving the stream viewing page. It supports multiple payment methods for events using South African Rands, and allows credit card payments for currencies supported by Stripe.

Is the content or any part of the content that you're streaming the intellectual property of someone else and do you have the right to use that content? This includes reading a book, blog post, or playing music in the background.

YouTube and Facebook will remove any content that violates their guidelines on copyrighted content, and may block you from streaming in future if you do violate their policies. If anything in your stream is not your own original content, you may want to carefully review their policies before streaming.

Vimeo and Quicket do not restrict your stream but by streaming on these platforms you agree to their terms of use which in both cases place the onus on you to ensure that you have all necessary rights to stream the content.

With any live stream done through encoding software such as OBS you have the option to record your stream yourself and then later on upload it to the platform of your choice. But to make your life easier, some platforms allow for automatic recording, transcoding to multiple bitrates of your live stream, and storing of the video file in your account!

YouTube allows you to record your stream to be made available in your channel if it is a public stream or in your account if it is unlisted. Only streams that are 12 hours or less are recorded.

Facebook allows your video to be recorded to your content library to be made available on the Facebook platform for re-sharing as video-on-demand (VOD) at no additional cost.

Vimeo allows for automatic stream recording and editing in the Vimeo platform. There is a restriction of 7TB of storage space which is more than most informal streamers need, but which may become a limitation if you are a professinoal broadcaster or studio.

Quicket allows you to automatically record your live stream and have it saved to your event, where you can continue to gate access to the recording in whatever format you prefer (i.e. payment, custom information). For more information, see our article here on VOD.

Streaming can be tricky to get right, and you may feel quite uncertain about what you're doing if you've not done it before. And when it comes to events, your audience may need help with anything from payment through to connecting to their TV. This is where support is absolutely essential to a successful gated live stream.

YouTube has no support for your audience and you will need to get all of your support from their help articles and community forums. There may be fewer audience support questions because of how widely used YouTube is.

Facebook too has no support for your audience and you can read through their help center for information on how to stream, edit, record and so on.

Vimeo has live chat support to help you setup your live stream and during the live stream during US (Eastern Time) business hours.

Quicket provides phone, chat and email support to you and your audience during South African (GMT+2) business hours and email support after hours on a Friday and on Saturdays. For events with large audiences, you may incur a small extra support cost if your event falls outside of business hours.

And lastly, the great leveller - cost. There is always a cost to streaming, whether it can be seen monetarily or not. Understanding that cost up front is imperative and can easily be handled through payment gating if you prepare for it.

YouTube is free to stream to and as a platform they make revenue that covers their infrastructure costs by advertising.

Facebook is also free to stream to as they use live streams as a way to drive user engagement on their platform, which results in advertising income for Facebook.

Vimeo has an upfront cost of $75 per month, but this is charged annually. This means you need to pay $900 for a year's access up front. Their OTT product for paywalling access to your content requires a different plan and may have extra costs.

Quicket charges on a usage basis, the details of which can be viewed here. Usage costs are deducted from any funds you have collected, so it is a good idea to factor the usage cost into the ticket cost (gating cost) so that you effectively pass the small per user fee on to each user instead of incurring each user's viewing costs yourself. Many hands make light work!

In Summary

Lots to understand but now you have an idea of the basics of each platform. YouTube and Facebook are good options for widespread sharing and largely un-gated streams. If you want a Vimeo streaming account you must pay a lot upfront but get plenty of benefits once you've paid.

For everyone else, Quicket's solution allows you the biggest range of gating options, and usage based pricing.

Lastly, you can always use Quicket for the gating and payments, and then embed an external platform's streaming link into your Quicket event (think YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Zoom and so on). Just be aware if you embed a YouTube, Facebook, or other publicly accessible platform, your audience will always be able to share your content regardless of how you try and gate it.

Feeling overwhelmed? Give us a call at Quicket and we'll help you understand it all a little better.

Happy streaming!

Was this article worth the read?
Yes! No