If you are paying to stream...

[wmmsaved]

I'd like to know:
1. Who are you using?
2. What do you like (and dislike) about them?
3. What is your average attendance?
4. How many viewers do you have on average?
5. What does it cost you per month?

Our Worship Pastor wants to move us to a pay (ad-free) service so I'm conducting this poll. Thanks for your participation.

Michael

[tedanderson]

We used to use Streaming Faith and then we eventually switched over to netbroadcasting.tv and we are paying them roughly $200 a month. One thing that we like about them is their customer support. I've never had a time where I called them and didn't get a live body within a couple of minutes.

[jonack]

Originally Posted by wmmsaved

I'd like to know:
1. Who are you using?

We are using Kulabyte.com for our streaming

Originally Posted by wmmsaved

2. What do you like (and dislike) about them?

They have a great stream and it is very customizable. They have pretty good customer support, and have worked with us to find solutions to issues that arise. We currently stream at 3000kpbs in 720p with 2 channels of audio. It's a lot higher than most other services offer in their basic package. Most services offer only up to around 1100kbps streaming

Originally Posted by wmmsaved

3. What is your average attendance?

We range from 3500-4250 on a weekend

Originally Posted by wmmsaved

4. How many viewers do you have on average?

We only stream to a remote campus, but we are planning on launching it on our website soon. Kulabyte uses an Amazon S3 cloud service for the DVR functionality. But with the S3 cloud we also have a larger backbone for many people to view it. Basically if we have a couple of hundred people viewing the stream it isn't going to bog down our streaming server or our bandwidth here at the church.

Originally Posted by wmmsaved

5. What does it cost you per month?

I will have to get back to you on it. I think it is in the range of $350-450/month. But we are mainly streaming to a 2nd campus who doesn't have to have a teaching pastor there. So the cost savings is pretty huge.

I know that ustream.tv has a really nice $99/month plan for a basic ad-free service. I know it is not huge on the bandwidth but it might be a great starting place...

[wmmsaved]

Anyone else?

Michael

[greenidge]

Hi Michael,
I am in the search for a streaming service for our church as we have been having some difficulty with Ustream. I was just about to post the question you asked here so I am also waiting to hear what everyone else is using. I spoke to Mediaserve.com and their rates seem quite reasonable $30/month for 20 people initially on a 500K stream. I see a few other sites online that I want to try out but I would much rather get the feedback from those that have used it. So c'mon everyone, tell us what you already know so we can get rolling faster and get the Word out quicker!

[wmmsaved]

Thanks for your response, Greenridge. I didn't know about Mediaserve. Their rate is competitive. I'll look into that.

If your church is like ours, income is not up to the budget due to the economy. We are, however, financially sound because our staff knows how to tighten the belt and not spend what we don't have. In such an environment we can't justify the $1000/mo many streaming services charge.

I appreciate your great information and the call to action for others to post.

Michael

[bladeaudio]

1. Who are you using?
- netbroadcasting.tv

2. What do you like (and dislike) about them?
- good customer service
- fair pricing, based on usage/viewers
- lets me configure the stream quality/size, etc through Adobe Flash Encoder.

3. What is your average attendance?
- ~2000

4. How many viewers do you have on average?
- Fluctuates between 80 and 120.

5. What does it cost you per month?
- Fluctuates depending on above, 120 a wk would be about $450/mo.

[churchtech007]

We just did our second weekend of streaming so I may not be a fair representation but here goes...

1. Who are you using?
- sermon.net

2. What do you like (and dislike) about them?
- awesome customer service
- let us try their service for over a month to get up to quality before we went live
- has a great campus/player with built in things churches use (ie. bible, online giving, chat, up-loadable sermon notes etc.)
- host records of previous services
- negative: that hosting counts against monthly usage total

3. What is your average attendance?
- around 1,500

4. How many viewers do you have on average?
- our first week we had 7, our second week we had about 30. (but we had about 70 people baptized and family from all over tuned in)

5. What does it cost you per month?
- Fluctuates depending on amount streamed. Our base cost is $75 a month


Like I said, is only our second week but so far I have nothing but good things to say about them!

[gbcecil]

ComF5 the link can be found here: http://www.globalministrymedia.com under the tab live streaming. It runs us about $40.00 per month but you can upgrade to the $99. package. There are also some examples of ministries using it on the example link. Other services I have seen are www.StreamingFaith.com , www.Ustream.com , www.Christian.tv , you can also use www.google.com to search the term "live streamin services"

[sinc747]

The preceeding post is a carefully crafted spam message where the URL referenced includes many links that include affiliate codes. It appears to violate the self-promotion policy and should be deleted by a mod.

[katanna]

None of the links have affiliate codes, they are all direct links.

Matthew

[sinc747]

Clarification: the links on the pages of the referenced URL contain affiliate codes.

But, hey, if you don't mind this guy promoting his affiliate links and side-stepping the self-promotion policy, then I guess its okay.