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Brightcove Pricing: Shhhhhhhh!

Posted on Saturday, March 1, 2008 at 09:41AM by Registered CommenterMichael Kolowich in , | Comments12 Comments

I had a chance to review my web server logs last night (what else are you going to do when it’s snowing another foot in New Hampshire?), and to my surprise two of the top six search terms that were used to discover the “Web Video Expert” blog were “brightcove cost” and “brightcove pricing”.  There is obviously a lot of interest around this subject — enough so that literally hundreds of people a month are coming to us, trying to find the answer to the question: What does Brightcove cost?

For those of you who don’t know what Brightcove is, it’s an amazingly powerful and flexible platform for publishing Internet TV Channels on the web.  It has revolutionized the way we think about video on the internet, and has had a dramatic and positive impact on the effectiveness of web video for dozens of DigiNovations’ clients.

Yes, there’s a free version of Brightcove available if you’re willing to put up with ads on your videos and channels, placed by Brightcove.  But we’re talking here about the full-blown, fully-featured premium Brightcove publishing platform — the same internet TV channel used by everyone from the National Geographic Channel to the Barack Obama for President campaign…not to mention clients of ours like Sacred Heart University.

The problem with trying to answer the question, though, is two things:

  • It depends; and
  • It’s a secret that Brightcove is trying its best to protect.

It depends, of course, on the scale of the application — the number of video streams served per month, the size of each of those streams, and the amount of customization you want to apply.  So there’s no easy price list to look up — you’ve got to fill out a contact form and have a sales representative call you to size you up and assess your needs.

But beyond that, Brightcove has clamped down a veil of confidentiality about its price list by contractually obliging its customers (that would be us) to keep their pricing confidential.

Suffice to say, though, that despite its initial efforts to offer a “Brightcove Standard” product that would be affordable for every business, department, school, and not-for-profit organization, Brightcove has now reversed itself and is content with cream-skimming with the big media companies (take a look at their selected customer list) and has abandoned for now the strategy of empowering everyone with inexpensive, ad-free internet TV channels.

Brightcove quietly pulled its small-customer offering (priced under $100 a month) off the market within a couple of months of launching it, and now customers who want to buy the full Brightcove platform from Brightcove pay tens of thousands of dollars a year to do so.

On the one hand, this isn’t terribly surprising.  Despite its big, bold look, Brightcove is a relatively small organization with modest venture funding…and word has it that the support burdens of trying to get thousands of small companies up on Brightcove were a nightmare.

But it is a disappointment, and leaves plenty of room for a competitor to sweep into the middle market.  After all, I still believe that internet TV channels will be a common part of every company and organization’s website within the next five years, and right now Brightcove is simply not affordable for anyone except big customers — at least when bought directly from Brightcove.

All of that said, there is another approach to getting the benefits of Brightcove for smaller applications.  Web video production companies like DigiNovations are set up to design, implement, and manage great internet TV channels on the Brightcove platform for smaller customers.  And until Brightcove figures out a lower-priced middle-market offering, that will be the only way the vast majority of companies and organizations can take advantage of this powerful new web video tool.

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Reader Comments (12)

I really wanted to use Brightcove. I talked with sales and they told me the entry price... it was WAY over my head. The guy did mention that they were launching a cheaper service this month. I have not heard anything about it. I think it was still going to be very expensive, but not as expensive as their previous cheapest option.

I've been using bitsontherun.com. The guy who developed it is very well known for his stand alone player you can find on many web sites. It's super basic and they are just getting their feet off the ground, so there are still improvements that they are working on every day.
September 12, 2008 | Unregistered Commentertm
Check www.v4x.com.
It has professional tools to create interactive videos on both web and mobile.
October 7, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterSylvie
Well, i got price quote for basic edition and it is 6000$ for a year!..
October 24, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterEssexian
$6000 for basic brightcove?? i hope everyone uses free services such as blip, veoh, youtube, etc

and brightcove goes bankrupt.
November 4, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterMadbrightcoveuser
is it really 6.000 $ a year for the basic edition?! I heared 5.000 $... well that is still quite a lot! Are there any other high quality alternatives? Anyone heared of/ experience with mig69.com/ tv1.eu/ or stream5.tv (european companies)??
November 5, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterNaash
Vidego is the world's most intuitive and most affordable self-publishing platform for streaming video. Vidego starts out way below the annual numbers being tossed around here, has more than 50 player templates, automated granular analytics and more...and it's a tab based, wizard-driven solution that is SaaS, so there's nothing to install. Oh, and it supports both on-demand and LIVE webcasting in Flash. Let me know if you want more info. Good luck to you.
November 10, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterSM
I have been reading these entries with great interest. Take a look at a comparison sheet our company MIG69 created a few months ago. Just to let you and others know there are in fact multiple solutions (some new, some old) for less wealthy companies!

http://www.mig69.com/docs/comparison_sheet.pdf

(There will be an update soon!)
December 23, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterFloris Baan
Endavo Media is a fully custom-branded alternative complete with personal players, one-click video ad attachments and so much more.

Forget Brightcove, check out http://www.wqyktv.com for an example and start making money again with your content.
February 9, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterJA
Yes i was one of the unlucky ones to have had the $100 offer pulled on me but i found the guys over in england at http://www.vyoo.eu were doing practicly the same thing for around the same price, i don't know where brightcove get off with those prices, sureley with people getting more and more media savvy they are destined to fall?
March 3, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterbrightcovedupedme
I saw my company's name mentioned so I thought I would join the blog. I think it fair to say that we are brightcove's main competitor in the UK and that there are many brightcove wannabees who are delighted to find a feature rich video platform at half the cost of Brightcove. Yes now where is that brightcove price list? Whose up for transparencey and honesty with pricing? www.vyoo.eu
March 26, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterJohnny Thwaites
This blog does not seem to recognise .eu domains. I'm waving to you from Europe. www.vyoo.eu
March 26, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterJohnny Thwaites
Guys at vyoo.eu. Good prices but when I saw the pricing options they all had (Excludes bandwidth), wasn't impressed as a potential customer to see additional charges on top of the packages. I have been shopping around and I have seen some attractive deals going around. Extra charges on top of packages is not a good business model = hidden charges because you can not control the pricing that you could pay on a per month basis!
June 18, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterJustin B

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