Limits on viewers, bandwidth, and storage on free and paid IBM Video Streaming accounts

Viewer limits

Free Trial accounts

If you have a Free Trial account there is no limit to viewers ,Broadcast to an audience of any size (up to 5 concurrent viewers without ads) and access advanced broadcasting features for 30 days.

Pro accounts

If you have a Pro account, there is no physical limit to the number of viewers you can have, but you pay according to how many viewers you have and how long they watch. The number of viewers multiplied by the time they watch is calculated into "viewer hours." To estimate how many viewer hours you need, use our Viewer Hour Calculator on the pricing page. Click on 'View Pro Plans', and you will find the calculator below the feature list.

Bandwidth limits

IBM Video Streaming does not limit what bandwidth you can broadcast at. However, on free accounts, IBM Video Streaming does not provide lower bitrate versions of your stream to viewers, so you may want to keep your bitrate reasonable so that viewers on slower connections are still able to watch your stream without any lag. In addition, the higher of a bitrate you broadcast at, the more upload bandwidth you need. As a general rule, we recommend your upload bandwidth to be 2x the bitrate of your stream. Please see our complete encoding settings recommendations.

Video storage limits

Videos for our basic broadcasters are stored for 30 days from the date of the broadcast. There are limits to Video Storage in Video Streaming accounts.

These video storage limitation changes will only affect new customers who subscribe on or after Monday, January 12th 2015 and for customers who upgrade or downgrade their existing account.

Summary

For a complete comparison of plans, please see our Plans and Pricing page