Castr

Avantages

I really appreciate Castr’s reliability, its feature set (infinite loops are really useful!) and it’s low cost. Having highly responsive, helpful support is also a huge plus. Recent upgrades to reduce latency down to 5-10s is incredibly impressive, too.

Inconvénients

Some features, like infinite loops, I only need part of the time. I wish it were possible to easily purchase certain features for just a month or two on top of one’s regular annual plan for the basic package. I’d also love to see hosted video streaming that isn’t quite so expensive — the multistreaming function is the best value I’ve seen, but the hosted video streaming is more than services such as Vimeo.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi choisir Castr 

Logiciel antérieur 

Pourquoi passer à Castr

Avantages

I love how Castr team is practical and they are working from personal experience perspective. They are always trying to accomodate market changes.

Inconvénients

I had to have several accounts to pile on same services that could have been done in one. Castr should allow all you can eat plans that allow as many tiers and options as possible and available. Just a suggestion.

Avantages

- Great ideas and good concept of features
- Prices seem to be fairly good
- Customer service was friendly and quick to return questions

Inconvénients

- Streaming was choppy when using the scheduler
- Only able to schedule one at a time
- Customer service lacked training and/or knowledge of product
- Many bugs when uploading to scheduler
- No playback menu to skim through media if things failed on their end to continue where you left off on your broadcast

Avantages

Castr is not only very easy to setup and manage a stream, but being able to broadcast to multiple sources such as Facebook and YouTube is made very easy.

Inconvénients

It doesn't happen a lot, but on occasion we have had a glitch where when we multi-stream, one platform will work instantly but the other platform takes a while to connect. Usually all you have to do is close the window and restart Castr to fix the problem. But overall this happens very rarely. As long as you have stable internet you should have no issues.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Castr

Avantages

I love most the ease to figure things out. We knew nothing about how live streaming worked before and the customer service provided by Castr is what sold me at the beginning. They have been great to help guide us and pretty quick to get back to you as well!

Inconvénients

The one thing I least like is we are not able to use our platform: Planning Center Online to stream live. We have to go in each week and add each service. It's not a feature Castr and PCO do together. At least the last time I checked it wasn't.

Avantages

It works and the feed is reliable, I can’t say the same for other popular streaming services. The ease of use is also very simple for someone just starting out.

Inconvénients

I really don’t have anything negative to say, I chose Castr because it was the best option.

Avantages

Is easy to use and easy to configure every channel, i like the service to control everything in one place

Inconvénients

I would like to have embed video in multistreaming

Avantages

Castr is cost-effective, reliable, and easy to use.

Inconvénients

For our purposes at the church, I can't think of what would make it better. I can train anyone to use it without any difficulty.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Castr

Avantages

The ability to have an uploaded pre-recorded video scheduled to stream live with just 3 mins notice is really useful for failsafe option. Internet gremlins can always get in the way during a live event, so I find this quick scheduling option to be really useful and the main reason I stuck to Castr and not their competition.
They also offer 24 hour cloud recording & a mobile app which their competitors don't either. Cloud recording is another really useful failsafe in case your recordings locally didn't happen.
Mobile app lets you use your mobile camera to stream which is really useful.

Inconvénients

Shame that they only allow 1 uploaded video at a time seems rather stingy when 2 would be really useful and not lose them much business for small time streamers.

They don't offer their Embed on website script as part of the lower packages which seems a shame when their competitors do and don't see why that would harm them to offer this in lower packages.

Less than 3 mins schedulng would be even better!

Avantages

Simple setup, multi stream capability, stability, customer support.

Inconvénients

Nothing to say, no problem found in over 20 hours of multistream

Avantages

Castr does a fantastic job at keeping the stream's quality while still pushing it out to multiple places. It's seamless to use, which is huge for our volunteer broadcast operators on our small team. For only $12.50/mth, it's a no brainer for us.

Inconvénients

Nothing, we enjoy everything! Have yet to have any negative experience.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Castr

Avantages

If you understand how streaming works and the technologies invloved, Castr is easy to implement and confugure.

Inconvénients

Active monitoring of the stream would be nice. When i say monitoring i mean, monitoring the data packets, stream quality, any break in stream etc...

Avantages

Castr is Easy to uses and does the job it promises

Inconvénients

There are some limitations depending on the selected plan, and not all available streaming destinations are available

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi choisir Castr 

Avantages

easy interface and it just works. Did a 5 destination multistream last week for 3 days in a row with changing event topics and it worked seamlessly.

Inconvénients

With my tier there should be at least one way to easily grab and integrate comments from the various social media destinations.

Avantages

Castr is so easy to use and allows so much freedom when it comes to our church livestreams. I have quickly been able to train other congregation members, who are more elderly, to use this software with ease which allows more freedom for me. With that said being able to login from any location allows me to troubleshoot any ideas they may come across when I am not on site. I love this product very much.

Inconvénients

I cannot say there are any cons I have found with Castr. This product has been so good and reliable that it creates a quality product to multiple destinations at one time making my life so much easier. If I have to mention one con, is that I have not been able to figure out the responding to all platforms at one time, but I think that comes from me using a phone and not a computer.

Avantages

I love how easy it is to setup the livestream, but also being able to stream to different sites simultaneously. It comes at an affordable price too.

Inconvénients

Better social interaction with audience.

Avantages

You can stream to multiple platforms at once.

Inconvénients

Can't stream to Twitter easily. Facebook often breaks or cuts off and you have to start again.

Avantages

its easy and i can multistreamNothing its great in my opinion I am glad you offer this service

Inconvénients

Nothing its great in my opinion I am glad you offer this service

Avantages

Castr allows our ministry to live stream to multiple platforms, increasing our ability to reach parishoners exactly where they are. I love the software, the ease of use. We're grateful for such software that allows us to perform ministry across the world.

Inconvénients

I don't have any major pain points regarding Castr. It's one of the best software procurements that my ministry has made.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Castr

Avantages

Castr is easy to use for my live streaming needs.

Inconvénients

We don't really utilize all the features of Castr enough to really know any dislikes...

Avantages

We were looking for a way to get our livestream on multiple platforms and Castr does this easily and inexpensively. It also works easily with OBS which we use to run our livestream.

Inconvénients

I would like to have better integration with our website, but I believe that's available on a more expensive plan that we are on.

Avantages

Castr is an amazing product and I have yet to really tap into all of its features but I will say it's very reliable and the customer service is great and fast when I have concerns or questions.

Inconvénients

I don't have any cons, this product does everything I need it to and more.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Castr

Avantages

-GREAT PRICE, way cheaper than most simulcast or re-stream services
-Unlimited Stream hours
-Direct download after stream is over
-SUPER User friendly, linked my accounts and started streaming day one.
-Integrated chat system is a huge plus

Inconvénients

Over the past 6 months since I've been using it there has been a few hiccups. Some times when I start streaming, it will say my account is linked and connected but it wont be streaming on the platform. Example: I stream on youtube, twitch, mixer and Dlive. On the home screen it says my mixer account is connected and live, but when I visit my page on mixer it says I'm offline. I then have to try deleting and reconnecting my account to Castr or resetting my stream key, and even then it does not always work. I have only had this problem mainly with Mixer (youtube and twitch every now and then). That being said I'm not sure if this is a problem on Castr's end or Mixers. I have chatted with a worker about this issue and alls he had me do was the same steps I listed above. Deleted, re-link, try again. This option does not always work. Then the next day everything will magically work again. This is a very minor problem but can grow to be very irritating.

Some other small cons I've noticed. The integrated chat seems to only link Youtube, Mixer and Twitch. Any smaller platforms don't detected.

I use OBSLabs to live stream, and some of the apps don't work as they should. For example the viewer count extension where it shows the amount of viewers per platform only shows my viewers on twitch. Not the other 3 platforms I'am streaming on. Again, I'm not sure if that is a problem on OBSlabs end or Castr's.

Avantages

The set-up was extremely simple. The cost is affordable for smaller organizations as well as larger. The simple push of a button use makes this easy for non techie types. Customer service was simple as we needed to upgrade our plan for a couple months and then go back to our regular set-up. Made working with Castr very powerful.

Inconvénients

Nothing no dislike in our experience of using Castr.

Avantages

RTMP pull and multistream, great support

Inconvénients

Need more flexible plans, because I no need some features and need only one from bigger plan

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à Castr