Given how highly anticipated this feature has been, we have a lengthy post below describing things in a lot more detail. For those of you on the run, here’s the summary:

PheedLoop now supports native streaming! It is built on top of PheedLoop Meet (together, called “Meet & Stream”) allowing you to have an all-in-one meeting and streaming experience with zero need for any third-party software, ever. Pricing is 100% pay as you go, and starts at $45/credit. We’re offering a free streaming starter pack for all new customers as well ($635 value). Building this system took quite a lot of engineering resources, and now that we’re in beta, you can expect to see dozens of powerful new features come out before the end of the year on all fronts, not just streaming.

Motivation and Inspiration

For those of you who know PheedLoop and how we operate, you know that we love building things. We’re engineers, starting with our CEO. Our team at PheedLoop works incredibly hard to build proprietary technologies. Why do we go through so much effort instead of just repackaging and white labeling existing products? The answer is simple: it allows us to control innovation, and it allows us to keep prices low. In fact, by controlling our own innovation, we’re able to continuously lower prices as we have a constant growth engine founded on innovation, not just sales. We have a major announcement on this front in 2021 that, we believe, will change the event tech industry forever and help event planners get back on-site.

Our engineers spent the last few months first putting together PheedLoop Meet, which we know you all love! We created PheedLoop Meet to be highly expandable, because we knew streaming would be the important next step. We’ve always offered live streaming, but we’ve relied quite a lot on offering it through integrations (e.g. our native Zoom Web Integration, which we will continue to fully support and expand).

However, we want more control than what a third-party platform can offer us. So, we built and are proud to announce Meet & Stream! A system that can scale to tens of thousands of attendees, is pay as you go, robust, and simple to use.

Introducing Meet & Stream

At its core, Meet & Stream brings everything you already know and love about PheedLoop Meet, and adds a streaming layer for hundreds or thousands of attendees to watch the meeting. It’s really as simple as that.

A new backstage section is available in your virtual event portal, each session in the backstage is accessible by the event admin or affiliated speaker. Each session in the backstage has a PheedLoop Meet instance attached to it, allowing you and your speakers to converse freely, share screens, videos, etc. Once you are ready, you simply broadcast and stream the live meeting from your backstage, and within seconds attendees will be able to watch in real-time.

Enjoy lots of exciting features such as:

• Picture-in-picture mode, allowing you to navigate anywhere not only in your virtual event portal, but your entire computer and browser on completely different websites and apps while still continuing to watch the live stream
• Gallery view, allowing up to 16 live video feeds at once with smart wrapping around a screen share
• HD quality video
• Automatic recording of all streamed content
• Low latency streaming (glass-to-glass approximately 10 seconds)
• Adaptive video resolution management to support slower internet connections
• Unlimited tests (10 minute streaming tests)
• Tens of thousands of attendees streamed at once
• [Coming Soon] Exposing RTMP ingest, allowing you to bypass Meet and stream anything you’d like direct

New Backstage

A more subtle aspect of this release is the backstage section of the virtual event portal. Although the backstage isn’t the highlight of this release, it’s very important. The backstage is a new centralized location for you and your speakers to connect, plan, and execute sessions. Currently it’s equipped with the ability to share custom instructions, the whole Meet & Stream system, and extends private speaker portal functionality. In the near future, the backstage will be expanded significantly to provide access to new ways of executing live polls, Q&A, and more.

Hybrid Ready

Meet & Stream is fully hybrid ready as well. Your AV team will be able to plugin their on-site audio/video source directly into Meet like any other webcam or microphone, and stream to your virtual audience.

It was in February of 2020 when we saw the writing on the wall and prepared for a year of virtual events. 2021 is likely going to be the year for hybrid events. PheedLoop has been serving live events for years, we know the tech and the process better than most given how many we serve. We have big plans, and are investing heavily not only in virtual events, but hybrid as well. Both from an innovation, and charitable standpoint to help with the recovery.

Pricing

As with all pricing for PheedLoop, it’s important to us that it’s affordable, transparent, pay as you go, requires a minimal initial investment, and does not lock you into a contract. Pricing for Meet & Stream is based on the number of sessions you would like to stream, and the number of viewers per session you want to stream.

Before anything else, we’d like to mention that any new customers coming onboard during the month of November will receive a free Meet & Stream Starter Pack. It includes 3x 100 Viewers Credits, 2X 250 Viewers Credits, and 1X 500 Viewers Credit.

Here’s a breakdown of pricing below. The first table reiterates the various streaming options offered, and the second table lists Meet & Stream pricing.

Road Map

Meet & Stream will be in beta for the month of November. This means you can sign up for it, purchase it, test it and use it, but you can also expect to see rapid and constant improvements as we collect customer feedback. You will officially be able to use the beta version starting on November 10th. If you’d like early access, let us know.

In general, PheedLoop has a long and fast-paced road map ahead for its products. As a full event management system from call for abstracts and live virtual video booths, to mobile apps and floor plan design, we’ve got our hands full with everything, not just streaming. Over the coming weeks and months you can expect to see a huge push for new third-party integrations, sponsor and exhibitor ROI opportunities, and an absolute blitz of new virtual event features.

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