Item: Brightcove
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

One department currently uses the Brightcove Video Cloud, IT. Our IT department handles all web site design, development and updates. One huge business issue that Brightcove resolves for us is security. We have a secure site that our customers use and use Brightcove on that site for security reasons. For instance, being able to turn off the "get code" feature if we don’t want videos being shared. Also, we have users on a variety of platforms and browsers. Being able to transcode to multiple streams is invaluable.

Pros and Cons

Pros

As far as security, our customers are agents and access a secure agent site for details on their line of business. We also offer product tutorials, training and promotion. All this information is secure. Brightcove provides an ideal solution for embedding videos and players into our secure site.
The variety of players and player-related infrastructure Brightcove offers is a huge plus. The choices provide a variety of solutions depending upon our needs. It could be as simple as an embedded video or something more complex such as a tabbed-player. Being able to style and brand the players is just icing on the cake.
Being able to easily sort, manage and organize our entire media library is convenient and a real time-saver. No searching through pages and pages of videos to get to the one you want.

Cons

I find the interface to be a little cumbersome. The more you use it, the easier it is but I would not say it offers the best user experience.
We have the Basic subscription because that's all we need. That means there are some features and developer tools that we don't have access to. It would be nice to have access to those features without paying up for the next level. Why are we limited because of the type of plan we have or the number of videos we have?

Return on Investment

Positive: being able to use video on a secure customer/agent site for product marketing -- this is definitely a ROI as far as increasing sales.
It has provided a solution that free video hosting services do not provide (although we use those services, too) and gives us the ability to provide a good user experinence to our users (something a free service doesn't always provide).

Alternatives Considered

YouTube

Marketing department favors it because EVERYONE uses YouTube. Overall, YouTube offers decent features and functionality. But Brightcove offers the ability to brand and style players, and control what our users see (and so much more) and YouTube does not. For instance, on YouTube, users are presented with other videos (which could contain competitor videos).

Likelihood to Renew

Because we will continue to need a solution for our secure customer/agent site. Because being able to choose the appropriate player, and style and brand it, is highly desirable in some situations. Also being able to transcode to multiple streams for adaptive distribution is a huge plus in today's mobile world.

Likelihood to Recommend

I definitely would recommend Brightcove depending upon the scenario in which they need to use it. For security purposes, definitely. Also if you want to be able to add branding and styling. It's also well suited for multi-platform video experiences. One concern would be integrating with a CMS. Brightcove is integrated with many CMS solutions but not all, so it may not be well suited for all in that respect. As far as resources required, it is helpful to have someone knowledegable in HTML, CSS, some JavaScript, and possibly a developer if you want to access the developer features.

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An ideal video platform for business

Modules Used