Show HN: Simpler alternative to WebEx and GoToWebinar, built with WebRTC | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Simpler alternative to WebEx and GoToWebinar, built with WebRTC

breakoutroom.co

17 pointsAdams4727 comments

We think webinar software is generally outdated and overly complex. So, we decided to build webinar and broadcasting software we'd want to use. We only support Chrome right now and have lots of features we need to add, but would love any feedback. Thanks!

Price? Can I host it on my own server? (please? pretty please?) If not, whats the $$ per # of simultaneous users per broadcast? Can broadcasts be recorded? In what format? Private (require password) broadcasts?

Thanks for the questions! Price - TBD, but most likely a free tier + a pro tier (eventually).We are thinking something around $50 to a few hundred $ a month, based on the number of simultaneous attendees in the room. Right now, service is free as we need feedback.

What's your use case for hosting on your own server? Security? Really interested to learn more.

Recording isn't available currently, but we hope to have it out this week! We'll start with .mp4 format. Is there another format you'd like?

And yes, private and unlisted broadcasts are also on the roadmap!

Self hosting is of interest to avoid monthly fees / per event fees - I'd rather pay up front for software, run it myself and not have to pay hundreds / month - additionally, our (as most would) attendance would fluctuate - numerous times we paid for more seats at Webex only to have not as many attend as we anticipated, but the same conversely happens also - we paid for a low tier and more wanted to attend. Sometimes you don't know how many people will be interested in a specific topic, even though we try to gauge interest by forcing registration via our website.

Also - self hosting might lend itself to tighter integration. It would be awesome to embed the broadcast page directly into my events page, instead of emailing everyone a link to webex and maybe they got the email, maybe they didn't, maybe they missed it, etc...

.mp4 is fine - was just concerned it might be some proprietary format like Webex uses.

".mp4 is fine - was just concerned it might be some proprietary format like Webex uses."

Exactly what I was going to say. I've never understood what webex was thinking there

Good feedback. Thanks! Agreed on the pricing model. We'd prefer to not have a bad pricing model be a reason you need to host yourself. Perhaps, it means some type of elastic pricing where you have a base plan and pay per additional attendee?

I believe the problem with WebEx and others is they have to know how many attendees you expect upfront so that they can put you on the right server. I think we can solve that.

Embedding on your events page is a great idea! We've talked about that. We've heard the reminder emails are notorious for not showing up in the inbox.

I tried this out and honestly can't believe how easy it is to start broadcasting. It's scary fast.

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