Where should you host your livestream?

Welcome to Episode 13 of our Online Ministry Made Simple Podcast. Click here to subscribe and listen to the podcast, which is available on all major platforms. Do you stream to Facebook, Youtube, Twitch, Vimeo, or another service? Which is best? How do you stream to more than one? In this episode, we cover the basics of choosing a host and introduce you to simulcasting. Facebook offers an advantage of a pre-built audience for your livestream service. If you already have a church Facebook Page or Group, you can start streaming and see people start watching immediately. Facebook also allows great interaction with comments and sharing, so that people can share what they are watching with their friends. Facebook has also started adding new features for churches, like phone call-in to listen, and the creation of online host badges for people commenting on behalf of the church. YouTube is another good option. YouTube is where people are searching for answers to their questions, so it’s a great place to share sermon content and livestreams. It’s also easier to embed into websites than Facebook. YouTube is also easy to find on smart tv's and streaming devices. Hosted solutions like Vimeo, Boxcast, Resi (Living as One), ChurchLab, and many others are great for giving you more control over your livestream. They give you greater control over embedding your stream and using it with your own website. They also offer better quality and help prevent your members from buffering problems while watching. Hosted solutions also give you the advantage of not having your stream taken down due to false copyright claims (which is happening more and more frequently on Facebook) So what do I recommend? I recommend streaming to where your people are! For our church, currently, we are streaming to our website using Resi and the Church Online Platform, and letting Resi send our stream to Facebook and Youtube.  For a fee, Resi, Vimeo, Restream, and Castr, all let you send one stream to multiple destinations simultaneously. So you could send your live stream to Facebook Live and YouTube at the same time, and also use the Church Online Platform. You do need to remember that you will need to engage with the people watching on each platform. For more information about online ministry, please visit our website for online courses, podcast episodes, and blog posts that help simplify the complexity of online ministry.