Hey everyone, it’s Stu, CEO of Lightstream. Today we announced our first ever paid plan with 720p 60 FPS and new capabilities for mobile and IRL streamers. For more info on that, go here.

I know. I know.

“What happened to free!?” 
“$99!?” 

First and foremost, we still have a free tier that all our creators can take advantage of. Secondly, there is good reason for some change.

Over the past few years, we have provided everything we have made for free. A live streaming production Studio powered by the cloud. But it was never free for us to provide it. In fact, the early versions were insanely expensive for every hour our creators streamed. We didn’t want to charge for Lightstream Studio until we felt it had real value for creators (which we believe we have been delivering for awhile) and a quality, consistency, and reliability that is worth paying for. 

Today, Lightstream Studio and Lightstream Cloud are a global, on-demand, live video editing pipeline available for any creator to go live at any moment while streaming with sub-second latency and empowering some pretty incredible creative possibilities. We also now have 25+ amazing people working hard to further develop the technology and provide the unique live chat support for our community.

We have so much more planned to build for you, but we believe that Lightstream Studio is finally worth the money. We are starting with a premium plan around a specific group of creators that we think we are uniquely capable of serving some powerful new capabilities. All other cloud server options for these streamers are actually $120+ per month and some even charge an hourly fee on top of that. We put a beautiful, intuitive interface on the most powerful cloud-native livestreaming pipeline in the world and we are charging a flat, lower monthly fee. A complete, cloud-powered graphics and production suite for individual creators, broadcasters, and production teams that are creating content out in the world vs inside a studio or at their desks. We hope you love it.

We have plans to roll out other options soon that will scale based on your needs as a creator. In the meantime, free remains free and so it will seem like a big jump to see the Free tier and the IRL plan right next to each other. Once those other plans are available, there will be something for everybody.

Thank you for all your love and support along our journey. Very excited to keep delivering new, innovative, and unique technology for our creator community!

Cheers,
Stu & The Crew at Lightstream & Arsenal