Goodbye Brightcove Network
Posted by Simon Crisp | Filed under Uncategorized
I just received an email telling me that Brightcove were discontinuing the free version of their video platform.
‘Oh @$%&’, I thought. Over the past year or so I have encouraged a number of clients to go with Brightcove video on their sites. I braced myself for a few angry phone calls.’
“Regretfully, we’ve decided to discontinue the Brightcove Network (the free version of our service). The discontinuation of the free Brightcove Network accounts will not affect Brightcove platform accounts that customers have paid to use.
Please see the FAQ for complete details about this transition.”
On December 17, 2008, we will be shutting down Brightcove Network accounts that have not been upgraded to paid Brightcove platform accounts. At the same time, we will be shutting down the Brightcove.TV website
The Brightcove Network had since 2006 allowed smaller sites the same feature-set as the big-boy publishers such as the Telegraph and the New York Times, but without the option to monetize.
Publishers could create custom players, playlists and embed-able videos.
I had often wondered how they were able to offer the same service they charge big publishers thousands for, now it appeared they were asking themselves the same question.
As on 17 December all Brightcove Network accounts will be turned off, that means all the videos you embedded in articles will disappear unless you upgrade to their new “low cost” service.
However they do not tell you the price of this “low cost” service, nor is the information available anywhere on their site. I have heard from other users it is around $6,000 per year, but am waiting for a reply to my emails.
While this is no doubt a fraction of the price they charge big publishers it is still waaaay too much for the people I had introduced to Brighcove. Some of them have hundreds of videos embedded in articles which will be turned off in little over a month.
If they were offing a $50 per month deal I would be telling people to go with it, Brighcove has great encoding, backend and players. As it is I will suggest they make sure have the original files, an enough time to re embed them into articles on another service.
