Castr - The Best Dacast Alternative

Castr vs. Dacast 2023 comparison

With Castr, you get
twice the bandwidth
and storage
at a lower price

Plus more additional features. No contract to start.

Feature

Have a lot of content in Vimeo? We'll help you migrate.

Feature

No yearly commitment. Try and cancel anytime.

Feature

24/7 Tech Support with no extra cost

Castr

Plan type: Starter

  • HTML5 Player bandwidth: 2.4 TB per year
  • Video Hosting Storage: 100 GB
  • Unlimited Concurrent Viewers
  • 4K quality streams
  • 24/7 Dedicated Tech Support
  • Akamai / Fastly CDN
  • Ad-free streaming
  • No contract
  • Paywall on all plans
  • In-stream ads on player
  • Multistream to 30+ social platforms at once
  • Blackmagic Atem streaming XML file provided
Try for free

$12.5/month

Dacast

Plan type: Starter

  • HTML5 Player bandwidth: 1.2 TB per year
  • Video Hosting Storage: 50 GB
  • Unlimited Concurrent Viewers
  • Full 1080p HD streams
  • 24/7 Customer Support
  • Limelight CDN
  • Ad-free streaming
  • 3 months contract
  • No paywall for starter plan
  • No In-stream ads for starter plan
  • No multistream feature
  • No Blackmagic Atem streaming XML file provided

$39/month

See full comparison

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Trusted by 50,000+ amazing companies

Castr vs Dacast

Castr vs. Dacast: Similarities and Differences

Similarities:

Both Castr and Dacast let you host livestreams on your website using HTML5 player, together with monetization tools like paywall and in-stream ads.

Differences:

With Castr, you get 4k quality streams, more bandwidth, plus the multistreaming feature which makes it easier to multiply the number of people watching your stream.
And the best part – all these things come at a lower price!

Castr is the best Dacast alternative for video streaming

A Live Streaming Platform without Contract

The thought of signing up for yet another service or commitment can send anxiety and panic through your veins. We get it, which is why we’re different from any video streaming service.
You don’t need a contract to get started with us. Sign up and cancel anytime if you’re not happy – there won’t be any commitment involved in the process.

castr_no_contract
24/7 dedicated tech support via Slack, Skype and Whatsapp

24/7 dedicated tech support via Slack, Skype and Whatsapp

We know how stressful it can be to plan a big live event. Let our dedicated team of experts take care of everything to make sure that your live event goes smoothly on its way in and out. 
Other companies may charge additional fee for tech support, but we don’t. We’re committed to offer our customers 24/7 high-quality tech support without any extra fee for a live video streaming solution.

Monetization Models with Paywall & in-stream ads

Castr’s monetization tools with paywall and in-stream ads are available for all plans.
Creators can now benefit from a range of monetization options including

pay-per-view, subscription and in-stream advertising. 

paywall_n_ads_on_all_plans
Stable and high-quality streams

Stable and
high-quality streams

Castr is Dacast’s best alternative that offers a seamless video streaming service with Akamai and Fastly CDN, delivering 4k quality content for any time or occasion.

Stream online video to your own website and 30+ social channels at once

You can host livestreams on your website using our HTML5 player, but why stop there if you can also multistream to 30+ social channels at the same time? Which is like multiplying how many viewers you get to 10.

stream_on_social_channels
own-brand-on-the-video

Your own brand on your videos

Leave lasting impressions with your awesome videos because your viewers know exactly who is behind these fantastic content.

You get full control of what your viewers will see when they’re watching, whether it’s your brand, website URL or messages.

SRT support

Castr supports streaming through the Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) protocol – offering a more optimized viewing experience over unstable networks, so your viewers can enjoy your live streams anytime and anywhere without interruption.

SRT support

Castr vs. Dacast:
Features Comparison

Dacast

Main features

Embeddable HTML5 Player

Dacast

Stream Quality

4K

Dacast

Full HD

Bandwidth

From 2.4 TB/year (Starter plan)

Dacast

From 1.2 TB/year (Starter plan)

VOD storage

From 100 GB (Starter plan)

Dacast

From 50 GB (Starter plan)

Paywall

All plans

Dacast

Only in premium plans

In-stream Ads

All plans

Dacast

Only in premium plans

Multi-stream

Dacast

Pricing

from $12.5/mo

Dacast

from $39/mo

24/7 dedicated tech support via

slack, skype, whatsapp

Dacast

CDN Delivery

Akamai / Fastly

Dacast

Limelight

Contracts

No Contract

Dacast

3 months contract

Adaptive bitrate (ABR)

transcoding

Dacast

Time-shifting

Dacast

Multi Ingest (RTMP, RTSP, SRT,

HLS, DASH)

Dacast

Multi Output (HLS, DASH, RTMP)

Dacast

Only HLS

HLS URL

Dacast

Only in premium plan

Live to VOD

Dacast

Live Rewind

4+ Hours (Customizable)

Dacast

Live Guest Chat

Dacast

Geo-restriction, domain control

Dacast

Geo-restriction, domain control

Dacast

Password protection

Dacast

Livestream Analytics

Dacast

Bandwidth Charges

Dacast

Quoat

"The Castr restreaming product was very easy to set up and works flawlessly. We use it every night to live stream our 10pm newscast on YouTube and Facebook. In addition, the low cost of the service was a big bonus for what is a very robust and mature product."

"We are using castr.com for our live stream productions without any problems, the latency is great and the fact they have servers around the globe allows for stable streams even from the US to Europe, etc. For our usage, castr.com is perfect as it offers everything we need and nothing more on a stable, easy to use platform."

"Adding your platforms to Castr is easy as 1, 2, 3. Their no fuse way of adding platforms makes it so easy to do that I had it done within 3 minutes. When looking for a solutions to livestream to both Facebook and YouTube, we came across Castr and it solved all of our issues. We love the fact that it doesn't required you to put any of their branding in the descriptions."

"We use this service daily and this is already part of our workflow! It offers a clever alternative to slow internet connection when one need to stream to various channels and is very easy to use. We user Castr to deliver our content 24/7 to different platforms, it makes our workflow much simpler, we save internet bandwidth and hardware stress"

"The ability to have an uploaded pre-recorded video scheduled to stream live with just 3 mins notice is really useful for failsafe option. Internet gremlins can always get in the way during a live event, so I find this quick scheduling option to be really useful and the main reason I stuck to Castr and not their competition."
Castr

Frequently asked questions

Can’t find it here? Check out our Help Center

FAQ

Using Castr Simulcast, you can stream to multiple social platforms. You can also enable and disable platforms on the fly.

Castr Live Streaming CDN feature provides a fully white-label player that you can embed on your website.

Castr Simulcast is the easiest way for you to live stream to 30+ channels at once. Stream to YouTube, Facebook, and others— at the same time. Don’t worry about where you have the biggest audience, just stream everywhere.

There are no limits on streaming, and you can stream 24x7 without any restrictions on any of our plans.

Yes, you can stream to a custom RTMP Destination by configuring a custom platform in the Castr dashboard.

Yes, you can upload video files in Castr and get an embeddable player and HLS URL for the uploaded video file.

Castr Simulcast is the easiest way for you to live stream to 30+ channels at once. Stream to YouTube, Facebook, and others— at the same time. Don’t worry about where you have the biggest audience, just stream everywhere.

Yes, all live video streams get delivered via Akamai CDN. We bet there won’t be any buffering.

We transcode the streams in the cloud and you have the option to enable and disable adaptive bitrate streaming options for your live streams.

Yes, we do, when you upload a video, you will get the option to choose the resolutions to which the videos need to be encoded.

If you are on All in one Entry, your streams will shut off when you run out of bandwidth.

If you are on All in One Plus plan or above, overage protection will be enabled when you run out of bandwidth. It will be charged at $0.25 per GB for each that you go over, and billed per 1TB.

Overage protection is a feature that keeps your live streams up and running in case you are out of bandwidth. It will only be enabled when you go over your total bandwidth limit for your subscription plan and don’t have any rollover bandwidth remaining. In this instance, your overage protection will kick in and the selected payment method, such as a credit card, will be drawn from for the specific amount automatically.

Ready to give Castr a try? Join 200,000+
streamers worldwide today!