Undeniably video streaming is one of the most popular activities that occupy a significant amount of Internet users’ time. Be it a sports events, music concerts, TV shows or world news, you can watch them live on the web, either free or paid subscription.

Due to the advancement in high speed Internet and popularity of mobile devices, big companies like Apple and Google have entered the online TV markets. It shows how important video streaming is these days. So if you are an Internet marker, e-commerce entrepreneur or content publisher, video streaming is something you absolutely can’t afford to miss!

Today we’ve rounded up 30 most popular video streaming services where you can live stream any shows and events by connecting your webcam, camcorder, or mobile device to the Internet. These sites offer all the necessary video and broadcast tools so that you can reach your target audience easily. Apart from that, social sharing features are also available where you can embed video on your blog, or share it on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites. So if you are ready to live stream your show for the first time, check out the following websites.

1. Facebook Live

With Facebook Live, any user with Facebook Profile or Page can broadcast live to reach wide audience in the world and interact with them in real-time. When you broadcast live on Facebook, the video appears in the News Feed and on your Profile/Page with a red color “live” indicator. A Facebook Live session can last up to 4 hours. After the live stream session ends, the video is still viewable for those who missed the live broadcast depending how many days you want to keep it on Facebook.

2. YouTube Live

YouTube, the most popular video sharing site provides users a feature-rich live streaming service. You can simply enable it by going through the creator studio tools and then select live streaming. However, before using the service you have to first ensure that your account is not subject to any restrictions within the past 90 days. If your account has more than 10k subscribers, YouTube even allows you to stream right from your mobile device. You also have the options to pre-set the level of privacy determining the group of viewers for your live streams.

3. Instagram Live Video

Similar to Facebook Live, Instagram users able to share a live video with their followers in real-time. However, the video can’t be kept on Instagram when the live video session is over. Instagram enables broadcaster to interact with the audiences and response to their comments. The live video interface will also indicate the number of viewers.

With regards to privacy, the live video can only be watched by approved followers for private account. Live video broadcasted through public account, on the other hand, can be seen by anyone on Instagram.

4. IBM Cloud Video

IBM Cloud Video (formerly known as Ustream) is another great cloud-based live streaming video platform and hosting service. Its Streaming Manager is basically the equivalent of Ustream Pro Broadcasting, and it’s specifically designed for broadcasting big events to reach large audiences.

Some of IBM unique features include its centralized management for both external and internal video communications, Watson artificial intelligence to gain insights from unstructured video content, its built-in backup process with intelligent traffic management, and video content is automatically transcoded in the cloud for delivery to any devices.

5. Twitch TV

Twitch is another live streaming video platform owned by Twitch Interactive, a subsidiary of Amazon. The site primarily focuses on video game live streaming including broadcasts of eSports competitions, music broadcasts, creative content as well as “in real life” streams. The streamed video content can be viewed either live or via video on demand.

6. Periscope Watch Live

Periscope, an alternative to Facebook Live that allows you to stream live video in real time. The live video streaming app was acquired by Twitter in 2015 and hence many Twitter broadcasters using it to stream video and engage their followers through smartphones. Broadcasters can interact with people through hearts and comments. If needed, they can also broadcast privately to specific followers or friends.

The live videos are automatically saved as Tweets, and they can be easily shared on Twitter and other social networks. The live videos can also be searched and removed from Periscope at any time.

7. Livestream

Livestream is a widely used live streaming video platform. Users can broadcast video online through camcorder, computer’s webcam, smartphone, camera, etc. The service offers a variety of video tools, media players, embedding and sharing features, helping you to connect your live video to your audience.

Livestream offers 2 type of package plans:

• Professionals with advanced live streaming needs.
• Businesses focused on control, privacy and monetization.

Of course it also lets beginners to start a free trial to see what it’s like to steam.

8. JW Player Live Streaming

JW Player’s live streaming video platform gives you one of the easiest ways to broadcast your events and grow your audience. Its user-friendly dashboard lets you to set up and broadcast live events in minutes. Your live stream is transcoded to multiple resolutions and bitrates while maximizing quality up to 1080p high-definition. With regard to audience analytics, JW Players allows you to see the total number of viewers for your live event, by domain, device and geography.

9. YouNow – Live Stream Video Chat

YouNow is a live social TV platform that lets you broadcast your video content, chat and interact with the video streams of other users in real time. The service is accessible through its website, Android and iOS apps. It’s a good place to watch live broadcasts and meet new friends. Users can also have fun by joining broadcasters as a guest, creating selfies, sending gifts, and capturing special moments.

10. Google Hangouts

Google Hangouts is one of the best voice and video conversation platforms for influencers to host webinars or live discussions. The platform provides broadcasters an easy way to take questions from the audience for better discussion and interaction. Once your live session is over, you can easily upload the video to YouTube for the public to watch it later on.

11. Dailymotion Live

Dailymotion offers a great live video streaming services that allow you to create and broadcast your live shows and events online. The site features multiple social media buttons and functionalities making video sharing an easy task. Also, users can search and watch online events without having to login to the service.

12. Netflix

Netflix is one of the most famous subscription-based streaming services, offering online streaming of a library of films and television programs. It has also added a live streaming service that allows viewers to join live workout classes and watch live sport events.

13. Zoom

Zoom is a platform with live-streaming service for meeting, webinar, conference and training of any sizes. It offers communications software that combines video conferencing, online meetings, chat, and mobile collaboration. Some of its features include split-screen, one-click sharing, polling and many more.

14. Vaughn Live

Vaughn Live is a social broadcast and entertainment site where users can live stream video and make new friends. The broadcast media site provides its viewers with content on people, music, news, and nature.

15. Brightcove Live

Brightcove Video Cloud is another online video hosting platform that offers live streaming video services. It enables you to deliver high-quality live streaming broadcasts to any device or browser. Users can deliver live streams without any custom development or complex integration.

16. Tinychat

Tinychat is an online video chat community site where you can browse through the free video chat rooms to meet friends or make your own chat room on any topic or category. Tinychat makes it easy with up to 12 live cameras in each room and unlimited viewers. The app is very suitable for those who need more viewer interaction and effective chatting.

17. Funny or Die

Funny or Die is a comedy video website that lets users to capture funny or stupid moments. The live streaming platform is best for those who want to make humorous videos.

18. Ooyala Live Streaming

Ooyala’s live streaming service is another good choice for broadcasting user-generated live video while allowing users to create real-time connections with people around the world. It provides you an open and highly customizable way to manage, curate, publish, analyze and monetize your video content.

19. Wowza

Wowza is a customizable live streaming platform where you can broadcast video, live and on-demand. It has 2 key products namely Wowza Streaming Cloud and Wowza Streaming Engine. The Streaming Cloud has a variety of features focused on providing content access to global audiences with low latency. Streaming Engine, on the other hand, is widely used in the industry for self-hosted streaming.

20. DaCast

DaCast is a white-label video streaming platform that delivers live and VOD streaming over the Akamai CDN. What makes it stands out is the fact that you can stream to the cloud instead of using your device space. Unlike YouTube, Facebook and other consumer oriented platforms, DaCast is a B2B platform and used by many video producers from TV and radio stations, event production companies, school and university networks, as well as church and house of worship networks.

21. Cloudcast

When it comes to running a webinar or online workshop, you may consider Crowdcast’s live streaming service. It lets you send emails to audience within the app, accept payments with ease, share highlights on social media and more.

22. BeLive

Another live streaming platform that allows you to broadcast live video, sharing experiences and passions, and meet new people and places. Basically it has 3 broadcasting modes namely solo, interview and talk show for multi-guest. One of the cool interaction features it offers is that you can bring your Facebook audience’s comments to your screen while interacting with viewers.

23. Crackle

Sony Crackle provides ad-supported video entertainment content in the form of streaming media. The free live streaming platform allows users to stream short videos or full movies to entertain their viewers. However the videos can only be kept for a short period of time. Its interface is intuitive and equipped with easy sharing feature where you can share the videos through SMS, social networks and emails.

24. Smashcast.tv

Smashcast is another famous site in gaming and eSports live streaming. The platform focuses on a delay-free experience between broadcasters and viewers, and optimizing mobile user experience and monetization technologies. One of its awesome viewer engagement features called “Hype-o-Meter”, it helps eSports fan cheer for their favorite teams.

25. Muvi

Muvi is another live streaming platforms focused on OTT media. You can use it to live stream sports, events, news as well as business conferences to your audience. The live streaming service is highly customizable and it supports all kind of requirements from something as complex as live streaming TV channel feeds to something as simple as laptop and mobile camera based feeds.

26. Streamago

Streamago offers you a great way to socialize through live video and live video selfies with friends and followers. This is not a live streaming service for big events. Instead it offers a simple way to stream your life events for a small community of people watching.

27. Zype

Zype is the cloud video distribution service for OTT. It offers most of the video content tools you need to get your video streaming business to market effectively. Some of its notable features include direct web publishing tools, Javascript and WordPress plugins, connected TV and mobile app builders, partner marketplace and many more.

28. Streamshark Live Streaming

The StreamShark is another live streaming service is optimised to share your next event in real time to a global audience. It supports 360 full degree videos, and you can customize the colors of video player to match your organizations branding. Its real time statistics engine gives you insight on how viewers are engaging with your content. Streamshark also has a great embed restriction feature allowing you to make sure content can only be played on specific pages or domains.

29. Bambuser

Bambuser delivers low latency, live video streaming technology and infrastructure as a service. Bambuser focuses on B2B offering, the Iris platform, which provides mobile live video for brands, organizations and app developers. Users connect with the app for Android and iOS devices. The service can also be used through webcams or cameras connected to computers. After live broadcast ends, the streamed video can be saved to your account for other people’s viewing.

30. Freedocast

With Freedocast, you can broadcast live video and chat with other users. The service comes with Flash video encoder which provides you the best quality streaming. Freedocast also enables you to add effects to videos, making your PC a studio.