On the surface, Panopto and Microsoft Stream appear to be very similar solutions for recording, managing and sharing your organization’s videos. There are, however, a number of fundamental differences that may impact your ability to scale and deliver live and on-demand video. If you’re considering an alternative to Microsoft Stream, Panopto offers a more complete feature set that can better support any organization’s unique video communication needs.
In September 2020, Microsoft announced the formation of a new Microsoft Stream product and the end-of-life (EOL) of the current Microsoft Stream, now renamed Microsoft Stream (Classic). Microsoft Stream (Classic) will sunset and no further product investments will be made. New Stream is not yet available, and does not have an announced date.
When compared to the prior Stream product, the new Stream product will have significant product deficiencies, including reduced playback quality, no mobile playback, no screen recording, no video search, no captioning, and no embed codes. Customers who migrate to new Stream will also find that all existing links and embed codes will break one year after retirement date. The migration path is complicated and may require multiple migrations. If you are an existing Stream (Classic) customer, or are considering new Stream, we recommend you understand and consider their announcement, product features, and roadmap.
Microsoft Stream, even when bundled with Office 365, lacks many of the productivity benefits that video offers for collaboration and communication. It does not include the features, capabilities, and third party integrations organizations need to make video easy and manageable.
Stream, for example, cannot be integrated with solutions outside of the Microsoft platform, including essential Learning Management Solutions (LMSs) such as Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, Cornerstone, Saba, Bridge, and Brightspace that many organizations use to track viewing completion. It does not support integration with mission-critical enterprise solutions such as Salesforce, Zoom, GoToMeeting, and Slack.
The reality is that Stream is primarily intended as a video playback experience for Microsoft Teams users, not a solution for video creators, content managers, or administrators.
Furthermore, because Stream is included with Office 365, several organizations consider it to be “Free.” But is it?
When comparing the total cost of ownership (TCO) of Panopto vs. Stream, many discover Panopto is substantially more affordable because Microsoft Stream has hidden storage, productivity, administration, and support costs that are especially high for large organizations.
Additional storage, productivity, administration, and support costs of Stream can be more than $350,000/year for an organization with over 10,000 employees. Administration can be costly given the heavy dependency on the Office 365 tenant administrator to change Stream settings or permissions. This does not include the additional costs that will be incurred from maintaining Stream (Classic) during its EOL period and migrating to New Stream. With this shift to New Stream from Stream (Classic), organizations will have to absorb high migration costs and a significant loss of employee productivity, both for administrators and users. Administrators should be wary of the implications of using an end-of-life and/or significantly under featured video product.
In August 2020, Microsoft also introduced new changes for certain types of education customers that eliminate support for cloud recording in Stream. This means that many of these customers may need to upgrade to more expensive licensing plans, and also closely watch their Azure storage costs. You can read more about these new changes here.
The comparison table below summarizes the feature differences between Panopto and Microsoft Stream. In addition to third party support and total cost of ownership, there are significant differences in capabilities:
Dive deeper into how Microsoft Stream compares to Panopto in our detailed technical white paper. In the white paper, we cover 18 questions you should consider when evaluating Microsoft Stream across the following:
Complete the adjacent form to download the white paper now.