We have used it for 8 years, and we have not had any significant downtime or issues. It's an established platform, which has been fairly stable also for higher usage. It can scale with bigger video needs - but tbh, nowadays all platforms can do that. So whats best? They have delivered video's fine. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
There are many downsides in my experience. Let me address a few, to make it more easy for you to decide to stay or migrate or start with them.
1. Package based pricing
First of all - they don't charge based on usage, but based on packages. This means you are always paying for storage, streams and views that you might not use. When you go slightly over, they come right away with overage charges.
Most important tho, is their dishonest way of charging for storage.
2. Misleading storage charges
They charge you both for the different variants stored (fair), ánd the original video size that they remove. This means, storage charges are heavily inflated. In our case - after migrating to a new solution, we went from 22TB stored to 6.6TB stored. This eventually leads to a 78% reduction in our expenses regarding our video solution.
3. Limited customization options
They offer very limited customization options in settings and player. When you're working with it, you think it's fine. However after migrating, we realize how much options we have been missing. Think in customizations to the player, API features etc. Our developers are very happy after the migration.
4. High cost relative to value
Because of inflated storage figures and required package upgrades, we paid significantly more than necessary. After switching providers, our annual streaming costs dropped 78 % (saving roughly USD 14,000) while maintaining the same usage. Migration took about one week and was straightforward. Our biggest regret is that we did not switch sooner.
5. Account managers are sales representatives
They call them support and account managers. However, to be honest, they are there just to push you into higher packages. Coming with 'you have significant overages, if you upgrade to a higher package we can waive them'. I'm not sure if this is something you can expect from a company that overcharges this much - but from account managers I expect them to look also into a ways to help their customers, not only how to get the most money out of them. But that might be just a hope that more companies don't do.
Overall, it has been stable to use. Just their opaque and unfair pricing and limited functionalities make it not a good choice. There are many other solutions in the market that you should try before using JW player. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
