Table of Contents
Video streaming has become more popular than ever before, with live broadcasts drawing huge audiences. Industry experts predict that the streaming sector will generate revenue of over $184.27 billion by 2027. Among the leading platforms in this space is Uscreen, which offers a comprehensive all-in-one solution for video creators and businesses looking to host, sell, and promote their content.
This detailed review of Uscreen covers its main features, advantages, and disadvantages to help you decide if it’s the right platform for your needs. Let’s dive in.
Uscreen Overview
Uscreen is a versatile platform that combines Video on Demand (VOD) and Over-the-Top (OTT) streaming capabilities. It helps users host, promote, distribute, and monetize videos across various channels. One of its key benefits is that it allows the creation of custom apps for both mobile devices and smart TVs, all without additional commission fees.
The platform was launched in 2015 and has grown to include a dedicated team of over 70 experts worldwide. It supports around 11,000 video creators and reaches more than 8.5 million viewers in 195 countries. This extensive network demonstrates its reliability and scalability. Uscreen enables users to monetize diverse video content such as fitness, entertainment, educational courses, faith-based videos, and eCommerce product videos, all managed through an intuitive dashboard that eliminates the need for coding or third-party tools.
Uscreen’s feature set is designed to help entrepreneurs and content creators build and grow a streaming service business. Here are some of its core capabilities:
- Branded Websites and Apps – Customize your online presence with theme options, logo placements, colors, and advanced modifications using CSS and HTML to ensure your platform reflects your brand identity.
- A Central Video CMS – Manage your video library efficiently within a unified system that allows uploading, organizing, and distributing content seamlessly.
- Video Hosting – All plans include free hosting, with the option to use your own domain name for branding consistency.
- Fast App Deployment – Launch your mobile and TV apps quickly, typically within 30-60 days, without any coding, thanks to Uscreen’s OTT distribution services.
- Live Streaming Capabilities – Stream live in HD directly from your admin panel or via extra apps, and monetize your live broadcasts.
- Multiple Monetization Options – Generate revenue through subscriptions, free trials, rentals, or pay-per-view models tailored to your audience.
- Marketing Tools – Leverage features like coupons, upsells, lead generation, discounts, and gift cards to grow your subscriber base and boost sales.
- Detailed Analytics – Access comprehensive reports to track video performance, viewer engagement, and sales metrics for informed decision-making.
- Community Engagement – Build a loyal audience by fostering interaction through comments, discussions, and engagement tools directly within the platform.
- Educational Resources – Uscreen provides a range of helpful materials including a blog, podcasts, video tutorials, a help center, and FAQs to support your success.
Since payment plans cover all functionalities, you won’t need to pay extra for encoding or bandwidth. You can simply upload your content with peace of mind about hidden costs.
Key Features
1. Video CMS
Uscreen provides a centralized content management system that allows you to upload, organize, and distribute your videos effortlessly. The platform’s built-in video hosting makes it easy to manage your library directly within the CMS. You can start by uploading multiple videos at once using the bulk uploader feature. Besides videos, the system supports additional media types, enabling you to create a rich multimedia experience for your audience.Video files, documents, images, presentations, and even live streams can be uploaded and managed effortlessly.
The process is simple: go to your dashboard’s Content section, then select Videos, and simply drag and drop your files into the upload area. You also have the option to upload videos directly from your Dropbox account for added convenience. This feature allows you to pick up your upload where you left off, even if you lose internet connection or navigate away from the page, ensuring your progress is saved.
They provide fast transcoding and guarantee seamless playback without buffering. Just be sure to use one of the supported browsers listed in their help articles and keep your uploads under 13GB for the best results.
After uploading, you can customize your videos with titles, descriptions, and subtitles, and even offer viewers options to download the videos if desired. These customization options are accessible from the Video section in your admin area, where you can also organize your content into playlists, collections, and chapters, effectively creating series or courses for your audience.
In addition, you can organize your videos into collections and create structured series. You also have control over their release schedule, allowing you to set specific publication and expiration dates that automatically manage your content’s availability.
The platform offers a range of additional features, including:
– Uploading custom thumbnails for each video.
– Adding captions and subtitles for accessibility.
– Implementing basic SEO elements like meta tags and search keywords.
– Integrating with Vimeo and Wistia for hosting options.
– Selecting a trailer video to preview your content.
– Applying filters to make content discovery easier for viewers.
Moreover, there’s a geo-blocking feature that lets you restrict access to certain videos or your entire platform based on user location.
Keep in mind, Uscreen focuses on hosting and monetizing videos. It doesn’t support other content types such as quizzes or assignments. Overall, the platform is very user-friendly, with a sidebar menu that provides quick access to all functions, making content management straightforward and efficient.
Heading: Building Your Website
Uscreen also offers a website builder to help you create a professional site for your video-on-demand services. You can use this website to showcase and promote your videos while engaging your audience. The builder requires no coding skills and provides a visual interface with ready-made themes, automatic updates, and free hosting, enabling you to launch your site quickly and easily.The themes offered are visually appealing, adaptable, and optimized for mobile devices.
They also include multiple pages such as a homepage, checkout page, subscription page, and others. Once you pick a theme you like, you can easily customize its look to suit your preferences. Adjust the text, color schemes, images, and branding elements to match your style. Additionally, each theme provides a variety of blocks and customizable components like main banners and subtitle sections to enhance your site’s design.
Most themes allow you to add testimonials, videos, and even social media sharing features directly on your homepage. You can preview how your site will look on desktops and smartphones from the top right corner of the editor. Your homepage also offers options to manage SEO settings, including adjusting the SEO Title, Description, URL handle, and tags for videos, video collections, live events, categories, and authors.
While there aren’t tags for categories or author sections, the platform manages other SEO elements automatically, such as open graph tags and H1 markup. However, pre-designed themes have some limitations—they don’t allow moving or adding new blocks beyond the default ones, so customization is mostly limited to changing existing elements like text, colors, titles, and images. For more extensive modifications, a custom code Editor is available.
Other website customization features include the ability to use a custom domain, free hosting, multilingual support, and free SSL certificates for checkout and login pages.
Launching branded OTT apps is also possible with Uscreen. You can deploy your apps on smart TVs and mobile devices, allowing viewers to access your live streams, videos, and series from any location. The apps are compatible with iOS and Android smartphones, as well as popular smart TV platforms like Roku, Apple TV, Android TV, and Amazon Fire TV.
Uscreen handles the complex tasks for you, including publishing, ongoing maintenance, and updates to keep everything current. You also have full freedom to customize the branding and design of your apps to suit your style and needs.
Additional features of the app include support for in-app purchases, notifications, live streaming, offline viewing, and detailed analytics. The standard release timeframe is between 30 and 60 days, and the app allows users to listen to audio even when their phone is locked. You also have the option to launch a dedicated Apple Watch app, letting viewers control playback directly from their wrist during workouts.
Please note that branded OTT apps are only available with the custom plan, which might require an additional fee to access.
4. Video Marketing Tools
Uscreen offers a comprehensive suite of marketing tools designed to help you grow your video streaming business. These tools are tailored for various objectives, such as customer retention, cross-selling, upselling, reducing subscriber churn, and recovering abandoned carts.
The Reduce Churn Tool is automated and designed to prevent cancellations by prompting users when they attempt to cancel their subscriptions. It collects feedback from those canceling, helping you understand why they are leaving. Once someone tries to cancel, the system automatically initiates a sequence of win-back offers and emails to encourage them to stay and continue paying subscribers.
Subscription Upsell
Subscription upselling is a powerful marketing strategy designed to boost the overall value of your existing customers’ purchases. For example, when a customer opts for a monthly plan, your system can automatically offer them discounts if they upgrade to an annual subscription. Presenting attractive discounts encourages customers to switch to the longer-term option, which benefits both parties. Not only does this approach increase your sales revenue, but it also fosters stronger customer loyalty by rewarding their commitment.
Leadzen
Leadzen is an integrated tool that automatically generates sales funnels and captures leads, transforming prospects into paying customers. It simplifies the process of expanding your email list by automating follow-up sequences that guide potential clients toward making a purchase. The platform offers ready-to-use, responsive landing page templates and a drag-and-drop builder to create customized pages easily. You can quickly design attractive landing pages, see live results as you make changes, and preview how your pages will look on both desktop and mobile devices. These pages are essential for converting visitors into subscribers by offering incentives such as free giveaways or flash sales, encouraging them to share their email addresses with you. You can easily set up automated email campaigns to nurture new leads. All the email addresses gathered are saved in the Leadzen system, allowing you to download your contact list whenever needed. Additionally, you can integrate Leadzen with your existing membership platforms to streamline your outreach efforts. Create customized discounts and special offers using the Coupons feature. These can be applied to subscriptions, individual videos, or bundles, and you can specify an expiration date or limit the number of redemptions. These coupons help in nurturing potential customers, encouraging loyalty, boosting sales, and facilitating upselling. The Abandoned Cart tool enables you to recover nearly-lost customers who added items to their cart but didn’t complete their purchase. When activated, it automatically sends follow-up emails with discount offers to entice them to finalize their checkout. You can choose the type of offer and discount amount, and set the timing of these reminder emails—such as the first one 15 minutes after abandonment, the second six hours later, and a final reminder after a day. The system provides ready-to-use templates, which you can modify to match your brand tone, found under Settings > Email Templates. The platform also offers pre-designed email templates for various situations, like order confirmations, customer invitations, or payment issues, saving you time and effort. Furthermore, you can offer gift cards and reset free trials for leads who didn’t subscribe initially, giving those potential customers extra time to decide after their trial expires. Video Monetization is another key feature, allowing you to set the pricing structure for your video-on-demand (VOD) offerings. You can configure your payment setup depending on your business model and goals.The Pricing tab in the Content section is where you can set up how your videos are monetized. You have access to a variety of monetization options, including subscription plans (monthly, yearly, and beyond), one-time purchases, rental fees, lifetime access with a single payment, pay-per-view, and free trials. It’s possible to combine two or more of these options at the same time, giving you full flexibility to create a monetization strategy that suits your needs. Uscreen empowers you to choose how you want to generate revenue from your video-on-demand (VOD) content. You can also offer your videos for free by selecting the “Free for everyone” option when configuring your pricing. Beyond the basic monetization methods, Uscreen provides numerous tools to motivate viewers to make a purchase. For example, you can monetize live streams by showing ads and charging viewers in advance for access. Built-in features like countdown timers can help generate excitement and create a sense of urgency among your audience. There are additional options to offer special deals and discount coupons, which can help foster loyalty. Managing all these features is straightforward since everything is handled from a single administrative dashboard. Additionally, you can create and promote exclusive offers with coupons, all within an easy-to-use interface. To further enhance sales, Uscreen offers a streamlined checkout process with pre-designed sales pages optimized for conversions. Other features designed to increase revenue include in-app purchases via OTT, upselling and cross-selling strategies, tracking royalty payments and payouts, monitoring customer lifetime value, and integrating with platforms like Rewardful to create affiliate marketing programs. Regarding payment processing, Uscreen supports three key payment gateways: PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net. This allows you to accept payments seamlessly from your audience using widely used and trusted services. Uscreen allows you to accept payments through various methods, regardless of the currency or location. It supports payment in over 130 currencies, making it easy to conduct business globally. If other options are unavailable, your customers can easily complete their payment via Uscreen’s Payment Gateway. Additional features include secure SSL checkout, sales tracking, customizable checkout pages, and more. Uscreen provides a comprehensive analytics dashboard that tracks your subscribers’ activity, including insights into how long they watch videos on different devices. You can filter this data by specific videos, collections, countries, and device types. This information updates every 24 hours, keeping your data current. You can also identify which videos resonate most with your audience, helping you focus your efforts on creating similar content. These analytics integrate seamlessly with Uscreen’s marketing tools, allowing you to track results like your “reduce churn” automation effectiveness. Metrics such as Monthly Recurring Revenue and the number of Subscribers saved help you understand your growth and retention better. Managing affiliate payouts is straightforward with Author’s detailed analytics, which examine viewer behavior, total plays, and seconds watched for each content creator, ensuring fair and accurate payments. If you’d like to analyze these statistics in a spreadsheet, you can easily download the reports as CSV files. Leadzen, Uscreen’s built-in lead generation tool, offers in-depth analytics on your lead capture efforts, showing information like how many visitors submitted forms, opened welcome emails, or visited promotional pages, providing clear insights into your lead conversion performance.Besides tracking your marketing efforts and video views, Uscreen also provides detailed insights into your sales activities. You can conveniently access all your invoices and comprehensive financial reports in a single location for easy management. The platform offers various sales reporting tools, including: – Invoices: To help oversee your customer’s financial transactions. The video platform also supports live streaming in high definition, enabling you to create engaging, interactive broadcasts for your audience. This feature helps you grow your community and stream your events across the web, mobile apps, or OTT TV platforms. When setting up a live stream, you can activate the Live Chat feature under the Details tab in the Content > Live Event section. Live Chat fosters real-time engagement by allowing viewers to converse, comment, and share feedback during your broadcast. You can respond to comments, report inappropriate messages, delete comments, and block users to maintain a positive environment. Here’s how your audience views the live chat: they see a chat box alongside your video where conversations happen. You’ll also have access to information about the number of viewers and current active participants. Creating a live event is straightforward—you simply navigate to the Content > Live Event tab and input details such as the event title, start date, full description, and pre-registration information. The platform makes it easy to organize and launch your live streams successfully. To boost registration and create a sense of urgency, you can set up timers and showcase your registration options ahead of time. Once pre-registration for a live event begins, it will automatically appear on your video catalog page, making it easy for viewers to find. You also have the option to include your live events in subscription plans, offer them as one-time purchases, bundle multiple events, or set up pay-per-view access. Alternatively, you can make your live events available for free to attract more viewers. If you plan to host frequent live events, consider creating a dedicated page on your website listing all upcoming events. Viewers can also add your events directly into their calendars for easier access. To further boost attendance, set up email and push notifications that alert subscribers every time a new live event streams. Features like automatic recording of your streams, on-demand access immediately after the event, pre-sales pages to generate interest, and multi-bitrate adaptive streaming ensure a high-quality viewing experience regardless of viewers’ bandwidth or location. Note that without an OTT app, live streams won’t be compatible with platforms like Roku or Apple TV. While streaming on mobile devices is possible without an app, watching on TV requires the appropriate application. Providing users with a smooth viewing experience is just as important as the backend technology powering your content. Uscreen offers a built-in HTML5 video player that delivers fast, reliable playback in a fully branded, HD quality setup. This player uses modern ES6 JavaScript and supports features like speed controls, multi-bitrate HLS streaming, and captions or screen readers via VTT files. The platform’s videos are delivered via Akamai, a leading global CDN, ensuring secure, quick, and buffer-free streaming no matter where your audience is located. Uscreen seamlessly connects with a wide range of external business tools, including marketing platforms, email services, chatbots, affiliate networks, and data analytics software. These integrations are easily accessible through the Settings > Integrations tab. Native integrations with popular payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.net simplify checkout processes. Additionally, integrations with MailChimp, Zapier, Constant Contact, Salesforce, Google Sheets, Slack, and Google Analytics allow you to extend functionality without switching between different apps or dashboards. You can even connect Uscreen with thousands of other apps via Zapier or its API, providing flexibility and scalability for your business. Uscreen offers extensive support options, including dedicated onboarding specialists to help set up your platform, prompt email support, and direct billing assistance to streamline your account management. When a customer signs up, Uscreen designates an onboarding expert to guide them smoothly into the platform. The expert personally assists clients through the setup process and helps customize their account settings to suit their needs. This individualized support provides reassurance during onboarding, making sure clients have a positive experience from the very beginning. Uscreen offers round-the-clock email support, granting customers direct access to a dedicated team of specialists via email at any time. Clients can reach out whenever they face issues or have questions about the platform. The knowledge that their queries will be promptly addressed offers peace of mind and confidence in using the service. The platform also provides direct billing options, enabling clients to pay for their subscriptions quickly without dealing with third-party payment systems. This simplifies the billing process as users don’t need to manage multiple accounts or handle numerous invoices each month. Additionally, Uscreen offers specialized technical support, including one-on-one training sessions for new users and troubleshooting assistance for any technical problems encountered during platform use. Uscreen offers three subscription plans along with a 14-day free trial that costs just $1. The available plans are: This Video on Demand platform has several strengths and weaknesses I’ve identified through reviews and personal testing. Advantages include: Disadvantages include: In this review, I’ve outlined all essential features, pricing options, and the pros and cons of Uscreen. It stands out as a leading platform for video-on-demand services. Its affordability, combined with marketing tools, various monetization options, customizable website themes, and built-in video hosting, makes it a strong choice starting at $49/month. Additionally, you can launch your own branded OTT apps for mobile devices and smart TVs, although at higher costs. The platform offers comprehensive features to support a successful streaming business, all manageable through a centralized admin panel that includes a content management system for your video library. A 14-day free trial is available, helping you evaluate whether Uscreen is the right fit for your needs.
7. Analytics and Reporting.
– Annual Sales Report: To evaluate your business performance over the year.
– Monthly Sales Report: To monitor monthly sales trends.
– Coupons Report: To track the redemption rates of promotional coupons.
– Payouts Report: To view your earnings from Uscreen payments and PayPal transactions.
HTML5 Online Video Player
Third-Party Integrations
Uscreen Customer Support Services
Onboarding Experts
Email Assistance
Billing and Tech Support
Pricing Options
Advantages and Disadvantages of Uscreen
Summary