Cincopa vs. Kaltura

Cincopa is great for small businesses that need to post photo or video galleries on their websites. Cincopa can do many other things, however, I have only used them for photo galleries. Cincopa also makes it easy to post a video on websites.

Kaltura and Mediaspace are well suited for any business that has a need for an easy to use video conversion software. We use the SaaS solution, but Kaltura is also open-sourced which means if you have the server resources available, you could get Kaltura up-and-running for a minimal cost or customize it to your hearts content. We have gone with the SaaS solution to minimize the amount of administration required as well as give us the benefit of getting the most-up-to-date version of the software. There are ways to monetize videos by adding ads and other things, but unfortunately I don't have much experience with these since we are a University. Kaltura is excellent from our University's perspective because it gives our campus a way to share their videos in a very easy to use package that basically "just works." If you're a small company or institution that doesn't need a lot of control over the back-end of a video solution, then there may be other, better alternatives that are free such as YouTube.

• Responsive - if your platform is not responsive it will display the gallery this way across all platforms.
• Fast - if you have slow uploads it will increase your load speed.
• Easy - you can upload all your photos at once or one at a time. Then use a preset gallery to display them.

• Kaltura Classroom is one of the best ways to teach online, including the capacity of instructors to record classes directly to the LMS
• Integrates very well with enterprise application via strong API system
• Cutting edge implementation of emerging technologies like 360 videos
• Robust and flexible transcoding profiles

Incentivized

• Cincopa only allows for one size of photo. For example, if I want to include a vertical photo and a horizontal one, I have to have the Cincopa team custom-code this feature for me. It should be an out-of-box feature.
• Our designer had to put some parameters in Cincopa, so that the galleries fit in well with our website. It's not intuitive to the average person.
• The analytics are very lacking. We have a podcast page where about four to five podcast series live, but the analytics are the same for all of those series because Cincopa only records when someone sees the first slide of a gallery, not individual slides. So, there's no way to know if one podcast is more popular than the other. And, since Cincopa is an iframe, we can't gather this data with Google Analytics either.

• As it relates to the LMS integration, we would like to see improved workflow. But that may be just as much a Canvas issue as a Kaltura issue.
• I would like to see the ability to add inline, anchored comments to the video timeline.
• We are seeing issues with compatibility with certain browsers - especially Chrome. The faster Kaltura can move away from Flash the better.
• The capture appliance (CaptureSpace Lite) needs to be reconsidered. It's not intutive enough.

Incentivized

It solved the problems we were facing at the time.

The choice to renew our subscription does not belong to us, though we are able to provide input. We are aware of competitive products who have matured in the past three years, and we are aware now of alternatives to conventional plugin usage (LTI).

Cincopa is very easy to use, especially to the uninitiated. You don't need a degree in CS or years of experience to set-up a fantastic looking gallery. The interface is self-explanatory for the most part and very easy to use. The drag-and-drop functionality makes it simple and inviting for all users.

Incentivized

The first line support agents seldom are able to diagnose or troubleshoot any problems that we have. These agents simply open support tickets in their system which are escalated to a foreign level 2 support agent which creates at least a day delay between reporting a problem and getting initial feedback. Any back-and-forth questions add at least another day delay.

Incentivized

When looking for a gallery system on BigCommerce, we looked at POWr, Owl Carousel, and JuiceBox. We settled on Cincopa due to the embed options, drag-and-drop functionality, and the lack of development needed to integrate into our website. Additionally, Cincopa's price point (especially with a free option) put it in the lead over similar products like JuiceBox.

Incentivized

Panopto is a much cheaper option (based on a pay per view model) but the user experience is not nearly as good. The video portal UI is difficult to navigate and the recording feature requires downloading separate desktop software that differs greatly from PC to MAC. Inline quizzing features are far behind Kaltura. It does have stronger analytics tools but they are the type that are better exported to .csv and processed by an advanced Excel user. Vimeo Pro is a very cheap and solid option for a small program or business that is just starting out, but it isn't highly searchable, it doesn't support a large body of users and does not offer any type of online features. It isn't really much more than a repository but it is a bit nicer than using freeware such as YouTube.

Incentivized

• We use the tool primarily as a customer loyalty measure. Customers can view all submitted images and videos, also from other people and share with other people.
• In addition, the tool serves to promote the image of our company by giving the customer pleasure. The residence time of the customers on the page with the picture gallery is very high.

• Managing video content with the KMC has greatly reduced the amount of hours previously needed to manage.
• User issues ie: uploading video, viewing video has been greatly reduced.
• Increased user engagement with using video in LMS courses. We currently have 6,929 videos on our system. Last month , 2/1/14, 17,623 videos were viewed at least 75% of the way through.