Channel Limits -- New Wowza Pricing

[Roger_Villanueva]

Hi!

I’m currently subscribed to legacy $65/month Wowza Streaming Engine subscription plan. I was advised that my subscription plan will be $75/month starting on June 1, 2021 and “the plan will be limited to a maximum of 10 simultaneous TRANSCODER CHANNELS (inbound) per instance, measured within each billing cycle.”

On the FAQ section of Wowza website, there’s an entry which is a bit confusing for me:

"Is there a limit on the number of CONCURRENT CHANNELS per instance per month?

Yes, you are limited to a maximum of 10 CONCURRENT CHANNELS per instance per month. If you exceed 10 concurrent channels per instance, you will be charged at an incremental rate for every instance required to achieve a maximum of 10 concurrent channels per instance."

I have a few questions related to the above:

1. What is the definition of a channel?
2. What if I have 11 APPLICATIONS but TRANSCODING IS NOT ENABLED, are they considered as 11 CHANNELS?
3. Is that entry on the FAQ, actually refers to CONCURRENT TRANSCODING CHANNELS.?

I’m asking this because I have more than 10 applications running in some of my instances but transcoding is not enabled in any of them. I’m worried that I might be billed beyond $75/month.for the overages.

Thank you.

[Rose_Power-Wowza_Com]

Thanks for the question and I’ll see to it we make that description easier to understand. As far as the answer to your question:

A “channel” is a stream that is being transcoded. Period. Not the number of actual transcodes from the stream. Not the number of streams or applications coming into the server. Just the number of streams going into the TRANSCODER. The “10 concurrent channels” means streams from multiple camera’s, encoders, etc. at the same time going into the transcoder.

If you are not using the transcoder, this doesn’t apply.

Hope that helps a bit. We’ll get that description updated asap- thanks.

[Keoni_Mahelona]

Does this apply to audio only transcoding?

[Rose_Power-Wowza_Com]

Yes it does @Keoni_Mahelona, audio only is still an incoming stream as far as how wowza ingests it so it still applies above and some people use the transcoder for audio only codecs.

You are limited to a maximum of 10 concurrent incoming sources per instance per month.
This means streams from multiple cameras, encoders, etc. at the same time and so that would include 10 audio only streams at the same time.

[Keoni_Mahelona]

Thank you. I guess I’ll find out in my next bill what that costs me? This is a pricing change which I’m not super happy about. I’ve got 21 incoming audio streams being encoded into muilti-birate HLS. It works great - super fast playback start for internet radio. So how much extra will I have to pay for the additional 11 channels on the 1 instance? We’re also on a non-profit account as we’re a small, indigenous, non-profit.