Ant Media Server is a media server software that provides real-time, live, and on-demand-based video streaming capabilities for any application that requires it.
Ant Media Server provides Community and Enterprise Editions that come with different feature sets. Please look here for more details
Ant Media Server Community Edition is free and comes with limited functions. Please check the comparison table here.
Ant Media Server Enterprise Edition is a paid version and contains all advanced features. It has subscription-based packages and also provides a Perpetual License as well for the use of Ant Media Server.
Subscription-based packages are offered in a periodical time of renewal which is hourly, monthly, and yearly. A perpetual license is offered with unlimited use. Please check the pricing table here.
In addition, Enterprise Edition is also offered with Pay As You Go (PAYG) based subscription model and it’s only charged per hour when it’s up and running. Please look here for more details about PAYG based model.
The subscription-based licenses come with auto-renewal capability and your license is automatically renewed for predefined periods such as monthly, yearly, and triannually to use Ant Media Server.
A Perpetual license is a one-time license and comes with an unlimited period of use. However, if you want to get the benefit of Software Upgrades, you should subscribe to the Software Upgrade package after 1 year and regularly if you prefer.
The cluster license of Ant Media Server allows more than one Enterprise Edition to work in a synchronized way based on the structure of the origin and edge servers. It also enables auto scalability of Ant Media Server.
No. There is no additional price added on top of license fees.
Yes. You can easily scale Ant Media Server in horizontal or vertical mode. You can add more CPUs on the existing server or more instances of Enterprise Edition to reach a higher capacity.
Yes. You can easily set up and configure Ant Media in autoscale mode.
If you are using on-premise servers, you can use Kubernetes to set up that easily.
If you are using Marketplace Servers such as AWS or Azure or Alibaba, you could easily set up an autoscale configuration to add a new node when any server is overloaded.
Ant Media Server Enterprise Edition is licensed per server. Therefore, if you will utilize 3 servers, then you will have to purchase 3 Enterprise Edition licenses.
The license itself does not limit any number of viewers or broadcasters, therefore you can use any type of server to have the streaming capacity you plan to.
Plus, you can get free mobile SDKs for Android, iOS, RN, Flutter, and Unity platforms when you purchase the license.
Ant Media Server comes with a benchmark table that you can always refer to find out what type of hardware you will need to handle your streaming needs.
According to benchmarking table of Ant Media Server
- On 4 Core CPU Server, you can have either 50 broadcasts or 200 viewers
- On 8 Core CPU Server, you can have either 100 broadcasts or 400 viewers
- On 16 Core CPU Server, you can have either 200 broadcasts or 800 viewers
- On 32 Core CPU Server, you can have either 400 broadcasts or 2000 viewers
For the memory size starting with 8GB of memory should be fine. However, if you select 8 Core or above, you should consider having 16GB of memory available.
Yes. Ant Media Server interacts in periodical time periods with its License Manager distributed worldwide to ensure that the license is being used and active. In case you have no Internet access, the license key will not be validated and your server will not run.
No. Ant Media Server is not provided as SaaS platform. It’s a standalone software that you will need to install and start using in order to provide real-time and live video streaming sessions.
Yes, definitely. Ant Media Server enables any user to build an Online Video Platform to provide SaaS-based video streaming services.
Yes, definitely. Ant Media Server enables any Datacenter or company to provide hosted video streaming solutions.
Ant Media Server supports 0.5 secs. latency if you are using WebRTC protocol. However, if you use DASH, you can have 3-5 secs. latency and if you use HLS, you have 10-12 secs. latency.
Ant Media Server supports WebRTC, DASH(CMAF), and HLS protocols to deliver the streaming sessions. In addition, RTMP output is also provided for streaming purposes to any endpoint including Social Media.
Ant Media Server supports H.264, H.265, and VP8 codes for the live streaming sessions. For VoD (Video On Demand), MP4 and HLS formats are also supported.
Yes, you can record any video sessions on Ant Media Server. Recording formats are MP4, WebM, and HLS. It can be recorded in any local or remote storage or even AWS S3 with auto integration.
Check out a more detailed and technical FAQ on our documents page.
You can also join our Ant Media Server Community called Ant Colony here.