Digital Samba English Blog

Digital Samba Plans: Comparing Free vs. Paid Options for Video Conferencing

Written by Digital Samba | January 31, 2024

The significance of video conferencing has increased in today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape. It has transformed communication across diverse sectors, including Telehealth, e-learning, sales and marketing, etc.

As more and more organisations focus on working together online, the demand for good video conferencing tools is going up. Digital Samba is a leader in this area, offering pre-built video conferencing solutions and using an easy-to-use low-code approach. With just a few lines of code, you can easily add high-quality video conferencing to your system, complete with all the features you need. Digital Samba makes it simple to improve how you collaborate online.

Table of Contents

  1. Understanding Digital Samba plans
  2. How to decide which package is best for you 
  3. Digital Samba Free vs. Paid 
  4. Free plan version
  5. Create & Create S plans
  6. Volume pricing (paid)
  7. Choose the perfect Digital Samba Plan for ultimate connectivity

Behind its simple embedding, Digital Samba automatically handles all video infrastructure, capacity scaling, transmission protocols, and quality management. With Digital Samba’s intuitive and modern UI, it's as simple as 'grab and embed' — that ensures a user-friendly experience. Developers don't need any specialised video knowledge.

Our innovative offerings enhance the seamless integration of video conferencing capabilities, facilitating improved communication and collaboration for businesses and individuals alike.

In this article, we will explore Digital Samba plans, examining free and paid plans, their advantages and limitations and their scope of use. 

Understanding Digital Samba plans

Digital Samba offers a comprehensive video conferencing pricing structure that caters to diverse user needs. Users can explore several features, including HD video, cloud recordings, whiteboard, group chat, waiting room, and more, to streamline their virtual collaboration experiences. 

Though the Free plan has limitations, it is the best option for individual users and companies who want to explore the value-add of adding video conferencing to their applications. The “Create” and “Create S” plans serve as foundational options, providing essential tools for effective communication. 

Digital Samba understands the diverse needs of its users, and that's why we're introducing our "Volume Pricing" plans. These plans are designed to meet the demands of large-scale operations, ensuring that our services align perfectly with your business needs.

Upgrade to a solution that grows with you — choose Digital Samba's Volume Pricing for seamless scalability and cost-effectiveness.

How to decide which package is best for you 

Several factors should guide your decision-making process when determining the most suitable Digital Samba plan for your needs.

Digital Samba Free vs. Paid 

Whether opting for the free plan or the enhanced capabilities offered in the paid options, users can expect Digital Samba's commitment to delivering reliable, secure and cutting-edge video conferencing solutions

But before we discuss the features of each Digital Samba plan in detail, here’s a comparison table to show all our plans side-by-side.

 

Free plan version

Our free plan is designed to allow you test all features of Digital Samba, for any use case. You can use it to test the waters and, if you use less than 10,000 participation minutes each month and don't mind Digital Samba's logo being displayed, even use it for small live projects. 

  • Participation minutes: The Digital Samba Free plan provides users with 10,000 participation minutes, allowing ample time for virtual meetings, discussions and collaborative sessions.
  • Cloud recordings: Users of the Free plan can receive 60 minutes of monthly cloud recordings. This feature facilitates capturing and revisiting critical moments of the virtual meetings. The maximum recording length for users on the Free plan is limited to 15 minutes per session.
  • Collaboration features: The Free plan offers a range of collaboration features, including cloud recordings, group chat, screen share, video/audio muting, waiting room functionality, hand raise feature and many more. 
  • Branding & UI: For branding and user interface (UI) customisation, the Free plan includes support for video SDK, friendly and vanity URLs, colour branding, virtual backgrounds, favicon and dark mode. 
  • Security & privacy features: In terms of security and privacy, the Free plan includes transport layer security (TLS), datagram transport layer security encryption (DTLS ), token-based security and anonymised user IDs.
  • Pricing: The Digital Samba Free Plan, as the name suggests, is completely free, providing a valuable entry point for individual users seeking basic video conferencing capabilities.

Limitations

While the Free plan offers a full set of features, including end-to-end encryption (E2EE), there are some limitations. Notable exclusions: logo branding, CNAME/white labelling for enhanced customisation, live transcriptions, closed captioning and priority integration support.

Create & Create S plans - 99 Euro

The Create plan is ideal for individuals looking to integrate video call functionality into event platforms or webinar software solutions. With 25,000 participation minutes per month and advanced features like transcriptions, logo and colour branding, roles and permissions, this plan caters to more specific requirements. The Create plan supports 100 concurrent participants and 5 concurrent sessions. 

Create S plan, tailored for small meetings, provides the same features as the Create plan, including 25,000 participation minutes, but it also accommodates 40 concurrent participants and supports 20 concurrent sessions. Thus, the Create S and S-group plans are an ideal choice when businesses need to host numerous one-on-one calls within the app at the same time.

Let’s discuss the different features of the Create plans.

  • Participation minutes: The Create plan substantially increases participation minutes, providing users with 25,000 minutes. Additionally, users can acquire extra participation minutes at a rate of €0.004/minute.
  • Cloud recordings: Recordings under the Create and Create S plans are securely stored within Digital Samba's infrastructure. Digital Samba applies charges for cumulative recording minutes at the end of the billing cycle, with a rate of €0.013/minute. Also, the charge for cloud storage/minute is €0.003. Users can download and remove recordings before the billing period concludes to manage costs.
  • Collaboration features: Building upon the Free plan's features, the Create plans also offer roles & permissions and transcriptions (captions). Pricing for captions is €0.023 per minute. This array of collaboration tools enhances the overall experience and supports diverse communication needs. 
  • Branding & UI: The Create plans allow for extensive branding and UI customisation, featuring all Free plan features, logo branding and the option to remove the Digital Samba badge. 
  • Security & privacy features: Regarding video conferencing security and privacy, the Create plans include token-based security, TLS/DTLS encryption, and anonymised user IDs.
  • Pricing: The Digital Samba Create Plans are available at a monthly subscription fee of €99, offering an enhanced set of features and increased participation minutes compared to the Free plan.

Limitations

While the Create plans provide robust features, there are some limitations, too. The Create plan supports up to 5 concurrent sessions, while with the Create S plan users can conduct up to 20 concurrent sessions with 40 participants. Advanced features, such as CNAME/white-labelling and specific security enhancements, are not included. For more details about our advanced S plans, please feel free to contact us.

Volume Pricing

Our sales team is happy to help you explore our various Volume Pricing options.

  • Concurrent participants per session: Volume Pricing offers up to 2000 Concurrent participants per session, while the CREATE and CREATE S plans offer up to 100 participants.
  • Participation minutes: The Volume Pricing plans offer very generous levels of monthly participation minutes where overage is available at the discounted rates down to €0.0026/min.
  • Cloud recordings: Cloud recordings usage rates are discounted in Volume Pricing, with discounts for cloud recordings and storage reaching €0.0085 and €0.0020 per minute, respectively.
  • Collaboration features: The Volume Pricing plans entail all the features available in the Free, Create, and Create S plans,  such as roles & permissions, AI-powered captions, etc. The lowest available rate for transcriptions is €0.0150/minute. 
  • Branding & UI: The Volume Pricing plans offer all the features available in the Free, Create, and Create S plans, such as colour and logo branding, virtual backgrounds, SDKs, etc. They also provide CNAME/white-labelling for enhanced brand integration.
  • Security & privacy features: All our plans include security & privacy as Digital Samba was built with a privacy first mindset. Our Volume Pricing plans allow our legal teams to work more closely with yours and take into account any custom Data Processing Agreement terms you may require for your country's jurisdiction or use case.
  • Input into roadmap: Our higher Volume Pricing plans allow you to actively contribute to our development roadmap through feedback and suggestions. This ensures your needs and priorities are acknowledged in transforming Digital Samba.
  • Priority support: Enjoy premium support and even a direct Slack channel with our team for an even more more agile support experience than the one we can provide with our ticketing system.

For detailed pricing information on the Volume Pricing plans, please contact Digital Samba’s sales team. This personalised approach allows for tailored solutions based on each business's unique requirements and scale. Volume Pricing plans are offered as annual subscription terms, with monthly payments.

Limitations

Our highest capacity Volume Pricing plans are delivered without limitations in Concurrent Sessions or Concurrent Participants. These plans are designed to accommodate the diverse needs of large-scale operations, providing a flexible and feature-rich solution without imposing restrictions on daily usage.

Choose the perfect Digital Samba Plan for ultimate connectivity 

Experience effortless collaboration customised just for you with Digital Samba. Whether you're an individual looking for essential features or a business seeking advanced customisation and scalability, Digital Samba's plans - Free, Create, Create S and Volume Pricing - cater to your needs.

Easily upgrade through the dashboard or reach out to our dedicated sales team for more information on volume pricing. Elevate your collaboration game with Digital Samba!

Select the Digital Samba plan that aligns with your connectivity requirements, ensuring a superior video conferencing experience. Contact us today!