Tuesday, July 17, 2012

SlideShare Vs authorSTREAM: Which one fits the bill

SlideShare and authorSTREAM are two top PowerPoint sharing platforms in terms of user base, traffic, reach and feature set. Both the companies are being run by Indian entrepreneurs.

Both were started at a gap of almost a year. SlideShare was started in the year 2006 while authorSTREAM was started in 2007. Since then Slideshare saw tremendous growth in terms of traffic and content. Slideshare has always been marketing focused. Starting from day one they made sure that each big or small release creates the buzz and get covered by reputed tech blogs and websites. Slideshare known as world’s no. 1 presentation sharing platform few years back experimented with lot of things over the time and emerged as World’s Largest Content Marketing Platform. Slideshare now allows uploading of pdf, documents, videos and presentations.  SlideShare’s Silicon valley  connections, huge traffic and user base made it easy for them to have exclusive partnerships with WordPress, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google and other platforms. Today SlideShare has more than 29 million monthly unique visitors, more than 7.4 million presentations and 16 million registered users. SlideShare recently got acquired by Linkedin.

authorSTREAM on the other has been bit inactive in terms of marketing.  Though they have been continuously improving the product and are solely focused on PowerPoint, yet their growth story is somewhat like Vimeo and SlideShare’s is that of YouTube.

Just so you know, authorSTREAM was the first to launch premium plans in 2009 and later SlideShare followed the suit and Launched their Pro plans. authorSTREAM was the first to launch the presentation meeting solution Present Live. Later SlideShare too launched similar tool called Zipcast. authorSTREAM supports basic elements of PowerPoint like animation effects, narrations, audio, transition effects etc. in online output. authorSTREAM’s output is like PowerPoint slideshow replicated online. authorSTREAM also let users convert PowerPoint presentations to video much before Microsoft even thought of having it as a feature in PowerPoint 2010. Today, authorSTREAM has 3 million registered users, 1.3 million presentation uploads and around 5 million monthly visitors.

After 5 years where these two presentation sharing platforms stand and which one is best suited for your needs and offers real value for money, here is a comparison to help you decide:


authorSTREAMSlideShare
Private StorageYes (unlimited)Yes (unlimited)
Larger file uploads (per upload cap) 1 GB300 MB
AnalyticsYes (with Instant read receipts) Yes
Private meetings (webinars)Yes (chat only, no audio/video)Yes( video and chat)
Convert PowerPoint to video Yes -
Video uploads-Yes
Capture Leads-Yes
Turn off ads and other elementsYesYes
Branded or white labelled embedsYes-
Domain restriction for embedsYes-
BrandingYes Yes
Put own AdSense ads on your contentYes-
Download Flash files for hosted solution or desktopYes-
Facebook AppYesYes
Mobile websiteYesYes
Linkedin App-Yes
Starting price$29.95/ Year$190/ Year

Given the fact that SlideShare has huge traffic, your presentations are bound to get more views on SlideShare as compared to authorSTREAM but if you care about animations, narrations, want to get your presentations places by converting them to HD  videos or pricing is a concern for you,  authorSTREAM can be the best bet.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good comparison. What do you think about http://www.edocr.com?

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