How to test BigBlueButton for free？
When you're trying to implement a bigbluebutton conference system into your learning platform, is better to do some tests first, than to start full-scale implementations.
But what kind of test could you do, without spending too much money, and taking too much time?
We've been able to gather some information, on what you could do in order to evaluate bigbluebutton, without spending much.
BigBlueButton is not a trivial software that can be seen from first sight and understood. It requires time and resources to implement it into an existing learning platform. It is essential to test out the system beforehand, in order to see if it works as anticipated.
BigBlueButton Pricing
First of all, let's start with the pricing. BigBlueButton is released under GPL, and its source code can be downloaded free from its official website. It is free to download.
One of the advantages of open source BigBlueButton is that there is no cost for licensing, but you will need a server in order to host it. In addition, if you want to have a good performance, always recommended that you use Dedicated bare metal servers. The pricing will vary from $100 per month to $400+ depending on your needs.
If you do the maintenance on your own, then there is no additional cost.
BigBlueButton Demo
You can evaluate the bigbluebutton software before you buy it by going to the demo site. From there you can test some features of the product before making up your mind about buying it. The features on the demo site may be limited, but it gives you a good idea of how bigbluebutton works.
If you would like to test bigbluebutton with your learning management system, make sure the plugins are installed for your particular learning management system. You can see a list of the available bigbluebutton plugins in this article.
If you have enabled the BigBlueButton plugin, you can usually find the test server information. Type in this BigBlueButton API information and start doing a preliminary integration test with your LMS.
Keep in mind, this is only for testing purposes. Test recordings may be disabled.
BigBlueButton API integration
What if there are no available bigbluebutton plugins for your LMS? No worries! Bigbluebutton has in-depth API documents that can allow you to quickly integrate with your system. The best part of it all is that there are some sample bigbluebutton API integration codes that can save you a lot of time and get your integration up and running as soon as possible. You can find those sample codes here. Using the sample codes you can quickly integrate bigbluebutton with your existing Learn Management System.
BigBlueButton Server
Once you have the plugin or integration-ready within your system, then installing a server to run bigbluebutton is next. According to bigbluebutton core developers, if you want to get the best performance from the bigbluebutton conference system, it is always preferable to use a Dedicated bare metal server rather than a VPS.
Regarding the bigbluebutton server selection, take some notes from this article.
BigBlueButton free trial
That is a long journey, even if only you want to test it since you have to manage and leverage everything. It will be difficult if you are not skillful with these skills or have no one on your team who can help. If it is possible, try to have some staff in your team who has the expertise and time.
There are some bigbluebutton commercial support companies out there that can help you test an instance of the software and save you time. The majority of them offer a free trial and which is great enough for you to evaluate the service.
To help you find the right company for your needs, we have collected some of the companies below. Which can offer you a free trial in some ways.
Those are 2 bigbluebutton commercial support companies we found where you can simply sign up and get your hands on all of the required BigBlueButton API information.
There are many other bigbluebutton support providers, with different approaches and pricing methods, but you can still contact them for a free trial based on your specific needs.
Here is a shortlist
In addition, there might be many more companies that can do the same tasks as well. Please feel free to contact us if you would like us to list another company. We will research and update them here if they are a good fit for the bigbluebutton support test instance, in which you may want to evaluate the service before you buy it.
If you need professional services such as customization or deployment or hosting, then you should use someone who does this kind of work professionally on a daily basis. You don't want to waste your time and money, right? There is plenty of commercial companies that can help you to manage it based on your different budget and requirements.
BigBlueButton is a free open source software that can be used to host and deploy your own online meetings or conferences. More specialized for the online classroom purpose of working with LMS. It's important to know the various differences between VPS hosting, Dedicated servers, and Shared Hosting before you make a decision about what type of server will work best for you.
BigBlueButton has created detailed API documents with sample code that should help those who are trying to integrate their LMS system into bigbluebutton quickly get started on leveraging this powerful software in their elearning strategy.
If all of this sounds too confusing then we recommend you to get help from a professional BigBlueButton service provider to help you manage everything on bigbluebutton. And to make sure you get stable and cost-effective solutions for your needs.