Managed BigBlueButton Hosting vs. Self-Hosted on AWS
A Cost & Use-Case Comparison
Small Organisation with 100 Concurrent Users
Requirements:
Hosts multiple 2-hour sessions daily
80-100 total participants across all sessions, Minimum 20 days per month actual usage.
Requires all session recordings for later review
Self-Hosted on AWS (Amazon Web Services)
| Expense Type | Cost |
|---|---|
| One-time Deployment Cost | $40 – $100 (or your time) |
| AWS EC2 c5.2xlarge (On-demand) | $244/month |
| Storage (500GB EBS for Recordings) | $40/month |
| Outbound Data Transfer (4TB at $0.09/GB) | $368/month (usage based) |
| Maintenance & Support (Optional, if outsourced) | $50/month |
| Total Estimated Cost | $650 – $700/month (Varies with data usage) |
Our Managed BigBlueButton Hosting Plans for 80-150 Concurrent Users
| Feature | Cost |
|---|---|
| Our Managed Hosting Plans for 80+ Concurrent Users | Starts from 85 USD/Month Explore Plans(Economy 80, Premium 80, Economy 120 , Premium 150) |
| Recording Storage | Base Storage Included, Additional Storage @ 60 USD / TB / Month |
| Upgrades, Migrations & Support | Always Included |
| No Extra Data Transfer Cost | Always Free (Fair Usage) |
| Total Estimated Cost | Monthly or Annual Plans Cost (No Hidden Fees) |
👉 Conclusion: Managed hosting is more cost-effective and predictable. AWS self-hosting appears cheaper initially but fluctuates based on data usage.
Medium-Sized Coaching Business (600 Concurrent Users)
Requirements:
Hosts multiple One-to-One & Group(Up to 15 participants) sessions daily.
2000+ Registered Students, 250+ Tutors
Maximum 600 total concurrent participants across all sessions including Tutors & Students
Every day around 8 hours of peak usage.
Requires all session recordings for later review, quality monitoring.
Self-hosted BigBlueButton Cluster infrastructure for 600 concurrent users on AWS (Amazon Web Services)
| Expense Type | Cost |
|---|---|
| One-time Deployment Cost | $200 – $500 (or your time) |
| AWS EC2 5*c5.2xlarge (On-demand) | 5*244=$1220/month |
| Storage (2TB EBS for Recordings) | $160/month |
| Outbound Data Transfer (15TB at $0.85/GB) | $1275/month (usage-based) |
| Maintenance & Support (Optional, if outsourced) | $400/month |
| Total Estimated Cost | $2000 – $3000/month (Varies with data usage) |
Our Managed BigBlueButton Hosting for 600+ Concurrent Users
| Feature | Cost |
|---|---|
| Our Managed Hosting Plans for 600+ Concurrent Users | Starts from 720 USD/Month Explore Plans(Economy 600, Premium 600) |
| Recording Storage | Base Storage Included, Additional Storage @ 60 USD / TB / Month |
| Upgrades, Migrations & Support | Always Included |
| No Extra Data Transfer Cost | Always Free (Fair Usage) |
| Total Estimated Cost | Monthly or Annual Plans Cost (No Hidden Fees) |
👉 Conclusion: Overall our plans are designed to offer the required infrastructure with ease of usage at the best price with complete peace of mind.
Large Online Academy (1800+ Concurrent Users)
Requirements:
Hosts multiple Group(Up to 50 participants) sessions and few one-to-one sessions daily.
5000+ Registered Students, 500+ Faculties
Maximum 1800 daily concurrent users across Moodle LMS platform including Tutors & Students.
Every day around 8 hours of peak usage.
Requires all session recordings for later review, quality monitoring, stored for 3 Months
Self-hosted BigBlueButton Cluster infrastructure for 1800 concurrent users on AWS (Amazon Web Services)
| Expense Type | Cost |
|---|---|
| One-time Deployment Cost | $1000 – $1200 (or your time) |
| AWS EC2 9*c5.4xlarge (On-demand) | 9*488=$4392/month |
| Storage (3TB EBS for Recordings) | $240/month |
| Outbound Data Transfer (45TB at $0.85/GB) | $3825/month (usage-based) |
| Maintenance & Support (Optional, if outsourced) | $1000/month |
| Total Estimated Cost | $6000 – $9500/month (Varies with data usage) |
Our Managed BigBlueButton Hosting for 600+ Concurrent Users
| Feature | Cost |
|---|---|
| Our Managed Hosting Plans for 600+ Concurrent Users | Starts from 1800 USD/Month Explore Plans(Economy 1800, Premium 1800) |
| Recording Storage | 3TB Base Storage Included, Additional Storage @ 60 USD / TB / Month |
| Upgrades, Migrations & Support | Always Included |
| No Extra Data Transfer Cost | Always Free (Fair Usage) |
| Total Estimated Cost | Monthly or Annual Plans Cost (No Hidden Fees) |
👉 Conclusion: Overall our plans are designed to offer the required infrastructure with ease of usage at the best price with complete peace of mind.
Feature Comparison Table
A quick side-by-side comparison for a feature-focused breakdown.
Feature | Our Managed Hosting | Self-Hosted on AWS |
|---|---|---|
Setup & Deployment | Included | DIY or Pay for DevOps |
Server Management | Included | Requires Manual Setup |
Auto-Scaling | Included | Manual Configuration Needed |
Data Transfer Cost | Included | Expensive at Scale |
Security Updates & Patches | Included | Manual Maintenance |
Technical Support | 24/7 Support | AWS Premium Support Costs Extra |
Regular Maintenance | Included | Paid or DIY |
Recording Storage | Included Base Storage | Charged per GB |
TURN/STUN Support | Included | Needs Manual Setup |
Total Cost | Fixed Plan’s Price | Unpredictable High Monthly Cost |
Notes:
1. For this calculation we have used AWS Ohio Region, assumed ideal usage & active media consumption by participants. In real-world scenario it may differ.
2. Other cost for Professional Services like Regular Maintenance, Updates & Upgrades, Technical Support etc you may ignore for a non-production deployment or a Hobby project. For example , we do maintenance of the Standalone self-hosted BigBlueButton server for 50 USD / Month, billed annually.
3. For other major cloud providers like Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud etc. overall costs will look similar, we have choosen AWS as the most popular cloud service provider.
Disclaimer:
1. Estimated costs above does not guarantee anything. No responsibility taken if AWS or other cloud providers charges more than the estimated cost.
Other Hidden Costs for Self-hosted BigBlueButton
For smaller infrastructure below costs might be ignored, but these can be crucial for a large scale production deployment with few hundreds or thousands of concurrent users.
Expert Consultation
To use BigBlueButton to it's full potential you have to hire an expert for regular maintenance & guidence.
Opportunity Cost
You may run into problems due to lack of maintenace, so it may incur some opportunity cost indirectly.
Technical Support
With self-hosted infrastructure, you have no one to reach out for any issues or queries.
Frequently Asked Questions
Kindly explore the related FAQs below, before you reach out for support.
Most of your questions are probably already answered.
Self-hosted BigBlueButton related FAQs
YES, but be very clear to yourself, why you need to self-host BigBlueButton, what additional benifits it brings to you.
If you have valid reasons, you should consider self-hosting BigBlueButton infrastructure.
YES, definately if you have at least 5K USD credit, and you don’t have a good way to use it.
You can definately use that for the BigBlueButton infrastructure. But if your usage is really high, most of your credit will be utilised in just a few months.
If your usage is less but you need a BigBlueButton deployment for occasional usage, we recommend deploying there.Â
No, we don’t charge extra for Bandwidth or Data Transfer usage.
We actually offer unlimited usage, means you pay the fixed monthly cost irrespective of your usage.
However if we observe any extremely hight usage or unusual activity, we will communicate with the client & try to find a solution, but we don’t send additional invoices for that immediately and it never happened yet.
Self-hosted BigBlueButton vs Our Managed Hosting Plans
Self-hosted is not always the Best decision. Be very clear to yourself, why you need to self-host BigBlueButton, what additional benifits it brings to you.
Consider Self-hosted infrastructure only if necessary.
You shouldn’t end up with an expensive, abandoned infrastructure with older version installed without any maintenance or updates for months or years.
You take charge of the BigBlueButton infrastructure yourself, no one else is accountable for anything.
- Self-hosted BigBlueButton will cost you more.
- We don’t charge extra for Outbound Data Transfer, but they do.
- Do it yourself, if you want to learn, else you may use your time better.
- Mostly self-hosted deployments runs older versions without any updates.
- Mostly self-hosted infrastructure runs with default, out of box configuration.
- Without any monitoring your infrastructure may get overloaded & cause issues.
Though we recommend managed hosting plans, but it still make sense to consider self-hosted BigBlueButton for the following reasons.
- It is a short-term event specifc experimental project.
- For Testing and Development without any production use case.
- Third party vendors aren’t allowed for a government funded project.
- Your company already has the required Infrastructure, DevOps Engineers.
- Existing Free Azure or AWS Credits, to run BigBlueButton for a few months.
- You are bound to follow the company policy that restricts outsourcing services.
- Infrastructure will be so large, that you can hire a full-time DevOps team to manage.
We can help with our self-hosted services
- Deployment or installation of the BigBlueButton project into your provided infrastructure.
- Maintenance of your Self-hosted infrastruture with a monthly cost & annual billing.
- On-demand Technical Support, consultation.
- Migration or capacity upgradation or scaling up.
- Custom implementation like external recordings backup etc.