Studio Pricing

There are 2 account types, free and premium. Both account types include all features and are ads-free! We have no contract, no setup, and no support fees. Any new features are also included as we add them at no extra charge. The only difference is the usage included, with usage being storage and delivery of your media.

Free accounts provide 2 GB (Gigabytes) of monthly usage and are best suited for sharing audio with your audience. A free account should provide you with enough usage to test video features before upgrading, but you will want a premium account if you plan on sharing video regularly. To get the most from your free account please use a lower bit rate setting when publishing your media (click here for more details). Free accounts are set up so that if you cross 2 GB in a month, no media can be added or accessed until your Storage is reduced, and / or Delivery resets at month’s end. [Please note: to prevent abuse, if you pass 5 GB of total Usage in a single day, you will receive an invoice for any usage overage beyond 5 GB. This invoice must be paid and Usage must be brought below 2 GB to be reactivated.] 2 GB of usage should provide between 150-200 sermons stored or accessed in a month (assuming each file is under 10 MB), if you’re storing 50 you could have 150 listens for example. This is enough usage for 98% of our ministry users to share audio for free.

Monthly Premium License plans provide an amount of usage that is included each month, and a cost for overage if you exceed your plan. If you find later that you need to move up or down we are happy to help you find the best plan for your needs. It is usually to your advantage to be on a lower plan and pay for overage rather than being on a higher plan where you are purchasing unused GB each month. Unused usage GBs do not roll over to the next month. One reason to be on a larger plan would to have a flat price each month for budgeting purposes.

Bundles  are a block of prepaid usage without a monthly fee that last until all of your usage has been consumed. This is a great option for users that have a one-time event or expect low usage (2GB – 7GB per month) but above what is included in the free plan.  Bundles are a good way to cap your costs or to insure you are not deactivated for usage as you would be with a free plan, but do not require enough usage for a Premium License. Bundles are not a good plan if you intend to store large amounts of media, as usage is counted each month at months end for everything you are storing (just as all account types count storage for billing purposes at the end of the month). You will be emailed when your bundle reaches 20%, 10%, and 0% remaining, and an invoice for the next bundle is sent when 10% remains. If you have paid for the next bundle it begins automatically when the last bundle is consumed, with no interruption in service.

Your total monthly usage is the total of 3 areas: storage, on-demand delivery, and live broadcasting delivery. Storage is the running total of all files you have archived, like a folder on your computer, if you add to it and never remove anything it will grow each month. On-demand delivery is people listening, watching, or downloading your archived files. Live broadcasting delivery is people watching in real time.

Each night our system checks the usage for your account. If you are a Free user and have surpassed 2 GB of usage your media will be deactivated until the end of the month, or you can upgrade to a premium or bundle account to keep media active in the current month. If you are a Bundle user our system will check for your next payment when you consume all of your usage. If unpaid your media will be deactivated until you pay the invoice for the next bundle, or contact us to change to a free or premium license account. Because the account does not deactivate immediately when you reach your limit, we allow a small “grace period” for which you will not be billed.

For example, using a Free account you start the day with 1.8 GB total usage. You do a broadcast that day and consume 0.7 GB of live broadcasting usage. The next day your total monthly usage is 2.5 GB and the account is deactivated. You are not billed for the additional 0.5 GB of usage. Please see the pricing scale above which includes the grace period for free and bundles.

You can monitor your usage on the Studio Usage page within your Sermon Studio, you will see this listed under the My Account menu in the upper right. There is also a meter on the Dashboard of your Sermon Studio that shows the current month usage and the billing plan you are using.

Storage:  If you archive 4 video files in a month and each file is 0.5 GB, at the end of the first month your storage would be 2 GB. If you repeat this in month 2 and do not remove anything, your total at the end of month 2 would be 4 GB. As you can see this number will continue to grow if nothing is removed, each month consuming a larger portion of your available GB of usage.

On-Demand Delivery:  If each video file in your archive is 0.5 GB then it would use 0.5 GB of bandwidth to deliver a file to a user. If a user is playing the file online and only watches the first part, only that portion would be added to your bandwidth. A download delivers the entire file (assuming the user completes the download), in short you are charged just for what is used. This can be tracked through the On-Demand Delivery Stats page within your Sermon Studio.

Live Broadcasting Delivery: This is a function of 3 things, the size of your broadcast bitrate (quality), the duration, and the number of viewers. You should find that 1 GB provides between 2 – 5 viewing hours depending on your bitrate.  Your stats can be tracked on the Live Stats page within your Sermon Studio.

There are a few ways to reduce usage, the one that is easiest to control is your storage. We have many users that leave video available for a certain amount of time, after which they remove the video leaving the audio for each service. This reduces storage of the video file, as well as any audience member accessing that service now can only access audio which requires less usage to send the (smaller) audio file. You can remove files individually or entire Episodes with all of their media through the Batch Process option at the bottom of the Archive page in your Sermon Studio account.

Reducing your on-demand delivery can be achieved by having smaller files in the archive, or making smaller files available. You can upload edited versions of your live broadcast – in the future you will be able to trim the published broadcast video file within your account so you do not have to edit and then upload the file. When you publish your media into an Episode use a lower bitrate setting – this is good for both you and your audience as it creates smaller file for less storage and faster delivery. You can adjust the settings at the bottom of any Episode page, in the Transcoding Profile Template section. Reducing live delivery can be achieved by reducing any of the 3 areas that affect the delivery: bitrate (send lower quality broadcast), duration (broadcast a shorter service), or reduce number of viewers (not something you likely wish to do).

You can login to the billing system through Billing link in the My Account menu (upper right in your Sermon Studio), or directly at http://sermon.freshbooks.com. When your account was created a “billing contact person” was provided along with a username and password, these credentials do not have to match your Sermon Studio login credentials and allow ministries to separate the duties of billing from the technical side of your sermon.net account. If you have trouble accessing the account you can request a username/password reminder, if you require further assistance please let us know.

Our system sends Free and Premium license users invoices on the 5th of each month for that month of service, and any overage from the previous month. Invoices unpaid after 60 days will result in deactivation of the account. If you have a credit card on file for monthly payments, you will see the invoice marked “Paid” if the card was processed successfully.

To add a credit card, or update the card you have on file please make a payment online and at the bottom under “Future Payments” select the option “Charge the full amount to my credit card monthly”, then click the Pay Now button. You can also change the credit card without paying an invoice through the “Profile” link in the upper right within the billing system.

One-Time Payments can be made by credit card or PayPal online, or sent by mail with check or postal money order. You can set up a PayPal account to draft from your bank account, similar to e-check payment. For payment by mail, please include your account number or invoice number.

Please mail your payments to:

sermon.net, inc.
7107 S. YALE AVE, #182
TULSA, OK 74136

If you would like to send payment for multiple months please send a check for an amount greater than your invoice amount. The excess payment will be added as a credit balance to your account, which will be applied to future invoices as they are created each month. If you would like to pay in advance by credit card please contact us and let us know the amount you would like to pay, we will send a “money request” that allows you to pay online with a credit card or PayPal account.

If you would like to change plans or if you have any questions please feel free to contact us at 800-807-1014 x 3, billing@sermon.net, or use the Help Desk within your Sermon Studio.