# Bunny Stream vs Spotlightr (2026) · Play That Sells

> Source: https://playthatsells.com/compare/bunny-stream-vs-spotlightr

## Bunny Stream vs Spotlightr

Two video players built to sell, priced and wired very differently. Here is which one fits, and on what grounds.

By Dominic Reyes, Lead reviewer. Edited by the Play That Sells desk. Updated 27 September 2026.

**Disclosure:**We may earn a commission when you buy through links on this page. It never affects our rankings. 

Quick answer

Pick Bunny Stream if you want the cheapest pay-as-you-go delivery and have a developer to build the player, gating and tracking around it; pick Spotlightr if you want encrypted, branded video with gating, CTAs and lead forms working out of the box for a course or funnel, on a plan you can budget.

### Side by side

| Tool                                  | From   | Free plan | Best for                                                                     |
| ------------------------------------- | ------ | --------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| [Bunny Stream](/reviews/bunny-stream) | $1/mo  | No        | the cheapest pay-as-you-go delivery, if you build the selling layer yourself |
| [Spotlightr](/reviews/spotlightr)     | $13/mo | No        | locking down and selling course videos on a budget                           |

Prices checked September 2026\. Verify on the vendor site before you buy.

### Pros and cons

#### Bunny Stream

What we like

* The cheapest way to deliver video on this list, by a wide margin. Encoding and the player are free, storage runs from $0.01/GB and delivery from $0.005/GB, on a $1 monthly minimum. Course owners on Reddit report bills under $10 a month after leaving a plan-based host.
* Pay as you go, not per seat or per plan. You pay for the traffic you actually use, which fits an unpredictable launch better than a fixed monthly tier.
* Built for developers: a resumable upload API and adaptive HLS you can drop into any player of your choice, with the security layer (signed tokens, anti-hotlink, optional DRM) bundled in rather than sold as add-ons.

The catch

* It is raw video delivery, not a sales tool. It carries no conversion analytics, no sound-first VSL autoplay and nothing that ties a play to a sale. You build the selling and the tracking yourself, or bolt on another tool.
* It reads as a developer product, not a polished platform. Long-term users call the API and dashboard still immature next to Vimeo or Wistia, so a non-technical marketer will feel the gaps.
* Reliability is good, not flawless. There are reports of slow playback in some regions and a serious storage-loss complaint, plus a couple of Stream incidents in September 2026\. Keep your own master files and test playback in your buyers' regions before you migrate.

#### Spotlightr

What we like

* HLS encryption, domain locking, password protection and a dynamic IP watermark are on by default, so your course is genuinely hard to rip, and the basics are not gated behind an enterprise tier.
* The selling layer is built in: in-video CTAs, email and SMS gating, lead forms and a Stripe paywall for pay-per-view, plus a free WordPress and LearnDash integration a lot of course creators buy it for.
* Cheap at the bottom. Light is $13/mo on annual billing with encryption included, well under Wistia, and every video keeps an evergreen embed you can update without losing views or analytics.
* Support is the most-praised thing about it: Capterra rates customer service 4.8, and smooth, glitch-free playback is the common experience.

The catch

* The public review base is small and the sharpest complaints are about downtime and slow notification when it happens, so uptime is not independently proven at scale. Pilot it and keep a fallback host ready.
* The dashboard divides people. Several reviewers find settings hard to find and advanced options buried, so expect a learning curve even when the feature you want is present.
* It is course-and-marketing hosting, not a conversion-first VSL player, so it lacks buyers-versus-non-buyers retention and cart-verified sale attribution, and a cold-traffic sales video still needs a conversion player on top.
* Bandwidth is metered with overage at $0.05 per GB and no hard spend cap, so a popular public video can run up a bill; high-traffic creators often find raw CDN delivery cheaper.

### The real split: raw delivery against a secure managed host

Both will store your video and hand you an embed, so on that one job they can look like the same purchase. They are not built for the same person. Bunny Stream is video infrastructure: the cheapest way to encode, store and stream a file, with the player and everything around it left to you. Spotlightr is a managed host built for people who sell with video, with encryption, a branded player, gating, in-video calls to action and lead forms all working from the dashboard.

That one difference decides most of what follows. Bunny Stream suits a developer, or a team with one, who wants to pay only for the traffic they move and wire up the selling layer themselves. Spotlightr suits a course creator or marketer who wants a protected, branded video that captures an email or takes a payment without touching code. Ask who is going to set it up and who has to keep it running, and the answer usually picks itself.

### Where they actually differ

**What comes in the box.** Bunny Stream gives you encoding, adaptive HLS and a free HTML5 player, and expects you to drop the stream into a page you built. Spotlightr gives you the player plus the things a course library needs: in-video CTAs, email and SMS gating, lead-capture forms, a Stripe paywall for pay-per-view, and a free WordPress and LearnDash integration a lot of creators buy it for. For a non-technical seller that gap is the whole decision; for an engineer, Bunny's blank slate is the feature.

**Protecting the video.** Both take security seriously, and this is closer than the rest. Spotlightr turns on HLS encryption, domain locking, password protection and a dynamic IP watermark by default, on every plan, so a paid course is genuinely hard to rip without paying for an enterprise tier. Bunny bundles signed tokens, anti-hotlink protection and optional DRM into its usage price rather than selling them as add-ons. If protection out of the box with no configuration is the point, Spotlightr does more for less thought; if you are comfortable wiring signed URLs yourself, Bunny gets you there for less money.

**Selling features.** This is Spotlightr's home ground and Bunny's blind spot. Spotlightr can gate part of a video behind an email, run a CTA at the pitch, and take a card through Stripe, all from the dashboard. Bunny Stream has none of that by design; it is delivery. If you want a form over the video or a CTA at the pitch on Bunny, you build it around the embed or add a second tool. Note that neither ties a play to a cart-verified sale or fires that conversion back to the ad platforms, which is a different job again.

**What you pay for, and how.** This is the sharpest line. Bunny Stream charges for the storage and delivery you actually use, on top of a $1 monthly minimum, so a small or spiky audience can cost a few dollars a month and a launch that takes off scales with its own traffic. Spotlightr sells plans with a bandwidth allowance, from $13 a month on annual billing with encryption included, then bills overage past it at $0.05 a gigabyte with no hard spend cap. For raw low or unpredictable volume Bunny is usually cheaper; for a managed, protected feature set at a fixed, plannable price under what Wistia charges, Spotlightr is the better home. A high-traffic public video, though, can run up Spotlightr's overage fast, and there Bunny's raw delivery wins on cost.

**Reliability and support.** Neither has the deep public track record of a Vimeo or a Wistia, so prove both before a live launch. Long-term Bunny users praise the price and the developer experience but call the dashboard and API still maturing, and there are scattered reports of slow playback in some regions plus a serious storage-loss complaint. Spotlightr's most-praised feature is its support, with Capterra rating customer service 4.8, but its public review base is small and the sharpest complaints are about downtime and slow notification when it happens. Whichever you pick, keep your own master files and test playback where your buyers are.

### If the video's job is a direct-response sale: TrackPlay

There is a third situation neither of these was built for. If your video is a VSL running on cold paid traffic, and the only number that matters is whether the play produced a sale, TrackPlay is aimed straight at that job. It hosts the video behind one embed and ties every second watched to who actually bought, then posts the cart-verified sale back to Meta, TikTok and GA4 server-side, onto the play that earned it. Spotlightr can gate an email and show you engagement; Bunny confirms the file was delivered. TrackPlay is built to tell you which ad, which play and which cut of the video produced revenue.

It backs that with a player made for cold traffic (sound-first autoplay, timed CTA cards and watch gates), per-second retention split into buyers versus non-buyers with the pitch moment marked, and split tests decided on real sales with statistical significance rather than on views. Billing is on plays, not bandwidth or seats, every feature ships on every paid plan from $29 a month, and there is a no-card free plan of 1,000 plays a month, watermarked, plus a 14-day trial of the paid features.

The catch is real, and it is the flip side of that focus. TrackPlay is narrow by design: built for paid-traffic VSL conversion, it is not a general video host or a B2B content library, so it has none of the channels, SEO pages or webinar tooling of a Wistia and is a poor fit if the video's job is content marketing rather than a direct-response sale. If you are protecting a course, hosting a media library or delivering video cheaply at scale, Spotlightr or Bunny is the right home and TrackPlay is not for that work. It is also a very new product with thin outside proof: the testimonials are on its own site, there is little third-party review footprint yet, and signup is currently invite-only, which is what you would expect of a platform this recent. Weigh it when the sale, not the view, is the goal.

[Read our full TrackPlay review](/reviews/trackplay) for how the attribution and split testing hold up.

### Which one for you

**Choose Spotlightr** if you sell a course or run a video funnel and want the selling layer built in: encrypted, branded video with gating, CTAs, lead forms and a Stripe paywall, plus a WordPress and LearnDash integration, all at a plan price under Wistia's. It is the more complete answer for a non-technical seller who wants the video working the moment they log in. Pilot it and keep a fallback host, because uptime is the one thing to prove first.

**Choose Bunny Stream** if you have a developer and you care most about cost and control: the cheapest delivery on this list by a wide margin, pay-as-you-go billing that suits an unpredictable launch, and a security layer bundled in rather than sold as add-ons. You trade the finished dashboard and the built-in selling features for a bill that can be a fraction of a plan-based host's.

**Choose TrackPlay** if the video is a VSL on paid traffic and you are measured on sales: you want the play tied to the cart and the conversion fired back to the ad platforms, not an engagement graph or a delivery log.

### Pricing, compared

**Bunny Stream** sells usage, and the bill starts at a $1 monthly minimum. Encoding and the player are free; beyond that floor you pay per gigabyte, at rates from $0.01 a gigabyte for storage and $0.005 a gigabyte for delivery on the Standard network. A cheaper Volume network trades some points of presence for a lower delivery rate, which can cost latency in a few regions. There is no permanent free tier, but the 14-day trial needs no card, so a small or spiky audience can end up paying a few dollars a month.

**Spotlightr** sells plans, billed lowest on the annual rate. There is no free plan, but a 14-day trial needs no card. Light is $13 a month with encryption included, then Plus at $21, Premium at $55 and Scale at $163, each adding bandwidth and course features (Plus and up add course and gallery modules, Premium adds quizzes). Bandwidth past your allowance is billed at $0.05 a gigabyte with no hard spend cap, so set usage alerts before a public video runs away with the bill.

The two do not reconcile to a single number, because one charges for traffic and the other for a plan with a protected feature set attached. Estimate your monthly views and file sizes: at low or spiky volume Bunny usually wins on cost outright, while a course owner who wants encryption, gating and a paywall in one place often finds Spotlightr's fixed fee worth it. If the video is a paid-traffic VSL, note that TrackPlay bills on plays from $29 a month with every feature included, a different axis again, because you are paying for conversion tooling rather than raw delivery.

Prices checked September 2026\. Verify on the vendor site before you buy.

Our pick

### Spotlightr

Pick Bunny Stream if you want the cheapest pay-as-you-go delivery and have a developer to build the player, gating and tracking around it; pick Spotlightr if you want encrypted, branded video with gating, CTAs and lead forms working out of the box for a course or funnel, on a plan you can budget.

[Read the full Spotlightr review](/reviews/spotlightr)

### Frequently asked questions

Is Bunny Stream cheaper than Spotlightr?

For raw delivery, usually. Bunny Stream bills on usage from a $1 monthly minimum, then per gigabyte, at rates from $0.01 a gigabyte for storage and $0.005 for delivery, so a small or spiky audience can cost a few dollars a month. Spotlightr sells plans from $13 a month on annual billing, but it bundles encryption, a branded player, gating and a paywall into that price. Bunny is cheaper for pure delivery; Spotlightr gives you the selling and protection layer for a fixed fee.

Which one protects a paid course better?

Both protect video well, and this is the closest call between them. Spotlightr turns on HLS encryption, domain locking, password protection and a dynamic IP watermark by default on every plan, so a course is hard to rip without any configuration. Bunny bundles signed tokens, anti-hotlink protection and optional DRM into its usage price, but you wire them up yourself. For protection out of the box, Spotlightr; for protection you configure to save money, Bunny.

Can I capture leads or sell inside the video with either one?

Spotlightr can: it has in-video CTAs, email and SMS gating, lead-capture forms and a Stripe paywall for pay-per-view, all from the dashboard. Bunny Stream is raw delivery and has none of that, so you build any gate, CTA or checkout around the embed yourself. Neither posts a cart-verified sale back to the ad platforms server-side; that is what a direct-response tool like TrackPlay is built for.

Which is better for a VSL on paid traffic?

Neither, on its own. Both host and deliver the video, and Spotlightr can even gate an email, but neither ties a play to the cart-verified sale or fires that conversion back to Meta, TikTok or GA4 server-side. If the video is a VSL and you are measured on sales rather than views, a purpose-built player like TrackPlay fits that job; use Spotlightr or Bunny for the hosting underneath it.

### What we read

* [Bunny Stream — Video hosting and delivery](https://bunny.net/stream/)
* [Bunny.net — Pricing](https://bunny.net/pricing/)
* [Spotlightr — Secure video hosting](https://spotlightr.com/)
* [Spotlightr — Pricing](https://spotlightr.com/pricing)

### Related reading

* [Our full Bunny Stream review](/reviews/bunny-stream)
* [Our full Spotlightr review](/reviews/spotlightr)
* [The best video sales tools, ranked](/best)
* [All head-to-heads](/compare)

---

[ Play That Sells ](/) 

Independent, research-based reviews and rankings of the tools that sell with video: VSL players, webinar platforms and video funnel tools.

We may earn a commission when you buy through links on this page. It never affects our rankings.

© 2026 Play That Sells. Independent and reader-supported.

Play That Sells