Reselling managed PeerTube in 2026

TL;DR

• Run one isolated PeerTube instance per client. It starts at €9 per month — one compute unit, 30 GB storage, 1,000 GB traffic — then €0.50 per GB storage and €0.03 per GB traffic above those.
• At ten light-library clients, retail of €40 to €120 each is €400 to €1,200 in gross recurring revenue, before the DANIAN bill and your support time.
• Storage and bandwidth are the honest constraint. Video is large and viewership drives transfer, so size each instance to the client catalogue and traffic.
• The client owns the library. PeerTube is AGPL-3.0 with no vendor lock-in, no per-seat caps, and no per-video metering — the three things Vimeo and Wistia charge for.
• What is not built yet: a branded agency control plane. You assemble white-label per client today, on a custom domain with an unbranded player.

The agency math, before the marketing

An owned-video line works as recurring revenue when the wholesale cost is predictable and the retail price is yours to set. PeerTube gives you that: a flat €9 base per client instance, usage on top, and a margin you keep. The model is one instance per client, billed to you, re-billed by you.

Start with the light case. A client with a small library and modest viewership fits inside the €9 base. You charge that client a retail rate that reflects a managed, branded, ad-free video service — typically €40 to €120 per month. Across ten such clients, the picture looks like this.

That table is the best case, and it is honest only for light libraries. Two costs sit underneath it: the storage and traffic a real video client uses, and the hours you spend supporting the client. Subtract both before you call it profit. The next section sizes the first; your own rate cards size the second.

If the model holds for one client, it repeats. The work is in onboarding and support, not in infrastructure — that part is ours. See managed PeerTube at €9/month and price one client against it.

Where the video math actually bites

Video breaks the flat-fee daydream that works for a CRM or a wiki. A note-taking app for a client barely moves storage or transfer. A video library does both, and viewership compounds the second. This is the part a reseller has to model before quoting, or the margin evaporates on the first popular video.

Each PeerTube instance includes 30 GB of storage and 1,000 GB of monthly traffic in the €9 base. Above those, storage is €0.50 per GB and transfer is €0.03 per GB. A client with a 200 GB back catalogue and 2,500 GB of monthly views is not a €9 client. Here is what that one client actually costs at wholesale.

A €139 wholesale client is still a good line if you retail it at €200 to €260 — that is €61 to €121 of margin on one account. The point is not that video is expensive. The point is that you must size the instance and price the client, rather than assume €9 covers it.

PeerTube does push back on the transfer bill. It plays video peer-to-peer over HLS and WebRTC, so when many viewers watch the same stream at once, their browsers relay pieces to each other and lighten the server. That softens a spike; it does not erase the meter. And because we monitor every instance around the clock, a surge usually gets more compute before the client notices a stutter.

What clients pay now, and the catch

The trigger for this whole line is a client already paying a proprietary platform and feeling the ceiling. Vimeo and Wistia are the two most resellers meet. Both meter something a self-hosted instance does not, and both have a tier cliff that turns a predictable bill into a sales call.

Vimeo restructured its plans in 2026, after Bending Spoons acquired it for $1.38 billion in late 2025. Paid plans start around $20 per month, with Standard at roughly $25 per month on annual billing. The catch is bandwidth: every self-serve tier shares a 2 TB monthly cap, and exceeding it twice in a year — or hitting 10 TB once — triggers outreach to move you onto an Enterprise contract that users report starting near $6,000 per year. Seats are limited too, and extra seats are quote-only.

Wistia meters differently. It is marketing software with hosting bundled in, and it counts videos: each plan includes a fixed number, and you pay per extra video once you pass it. Its Business plan starts at $79 per month, additional seats run about $20 each, and a real ten-person team modelling seats and add-ons lands near $500 per month. Bandwidth overage rates are not published. Brightcove sits above both — enterprise contracts, quoted, not self-serve.

None of these numbers makes PeerTube automatically cheaper. They make it predictable and owned. A client on PeerTube never gets the email that says a viral month moved them to a $6,000 plan, and never pays for the next uploaded video as a line item. That is the pitch — control and a flat, legible meter, not a race to the lowest sticker price.

What white-label actually requires

Resellers ask for white-label and mean three different things: the client domain, the unbranded player, and a way to bill the client cleanly. PeerTube and DANIAN cover the first two well today. The third is yours to run, and the fourth — a branded agency portal — is not built yet. Being clear about that is the difference between a happy partner and a refund.

The client domain is straightforward. Each PeerTube instance runs on a domain you choose, so videos live at the client address, not ours. The player is embeddable on the client website and themeable to their colours, and a correctly configured instance shows no DANIAN logo. To a viewer, it is the client video platform.

Billing pass-through is manual. DANIAN invoices you; you invoice the client. There is no automated per-client billing bridge, so you raise the client invoice through your own system — which most agencies already run anyway. The honest gap is the agency control plane: a single dashboard to spin up and manage every client instance does not ship. You manage instances one at a time, with chat support for the changes that need a human.

The DANIAN partner setup today

Here is the setup as it actually exists, gaps included, so you can decide before you sell. The base is honest and the operations are real; the agency-portal product is on the roadmap, not in your hands this month.

What you get today: a flat €9 base per app with published usage rates, one isolated instance per client with its own storage and domain, daily off-site backups, around-the-clock monitoring, and 24/7 chat with a named human. New apps and new client instances are added on request, usually within the same day for partners. Vendor contracts sit in DANIAN's name, and the datacentre map is public — 21 locations across six continents, so you place each client near their audience.

What is not here yet: a branded agency dashboard, and automated per-client billing. You pay standard pricing and keep your markup. For more info see our Partner page. This post is also a question to the market: if you run client video, the gaps above are the ones worth telling us to close first.

Pairing PeerTube with Owncast for live

On-demand video and live streaming are different jobs, and a video client often needs both. PeerTube is the owned library — uploads, channels, an embeddable player, federation across the wider video fediverse. Owncast is the owned live channel: a self-hosted broadcast server with built-in chat, the client own version of a mainstream streaming site.

Owncast takes a standard RTMP feed from OBS or similar software and serves it to viewers in a browser, with chat, moderation, and a player you can embed on the client site. It is MIT-licensed, integrates with the Fediverse so followers get notified when a client goes live, and also starts at €9 per month. For a reseller, that means a single client can own both their recorded back catalogue and their live events, on two instances you run and re-bill. Owncast for live streaming slots in wherever a client outgrows recorded-only video.

When this works, and when it does not

An owned-video reseller line is not right for every client, and saying so up front is what keeps the ones who fit. Three signals say go, and three say stop.

It works when a client wants their own branded, ad-free video surface and values owning the library; when the library and viewership are light to moderate, so the meter stays legible; and when you want a recurring line you control rather than a referral fee to a platform. These are the agencies and clients the model was built for.

It does not work when a client needs deep marketing analytics and lead capture inside the player — Wistia earns its premium there, and PeerTube will not match it. It does not work for enormous, sustained viral traffic where transfer dominates every other cost and a pure pay-as-you-go video network undercuts a managed instance. And it does not work if you need a turnkey agency portal today, because that product is not built. Sell to the fit; route the rest elsewhere and keep the trust.

Frequently asked questions

Margin and pricing

How much can an agency make reselling managed PeerTube?
Retail of €40 to €120 per client each month sits against a wholesale that starts at €9. At ten light-library clients that is €400 to €1,200 in gross recurring revenue, before you subtract the DANIAN bill and your own support time. Heavier clients raise both the wholesale cost and the retail price.

What is the wholesale price for managed PeerTube?
PeerTube starts at €9 per month for the base instance — one compute unit, 30 GB of storage, and 1,000 GB of monthly traffic. Storage above 30 GB is €0.50 per GB and traffic above 1,000 GB is €0.03 per GB, so the real wholesale figure tracks the client library and its viewership.

Are there per-seat or per-user charges like Vimeo?
No. You pay for the instance and the resources it uses, not per viewer, uploader, or admin. A PeerTube instance can hold as many accounts as the client needs, and viewers watch without an account at all. Vimeo caps self-serve plans at 5 to 10 seats and quotes for more — PeerTube does not meter people.

Who bills the client, the agency or DANIAN?
You bill the client. DANIAN invoices you for the instances you run, and you charge your client whatever retail price your service warrants. The margin between the two is yours, and you keep the client relationship and the support contact. There is no automated billing pass-through yet, so the client invoice is one you raise.

Storage, bandwidth, and sizing

Why does storage cost extra on a video instance?
Video files are large. The €9 base includes 30 GB, which a few hundred short clips can fill. Beyond that, storage is €0.50 per GB each month, so a 200 GB client library adds about €85. Size the instance to the client catalogue first, then set a retail price that covers the storage you are carrying.

How does bandwidth pricing work for heavy viewership?
Each instance includes 1,000 GB of monthly traffic, and transfer above that is €0.03 per GB. A popular video that streams 3,000 GB in a month adds about €60. Heavy or spiky viewership is the cost driver to watch, so track traffic in the dashboard and resize an instance before a launch, not after.

Does PeerTube reduce bandwidth costs when a video is popular?
Partly. PeerTube uses peer-to-peer playback over HLS and WebRTC, so viewers watching the same stream relay pieces to each other and lighten the server. It does not remove transfer costs, and it helps most when many people watch the same video at once — it softens the spike rather than erasing the bill.

What happens if a client video goes viral?
Two things move: traffic climbs past the included 1,000 GB at €0.03 per GB, and we can add compute so playback stays smooth under load. We monitor every instance around the clock, so a surge usually gets resized before viewers notice. You then re-price that client to reflect the new traffic floor.

Is managed PeerTube cheaper than Vimeo?
For a light library under 30 GB and 1,000 GB of monthly traffic, yes — €9 beats Vimeo Starter at $20 per month. For a moderate library it can cost the same or more once storage and transfer are added. The durable win is ownership and no per-seat or per-video metering, not always being the cheapest line.

White-label and setup

Can I white-label PeerTube for my clients?
Partly today. You run each client on a custom domain with an unbranded player embed, so the video surface carries the client brand and never a DANIAN logo. What is missing is a branded agency admin portal — the deeper white-label layer is still a manual setup you assemble per client, not a switch you flip.

Is there an agency dashboard to manage all my clients?
No. A multi-client agency control plane does not ship today. You run one isolated instance per client and manage each separately, with chat support for changes that need a human. If a single client portal is a hard requirement for you right now, this setup will feel manual until that product exists — and it does not yet.

Does each client run on a separate instance?
Yes. Every client gets an isolated PeerTube instance with its own storage, its own users, and its own domain. One client cannot see another client library, and a traffic spike on one instance does not bill or slow a different client. You add a new client by emailing us the project, usually within 1 to 7 days.

Migration and ownership

Does the agency or the client own the video library?
The client owns the content and you control the instance. PeerTube is AGPL-3.0 software with no vendor lock-in, so the library exports and the instance moves if you ever leave. You are renting operations from DANIAN, not handing the catalogue to a platform that can reprice it, restructure tiers, or close the account.

How do clients move off Vimeo or Wistia?
You upload the existing catalogue into the client PeerTube instance and repoint the website embeds. PeerTube imports from a URL or a file and serves a standard embeddable player, so swapping old Vimeo or Wistia embeds is mostly a find-and-replace job on the client site, plus the time it takes to upload the back catalogue.

Will clients see ads or recommended videos from others?
No. A self-hosted PeerTube instance shows only the client own videos, with no advertising and no recommendations pulling viewers toward other creators. The client controls the player, the moderation, and the audience. That control is exactly what a free, ad-supported platform never hands over, and it is part of what you are selling.

Fit, live, and support

What if a client needs live streaming, not just hosting?
Pair PeerTube with Owncast. PeerTube handles the on-demand library, and Owncast runs a self-hosted live channel — the client own broadcast with built-in chat, fed from OBS or similar software. Owncast is MIT-licensed and also starts at €9 per month, so a client can own both their live and their recorded video.

When is managed PeerTube the wrong choice for a client?
Skip it when a client needs deep marketing analytics and lead capture inside the player — that is Wistia territory. Skip it for enormous viral traffic where transfer dominates and a pure pay-as-you-go video network is cheaper. And skip it if you need a turnkey agency portal today, because that layer is not built.

Who handles updates, backups, and problems on each instance?
We do. Each instance is patched, backed up off-site daily, and monitored around the clock, with 24/7 chat to a human. You stay the face of the service to your client and escalate to us when something needs attention. That keeps your operational load close to zero while you keep the client and the margin.

How do I start reselling PeerTube to one client?
Start a 7-day trial, load a sample of the client catalogue, and watch the storage and traffic figures for a week. That gives you the real wholesale cost for that client, which sets the retail price you quote. Once the margin works on one client, repeat the same pattern for the next.

What to do this week

Pick one client already paying Vimeo or Wistia and feeling the ceiling. Start a 7-day trial, load a sample of their catalogue, and watch the storage and traffic numbers for a week. Those two figures give you the real wholesale cost for that client, which sets the retail price you quote.

If the margin works on one client, the pattern repeats — one isolated instance at a time, billed to you, re-billed by you, owned by the client. When you are ready to run several, see our Partner program page. We run the infrastructure; you keep the client and the margin.

Sources

• PeerTube — project site and features: joinpeertube.org
• PeerTube — source, AGPL-3.0 licence, architecture: github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube
• Vimeo — current plans and bandwidth limits: vimeo.com/upgrade
• Owncast — self-hosted live streaming, MIT licence: owncast.online