Pricing, explained
How PealCast minutes work
PealCast plans are built around streaming minutes. We track three kinds — and it’s worth sixty seconds to see the difference, because it explains how your plan size, your “watchers” number, and your recording archive are all figured out. The short version: you’re billed on minutes delivered; the other two are there to serve you.
Minutes delivered
What you’re billed on- What it is
- The minutes of video actually sent (streamed) to your viewers’ devices. If 100 people each pull 30 minutes of your service, that’s 3,000 delivered minutes.
- How we bill for it
- This is your billable usage. Delivered minutes are pooled across your whole church and reset on the 1st of each month. Your plan includes a monthly pool; anything beyond it is billed in simple flat blocks (which also cover extra archive) — see the plans page for your tier’s pool and block size.
- Why we track it
- It’s the same way our streaming infrastructure (Cloudflare) bills us — per minute delivered — so we pass it through at cost with no markup on delivery. It’s the fairest, most transparent meter: you only pay for video your church actually pulled.
- One honest note: if a viewer opens the watch page and the video loads but they step away, those already-sent minutes still count — because the video was delivered to their device. In everyday use, delivered and watched are nearly identical.
Minutes watched
Your stats — not billed- What it is
- The minutes your viewers actually watched — real playback time, measured per person by our player.
- How we bill for it
- We don’t bill on this. Watched minutes are for you: they power your per-person watch stats, the weekly Shepherd’s Report, and the write-back to Planning Center.
- Why we track it
- Knowing who watched, how long, who’s new, and who’s drifting is the whole point of PealCast. Delivered minutes pay the bill; watched minutes tell the story. You’ll see both, side by side, in your dashboard.
Minutes archived
Your recordings- What it is
- The length of the recordings we keep for on-demand replay. Every service is auto-recorded; we store it for your plan’s retention window (about a month on Small, two on Medium, three on Large), then automatically delete it.
- How we bill for it
- Recording within your plan’s retention window is included. Want to keep recordings longer? Extra archive draws from the same flat block as extra delivered minutes — minutes and archive share one overage block, so you’re never juggling two meters.
- Why we track it
- Storing video has a real cost, and how long to keep it is a genuine choice — some churches want a rolling month, others a whole season. Tracking archived minutes lets you set retention to what your ministry actually needs.
How we turn minutes into “watchers”
Raw minutes are hard to picture, so we describe each plan in watchers. Here’s the exact, honest math — no mystery:
1 watcher ≈ 60 min a week × 4 weeks ≈ 240 delivered minutes a month
So a plan’s watcher estimate is just its monthly pool ÷ 240. A 4,000-minute pool works out to about 17 watchers (4,000 ÷ 240), 8,000 to about 33, and 16,000 to about 67. The same idea sizes your archive: a roughly one-hour service recorded each week sits comfortably inside your plan’s retention window.
- It’s an estimate, not a headcount cap. Your minutes are pooled across the whole church, so a packed Easter and a quiet Sunday average out — you’re billed on actual delivered minutes, never on how many people are on your list.
- Notifications are always unlimited. You only pay for streaming, never for the people you invite.
- Go over? It’s simple. Extra viewing (or extra archive) is billed in flat blocks that get cheaper per minute the larger your plan — the details are on the pricing page.