Uscreen

Uscreen is a Video On Demand (VOD) platform that allows to create, design and sell bundles of video with a world-class experience.

Think about it as creating your own Netflix.

Uscreen isn't technically a course hosting platform but you can use it as such!

If you think about it, an online course platform is often simply a video and content library people access to upon registration. 

And in that sense, Uscreen could be used to sell and deliver your online programs. As you'll see, it's not really suited to market it and build funnel, but it still does enough of the job to deserve a thorough review.

The main selling point for the platform is the fact that there is a particular focus to make the video experience (live or not) outstanding for your students, which isn't the case for most popular online course platforms.

That being said, let's break down what you'll get and how it compares!

As mentioned above, Uscreen will only do part of the job for course creators and if you really want to push your marketing efforts to maximize your potential, you'll definitely need to integrate other tools.

That being said, here is the feature breakdown:

If you're a course creator, you may now have a better idea of what you could use Uscreen for and what will be missing from your toolkit.

Namely, it's likely you'll still need at least an email marketing tool that you'll be able to integrate with the platform: some natively (Mailchimp for example) but most via Zapier.

That being said, let's take a closer look at the main features of Uscreen here and how they compare to other online course platforms:

Website/Page Building

When starting to build your Uscreen site, you'll have the ability to choose among a range of gorgeous themes:

That's going to determine the general ?feel? of the site and inside the course.

You can of course customize that theme a little bit, make back-ups and access the code editor!

Although not as powerful as a full blown site builder like WordPress, Wix or Squarespace, you can design some seriously amazing basic websites with Uscreen

Separately, you'll create Landing Pages to design things like an optin page, sales page or just any static pages on your website.

These will be in a different part of your interface and you will also be able to pick from different templates:

Once inside the actual page builder, you'll realize that although the page can look really great, the customization is still more limited than a proper funnel builder would offer.

You'll be able to add and organize pre-made sections to your page which you can then edit with a Kajabi style sidebar editor:

The flexibility of these blocks however is low and you'll have to make some compromises on how you may want your pages to look like.

But again, it's totally possible to create a high-converting sales page with Uscreen with a few well-designed graphics and good copy!

Just keep in mind that the funnel capabilities will be limited: you can capture emails unless you embed a form from a marketing email platform, and you can't really have one-click upsells and downsells.

Course Design and building

Since you're going to essentially be building and delivering your video courses in Uscreen, let's take a look at what that looks like.

The first thing to notice and what we mentioned earlier is that Uscreen isn't a course hosting platform per se but something that allows you to sell video content. 

Which is what most online courses are!

But in Uscreen you will simply bundle videos, slap a price on it and deliver that on the platform to your student.

This does mean that you won't be able to easily add things like quizzes or assessments, audio and text lessons or downloadables to your course.

All you will give away are videos with a description (where you could add links to additional resources)

That being said, the course experience is really where Uscreen shines! The quality of the video playback and design of the video pages are outstanding and will truly blow away your students.

I'm emphasizing this because the course delivery can be underwhelming in a lot of online course platforms and frustrating for you if you put a lot of production effort into your videos.

Checkout

Uscreen also allows you to take payments and sell your content directly through the platform.

You'll connect either Stripe, Paypal or Authorize.net and create an offer:

This is for recurring subscriptions and access to a set of content you'll define.

You can also create Bundles and choose to charge either a fixed price, make it a rental or give it for free (and create free courses).

This will then generate a pretty great looking checkout.

You don't have much capabilities for design of this checkout apart from the few information you'll add to the Subscription you create.

Unless you want to get your hands dirty and change a few things via the code editor!

Live Streaming

One of the big selling points of Uscreen is the fact that from the ?Amplify? plan onwards, you'll be able to broadcast live streaming through the platform.

As a course creator this could mean not needing Zoom and maybe even getting rid of the webinar platform you might be using.

These would simply be added to your Subscription (paid or free) and be accessible on the site or via the app (see below).

Just like most live streaming tool, your viewers will have access to a live chat but other cool things you'll be able to have with Uscreen too are: registration page for the live, pre-recording and replay, live event countdown?

OTT App

To take the watching experience to the next level, increase engagement and in-platform purchases, Uscreen allows your to get an Over-the-top application.

These will be created and launched for you after you've ?requested? them, on iOS, Android  and TVs using devices like a Roku Box, AppleTV, Android TV & Amazon Fire TV.

These honestly look great and Uscreen makes it really easy to build this extra layer of loyalty with your students.

Having a mobile app can seriously increase sales and recurring revenue by helping people to watch your courses on the go and provide a real learning experience.

You'll be able to send push notifications and take payments right inside the app.

There are some other platforms like Kajabi and Teachable that also offer mobile apps, but not to the level Uscreen does. 

The main difference being the fact that your app will be fully white-labelled and branded with Uscreen, whereas for your students on Kajabi and Teachable to access your courses, they'll have to download the ?Kajabi? app (which they might even though what this is at all) and login to the course from there.

On the other hand, you'll have your own app in the app store with Uscreen

This might not be necessary for all course creators but again Uscreen differentiate itself by the experience it can provide to your online teaching.

Other Interesting Features

I'll outline a few other features that stood out to me and aren't thing you can find in many other platforms, which again make Uscreen playing in its own category here:

Abandoned cart: This will allow you to very easily set up 1-3 emails for cart abandonment users and offer a discount. It's really one of the only way you'll ?send emails? through Uscreen apart from the system emails. 

Buy as a gift: Not all platforms allow to easily buy a course as a gift to someone? But Uscreen does. You'll be able to set that up as well as Gift Cards that their friends or family can redeem on your store.

This will help you first to understand why someone might be cancelling (with the survey), then to reduce churn rate and optimize retention.

Try again for free: On top of the above, you can also set an automation to offer a new free trial to a customer that cancelled. Send 1-2 emails to try to get them to jump back in!

These are all some really well-thought features in my opinion and limit the need to integrate your CRM too much to have these automations working.

As we have already started to describe, the User Experience is really where Uscreen shines and stands out.

From an admin point of view and with handling things in the back-end, the interface is polished and easy to navigate:

The different menus might be a little un-intuitive at times but it's quick to pick up and know where things are.

Each small setup is broken down into easy steps to follow and very well explained all throughout.

And of course, from the student's experience things are looking great!

You don't have a lot of influence on the watching experience beyond the theme and a few options, but this is still wayyy superior to any other course platform:

It's a Netflix meets Masterclass kind of feel that will definitely make the learning experience for your students outstanding.

They?ll also be able to set up a profile and communicate with other students via comments or during your live broadcast in the chat.

Uscreen is still growing and made changes to their pricing a few times.

And this is where the premium experience it offer comes with a price:

Now this might be slightly confusing so let me break it down. You'll pay the fixed the subscription fee depending on which package you want. The Basic package used to be $99 and is now only $49 a month.

But you'll also pay a per-subscriber of $0.50.

AND if you want to charge one-off payments, you'll also pay a 5% fee per transaction (this does NOT apply for subscription).

This can get a little expensive then for some course creators.... But again this is for the ability to create a premium experience and something that will awe your students, which can make the difference in their decision to enroll in your online course rather than another!

There is no community or facebook group to meet fellow Uscreen users unfortunately?

Which is a shame but this I don't think this is the kind of platform where the added value of the community is tremendous.

There is however a great live chat and knowledge bank available:

Live chat is available 24/7 and replies within 4 hours and are very helpful!