Overview - BigBlueButton

As the creators of BigBlueButton, in addition to managing the open source releases that are freely available to anyone in the world, we’ve also provide hosting for two flavors of BigBlueButton.

BigBlueButton Essentials: the essential capabilities to use BigBlueButton with limitations (see table below)
BigBlueButton Enhanced: Our Enhanced version many value added capabilities to ensure you have the highest learning outcomes.

If you are a sucstomer of Instructure using Canvas, or Powerschool using Schoology, you’ll find BigBlueButton Essentials embedded into your product. You’ll also find BigBlueButton Enhanced embedded into Canvas, Schoology, and Moodle Cloud.

Canvas by Instructure

Every Instructure customer has access to a free, built-in version of BigBlueButton Essentials. BigBlueButton Essentials is limited to 5 concurrent sessions, recordings expire after 7 days, and recordings are not downloadable. The table below summarizes the differences between essentials and enhanced.

Feature	Essentials	Enhanced
Max simultaneous virtual classes	5	Purchased
Students can see each other’s webcams in a session	-	Yes
How long do recordings last?	7 days	Permanent
Recordings are downloadable as video files	-	Yes
Recording links are sharable	-	Configurable
Ability for teacher to invite a guest into a session	-	Yes
Automatically share recordings with Canvas Studio	-	Yes
Analytics from session available later in recordings	-	Yes
Enterprise Learning Analytics Dashboard (ELAD) available, as upgrade, for insight across all your virtual classes.	-	Yes
Custom defaults (*)	-	Yes

(*) See Account customization for the full list of configurable defaults. For a detailed walk-through of each Enhanced feature, see the Overview of BigBlueButton Enhanced.

Schoology by PowerSchool

Every Schoology customer has access to a free, built-in version of BigBlueButton Essentials. BigBlueButton Essentials is limited to recordings expire after 7 days and recordings are not downloadable. The table below summarizes the differences between essentials and enhanced.

Feature	Essentials	Enhanced
Students can see each other’s webcams in a session	-	Yes
How long do recordings last?	7 days	Permanent
Recordings are downloadable as video files	-	Yes
Recording links are sharable	-	Configurable
Ability for teacher to invite a guest into a session	-	Yes
Analytics from session available later in recordings	-	Yes
Enterprise Learning Analytics Dashboard (ELAD) available, as upgrade, for insight across all your virtual classes.	-	Yes
Custom defaults (*)	-	Yes

(*) See Account customization for the full list of configurable defaults. For a detailed walk-through of each Enhanced feature, see the Overview of BigBlueButton Enhanced.

​Canvas by Instructure

​Schoology by PowerSchool

Canvas by Instructure

Schoology by PowerSchool