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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.

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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.
FeatureEssentialsEnhanced
Max simultaneous virtual classes5Purchased
Students can see each other’s webcams in a session-Yes
How long do recordings last?7 daysPermanent
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.

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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.
FeatureEssentialsEnhanced
Students can see each other’s webcams in a session-Yes
How long do recordings last?7 daysPermanent
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.