Streaming Tips: StreamElements or Streamlabs?

Regardless how far into the streaming journey you are on - whether you are still contemplating it as a potential hobby, or a fully fledged partner on the streaming platform of your choice - the use of either the Streamelements (SE) or Streamlabs (SL) ecosystem will be on your radar. 

This guide is aimed at anyone that requires a comprehensive rundown of what each platform can do, and hopefully help guide you towards a decision of which platform to use. Both have evolved throughout their multiple years of development, to benefit different communities or streaming styles in varying ways.

We have curated alert setups for approximately 250 creators across both platforms, with OBS scene setups accounting for around 70% of those. So a lot of what is outlined in this guide is based on the first-hand experience we’ve gained from the unique requests over at GETREKT Labs.

To get straight into it, SE and SL are platforms used to present viewer interactions on your stream. Connect your Twitch, Youtube, and/or Facebook to either platform, read/watch a few guides on setting things up, and everything from; event alerts, labels, chat and an endless collection of widgets, can all be displayed on-screen to reward the viewers interacting with your stream.

Both platforms use a form of Open Broadcast Software (OBS); an open source (community-built and updated) broadcast studio software that is used to handle stream scene building and live encoding to the connected streaming platforms.

-Streamlabs have built a version of OBS into their own studio software, now known as Streamlabs Desktop (SLD). 

-Streamelements uses the OBS Studio build, with a plugin known as OBS.Live to do similar things.

Both software packages are very similar at their core - with some slight quirks to each - which depend on your ecosystem of choice. Because of this, transitioning between the two is quite seamless, with UI, UX, and minor specific features being the only differences to get accustomed to.

We like to compare ‘Streamlabs vs. Streamelements’ with ‘Apple vs. Windows’. One is a closed ecosystem, feature-packed and simple to use (SL/Apple) - while the other can be heavily customized, allowing for far more complex builds (SE/Windows).

Remember the ‘Apple vs. Windows’ analogy we used earlier? Well a lot of the same reasons people would opt into the Apple ecosystem are the same reasons they would choose SL over SE; ease-of-use. 

Closed ecosystems come with a lot of ease-of-use benefits. Buying into the SL Prime subscription unlocks SL’s full potential, making the process of getting setup and going live very easy. Pick a theme, click install, add your game sources & microphone, login to your platform(s) and go live.

This leads up perfectly into the number one demographic of streamers that should pick SL: Beginner Streamers.

If you want all the beautiful displayable features, without the hassle of studying the complicated intricacies, SL is just unmatched due to how well everything is integrated. Don’t forget to check out our collection on the SL store.

Another feature that is often overlooked (it snuck up on us until quite recently!) is their multi-stream feature. If you have ever come across Devin Nash, you’ll know that he is a supporter of ‘spreading your wings’ and streaming on multiple platforms to build a wider community... and we agree! Especially if you are just starting out, or still early on in your streaming career. Each of the streaming platforms have many unique communities within them, so sticking with one early can mean that it takes longer to find your home.

With SL, multi-streaming is a breeze. The only viable alternative currently is Restream.io, which is also a paid subscription just for the multi-stream feature - so it doesn't seem financially smart to go that route in our opinion. 

The secret sauce here though is SL’s Theme system. Once you login to multiple platforms, you will have just one single theme that displays all your alert sets/data from all platforms, in one place. Displaying multi-stream data then becomes much more manageable, as all platforms get merged into a single alert queue, and all your chats are collated into one chatbox. Trust us when we say this (as we’ve done the setup for both) it’s just easier with SL!

Opposing the ‘SL = Apple’ analogy, SE is like a Windows PC - modular, customizable and generally community-driven. Whenever we have a client that has a more complex brief, we usually set them up with SE, because of how much easier it is to implement custom data with widgets.

As you grow and more people interact with your stream, creatively rewarding your viewers can be a key factor in differentiating you from the competition. We recognise this at GETREKT Labs, “Show them how you’re different” is our motto after all!

Custom widgets unlock the power to create unique interactions for your viewers. Historically, custom widgets and tiered alert systems we’ve created have paid for themselves within the first few hours of the client going live. 

Whether you want to create a custom ‘HypeTrain’ for a platform like Facebook (that doesn’t natively support one) - or you want an illustrated version of your own forehead to expand as people feed you donations, until it eventually explodes (yes you read that right!) - it’s all possible in SE.

As we said earlier, creativity is your limit here. We have another extremely talented coder (not me), that's not been truly challenged yet.. So we dare you to come up with something!

Another benefit of the SE Editor, is how much neater it can make your OBS scenes. Being able to organize and layer things such as; Camera Overlays, Labels, and Integrated Alerts all together into a single browser source, means that your OBS source and scene collections don’t overwhelm you everytime you want to stream. 

Combining widgets with OBS.Studio plugins can become a really powerful tool for creating highly interactive and unique looking streams. 

Using SE alongside plugins like; ‘Move Transitions’, ‘Transition Table’ and ‘Advanced Scene Switcher’, we were able to create a complex stream production for Marckoz. It included a full stream rebrand with; background TV screen alerts, on-stream tiered alerts, and fullscreen 3D alerts - combined with a transition system that seamlessly transitioned sources between each scene. This led to us being able to create a unique production that combined multiple plugins and techniques that perfectly complimented his brand new stream room. 

Streamelements’ ecosystem allows for truly bespoke streams, and is why we highly recommend it to people that have already developed their community, and are looking to take the next steps in upgrading their streams with a rebrand - just to make use of the extra interactive functionality you just can’t get on SL right now.

So to conclude, which one should you choose? Well that’s not for us to decide - we’re just here to present the facts and our expert opinions, to provide you with a better understanding of both options. Ultimately, we hope that the information and suggestions we’ve provided can help you make a more calculated decision in deciding which platform to use… and if not, you can always switch, or mix them up which is also an option.

TL;DR

For all those that saw the essay and scrolled here to get the TL;DR… 

-Streamlabs if you are new or multi-streaming

-Streamelements if you want to do some advanced things

Keep an eye out for the video version of this guide - coming soon!

GETREKT Labs and GETREKT Elements create custom and pre-made stream overlays for YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, Kick, Tiktok and all major streaming platforms, for use with StreamElements, StreamLabs and OBS.

GETREKT Labs features custom stream overlays, animated Twitch overlays, interactive stream assets, 3D world building, Unreal Engine 5 environments, custom widgets, stream overlays for OBS, camera overlays, reactive overlays, emotes, alerts, sound effects (sfx), set-up, coding and more for all items. Set-up includes all platforms and integration with StreamLabs, Stream Elements and OBS.

GETREKT Elements features pre-made stream overlays and assets, including animated Twitch stream overlays, camera overlays, stream layouts, emotes, alerts, sfx, Twitch panels, scene transitions, stingers, OBS overlays and more – all with an easy 1 click set up in StreamLabs and StreamElements with OBS.