Last updated: 2026-01-21

For most town halls in the U.S., start with StreamYard: it’s browser‑based, fast to learn, handles guests smoothly, and multistreams to the major platforms your community already uses. If you need very deep, technical scene control or a fully free desktop workflow, pair or replace it with tools like OBS or Streamlabs.

Summary

• StreamYard gives you an easy, browser‑based studio with multistreaming to Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Twitch, and more via RTMP.(StreamYard supported platforms)
• On paid plans, one upload from your browser can go to 3–10 destinations at once, plus up to 6 guest‑added destinations, which is more than enough for typical town halls.(How to multistream)
• OBS and Streamlabs are useful when you want highly customized scenes and are comfortable managing a desktop encoder and stronger hardware.(OBS features)
• For most public, municipal, or company town halls, prioritizing reliability, guest friendliness, and quick setup over maximum complexity leads you naturally toward StreamYard.

What does “good” live streaming software for town halls actually need?

A town hall is different from a casual livestream. You’re usually dealing with:

• A mix of speakers (mayor, executives, HR, legal, moderators)
• Non‑technical guests joining from home laptops
• Citizens or employees watching on whatever platform they already use
• Stakeholders who expect a clean recording afterward

So “good software” isn’t just about bitrates and codecs. In practice, you need:

• Low‑friction guest access (no installs, clear backstage vs live state)
• Stable, high‑quality audio and video, even on average machines
• Multistreaming to a handful of mainstream platforms (YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, X)
• Easy branding and layouts so the stream looks official without a designer on call
• Reliable recordings for archives, minutes, and compliance

This is the sweet spot StreamYard was built around. You run everything from your browser, guests join with a link, and cloud encoding takes the heavy lifting off your local machine.

Why is StreamYard a strong default for town halls?

Most teams running town halls aren’t trying to become broadcast engineers. They just need the event to look and feel professional and not break.

StreamYard leans into that:

• Browser‑based studio: No desktop installation, no drivers to manage. You open a link, you’re in the studio.
• Guest links that “just work”: Guests join from a browser, with no software to download, which real users consistently call more intuitive than tools like OBS‑based setups or traditional meeting apps.
• Live branding and layouts: Overlays, logos, lower thirds, and flexible layouts are controlled with simple toggles, not complex scene graphs.
• Independent audio control: You can manage screen audio separately from microphone audio, which is essential when playing videos or slides while taking live questions.
• Local multi‑track recording: Each speaker can be recorded locally in high quality for later editing, which makes your comms team very happy when they need clean clips.
• Presenter notes and backstage: Hosts can see their own notes without exposing them to the audience, keeping intros tight and Q&A on track.

On paid plans, your stream is also recorded in HD for up to 10 hours per broadcast, which comfortably covers lengthy town halls while avoiding monthly hour caps.(StreamYard paid plan features)

The net effect: non‑technical organizers can get a polished town hall running in a day, and they keep using the same studio link over and over without re‑learning anything.

How does multistreaming a town hall actually work?

For many public or company town halls, you’ll want to go live in at least two places—for example, YouTube for public access and Facebook for local engagement, or YouTube plus an internal site via RTMP.

In StreamYard, the pattern is straightforward:

1. Connect your destinations (e.g., Facebook Page, YouTube channel, LinkedIn Page, X account, plus any RTMP endpoint).(StreamYard supported platforms)
2. Create a broadcast and select multiple destinations for the same show.
3. Go live once from your browser; we handle the cloud fan‑out for you.

On paid plans, you can multistream to 3, 8, or 10 destinations at once from a single upload, with up to 6 extra destinations added by guests.(How to multistream)

That’s more than enough for the realistic town‑hall mix: maybe a couple of social platforms, a government site or intranet via RTMP, and a secondary language channel.

If you need portrait and landscape at the same time (for example, 16:9 to YouTube plus a vertical version for mobile‑first viewers), Multi‑Aspect Ratio Streaming (MARS) lets you do that from a single studio session on paid plans.(MARS overview)

How does StreamYard compare to OBS and Streamlabs for town halls?

OBS and Streamlabs are powerful—especially for creators who live and breathe scenes, sources, and advanced audio chains. But town halls usually reward simplicity over tinkering.

OBS Studio

• Free and open source, with no licensing cost and no paywalled features.(OBS help)
• Allows effectively unlimited scenes and complex compositions, which can help for multi‑segment programs.(OBS project)
• Runs entirely on your machine, which means you need to manage encoders, bitrates, and hardware load.

OBS is a strong choice when you have a dedicated technical producer, beefy hardware, and a mandate for highly customized visuals. For a city IT department or an enterprise AV team, that can be attractive. For HR running a quarterly all‑hands, it can be overkill.

Streamlabs Desktop

• Built on OBS with added overlays, alerts, and monetization tools.(Streamlabs GitHub)
• Multistreaming with a single uplink and cloud forwarding is available, but the full feature is tied to the paid Ultra membership.(Streamlabs Multistream FAQ)
• Recommended specs suggest 16GB+ RAM and modern CPUs/GPUs for smooth use, which many office or home laptops won’t have.(Streamlabs system requirements)

Streamlabs can work when you want the OBS‑style power plus its widget ecosystem, and you’re comfortable with a desktop encoder and higher hardware requirements.

Where StreamYard usually wins for town halls

• Guest friendliness: A browser link is easier to explain to a city council member or a CFO than “install this encoder, add this scene, configure this device.”
• Hardware forgiveness: Because encoding happens in the cloud, modest laptops are usually fine as long as the network is stable.
• Time‑to‑live: Teams can spin up a branded studio, invite guests, and run a rehearsal in less time than it takes to fully configure a complex OBS/Streamlabs scene collection.

You can absolutely pair tools—some teams feed an OBS output into StreamYard via RTMP for advanced visuals plus StreamYard’s guest and multistream benefits—but when in doubt, starting simple tends to give you fewer failure points.

How should public agencies and companies think about scale and access?

If you work in U.S. local government or a larger company, two extra questions matter:

1. Can enough people watch without friction?
2. Do we have the right record and recap later?

Many organizations stream to platforms citizens and employees already use—often YouTube, Facebook, and internal portals—then embed the player where needed. For example, some municipal and enterprise solutions advertise support for very large attendee counts (tens of thousands or more) for town‑hall‑style events.(Microsoft Teams town hall)

StreamYard fits neatly into this pattern:

• You multistream to those platforms from one studio.
• You capture high‑quality recordings and local multi‑track files for official archives and highlight recaps.
• You can route the same broadcast to both public and private endpoints (e.g., public YouTube plus an internal RTMP destination) so you don’t maintain separate productions.

For formal procurement, you’ll still want to validate things like SLAs, compliance, and any specific viewer caps directly with vendors, but in day‑to‑day practice, the bottleneck is rarely the studio—it’s platform policy and how you promote the event.

What’s a simple town-hall workflow using StreamYard?

Here’s a lightweight pattern many teams adopt:

1. Plan destinations: Decide on your 2–4 primary platforms (e.g., YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, internal site via RTMP).
2. Build a reusable studio: Add your logo, overlays, and standard layouts once. Reuse this studio for each town hall.
3. Invite speakers and staff: Send guest links to the panel and a private link for backstage helpers like chat moderators.
4. Run a 20–30 minute rehearsal: Test audio levels, screen shares, and any video clips.
5. Go live: Start the broadcast; keep presenter notes handy in the studio and use private chat for coordination.
6. Wrap and repurpose: Download the full recording and multi‑tracks, then use tools like AI clips to auto‑generate shorts for social recaps.

Because StreamYard runs in the browser and records in the cloud, most of this workflow is repeatable without rebuilding technical plumbing each time.

What we recommend

• Use StreamYard as your primary town-hall studio if you value fast setup, guest friendliness, and clean recordings more than deep technical customization.
• Layer in OBS or Streamlabs only if you have a dedicated producer, strong hardware, and a clear need for highly custom scenes or specific desktop‑only features.
• Multistream to a small set of key platforms, not everywhere at once; focus on where your audience already is and let StreamYard’s cloud fan‑out handle the rest.
• Standardize on a simple, reusable StreamYard studio so every future town hall feels consistent, professional, and low‑stress for your team.