The Best Tools for Twitch Streaming
If you are a streamer or you have considering streaming, you’ve probably asked yourself what tools you should be using? Here’s a guide to the best ones I’ve found over the past two years. Recommend from hundreds of people I’ve asked when they started their Twitch streaming life.
This guide includes:
- Moderator bots
- Donation tools
- Analytic tools
- Twitch trackers
- Promotion tools
- Bonus round: emoticons and stream health
Tools are incredibly important for your Twitch channel, but they will not decide whether you will be successful or not. This quote from Lemonpopz on Reddit is ultimately completely true:
“When I started out streaming I wanted to do everything myself, make my own art, have the coolest bots, put on the fancy overlays and all that, but as I’ve grown, I realise I want to spend less time messing with behind the scenes crap that viewers don’t care about anyway, and more time focused on my stream and content.”
– Lemonpopz
Moderator bots
Leave the heavy lifting to the chatbots that live in your chat. These bots will help with chat moderation and provide simple answers based on popular commands that viewers can ask.
Some of the best and most popular include:
- Nightbot
- Moobot
- Streamlabs Bot
- PhantomBot
But we’ve written a huge complete guide to every single bot you can use on Twitch. You can read it here or click on the image below.
Nightbot
Personally, I have used Nightbot as a moderation tool in the background, stopping any sort of spam. It also comes with timed messages (so you can promote your social media), song requests (so your viewers can make you play “Never Gunna Give You Up” endlessly) and giveaways.
You can also create regulars — which are essentially a form of Moderators — which are exempt from the spam filters (they can post links yay!) and have access to more commands you may choose to create.
If you are looking to setup Nightbot on your Twitch stream, we’ve also written a guide for that!
Moobot
Another simple moderator tool which allows you to worry less about the spam, and concentrate more on the actual job of creating an amazing stream and content. Moobot is one of the best tools to use right away.
Streamlabs Bot
(previously pronounced “anchor bot”) — it has been bought by Streamlabs, re-branded and kept all the functionality.
A downloadable programme for your stream which allows you to view chat, manage your channel’s game and title and run a lot of functions to make the stream more entertaining and engaging for your users. This includes:
- Quotes
- Raffles
- Currency
- Song requests
- Mini-games
Streamlabs’ bot also comes with Discord and Streamlabs integration which is incredibly useful as it brings everything all in one place!
Phantombot
Free forever and a ridiculous amount of features, Phantombot is a downloadable bot for Windows and Mac.
What are some of the bots you use and love? Here’s a simple but complete guide to every bot you could ever use. For ALL the Twitch Bots, read our full in-depth guide:
Donation tools
There are two different types of donations on Twitch, these include Bits and Donations.
Twitch Bits / Cheering
Twitch’s own currency (bought through Amazon) called ‘Bits’ has already raised over $6 million for streamers, leading many to prefer it as the chosen method of donating. However, Twitch takes around 25-30% of each donation to themselves.
You can learn more on Twitch’s own guide to cheering here: Guide to Cheering
Donations (and tips)
Using the below tools, you can set up a Paypal, Google Wallet or Cash.me to allow users to donate money from their accounts to yours. (You may also use a tool such as Patreon or GameWisp to get a monthly subscription.)
But there are individual donation tools such as:
- Streamtip — Streamtip is one of the best way for live streamers to collect tips on the Internet.
- Treatstream
However, donation tools tend to act as total management dashboards such as:
- Streamlabs
- StreamElements
- Muxy
- StreamJar
And now for some more in-depth information on those tools:
Twitch Streaming Management Tools:
Streamlabs
The number 1 choice when it comes to Live Streaming. Streamlabs (formerly known as TwitchAlerts) is a safe choice as it is used by 78% of the top 25k streamers on Twitch and YouTube.
I was going to write about the formerly great tool Streampro.io, but it since been bought by Streamlabs themselves.
StreamElements — streamelements.com
A relative newcomer, SteamElements positions itself as an all-in-one tool that is impressive in what it manages to achieve.
The dashboard gives you a total overview of your recent statistics, including followers, hosts and tips. Quick settings allow you to update your stream title and game on the fly (Tags are currently missing but…who is using them anyway?).
StreamElements comes with its own overlays that you can layer into OBS. A handy shortcut for those starting off!
What I most like about the tool is the in-built bot, giving beginner streamers the chance to simply set up a simple moderator bot.
Muxy — muxy.io
The all in one tool allows you to set up donations/tips through PayPal with no additional fees, create follower, host and subscription alerts and provides analytics so you can learn the best times to stream and which games you should be focusing your time on.
I’m really interested in what else they’ll be doing with Analytics.
BEBO— bebo.com
In October 2018, BEBO announced they were discontinuing support for general streamers, and moving their tool into one for tournament players and organisers for high schools and have since been bought by Twitch…
Yes, the old social network Bebo now describes itself as a “The easiest way to stream to Twitch” having started as the perfect alternative to Revlo but now re-making itself as a full replacement to OBS and Streamlabs.
Bebo has promised an all-in-one dashboard with payments, chat and more all built in and so far it looks like they have delivered. Bebo is now in an open-alpha on Windows and from early feedback and my own personal tests, looks brilliantly promising.
To put it in context, it took me around 2 hours of gentle tinkering to build my setup in OBS, while it took about 30 minutes in Bebo… it’s that easy.P.S. their support and Discord server are super supportive! ❤
Streamjar.tv — streamjar.tv
Described as the “ultimate tool for streamers”, StreamJar provides overlays, alerts and giveaway tools, it’s mostly been forgotten now with Streamlabs and StreamElements competing for dominance.
The best Twitch Trackers
Do you need help tracking your Twitch streaming success with followers/donations? Or just stalking your favourite broadcaster? These tools may be perfect for you.
TwitchTracker
The fastest growing Twitch tool right now, Twitch Tracker allows you to monitor and analyse both your own stream and anyone else.
It provides in-depth information on:
- The number of current followers and subscribers
- Average concurrent viewers and followers gained per month
- The most played games while on stream
- A streaming summary featuring insights on games played per stream and average length of streams
I’m incredibly impressed by everything it provides so far and highly recommend you try it out.
SullyGnome
Another new tool that pulls in all the data, and can look at 365 days’ worth in comparison to the other tools which are usually limited to 30 days or a month.
While it’s not the best looking tool in the world — this is incredibly useful and the information can be exported and saved in a spreadsheet.
Socialblade
From seeing your total followers per month to seeing detailed statistics per day and future projections, Socialblade is an all-round useful tool to seek out trends.
Twitch’s own stats dashboard
Twitch recently updated their stats page within every Dashboard. It now shows a ‘stream-first’ and a new heatmap mode will show how much you have streamed over the past hour.
Twitch has also released streaming achievements and a brand new Stream Summary which is incredibly invaluable to all streamers.
Here are some great explainer videos by Wild4Games explaining Stats and Video Stats.
Twitter Analytics
If you are using Twitter to promote your stream (which you should be…) then Twitter Analytics let you see how these tweets are doing and whether anyone is seeing or engaging with them.
Influencer.gg
We talk about Influencer.gg on our post about choosing what game to stream, you can learn more about it here. (Edit: Influencer.gg has since closed down and changed to esportsobserver.com)
Promotion tools
There are a lot of tools out there that help you promote your Twitch channel. Here is just a few of them!
Camelot
Kapsuli
Described as a social media tool made specifically for Twitch broadcasters.
StreamAid
Rechaaarge
Buffer
Use Buffer to schedule your Tweets, Instagram images and Facebook Statuses. Alternatives include Hootsuite and Tweetdeck.
Unum (or Later)
For Instagram scheduling
Canva
If you are struggling to design promotional material. Canva is perfect for you!
What about retweeting services and featured streamer slots on websites?
No. Unless you have spare cash laying around doing nothing, it’s probably not worth it. You’d be better off using the money to create unique content and spend it on Facebook, Google or Twitter ads.
Bonus round: Emoticons and Stream Health
Ever wonder what all the emoticons mean? Use twitchemotes.com to find out the info!
And want to check your Stream Health as you test your stream? Use this tool.
Now you understand the best tools to use, read our full guide to your first stream on Twitch: Getting Started On Twitch: Your First Stream
- #updated 23/10/2017 — Added StreamElements and switched Bebo from a Bot to a full all-in-one tool.
- #updated 22/11/2017 — Added more information on bots and Bebo
- #updated 02/01/2018 — Added TwitchTracker and switched Bebo to open-alpha
- #updated 05/02/2018 — Added more information to bots
- #updated 05/02/2018 — Added more information to bots, twitch donations and Bebo
- #updated 19/01/2019 — Re-wrote half the post, updated information about Bebo and StreamElements, tidied up grammar across the whole guide
- #updated 16/03/2019— Completed re-wrote and restructured the guide, added it to theemergence.co.uk and removed old pieces of content that are no longer relevant to Twitch streamers
- #updated 30/06/2019 — I added a portion of the article into promotional tools for Twitch streamers
What is The Emergence?
You can find more of what we do here:
Twitter — twitter.com/emergencegg
Twitch — www.twitch.tv/theemergence
Discord — discordapp.com/invite/VxFA7Xc
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