Finding a reliable IPTV service could be a hard thing, especially with a lot of scam going on in the market. The first thing people usually pay attention to is the price list and thats exactly what those scammers count on. If you want to know How to find the best IPTV service, there are few steps to take and some points to pay attention to before worrying about the price. You might take a few days to evaluate a few providers but if you do it right, you will decide on one which is going to be your first and last choice. So let's do it once but do it right.
How to find the best IPTV service?
How long have you been active in the IPTV/CS market? I have been since 2011. How many providers do you know? I know a lot! How many satellite and IPTV forums have you subscribed and active in? a few. End-users in the IPTV market are two groups:
1-those who know their way around almost all of it and no one is able to deceive them with some glowing, low-price offers
2-those who are simple, non-savvy, not much Knowledgeable in IPTV, simply looking for a reliable service with which they could enjoy watching their favorite team match in weekends.
You need to decide which group you belong to:
If the 1st, then probably this article might be a waste of time to you as you already know the right way of finding a reliable IPTV provider, you might have already done it ages ago and been with your provider for a very long time, but I promise to make this article worthy of your while, too.
If you think you belong to the 2nd group, try to be more active in satellite and IPTV forums. Read some articles. You can visit WeDoStream from time to time, I regularly post useful materials here, add to your knowledge, especially in terms of protecting your privacy in IPTV world. However, if you don't have time for that and still hoping between providers to find the right one, please take a few minutes of your precious time and read this article. I promise, it will change your way of looking at IPTV providers resulting in you having a shortlist of the best choices and find the right one in no time.
I'm gonna list some factors here, somethings you need to pay attention to, practice and some others to avoid, and then will delve deep into each:
-Ways to find an IPTV Provider
-Provider's name - brand name: The importance of keeping records
-Their online reputation and service lifetime
-Provider's main market country
-Free trial: when to order it, what to expect
-Provider's response time: how to measure that
-Your distance to server(s)
-Extra's: Android app? free VPN?
-Service updates: Announcement group or web page
-Client management: how does their accounting work?
-Flexibility in payment methods
-Ways to find an IPTV Provider
These days, IPTV providers have profile accounts on almost all social platforms. Some people look for a provider on Tiktok, other search Facebook. Some others have their own private groups in platforms like Telegram and they only accept clients through referral. Satellite and IPTV forums have a section where IPTV providers can take a few steps and gain "Verified Reseller/Provider" on that forum which means their authenticity of being a valid provider is confirmed by the admin(s) of that forum. But the usual, most common way would be using Search Engines like google. Most IPTV Providers have websites and by optimizing them, they hope to have the higher place on search engines, gaining the best possible impression in front of users' eyes. You can pick any method from above.
-Provider's name - brand name: The importance of keeping records
Two things I want to explain here:
First, provider's name means absolutely nothing. It should be considered a simple name just to differentiate this provider from others, thats all. If a service's name is "Lion IPTV" and the other "Rabbit IPTV", it does not mean the 1st service has better streams! yeah, you laugh right now but I have seen similar cases where people think like that. Both our hypothetical IPTV providers (Lion IPTV and Rabbit IPTV) could be good or bad, the thing we want to focus on is what not to use as a quality measurement.
The 2nd point is, when you choose your provider, remember their name, save their contact details. Bookmark their website address on your web browser. Add their email address to the trusted contacts. Save their announcement channel/group. There are brand names which are similar. It could be just an accident or some scammers trying to scavenge on a brand name which is popular, successful and reputable. For instance, let's say (this is just an example) a provider's brand name is "Nice IPTV" and the owner has registered the domain niceiptv.com - This is just an example and by the time of writing this article this domain is not even registered . Right now there are so many scamming projects going on and it would be like making other domains similar to the above like niceiptv.net , niceiptv.stream and so on. Some basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) would put that website on top pages and will result in some clients falling for this trap. They browse to niceiptv.stream thinking it's niceiptv.com, pay for the service and either wont receive any product or when they need support they don't get any. Be smart!
-Their online reputation and service lifetime
You can take a few minutes searching about the provider, see if they are reputable or maybe have some bad reviews. There are some IPTV Blacklist groups constantly exposing scammers and untrusted IPTV providers. You can find them on social media platforms and forums.
You should also see how old this provider is. How long ago they started. One thing I can recommend is to look for their activity records during September and October 2018, when the whole IPV market went down due to Xtream Codes getting busted and shutdown as almost all providers back then were using that CMS. Not many providers stood by their clients during that time, some fled the market and re emerged with a new brand name, some others stopped responding to messages and came back once everything came back to normal. If they have a website, check for any News page, Blog and/or Knowledge-base section. Those contents should have a publish date which can help you understanding how long this provider been around.
-Provider's main market country
It is so important to know the provider's main market country. In other words, you need to know that from which country the biggest audience of that provider are. If the majority of visiting users are from one specific country, that should mean the provider has something interesting for those people from that specific country. To show you how, you can go on any traffic analytic website like https://similarweb.com/ . These websites tracks the traffic analytics of almost all websites in the world. Type the domain of the provider you are evaluating and hit enter. Scroll down until you find Top Countries section. There you will see countries ranked from high to low based on the amount of traffic they have to that website. If your country is on top, that may mean this provider has your country package as their main market. This is just one way to do it. Another way would be a point-blank question hoping for an honest answer.
-Free trial: when to order it, what to expect
Here comes the first real interaction with the provider's service; an IPTV Free Trial. Evaluating the service first is your right and it has to be free. I mean, if you want to pay for a pair of slippers, you get to wear and take few steps with them for free :) . It should also have all the contents just like their paid subscription. Some providers charge for the free trial or they only share part of their content with the free trial. It's their choice, but it is also your choice not to accept that.
When to order a free trial is also important. First, see how long a free trial is going to be. Is it 24hrs? good, plan for it so the time you receive the access covers at least one major live event of your favorite country package so you can evaluate the service performance under heavy load during peak hours.
Your favorite country package should be categorized in folders or in the order you prefer. EPG should be available and Picons would be nice to have.
Another thing I'd like to mention here is that IPTV stands for "Internet Protocol TeleVision". That means an IPTV provider's first responsibility is to provide LiveTV. There are other things a provider can offer, like VOD (Video on Demand) movies and series. Yeah! I mentioned this so you good people know that VOD is not a MUST HAVE part of IPTV, it's just a bonus. Some people think if a provider does not provide VOD then it's crap! IPTV is LiveTV and thats why it's called IPTV and not IPVOD. You can not call it "cat" and yet expect it to "bark", right? :)
-Provider's response time: how to measure that
While you are on the free trial and you know hot events are live, send them an email, open a support ticket. Ask your questions about the service. See how quickly they get back to you. Don't say "Hi" and expect a quick answer. Compose a short but meaningful message about the inquiries you have regarding the their service, points we talked about in this article, and see how rapid they are in terms of customer support.
Remember one thing, them being slow in their response could mean anything: Maybe their service has issues and they are getting a high volume of support requests, or maybe their business is doing so well that it takes time to respond, or they just don't give a rat's ass about users and answer tickets once every 48 hrs. There are providers who answer messages every 2 3 days!
-Your distance to the server(s)
You need to know how far away you are from provider's servers. A user living in Australia and provider's servers being hosted in western Europe raises the risk of having buffering issues due to the increased network latency up to 250ms, maybe more. It is important to have the provider's servers right next to you in the same continent. Here is a good question you can ask your provider in the message you are going to send them to measure their response time, ask about where their servers are hosted.
-Extra's: Android app? free VPN?
Some providers have taken the game to the next level:
Most offer an Android application usually comes in a form of APK file which you can side-load into your device. It's not available on Google Play Store or Amazon Web Store because of legal reasons. Here you can read a guide on how to side-load an IPTV android application.
There are some who provide a private VPN service for free along with their IPTV service. VPN servers belong to the provider themselves and only dedicated to their IPTV clients. It then becomes a case of two birds and one stones basically; you pay for IPTV and VPN service comes along with it.
Ask to see what extra features are available in their service.
-Service updates: Announcement group or web page
Keeping clients up to speed regarding service changes, updates, upgrades is a sign of responsibility. There are some who also provide coverage tables of sports on their website or within their private announcement groups.
-Client management: how does their accounting work?
Many providers nowadays have their automatic customer management systems in which a user registers and then can manage their IPTV account, receive invoices, see the details of the service and so on. It's a good thing to have but if the provider of your choice still does everything manually yet their service and support is top notch, then you should not hold the lack of CRM system against them.
-Flexibility in payment methods
Basically, the more payment methods available to you to pay the fee, the better.
By now, you must be thinking, "what about the price?" sure, what about it?! It's what you should measure as someone who is going to pay their hard-earned money. Let's say the provider is doing everything mentioned above at top level. How much would a 1month deal be? is it worth it? Be reasonable. Understand that the provider needs to pay for various costs e.g. server rent, restream fees .. and add to that the risk a provider takes on by setting up and maintaining the service.
Any questions? post it on WDS Community Forum and let us help you.