One of the most common assumptions about live streaming is that it requires powerful servers, expensive infrastructure, and complex configurations. For many WordPress users—especially creators, small businesses, associations, and educators—this immediately sounds out of reach.
Castio.io was designed to break that assumption.
Castio can run on almost any WordPress installation, including cheap shared hosting, without requiring dedicated streaming servers, cloud encoders, or external platforms. This article explains how that’s possible—and why the technical choices behind Castio make it uniquely compatible with low-cost hosting environments.
The Real Constraint of Shared Hosting
Shared hosting environments typically have:
- Limited CPU time per process
- Restricted memory usage
- No background daemons
- No FFmpeg or system-level tools
- Strict security sandboxing
This makes traditional live streaming setups impractical. Most solutions assume:
- Persistent streaming processes
- Heavy server-side video encoding
- Long-lived socket connections
- High real-time CPU usage
Castio intentionally avoids all of these requirements.
No Server-Side Video Encoding
The most important reason Castio works on cheap hosting is simple:
There is no server-side video encoding.
With Castio:
- Video capture happens in the browser
- Encoding happens on the user’s device
- The server only receives ready-to-stream video segments
This completely removes the most expensive part of live streaming from your hosting environment.
Your server does not:
- Encode video
- Transcode formats
- Run FFmpeg
- Maintain heavy media pipelines
It only handles standard file uploads and HTTP delivery, which shared hosting is designed for.
HLS: A Perfect Match for Shared Hosting
Castio uses HLS (HTTP Live Streaming), which is inherently compatible with low-cost hosting.
HLS works by:
- Splitting video into small
.tsor.m4ssegments - Serving them as regular files over HTTP
- Using a simple playlist (
.m3u8) to coordinate playback
From your hosting provider’s perspective:
- This is normal web traffic
- No persistent connections are required
- No special streaming ports are used
In other words, your host doesn’t even need to “know” you are live streaming.
No Persistent Connections, No Long-Running Processes
Shared hosting environments are hostile to:
- Long-running PHP processes
- WebSocket servers
- Real-time signaling services
Castio avoids all of that.
There are:
- No WebRTC signaling servers
- No WebSocket-based streaming
- No background daemons
- No cron jobs required for streaming
Each viewer simply requests video segments using normal HTTP requests. Each request is short-lived, stateless, and inexpensive.
This fits perfectly within shared hosting execution limits.
PHP Is Used Lightly—and Intelligently
Castio is built as a WordPress-native plugin, which means:
- It respects WordPress execution limits
- It does not block PHP workers
- It avoids heavy synchronous operations
PHP is mainly used for:
- Managing stream metadata
- Handling permissions and access control
- Generating viewer pages
- Coordinating playlist updates
All heavy lifting is done elsewhere—primarily in the browser and via standard HTTP delivery.
Works with Basic Disk and Bandwidth Limits
On shared hosting, disk space and bandwidth are often limited. Castio works within those constraints:
- Video segments are small and temporary
- Old segments can be cleaned automatically
- Recordings can be enabled or disabled
- Retention time is configurable
You decide:
- How long recordings are kept
- How much storage is used
- Whether streams are ephemeral or archived
Nothing is forced. You stay in control of resource usage.
No External Services Required (or Blocked)
Cheap hosting plans often restrict outbound connections or third-party services.
Castio does not require:
- External streaming APIs
- Cloud encoders
- External chat services
- Remote processing endpoints
Everything runs inside WordPress and the browser. If your hosting supports WordPress, it supports Castio.
CDN-Friendly (But Not Mandatory)
While Castio works perfectly without a CDN, it benefits greatly from one—even on cheap hosting.
If you enable a free or low-cost CDN (like Cloudflare):
- Video segments are cached
- Load is offloaded from your host
- Viewer capacity increases dramatically
This allows even a basic shared hosting plan to handle surprisingly large audiences, because most traffic never reaches the origin server.
Real-World Use Cases on Shared Hosting
Castio is particularly well-suited for:
- Small creators starting live content
- Associations and clubs with limited budgets
- Teachers running online classes
- Churches streaming services
- Bloggers adding live sessions occasionally
- Agencies deploying demos on client sites
You don’t need enterprise infrastructure to go live.
When Should You Upgrade Hosting?
Castio does not force you to upgrade hosting—but it allows you to grow naturally.
You might consider upgrading if:
- You stream daily at high bitrate
- You keep long-term video archives
- You host large simultaneous live events
- You want full redundancy
The key difference: upgrading is your choice, not a technical requirement imposed by the platform.
Designed for the Real World of WordPress
Most WordPress sites:
- Run on shared hosting
- Have modest traffic
- Are managed by non-experts
- Need predictable costs
Castio embraces this reality instead of fighting it.
By avoiding heavy server-side processing, external dependencies, and real-time infrastructure, Castio makes live streaming accessible to every WordPress user, not just those with dedicated servers.
Conclusion: Live Streaming Without the Hosting Headache
Castio proves that live streaming does not have to be expensive or complex.
Because it:
- Uses browser-based encoding
- Relies on standard HTTP delivery
- Avoids persistent connections
- Eliminates server-side processing
- Integrates cleanly into WordPress
Castio works reliably on any WordPress hosting, including the cheapest shared plans.
If your WordPress site can publish a blog post, it can stream live with Castio.