It’s a competitive world out there for streamers. If you’re looking for ways to enhance your streams and stand out from the crowd, many tools are available to help!

These are our top 5 tools to elevate your streams and give your audience an extraordinary viewing experience.

Nerd or Die – Custom Overlays, Banners, and Graphics

On Twitch, YouTube, and other streaming platforms, one of the best ways to up the quality of your streams is to use custom overlays, transitions, alerts, banners, emotes, and graphics. When you have unified graphics during and around your streams, they look way more polished, giving a fantastic first impression to new viewers.

To that end, Nerd or Die is a platform where you can get tons of pre-made, customizable stream graphics for your channel. You can buy a wide range of free graphics and a huge selection of affordable graphics packages. Both free and paid graphics sets can be customized with your brand colors, logo, and other particulars.

Graphics and designs from Nerd or Die are compatible with Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook Gaming. They can be used with most major broadcasting software, including OBS, Streamlabs, XSplit, Bebo, and more.

You may not get more than a first impression when trying to attract new viewers. Make it count.

Streamlabs – Full-service Broadcasting Software

Every streamer has to use broadcasting software. This software has to encode your content and broadcast it online as a stream for others to view. While OBS Studio is one of the most widely used programs because it’s completely free, Streamlabs is a great option for a more polished, stress-free stream.

The core Streamlabs product is also free and built on OBS’s open-source software, so it works just as well from a technical standpoint. The obvious question is, if Streamlabs is just running on OBS, why not just use OBS?

A major difference between Streamlabs and OBS is the extra features that come along with it. While OBS allows a lot of third-party integrations, it doesn’t have any built-in add-ons for streamers to use. Streamlabs has a full suite of creator tools to help you make your streams as unique as you are.

Streamlabs has a free and premium version (Streamlabs Ultra), which is either $19.99/month or $149/year. The free version comes with all the basics, including unlimited video recording and streaming, chat moderation tools, overlays, and alerts, but it also has some awesome additional features like merch store support, a logo maker, basic video editing, and animations. There’s also access to stream data to help you track your viewership stats.

If you’re still streaming to a small audience and not yet making any significant income from streaming, the free package gives you many great features to improve your streams. It’s a big step up that doesn’t require a lot of technical know-how to get all the features you want. When you’re ready to scale up, the Ultra package can expand your capabilities significantly.

Their Ultra tier gives additional features to the basic package, including access to 60+ apps and widgets, additional customization options for stream graphics, stream sponsorship support features, a YouTube thumbnail/Twitch panel maker, priority customer support, and more. It’s a complete step up with even more tools to polish your streams, clips, and content.

Streamlabs is compatible with all major streaming platforms, including Twitch, YouTube, Facebook Gaming, and others, and can be used on Windows or Mac devices. Most third-party streaming apps and features are compatible with Streamlabs.

Since you need broadcasting software anyway, why not choose one that gives you room to grow stress-free?

Aitum – Custom Interactions and Automation

Some of the most memorable streams allow viewers to interact with the stream through channel points, specific donations, super messages, and subscriptions. While a few tools let you do this, Aitum is one of the most versatile tools that lets you set up a ton of different interactions without any coding or technical knowledge. It has a 30-day free trial, with a price of $4.99/month or $49.99/year.

The number of things you can do with Aitum is a little overwhelming, but here’s a look at the main features the tool offers:

  • Create interactions between streams and connected third-party devices
  • Automate both simple and highly complex channel point interactions
  • Set up custom scene changes and filters for instant adjustments
  • Build custom variables for advanced interactions with viewers
  • Moderate chat automatically

Aitum works with OBS, Streamlabs, XSplit, and other broadcasting software. It also connects with outside devices from MIDI, OSC, and Elgato.

If you’re a Twitch streamer, you’ll get the most value from Aitum since it has the most custom interactions with Twitch streams. However, Aitum recently integrated with YouTube streams, allowing for custom interactions via memberships, specific chat triggers, milestone chats, super chats, and super stickers. The software also works with TikTok streams.

Automated interactions help you set your stream apart and give viewers a fun experience. A tool like Aitum gives you nearly endless options to use lights, sound effects, graphics, overlays, alerts, custom viewports, and more to enhance the viewer’s experience.

Canva – Channel Graphics, Emotes, and Icons

Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook streaming channels all benefit from various graphics outside of the actual streams. On your channel, you have the profile picture, channel banner, about page sections, off-stream banners, and anything you use on social media.

Canva is a fantastic resource for all these things, especially since you can use it for free! For simple graphics, Canva is the boss. It’s easy to use, offers a ton of pre-sized canvases and templates, includes many useful design elements, and gives you free rein to design whatever you want.

With Canva’s free version, you can do everything you need to do for your on-page channel graphics and social media posts. If you want to use stock images and a larger selection of pre-made elements, you can upgrade to the pro version for $12.99/month or $119.99/year.

Pretzel Rocks – Curated Background Soundscapes

Creating a comfortable soundscape is challenging for most streamers, especially if you’re new to streaming. An instant way to level up your stream is to play background music that fits the mood of what you’re doing.

One immediate issue with this is how trigger-happy Twitch is with bans for using copyrighted music. Tools like Pretzel Rocks are a simple way around this problem.

Pretzel Rocks has a huge catalog of stream-safe music that’s 100% safe to use on Twitch and a separate YouTube-approved streaming catalog. There are different ways to sort the music you want to play, including turning on a specific station that matches your vibe for the day. You can switch to the station you want, click play, and go ahead with your stream as usual. Connect it to your stream deck or other devices for easy control.

There’s a free tier for Pretzel Rocks to get started with ten curated stream-safe stations. The full plan for streamers costs $9.99/month or $59.99/year. It includes 60+ curated stations and the full Twitch-safe and YouTube-safe music catalogs for streaming and VODs, with limited downloads for other video content.

How do you make your streams special? Let’s talk about it in the comments below!