Displayer

Yodeck vs OptiSigns: digital signage software compared on price, players and proof of play

Yodeck is the cheaper of the two at the entry tier, 8 USD per screen monthly against 10 USD, and it posts you a player with a paid annual plan. OptiSigns costs a little more and gives you a much larger app and dashboard library, plus three free screens instead of one. Both put playback reporting on a middle tier rather than the entry one. If the screens carry something a landlord, a franchisor or an advertiser will ask you to prove, that middle tier is the price you are actually comparing.

Try the screen builder

Build a screen here before you compare anything

Type a venue name and three messages and the builder renders a working screen in the browser, with the weekly grid and the dayparts behind it. No account, no player, no download. Two minutes with a real screen tells you more about a signage tool than any feature table, including this one.

Venue

Orientation

Layout

Weekly schedule
  • Venue: restaurant, retail store, clinic, gym, office or school
  • Orientation: landscape 16:9 or portrait 9:16
  • Layout: full bleed, main plus sidebar, or a menu board in three columns
  • Content: your business name and three short lines, prefilled for the venue you picked

The schedule strip underneath shows the same playlist placed on a weekly grid, which is exactly what the schedule view does inside the product.

Yodeck vs OptiSigns, side by side

The rates below are the published US list prices per active screen per month, read from each vendor's own pricing page. Annual rates are shown where the vendor publishes a separate one.

Yodeck OptiSigns Displayer
Free tier 1 screen, no card Up to 3 screens, 1 GB storage, 25 apps None, one paid plan from the start
Entry paid plan Basic, 8 USD Standard, 10 USD monthly or 9 USD yearly Essential, 19 USD monthly or 15 USD yearly
Middle plan Premium, 12 USD Pro, 12.50 USD monthly or 11.25 USD yearly Professional, 29 USD monthly or 23 USD yearly
Upper published plan Enterprise, 16 USD Pro Plus 15 USD, Engage 30 USD, Enterprise 45 USD Network, 49 USD monthly or 39 USD yearly
Screen minimum None published None until Enterprise, which starts at 25 screens None
Playback reporting Playback Reports, from Premium Proof of play, from Pro Proof of play with screenshots, from Professional
Player hardware Yodeck player included with a paid annual plan Software only, bring your own device Browser based player, bring your own device
App and data library 90+ apps on Basic, more on Premium 160+ apps, Power BI and Salesforce dashboards on Pro Plus Web page items, media, tickers, API on Network
Annual discount Same rate as monthly on the published table Roughly 10 percent off the monthly rate Roughly 20 percent off the monthly rate

What the table does not say

Every platform in this category plays a playlist on a schedule. That part is solved. The decision comes down to three things that cost money later: what the player runs on, what evidence you can produce when someone asks, and how much work it is to change a hundred screens at once instead of one.

Run the arithmetic on 25 screens

A comparison that stops at the headline rate is the one that gets the budget wrong. Twenty five screens on the reporting tier, on each vendor's annual rate, for one year.

Yodeck Premium

25 screens at 12 USD is 300 USD a month, 3,600 USD for the year. Playback Reports are on. A 4 GB player ships with each annual license, so the hardware line is close to zero.

OptiSigns Pro

25 screens at the 11.25 USD annual rate is 281.25 USD a month, 3,375 USD for the year, plus whatever you spend on Android sticks or mini PCs. Proof of play is on. Dashboards and Microsoft 365 need Pro Plus, which moves it to 13.50 USD.

Displayer Professional

25 screens at the 23 USD yearly rate is 575 USD a month, 6,900 USD for the year. This is the expensive option of the three and there is no point pretending otherwise. What the difference buys is on the next section. Our pricing page has the whole table.

Proof of play is the line that moves

Both vendors ship a playback log. Yodeck calls it Playback Reports and puts it on Premium. OptiSigns calls it proof of play and puts it on Pro. In both cases you get a record of what played, on which player, and when, exportable as CSV.

That record is enough for an internal audit and it is not always enough for an external one. A log says the file was scheduled and the player reported it. It does not show what the panel actually rendered, which is the gap that matters when a screen sits at the wrong resolution, a web page item fails to load behind a cached frame, or a player keeps reporting while the panel sits on an input nobody switched back.

Displayer's proof of play is the same CSV record plus periodic screenshots of the rendered screen, timestamped and kept with the play record. When a franchisee, a brand partner or a compliance officer asks what was on that wall on the fourteenth, you send a picture and a line, not a line alone.

If nobody ever asks you that question, do not pay for it. Buy Yodeck Basic and get on with the day.

Players, and the part nobody budgets

Yodeck's bundled player is a real advantage and also a real commitment. The hardware arrives with the license, it is configured, and if it dies the replacement comes from Yodeck. You are buying a managed appliance, which is exactly right for a first deployment and exactly wrong when a site already has standardized on something else.

OptiSigns goes the other way: software only, running on Android sticks, Fire TV, Raspberry Pi, ChromeOS devices and Windows mini PCs. Cheaper at rollout if you already have devices, more work to keep a fleet of them patched and identical.

Displayer runs as a browser page, which means the digital signage player is whatever already boots into a browser: a smart TV, a Chrome device, a Windows mini PC, an Android box. Pairing is a six character code typed once. There is no vendor hardware to buy and none to be locked into. The blog post on digital signage cost prices the whole hardware line if that is the part you are still sizing.

Running more than one address

At one venue this comparison barely matters. At twenty, the difference is whether a change is one action or twenty.

Tag screens by region, brand or venue and schedule against the tag, so one lunch promotion lands on every store in a market while each venue keeps its own door screen. Roles and approvals decide who can publish to the whole group and who can only draft. An audit log on the platform records who changed what and when, which is what an internal control review asks for and what a shared login cannot give you.

Both Yodeck and OptiSigns handle groups, and both do it competently. Check how their group model maps to how you are actually organized before you rely on it, because a flat screen list with tags behaves differently from a real hierarchy once a region manager needs to be locked out of another region.

Which one to buy

Buy Yodeck when

Price per screen is the deciding number, the deployment is new, and a player arriving in a box configured is worth more to you than choosing your own hardware. Basic at 8 USD is the cheapest honest entry in this category.

Buy OptiSigns when

The screens need to show things that live in other tools: Power BI, Salesforce, Google Slides, social feeds, a dashboard your operations team already maintains. The app library is the biggest of the three and that is not a marketing claim, it is a count.

Buy Displayer when

Something on the wall has to be provable. Franchise compliance, advertiser reporting, pharmacy and clinic notices, landlord obligations, safety messaging that an inspector may ask about. You are paying more per screen for evidence with a picture attached, multi-site control and a player that is not a hardware contract.

Is OptiSigns better than Yodeck

Neither is better across the board. OptiSigns wins on app and dashboard integrations and on the free tier, which covers three screens instead of one. Yodeck wins on price per screen and on hardware, since a paid annual plan includes a configured player. For playback reporting the two are close: Yodeck puts it on Premium at 12 USD, OptiSigns on Pro at 12.50 USD monthly.

Yodeck or OptiSigns, which is cheaper

Yodeck, at the entry tier. Basic is 8 USD per screen monthly against OptiSigns Standard at 10 USD, and Yodeck includes a player with an annual plan while OptiSigns expects you to supply the device. On the reporting tier the gap nearly closes: Yodeck Premium is 12 USD and OptiSigns Pro is 11.25 USD on the annual rate.

Does Yodeck have proof of play

Yes, under the name Playback Reports, on the Premium plan and above. It produces daily, weekly or monthly records of what played on each player, downloadable as raw CSV. It is the feature people use to bill advertisers or report royalties, which is why it sits above the entry tier.

Does OptiSigns have a free plan

Yes, for up to three screens, with 1 GB of storage, up to three users, playlists capped at 30 items and 200 MB, and 25 basic apps. Proof of play is not included on the free tier or on Standard. It starts at Pro.

What is the difference between Yodeck Basic and Premium

Basic at 8 USD covers media, templates, the layout editor and basic scheduling. Premium at 12 USD adds Microsoft 365 and Google apps, data visualization apps, the API, advanced media scheduling, tag based playlists and Playback Reports. Premium also ships a 4 GB player instead of a 1 GB one.

Can I use my own hardware with Yodeck or OptiSigns

With OptiSigns, yes, that is the model: Android, Fire TV, Raspberry Pi, ChromeOS and Windows. With Yodeck you can use your own device and take a small credit instead of the included player, though the platform is built around its own player. Displayer runs in a browser, so any device with a browser works and pairing takes one six character code.

Do any of them charge per user

Not on their paid tiers. Yodeck and OptiSigns both list unlimited users on paid plans, and Displayer includes unlimited team members on every plan. The seat count only bites on OptiSigns' free tier, which caps at three users.

Related pages

Put one screen up and decide from there

A shortlist made from feature tables ages badly. A shortlist made from three screens running for a week does not.

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