Kernel Video Sharing homepage presenting its self-hosted tube CMS — Kernel Video Sharing (KVS)

What a KVS licence costs

Basic is $99, Advanced $299 and Ultimate $499, each a one-time payment for one domain. Every licence includes the first installation on a compliant server and support from the developers. Updates are included for six months on Basic and Advanced, one year on Ultimate. The installed version keeps working afterwards, and another year of new versions costs $100, entirely optional. Ultimate can also be rented for $49 a month, with the VAST ad subscription, updates and one domain change a month included. If the rent lapses, KVS may be suspended. Extra services are priced per job: unencoded PHP source code, a branding-free player at $99, a domain change at $50.

Age verification for US traffic

The feature table on the order page leaves age verification, member accounts and paid access out of Basic. An adult tube therefore starts at Advanced. KVS applies age rules by country and traffic source, and its AgeVerif integration works by country, state, domain and referrer, which fits US laws that differ from state to state. Until a visitor is verified, the player can show a safe preview clip and thumbnail. Ultimate adds multi-server conversion, tokens, creator earnings, multilingual sites and photo albums.

What KVS cloud transcoding costs

The Conversion Cloud bills per 10 seconds of output: $0.0001 for SD (480p) and $0.0002 for HD (720p and 1080p), so $0.0012 per HD minute. Network traffic costs $0.005 per GB, and every task at least $0.005. KVS prices 100 daily videos of 15 minutes, output in 1080p, 720p and 480p, at $135 a month. Encoding covers H.264, H.265 and AV1, and KVS estimates that pairing AV1 with H.264 cuts video traffic by about 35%. The cloud also flags NSFW videos and picks a safe thumbnail for the pre-verification preview.

KVS licence terms worth reading

The licence allows no refunds and caps the publisher’s liability at the fee paid. KVS may link to customer sites for its own marketing, and the player’s source code is never supplied. Banned content covers child sexual abuse material, hate, violence, bestiality, rape and deepfakes. Legal adult content is not on the list. For hosting, the partners page lists M3Server from $39 a month and MojoHost with a 35% discount for KVS customers.

Kernel Video Sharing strengths and limitations

Strengths

Perpetual licence, paid once.
Age verification with safe previews.
Cloud transcoding at $0.0012 per HD minute.

Limitations

Basic lacks age verification.
No address for the publisher.
No refunds.

KVS alongside Coconut for encoding

Coconut charges $0.015 per HD output minute, with no site software and no licence. The KVS Conversion Cloud works out at $0.0012 per HD minute but comes built into KVS licences. On a KVS tube, the built-in cloud costs less, while Coconut fits a site running other software.