bongobd.com
On our quest for the best movie streaming sites on the web, it would be impossible to not mention Bongo BD. Not only is Bongo BD widely revered for its superior TV and movie streaming platform, but it is easily the most popular movie streaming service in all of Bangladesh and India. If you are looking for a new premium movie streaming site in either Bangladesh or India, you have come to the right place.
Bongo BD, one of the largest streaming sites in Bangladesh or India, has been successful for the past 8 years by accumulating a large membership base and offering a comprehensive streaming experience with many services. They continue to grow by expanding into adjacent spaces, such as introducing their Cricket app.
However, just because Bongo BD has made a sizable impact in the streaming landscape in recent years, that does not mean it is necessarily going to be the best movie streaming site for you. We all have different tastes, preferences and monthly budgets after all. That's why you were smart and decided to read the Bongo BD review before signing up, though! Go ahead and give yourself a pat on the back. I know it may sound like I'm being sarcastic but, seriously, go ahead and do it. It's okay, nobody will see!
Now that we have congratulated ourselves, it is time to get down to business. Do you want to know if Bongo BD is the best movie streaming site for you? Well, let's take a closer look at the popular streaming service, what it has to offer, and how much it costs in order to find out, shall we?
History
Bongo BD, a streaming platform with an interesting backstory, was sort of thrust into the streaming industry by unforeseen growth on another channel.
Bongo BD was founded in 2013 by Ahad Mohammad and Navidul Huq. They started their YouTube channel with a wide variety of original content, including web series and commentary on products and current events. The channel quickly surpassed 2 million views and received YouTube's Golden Play Button award, as well as an ICT national award.
Eventually, Bongo BD got too big for YouTube and decided to create their own platform. This would allow for further expansion and more lucrative opportunities if they could translate their millions of YouTube followers into monthly subscribers.
Today, Bongo BD has produced a total of 1500 original Bengali films and 1,000+ TV shows, dramas, and music videos. It can be said with certainty that Bongo BD made the switch from YouTube channel to movie streaming site at the perfect time - synergizing both the brand's own momentum as well as the surge in popularity and prominence of movie streaming sites in Bangladesh.
Design
Bongo BD offers a site layout and design that is common among movie streaming sites. Although this design format is not particularly game-changing or exceptional, it is effective and there is no need to reinvent the wheel.
A benefit of using familiar site design for Bongo BD is that there is no learning curve. If you have used any of the best movie streaming sites in the past - such as Netflix, Hulu, and Prime Video - Bongo BD will be easily intuitive and user-friendly. There are no surprises or complications here.
When you land on the site's main page, you will be greeted by an extra-large banner that alternates featured movie and series posters. If something catches your eye, great! Just click on it and start streaming immediately. There is no need to do any unnecessary digging or browsing in that case.
You can either scroll down or click on the menu lines to get to the different sections. Each line is separated by category or genre, and each also has a side-scrolling function so you can see the entire list at once. This makes it easier to browse and makes the site more responsive and dynamic than some of the other movie streaming sites.
One aspect of Bongo BD's website design that differs from the typical movie streaming site is the layout of the media player pages. For this, Bongo BD appears to have decided to pay homage to its roots, as it resembles YouTube a bit more than slightly. You'll find the media player, of course, situated off-center, left, with a scrollable list of recommended videos spanning the right-hand side of the page beside it.
It is a hybrid movie streaming site and video streamer that offers users the best of both worlds: Netflix meets YouTube.
The only potential downside to Bongo BD is that it incorporates a lot of ads. These ads, in my opinion, do a lot to undermine the otherwise enjoyable and adequate user experience of the site. The site would look much better if it would rethink its approach to advertising.
On the downside, however, the ads may be a result of the movie streaming site recently making all of its content available for free as a result of COVID lockdown orders. So, I would say that it is in fact a fair trade off, wouldn't you?
Content and Features
One thing that is fairly unique about Bongo BD, though, is the fact that the vast majority of the content featured here is from and of Bangladesh. Furthermore, Bongo BD offers up a blend of original films, Indian and Bangladeshi blockbuster hits, digital premieres, and classic movies, which are seldom seen from even the best movie streaming site that charges top dollar for a subscription.
That is not all, though? Bongo BD also has thousands of television shows, web series, music videos and YouTube-style content (mostly geared towards young adults, I would say), which results in one of the most unique and interesting content libraries of any movie streaming site on the web today.
And if that wasn't enough content for you, perhaps the fact that Bongo BD also provides live TV streaming will convince you to check this movie streaming site out. Users can enjoy 19 of the top Bangladeshi TV channels thanks to Bongo. The main feature that I always feel is missing from many of the best movie streaming sites is the ability to watch live TV - so, adding this to the growing list of strengths of this site!
Mobile and Desktop Experience
Mobile streamers rejoice as Bongo BD has native apps available for both Android and iOS devices! The apps for both operating systems are decent - offering a smooth and responsive user interface, as well as more intuitive browsing and content discovery functions. The iOS app has an average user rating of 4 stars (out of 5), just to give you an idea of the public opinion.
I'm sorry to say that as of right now, Bongo BD does not have any apps available for smart TVs or Roku devices. This means that a limited viewing experience is likely, unless you don't mind using older HDMI cables.
Pricings and Plans
This may be good news for the whole Bongo BD review: this premium movie streaming site is free for anyone and everyone to use, all around the world! As I said, the company made their service free to help people through COVID, but it appears to be sticking to this model for the foreseeable future.
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