Let us say this straight: A third-party video platform is the better option #than hosting your own videos. Why is that? Videos tend to be large. Meaning, they will quickly eat up your storage space and server bandwidth.
For example, it requires one gigabyte of server bandwidth for 10 people to watch one minute of HD video. It takes the same bandwidth for 1,000 people or more to view an image or text-based page. As a result, visitors may have issues viewing your video content, in addition to compatibility and quality problems.
On the other hand, third-party video hosting platforms come with a generous amount of storage space. For instance, some vendors give you 200 GB of bandwidth per month while others come with unlimited bandwidth.
Product | Best for | Pricing | Free Plan | Website URL |
---|---|---|---|---|
Youtube | Driving traffic | / | yes | Visit |
Vimeo | Creative professionals | $7 per month | yes | Visit |
Wistia | Successful online businesses | $99 per month | yes | Visit |
Dailymotion | As a secondary distribution channel | Get in touch with the vendor | yes | Visit |
Vidyard | Marketing teams | $15 per month | yes | Visit |
Brightcove | Enterprises | $199 per month | no | Visit |
Building an audience | / | yes | Visit | |
Sproutvideo | Solopreneurs | $24.99 per month | no | Visit |
Cincopa | Business of all sizes | $9 per month | no | Visit |
Jetpack | WordPress site owners | $19.95 per month | no | Visit |
Get this: YouTube has two billion users worldwide, and over 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute. There are two major benefits for hosting your video on Youtube. First, it has a massive user base. Two, it’s owned by Google, the largest search engine, which means you’ll get higher rankings in search results. In terms of what you can do with the free video hosting plan, YouTube gives you unlimited cloud storage, meaning you can upload as many videos as you wish. Although there’s a limit to the size of the content (128GB), that’s still more than enough.
But that’s not all. You can also embed your videos on your website by using iframe codes and tracking your content’s performance in real-time. Now let’s talk about the downsides.
The disappointing side of this video hosting platform is that you’ll have ads displayed before your video starts, or they may appear on the side during your video.
You may join the Partners Program and earn revenue from the ads, but in order to make a buck, you’ll need a large audience. The good news is that YouTube lets you turn off ads on individual videos only – although it can be quite time-consuming.
Youtube is best for businesses that:
Want to drive more traffic to their website.
Want to improve their search rankings.
Need unlimited cloud storage free of charge.
Vimeo is another well-known player that offers video hosting services. Let us speak honestly and say that it’s a major competitor to YouTube that comes with a generous free account. For instance, you can upload up to 500MB per week, for a total of 25GB a year. What’s more, the free video hosting plan also gives you some basic analytics and privacy settings.
And get this: all videos are ad-free and cross-device compatible, and there’s no limit on bandwidth, file size, or duration. Sounds impressive, right?
However, if your videos take up more than 500 MB of space per week, you’ll need to subscribe to one of Vimeo’s paid plans.
Luckily, there are four pricing plans, ranging from $7 to $75 per month. Some of the advanced features you’ll get include video creation with custom branding, private team projects, and player call-to-actions.
Even better, you can publish videos to any channel, customize the player and add powerful marketing tools to bump up engagement.
But here’s another thing: Vimeo tends to attract a specific audience, including creative professionals. Certain types of videos are trending on this platform, such as indie music videos, original short films, and extreme nature videos. If your business falls out of these categories, you may struggle with attracting an audience.
Vimeo is best for:
Branded content.
Ad-free videos.
Creative professionals.
Website:
https://vimeo.com/
Wistia (top pick for successful online businesses)
Intuitive user-friendly interface and advanced analytics are where Wistia shines. Finding your way around the platform is incredibly easy as you can see all the main features at a glance, while the analytics tools give you a better view of your engagement and user interaction. And if you’re interested in capturing leads through your videos, you’ll be lucky to hear that Wistia lets you insert in-video calls to action and email capture forms. Heck, you can even embed keywords into your videos to improve your SEO.
There’s plenty of integration options as well, including with HubSpot, MailChimp, Marketo, and WordPress. We must mention that the platform has just added podcast support to its features pack. This is a fantastic feature if you want to tell your brand’s story with video and audio.
One thing to note is that although Wistia comes with a free plan, its video hosting services are quite limited. For instance, it comes with 3 videos, 200 GB of bandwidth per month, and just enough storage to house those videos.
You can always upgrade to their paid plan, which can be pricey for businesses with a limited budget ($99 per month for the Pro plan). The high price tag makes Wistia a top pick but for enterprises and successful online businesses.
Wistia is best for:
Enterprises.
Successful online businesses.
Businesses that rely on leads.
Website:
https://wistia.com/
Dailymotion is a super great alternative to YouTube, although it has a smaller audience compared to the video giant. But hang on a minute: a smaller audience also means less competition.That’s right! You’ll find it easier to get your business off the ground and build an audience of your own. Let’s talk about the platform’s free plan (yes, it has one).
If your needs are basic, the free plan offers all the features you would need to grow an audience. For instance, you can edit your video, create a channel, add links to your social media sites, and set up feature videos.
Unfortunately, videos are not ad-free, although they appear at the end of videos, which is a relief compared to YouTube that overwhelms the viewer from the start. What’s more, there’s no limit on storage and bandwidth, although videos shouldn’t exceed 2GB or be longer than 60 minutes.
DailyMotion is best for:
Businesses that need free unlimited video hosting.
Audience building with less competition.
Businesses looking for a secondary distribution channel.
Website:
https://www.dailymotion.com/
The cheapest paid plan will cost you $15 per month billed annually and is a great option for communicating better with your customers and your coworkers. You’ll get call-to-actions, password protection, and replies to your videos. If you upgrade to $300 per month, you’ll get access to a range of advanced features such as custom branding, powerful analytics, priority support, and Zoom integration.
But that’s not all! If you have a large budget, the Business plan is priced at $1,250 per month. It’s the ultimate plan if you care about generating more leads and increasing revenue through your videos.
Vidyard is best for:
Powerful video analytics.
Security features.
Integrations with other business tools.
Marketing and sales teams.
Website:
https://www.vidyard.com/
Brightcove is the video platform solution that’s widely used by major publications and 50% of all Fortune 500 companies.
To begin with, there’s no maximum file resolution or file/video size for uploads and the platform works well with any player and accepts any video format.
It can help marketers integrate video in their marketing and communications at scale, while eCommerce businesses can incorporate video content within their eCommerce platforms for even greater customer engagement. You can do quite a bit with this tool, including:
Live stream right to your website/app.
Use advanced marketing automation integrations.
Manage and sell your own video ad inventory.
However, considering the platform is geared towards enterprises, it can be an expensive and complex solution for smaller businesses and solopreneurs. Pricing starts at $199 a month and requires an annual contract.
Brightcove is best for:
Enterprises.
Successful eCommerce businesses.
Website:
https://www.brightcove.com/
Here’s something to consider:
If you want a video hosting solution that compares to YouTube in terms of audience size, Facebook is a good place to start. Although not primarily a video hosting platform, Facebook is quite generous with its guidelines and specifications. For instance, there’s a 4GB max file size, 90 minutes of video length, and unlimited file storage. The best part? It’s all for free.
There are two great features, Facebook Live that offers live streaming, and “Watch” on-demand videos. You can host live streams on personal profiles, pages, and groups. You must have a Facebook Page in order to publish-on-demand “Facebook Watch” videos.
Unfortunately, as with all other vendors, it comes with a couple of downsides. For starters, it plays ads automatically on all videos, and the video quality is lower than others platforms.
Facebook is best for:
Unlimited free video hosting.
Building an audience.
Live and on-demand video hosting.
Business groups and pages.
Website:
https://www.facebook.com
Sproutvideo is another great video hosting solution that’s geared towards small to medium-sized businesses. All paid plans support a maximum file size of up to 100GB and total file storage of 500GB with 500GB of bandwidth. And get this: they don’t run ads on any video on the platform or link to other “related” videos.
Some of its best features include:
Video hosting services and delivery: users can create a custom video player.
Lead generation: add call-to-actions in your videos to collect email addresses and improve your lead generation efforts.
Advanced analytics: video play and engagement data, embed tracking, identity tracking, head mapping, and geo-tracking.
Video SEO: tools to help you create video site maps.
Easy embed options: embed codes work seamlessly with platforms like Shopify, WordPress, Squarespace.
Even better, Sproutvideo supports video in HD and Ultra-HD, all the way up to 4K and 8K. The good news is that there’s a 30-day trial today where you get unlimited access to every single feature the platform offers. The bad news is that the free trial only includes 5 GB of bandwidth and storage and 15 minutes of live input with 60 minutes of live delivery. Paid plans range from $24.99 per month to $499.99 per month.
Sproutvideo is best for:
Small and medium-sized businesses.
Solopreneurs.
Experienced digital marketers.
Website:
https://sproutvideo.com/
Cincopa is a comprehensive digital asset management platform that offers dynamic video hosting solutions.
You get to create personalized videos, share them via email, embed these videos onto your site, and learn about your viewers’ behavior in real-time through some powerful analytics. Cincopa’s customizable HTML5 player delivers ultra 4K video quality. You can easily customize it to add a logo, change player color, toggle speed controls, queue playlist, and much more.
What’s more, the platform lets you embed your videos in your email and marketing automation platform like Hubspot. Even better, you can boost your marketing efforts with on-video forms, email collectors, and call to actions.
But that’s not all! The platform comes with an unmatched live-streaming capability that can cater to thousands of viewers. Here’s some more great news: you can organize your videos into chapters, sessions, and seasons. Cincopa video galleries integrate well with most content CMS like WordPress, Shopify, Drupal, and WooCommerce.
There’s a 30-day free trial that lets you explore all of the platform’s best features. After that, you have to subscribe to one of the paid plans, ranging from $9 to $350 per month.
Cincopa is best for:
HD streaming.
Hosting for video, audio, and photos.
Businesses of all sizes.
Website:
https://www.cincopa.com/
If you’re working in a WordPress environment, then Jetpack can be a great video hosting platform for your business. For only $19.95 per month, you’ll get an ad-free video hosting solution that supports multiple video formats. Even better, the plan also includes unlimited video hosting. However, there’s a 2TB soft limit on storage. Some advanced features include autoplay, mute, and loop. On the plus side, you can easily embed videos into your WordPress posts and pages with Jetpack video blocks.
However, besides some of the features we’ve mentioned above, Jetpack lacks some of the more advanced features we’ve seen with other video hosting platforms. For instance, there’s no option to collect leads, include CTAs, or edit your videos.The platform doesn’t offer a free plan, but there’s a 14-day money-back guarantee.
Jetpack is best for:
WordPress site owners.
Website:
https://jetpack.com/
There’s not a simple answer to this question. In short, the best video hosting platform for you depends on your needs and budget. For example, if you want to drive traffic to your website and get higher rankings in Google, go with YouTube.
If you’re a creative professional who’s looking for a platform to create original short films or nature videos, definitely go with Vimeo. Wistia and its advanced features can be a top pick for enterprises and successful online businesses, while Dailymotion can serve you well as a second distribution channel to boost your traffic. And if money is tight, Facebook is another platform that’s both free of charge and great for building an audience. Before deciding on a video hosting solution, try to answer some of these questions:
What am I trying to achieve?
What features are crucial for my business?
How much am I willing to spend?
Your options are vast. In addition to the 10 vendors that landed on our list, there are plenty more out there. And in case you’re unable to decide between two vendors, why not combine two different platforms in your marketing strategy? Subscribe to a paid platform that will let you play with a range of powerful features for optimizing your videos while taking advantage of a free platform like YouTube or Facebook that can help you grow your reach organically.
Good luck!