So, you’ve created a brand new video for your product or company? Way to go! But now, people need to watch it. Although YouTube is the obvious go-to platform for videos, there are a lot of options out there that are worth looking at to make sure you position yourself and video in the best way possible. And, if you’re still working on your video, there are also some great platform options for sharing versions and collaborating within your team. Let’s take a look at some pros and cons of the most popular video hosting platforms out there.
YouTube
Pros:
- It is definitely the most popular video hosting site in the world. For businesses, it performs extremely well, and has more traffic than any other video site on the internet. (And more than most websites period!) Check out some of their stats.
- Creating a channel on YouTube is very easy and provides a clear place to send your audience, as well as something to which they can subscribe.
- Playlists offer a defined path of videos to have your audience watch. Which is great if your videos can pique their interest within the first 5 seconds or so, since they autoplay one after the other.
- YouTube promises high performance, so videos load quickly for your audience.
- The resolution of your video can range all the way up to 4K, otherwise known as UHD, which looks great!
- You can monetize your videos with ads. Good for you, can be bad for your viewer. See cons.
Cons
- YouTube is so popular, that it is getting a little oversaturated. There is so much content uploaded each minute, that it can be hard to be noticed.
- While promising high performance is a good thing, the downside to that is that YouTube’s quality may not be as good all of the time. They will make sure your viewers see your videos fast, over seeing it in high quality. Keep in mind though, that with most high speed connections, this isn’t a big problem.
- Ads. Lots and lots of ads all over the place.
Vimeo
Pros
- The standard for high quality video on the web. Vimeo markets itself towards video producers (like us), because they keep the video quality high.
- No ads so your content is front and center for your viewer.
- You can replace videos with updated versions.
- For the paid accounts, you have great privacy controls. You can password protect videos, enable private “review” pages, and hide it from Vimeo, but make it available for embedding on your own site or elsewhere. Vimeo is very popular for embedding for that very reason.
- You can select whether or not users can download versions of your video.
- And the most important reason… Vimeo is what we use!
Cons
- To do much with Vimeo, you need one of their paid accounts. The free ones are great for a video once in awhile, but is very limiting if you want to post regularly.
- It has a smaller audience, lower viewing rates, and lesser standing in Google’s search results.
Dailymotion
Pros
- Free unlimited video hosting.
- Option to make videos private and even password protected.
- Some opportunities for audience building with less competition.
Cons
- Smaller total audience potential than YouTube and other platforms.
- Smaller max file sizes and video length allowed.
- Ads automatically play before, during, and after videos.
Pros
- Facebook provides an even larger potential audience than YouTube currently (2.45 billion users!).
- It also has free unlimited video hosting.
- You can share your videos directly to Facebook’s platform.
Cons
- Ads automatically play on all videos, like it or not.
- It offers a lower video quality cap than other options.
- It is not, by nature, a video hosting platform. So, sadly, videos won’t show in any Google search results. Thus, this won’t help any in getting your SEO up at all.
Self-Host
Pros
- You are in the driver’s seat, are in full control, and aren’t tied to any service!
- Your own branding on videos on your site.
- Videos are not embedded, but directly placed on your site. (Giving your website more visitor views as well!)
Cons
- A lot of cons to this one, unfortunately. This is something only a seasoned web developer could implement, and even a lot of them don’t want to deal with it.
- You have to stay on top of so many things to make sure your video can be played back on all devices. It can be a full time job.
- It takes a lot of time to create all of the versions needed as each browser and platform needs different ones. This is something all of the previously mentioned platforms take care of in the background.
- You are responsible if your video isn’t working. If it’s broken, it is on you.
- Basically, this one takes a lot of work, and very few companies go this route. I would not recommend it when there are so many great options out there.
So, there you have it! Go through and see what is best for you. If you need to get content out there for the world to see, YouTube may be the best. On the other hand, if you’re a creative professional and quality and community are important to you, Vimeo is also great. Choose what will serve you and your brand the most.
And as always, please comment and let us know if you have any thoughts or questions!