Video is the hottest medium to be working with if you’re an online creator right now. YouTube announced that it registers over one billion hours of videos watched per day, which is absolutely bonkers. While Google’s online video giant is the absolute largest, it’s hardly the only place to put up your videos. As a creator, you should know all the options you have before you settle on one just due to its popularity. Who knows, there could be a more niche option out there that’s better suited for your content and your audience.
Below, we’re going to break down eight different video hosting sites, some of which need no introduction and some you may have never heard of:
01. Wix Video
It’s not just that we’re partial, Wix Video really is one of the easiest ways to get your videos online and make money from them! One of the best things about Wix Video is that it doesn’t remain a completely exclusive affair. You can choose to upload your own videos directly or to embed them from YouTube, Vimeo, or Facebook, allowing you to further your reach of your existing digital content. You can also use Wix's online video editor to easily create promotional videos to feature on you website or social media.
When it comes to YouTube, you can easily choose to sync your channel to Wix Video so that your new videos will automatically appear on your website when it’s published. When it comes to making money on your videos, there are no hoops you have jump through. Set your price for a video and choose whether you’d like to make it available for rent, purchase, or as a part of a subscription. You can also be rest assured that 100% of the money goes to your pocket, as there are no commission fees whatsoever.
Pros:
Free to use and commission free sales
Mobile and desktop live streaming available
Website focused
Completely mobile optimized
Plans: Wix Video offers a basic (free) package and four types of premium packages. All packages allow you to sell your videos and offer monthly subscriptions. The major difference between each type is the amount of video hours available. Unlike other platforms, Wix Video takes into consideration the length of the video rather than the size when it comes to hosting.
02. iPlayerHD
If you’re looking for another great video player and video host in one for your Wix website, we suggest you take a look at iPlayerHD. This is a great video solution that won’t require you to add any code to your website as you will with some of the other hosts on this list. Best of all, there are both free and paid versions, so you can try out a majority of the features before paying a dime! Also, since iPlayerHD is built for the Wix platform, you can customize the design of the player to your heart’s content to match your website and style.
With the free version of iPlayerHD, you’ll get features like the ability to password protect videos, share videos on social networks, add subtitles or closed captioning to your videos, customize thumbnails, and more. It’s also important to note that as a standalone video player and host, all of your videos will be played completely free of ads, even with the free version.
Upgrading to the premium version of iPlayerHD will bring a ton of benefits to your and your videos. It enables video analytics, the ability to make video playlists, collect visitor emails, and create looping videos. This is in addition to increased video views and bandwidth (up to 1 Terabyte!)
Pros:
Great for someone who wants an all in one video player and host for their Wix website.
Many of the features can still be accessed with the free plan.
Plans: iPlayerHD offers only one paid plan, which you can pay for either monthly or years. At only $9.99 a month or 109.92 for an entire year, there’s a payment option that works for everyone.
03. YouTube
Let’s get the most popular host out of the way. YouTube isn’t the biggest online video platform for no reason. Sure, being owned by the world’s most popular search engine certainly helps its popularity. But the fact of the matter is that YouTube is exactly what some people are looking for, or at very least, is good enough for what a creator needs. With YouTube, you simply have higher exposure potential, no question. That said, you are also uploading to a platform that has over 300 hours of video uploaded per minute, so to say your video is a needle in a digital haystack would be a massive understatement. Nonetheless, choosing YouTube as a video host comes with quite a few benefits, like statistics to track the success of your videos, an ad platform to start making money on your content, and a very robust music library to add to your videos. Of course, there’s a lot more that YouTube offers, but what takes the cake is that it’s free to upload content, which is not the case everywhere you go. Overall, YouTube remains one of the top video hosting platforms because, well, it’s quite good. Just don’t be surprised if a video of an eight year old blowing a snot rocket outperforms your video by the millions.
Pros:
The largest video audience
Great for SEO and discovery
Free to upload
Plans: There are no premium plans for creators. The newly-rebranded YouTube Premium, formerly YouTube Red, benefits only the viewer.
04. Vimeo
Get ready to snub your nose at the term “YouTuber” – Vimeo bills itself on catering to a more creative and professional audience. Out of all of the other options you’ll find on this list, Vimeo is the most similar to YouTube, as it’s also a social network of sorts. The similarities are uncanny, but the audiences and content vary drastically. Out of the gate, to experience the true benefits of Vimeo as a video host, you will need to upgrade to one of its premium plans that unlock more storage and features. Once you take a look at the features offered on the paid plans, you really do get a sense that it’s a professional video hosting service for creators, justifying the more prestigious allure it gives off. It just ‘feels’ more serious than what you’re getting with YouTube. While you do have to pay up to reap the benefits of the platform, there is a free version with limited functionality that you can sign up to check out. Setting up a Vimeo account is a quick and easy way to see if it’s the right platform for you.
Pros:
Seen as “more prestigious” than YouTube
A community of professionals
Some of the most flexible paid plan options around
Plans: Premium Vimeo plans range from $7-$75 a month, with the higher price points corresponding with a greater weekly upload limit and larger overall total account storage.
05. Wistia
Wistia may be a lesser known option than some of the others on this list, but it offers some great features that may help tip the scale for you. With a focus on data, customization and integration with third-party services, this video host is a jack of all trades that aims to suit your business needs in every way. The company is quick to point out how its service is better for your website’s SEO than some of its competitors, like Vimeo, given that the traffic will be directed to your website itself and not only your video host site. Another stand-out feature Wistia boasts about are its analytics tools that are very impressive, and may be worth the service alone. Some other, ‘nice touch’ features include a highly customizable player so your videos match your website and brand.
Pros:
Highly customizable video player
Exceptional video analytics
Plans: Wistia has two plans in addition to its free account: Wistia Pro, which will run you $99 per month and the Wistia Advanced plan, which requires you to contact their sales team to receive a price. Overall, Wistia is powerful and flexible but a bit expensive, and you’ll need to see how much is too much for your videos.
06. Video Cloud by Brightcove
While you may have never heard of Brightcove, it’s a well-seasoned video hosting platform that has been around since the early 2000s. If it’s online video related, Brightcove likely has a product for it. The platform offers solutions for publishers and broadcasters, marketers, and enterprises, so expect a suite of features that would be fitting. For the average video creator, Brightcove may be considered overkill as its primary target audience is marketers and other large businesses. Its specific video hosting platform, Video Cloud, is both a hosting and a publishing solution, offering everything and then some for the customers at a price that’s about as intimidating as its featureset. This includes customizable video players, monetization and advertising services, data driven insights (analytics) – the works. Expect all of the features you’d find from its competitors, with a high focus on advanced analytics and video management. Other services within Brightcove’s paid plans are gallery and social media tools, depending on the plan you choose.
Pros:
Unrivaled number of features for scaled businesses and marketers
Large ecosystem and third party integration capabilities
Plans: With plans starting at $199/ month and only going higher from there, Brightcove is hardly for a beginner video creator, but has massive appeal to the scaled businesses that need its services.
07. SproutVideo
This video service doesn’t necessarily do anything that its competitors don’t, but SproutVideo is an option worth looking into. The informative platform lays out all of the details you’d expect to see, with security, analytics, and SEO at the forefront. SproutVideo knows it’s a good service, and it’s very happy to let you know what it’s service is capable of: a lot. 8K video support? Check. Engagement tracking? Check. IP address and geo restriction? Check and check. Everything the service has to offer is laid out in an easy to understand format right on its website. Don’t dismiss SproutVideo’s no-frills approach. It’s appealing and offers what most general video creators need, putting it in a very good position without having to overmarket itself.
Pros:
Free tria
lPowerful video marketing tools
Great security and video monitoring features
Plans: Paid plans consist of the Sprout plan for $59/month, the Tree plan for $199/month, and the Forest plan for $499/month. In layman’s terms, they have plans that range to “that’s not bad” to “is it hot in here?”
08. DailyMotion
DailyMotion may not have much in the way of “mindshare,” but it’s nonetheless a great option that could be easily overlooked. Its content focus is divided into four primary topics for news, sports, music and entertainment, but you’ll also find several outlier topics in the mix, such as comedy, fashion, gaming live streams and more. It walks a line of being a social platform like YouTube, but carries a more ‘newsy’ vibe to it. Like YouTube, DailyMotion offers a partner program for its creators to monetize their videos through advertising. Becoming a partner also includes media management, analytics, and distribution. While this is nothing unique compared to the other platforms on this list, if DailyMotion’s air of professionalism and newslike vibe are to your liking, you may want to consider them as your video host.
Pros:
Variety of content subject, seemingly more curated than YouTube
Newslike feel to the platform
Plans: DailyMotion offers a partner program to monetize video content and more.
