With 100 hours of video uploaded every 10 seconds, YouTube is the leader in online video hosting. If you want to amplify your brand’s reach, establishing a presence on YouTube remains a smart move. YouTube, however, has its pitfalls that other alternative video hosting sites can help with.
- YouTube displays ads next to video content, which may very well be for a product or service in competition with yours. Not to mention, ads can detract viewers from staying to watch your video.
- Customization is somewhat limited. YouTube doesn’t offer options to change video player and channel colors for branding and offers limited player control options.
- YouTube offers limited security. You can make a video private only by making it accessible to those with a link or through email sharing — there isn’t an option to password-protect videos or make them accessible with single sign-on.
If you find yourself up against YouTube’s limitations, the good news is there are many other options for business video hosting. Here are 10 YouTube alternatives for video hosting, all of which offer a free trial:
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10 YouTube Alternatives for Video Hosting
While Vimeo has less traffic and a lower profile than YouTube, reducing your potential audience, it has built a reputation for high-quality content and established itself as the video hosting platform of choice for creative professionals.
Though Vimeo offers a free plan, a Vimeo Pro account ($20/month) is a better option for hosting business videos. This membership entitles you to HD video, unlimited bandwidth/time, customization and branding of your own video player, impressive analytics, and more. As a Pro user, you’ll also be able to monetize your own content by enabling viewers to “tip” your video $1–$500 using PayPal or a credit card.
Introducing Vimeo PRO from Bill Bergen on Vimeo.
Looking for a platform designed specifically for business video hosting? Meet Wistia.
When you embed videos on your site, you’ll have full control of the branding, including the option to add social sharing buttons, a clickable call to action, even integration with marketing tools to collect viewers’ emails and set up triggered campaigns.
Thanks to their Twitter integration, Wistia videos are also watchable from within a tweet. Interactive text options further boost accessibility and SEO.
Wistia’s analytics package includes a heatmap for every view, which shows exactly which parts of the video were watched, skipped, or rewatched, and what other videos the user previously viewed. Over time, this information is aggregated to analyze how your video library is performing as a whole.
For driving conversions, Wistia allows you to add three types of CTAs—text, image, or HTML—to your video.
SpoutVideo is a great alternative to YouTube if you want to integrate video content into your marketing strategy. These are the ways in which the video hosting platform can help:
- Adding a call to action to videos
- Adding an email collection form to videos
- Creating curated playlists
- Tracking how individual users interact with your content through heatmaps and detailed analytics
SproutVideo prioritizes security and they have a slew of privacy settings. For example, you can issue video-specific log-ins for viewers who should have access. And if you’re worried about how your video might rank in search results while hosted on a smaller platform, don’t worry — check out SproutVideo’s SEO tools to optimize your video for search.
As a YouTube alternative, Vzaar offers plenty of video-hosting controls, from uploading and encoding to displaying and delivering.
To name a few, you can upload videos from mobile, the web, or the desktop; choose your desired quality and dimensions; and control what domains are allowed to play your videos. The content management system also enables you to quickly categorize your videos for playlist or podcast creation. Even better? Vzaar is one of the few platforms that allow live streaming.
Vzaar integrates with Google Analytics to track advanced analytics for your video, including when it’s played and how much of the video is played.
With the online video platform Brightcove, you can easily add custom video players to websites, social media profiles, and mobile. Live-streaming video is even available to users with Pro and Enterprise accounts.
There are 15 different player templates, each with six languages and built-in social sharing.
For businesses that sell their video content — such as an e-learning company— Video Cloud provides built-in support for all standard IAB video ad formats and accommodates pre-, mid- and post-rolls. Supported ad networks include Tremor Media, Adap.tv and YuMe.
A major strength of Vidyard is its advanced analytics. You can pull real-time data and even channel this info into your Eloqua, HubSpot, or Marketo records.
Aside from that, it offers full customization, A/B testing for thumbnails, security options, playlists, pop-out calls to action, and a public uploader for running video contests and campaigns. For lead capture, Vidyard allows you to add an email submission field to videos for lead generation.
Viddler offers a comprehensive business video hosting service, including custom branding, playlists and RSS syndication, and geo-filtering, so you can limit access to your videos by location.
Along with these professional features, Viddler offers a fun option to create video contests for viewers — users can upload their own video content, and viewers then vote for their favorites.
There are a number of video-analytics options with Viddler. The tool itself tracks engagement, views by geography and other websites, and also integrates with Google Analytics, comScore, and SiteCatalyst.
Viewbix is a high-end video host that allows users to make their video content interactive.
For example, you can add a CTA for users to enter their email, visit a product page, or to share the video on social platforms. According to Viewbix, more than 20% of viewers who watch a video in Viewbix click on the call to action or engage with at least one of the apps inside the player itself.
Viewbix works as a video host only if you have an enterprise plan for $199/month. With a smaller plan, there are two ways to make a Viewbix player for your video: upload it to a third-party site or use a direct link to an MP4 file. Viewbix supports YouTube, Facebook, and Vimeo Pro. Viewbix will then embed videos within its player.
Kaltura offers a clean and intuitive experience for users through ease of video upload and implementation. Unique features like captions, calls-to-action, and choice-based interactive branches encourage further customization of your videos.
Interesting enough, it’s an open source video platform provider that has the support of an amazing community. They describe themselves as “an enterprise YouTube you control” and that seems to hold true through their centralized video content repository. This repository makes it easy to collaborate on videos across different departments.
Kaltura requires you to have Flash installed in order to play Kaltura videos which can be insecure due to Flash vulnerabilities. However, they have a seriously robust offering when it comes to security such as:
- Encryption at rest
- Stream encryption
- Streaming under HTTPS
- Session access control
- Digital Rights Management
Kaltura Cloud-Based Edition packages start between $499-$1,000 a month and there is also an On-Premise Edition available.
You can use Wix Video to not only host but also sell your videos. The platform allows you to make your videos available for purchase with either a one-time payment or a monthly subscription. YouTube permits monthly subscriptions only for accounts with more than 100,000 subscribers for a fixed rate of $4.99/month. Individual video sales are allowed only for movies and TV shows.
The free Wix Video plan comes with almost all of the app’s features, including ad-free videos and mobile optimization. But you can upgrade to a premium plan (starting at $9/month) to showcase 30+ minutes of video.
The one caveat in using Wix Video is that your site needs to be created through Wix. If you’re not using the website builder, there’s no reason to consider using this budget-friendly hosting platform. If you want to learn about the Wix website builder, read this review from our friends at WebsiteToolTester.
If you are looking for a solid YouTube alternative, Cincopa is a comprehensive digital asset solution that offers unique video hosting solutions. You can create your Cincopa Channel and have viewers engage with your content, on your terms. Cincopa Account Site enables you to present your audience with videos without embedding them. Its robust analytical features will tell you exactly how each of your viewers engaged with specific videos (i.e. where, who, and how much of each video was viewed by a given viewer). Plans start at $9 a month.
Find a Video-Hosting Platform That Works for You
YouTube is the most popular video hosting platform, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best hosting solution for your videos. YouTube draws in a large number of site visitors, but many of its video-hosting settings — limited security, a lot of advertising — don’t align with businesses’ needs when they publish content. With this guide, you can explore the pros and cons of 10 alternative video-hosting platforms to find the right tool for your business.
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