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How do you display videos on your website or blog?
If you are uploading videos directly to your website it will occupy most of your server space thereby delivering content in the worst way possible to your audience.
The only way to tackle it is by hosting your videos on a different server. That is what video hosting is all about.
This article will introduce you to the 10 best free and paid video hosting platforms that you can choose from.
YouTube
YouTube is indeed one of the prominent platforms for hosting videos. This free platform is a far better option than its paid competitors when it comes to providing affordable services.
Pros
- Great in search engine optimization.
- Offers unlimited, free storage for all accounts.
- Basic to advanced video analytics.
- Vast audience for your video
- Ease of use
- Unlimited video bandwidth
- No restriction on the number, length, or size of videos.
- Easy navigation and supported formats.
- Captions and its translation buttons are allowed.
- Create pop-up comments and pop-up links.
- Well organized playlists and a good player to play your videos.
Cons
- Pre-roll ads could tamper your traffic.
- The highly competitive environment might leave your content unnoticed.
- Limited options for securing privacy.
Dailymotion
Dailymotion is a video hosting site that is similar to YouTube. It offers both free and paid options in addition to a partner program offering ad revenue. Although its free version comes with ads, they play only at the end of the video by default. Let us take a closer look at the pros and cons of this video hosting site.
Pros
- Offers unlimited bandwidth and storage.
- It allows you to upload 96 videos per day.
- It comes with a simple user interface for adding titles, tags, descriptions, enabling comments, etc.
Cons
- The allowed file size is up to 2 GB.
- Limited video playing time (60 minutes).
- Limited analytics even for the paid version.
SproutVideo
SproutVideo is a powerful, easy-to-use, and secure video hosting platform for your business. Whether it’s about uploading, customizing, or analyzing videos you have all the features you need with this video hosting solution. This paid platform comes with the following pros and cons.
Pros
- Ensures complete security with password protection, viewer logins, single-sign-on, IP address restriction, geo-restriction, etc.
- Create custom video players, playlists, and stream in UltraHD.
- Access all marketing integrations and lead generation tools on all plans.
- Highly customizable.
- Video sitemaps and other useful SEO tools.
- Do not charge per video
- It offers powerful engagement metrics and video analytics.
- For effective video marketing, it offers lead capture, post-play screens, premium marketing platform integrations, etc.
- Easy to get started with helpful tutorials.
Cons
- Comes with a slight learning curve
- It doesn’t offer a free version.
Dacast
Dacast is formerly known as vzaar. This paid video hosting platform is a Professional-grade video hosting service that supports small and medium-sized businesses across the globe. Its pros and cons are listed below. Apart from hosting it also provides video streaming service.
Pros
- It provides you with an ad-free secure video hosting service.
- Dacast Comes with a fully customizable video compatible with every modern device and browser.
- Compatible with several video file formats (MP3, MP4, MOV, and AAC) and also lets you convert from one format to another.
- Batch upload your videos or upload larger video files easily with FTP.
Cons
- You will be charged for exceeding the allowed bandwidth limits, thus close monitoring of bandwidth is necessary.
- DaCast users have to pay for storage regardless of the plan they have chosen.
Wistia
Wistia is an ad-free paid video hosting platform where you can get the fastest, highest quality playback. Overall Wistia offers your viewers a distraction-free video viewing experience. This makes it one of the best tools for marketing professionals who want to grow lasting brand value.
Pros
- Excellent analytics to monitor how well each of your uploaded videos is performing.
- Bulk uploading of videos
- Advanced privacy options
- Custom branding
- Different types of calls to action; pop up call to action, calls to action at the end, asking for email/user info before or after playing the video, etc.
- Soapbox, Hubspot integration
- Customizable video formatting – choose the layout, colors, playlist style, etc.
- Different levels of user privileges
- Vast embed options
- Frequent updates introducing new features
Cons
- Minimal customization options
- Analytics are available only on certain plans
- Inadequate documentation
- Only one level folder structure
- Not good at integration with platforms such as Salesforce, Pardot, Act-On, etc.
- Limited video
- When you put the same video in multiple projects, it counts as multiple videos for your pricing.
Vimeo
Vimeo is another popular entry in the list of the best video hosting sites. This ad-free platform comes with both free and premium versions. Its paid version consists of 4 different plans; plus, pro, business, and premium which has a live streaming option as well.
Pros
- User-friendly interface for both admins and viewers.
- A great option for embedding and sharing videos across many platforms.
- Excellent analytics suite to understand user interaction and engagement with their videos.
- Customizable video templates.
- Unlimited stock photos, videos, and licensed music.
- Third-party player support
- Advanced customizations including adding a logo, video chapters, colors, and components.
- Video file transfer
- Unlimited viewers
- Private video presentation
Cons
- Uploading very large videos such as event coverage, training, full interviews, etc., exceeds weekly upload limits thus pushing you to go for the expensive business plan.
- No integration for Salesforce and Marketo.
- Not so great search option thereby making it difficult to look for old videos.
- Undeveloped navigation system.
- Do not have a widespread user base as that of YouTube.
- Speed controls are not currently supported in the Vimeo mobile or TV app.
Vidyard
Vidyard is one of the best ways to create, host, and share
videos to grow your customers and brand value. It offers both free and paid versions so you can choose the one that best fits your needs.
Pros
- Clean and easy to use interface
- Screen recording and video creation
- Advanced analytics
- Lets you create branded ad-free landing pages for videos
- Awesome customer support
- Send personalized videos inside emails
- Easy to embed videos onto your websites
- Great closed captioning feature
- Integration with Gmail, Hubspot, SalesLoft, etc.
- Easy sharing of videos (public or private password-protected).
- Simple video player with single or multi-video edit capabilities.
Cons
- Video editing tools are very limited.
- Not great at integration with external platforms.
- The admin user interface has navigation issues.
JetPack
Jetpack’s paid plan and a WordPress.com account will allow you to upload videos from your computer to be hosted on WordPress.com.
Pros
- Unlimited video hosting for all users with Jetpack Premium and Professional plans.
- Totally ad-free service.
- Best suited video hosting service for WordPress.
- Integrates directly with the media library and post editor.
Cons
- There is a 2TB soft-limit on storage.
- Hosting is not available with the Jetpack free plan.
Twitch
Twitch is an Amazon subsidiary. It is originally a live streaming platform for gamers and sports. Along with that, it provides a free hosting service to its users.
Pros
- It’s free to upload videos.
- Maximum of 100 uploads in 24 hours
Cons
- You are limited to 5 simultaneous uploads per user.
Brightcove
Brightcove is another excellent video hosting and publishing solution that allows you to deliver videos across dozens of combinations of devices, formats, and platforms. It is a paid video hosting platform offering a free trial.
Pros
- Easy to upload and host videos
- Availability of standard video players for different devices and the ability to customize the video players.
- It allows good privacy/security settings compared to YouTube.
- Lets you to create a video gallery that can be embedded on a website.
- Excellent tagging and organization capabilities.
- Great video analytics
- Supports HD resolution
Cons
- Not a very user-friendly interface and navigation system.
- Steep learning curve
Conclusion
Hopefully, this article was informative enough to make your decision easy. But before making your choice consider what your needs are and choose accordingly. Make sure you create some stunning videos to keep your site visitors hooked to your website/blog.
