Video marketing hosts: Wistia versus Youtube versus Vimeo
Let’s get it out of the way – Wistia, YouTube, and Vimeo are all important. They are all winners as video marketing hosts.
Figuring out which video hosting platform to work with can be a challenge. Every option has its own set of pros and cons. However, if a marketer doesn’t fully grasp what the brand or a marketing campaign specifically needs from a video hosting platform, then the company should probably find a new marketer.
These specific needs include broadband speed, file size restrictions, storage limits, HTML coding, file formats, browser quality, piracy security, and so on. To get any of these factors wrong can affect the viewability of the marketing videos.
Here’s the thing. The best marketers don’t limit themselves by using just one video hosting platform. They understand that each platform has unique benefits suitable for specific video content. Also, they leverage multiple video hosts to reach different objectives under one goal.
Below are the three most popular video hosting platforms. See how they differ from one another.
YouTube
largest search engine, outperformed only by Google.
Price: Free
Best Usage: For videos designed to entertain viewers.
• Pros:
YouTube is a straightforward video hosting site that offers to play videos efficiently across all devices, gadgets, and bandwidths. Also, since Google owns YouTube, it’s a great place to be in as far as search engine intents and goals are concerned.
• Cons:
YouTube resembles a vortex that drags the viewers in. Once they are on the platform and start watching videos, it’s quite difficult to pry them away to check out a website or follow a CTA. The platform also displays loads of its own branding and third-party ads on videos, which can be a marketing nightmare.
Vimeo
Vimeo Vimeo is the second largest video hosting site. It’s reported to get around 715 million video views per month.
Price: Vimeo has four account levels, each presenting bigger storage size, additional features, and broader control.
• Vimeo Basic: Free
• Vimeo Plus: $7/month
• Vimeo PRO: $20/month
• Vimeo Business: $50/month
Best Usage: Labeled as “the artists’ video platform,” Vimeo is typically used for indie projects, music videos, documentaries, and other sorts of films with an artistic flair.
• Pros
Vimeo provides marketers a more specialized community of viewers and vendors. This means the platform is less saturated and competitive than YouTube. It has over 300 hours of video content posted every minute. It also comes with a premium player that, without question, looks fantastic and trumps YouTube’s player.
• Cons
Considering Vimeo’s player is spectacular, it also calls for strong internet connection. If viewers reside in remote areas or have a spotty web connection, there is a high probability they won’t be able to watch the videos without interruptions.
Wistia
Wistia is a video hosting site that is explicitly created for marketers to help them direct visitors to their website with the goal to convert viewers to leads.
Price: Wistia has four tiers of plans, each with varying levels of storage and services:
• Basic: Free
• Pro: $100/month
• Advanced and Premium tiers: Costs depend on the marketing strategy (marketers are advised to contact the site for pricing)
Best Usage: Wistia is the ideal platform for businesses and organizations, particularly SMBs and startups. The platform resembles Vimeo, but highly concentrates on the needs and wants of both marketers and consumers.
• Pros
Wistia puts on a great deal of consideration on how its platform can assist marketers to optimize viewability and reach. It funnels insights for future marketing campaigns. To aid marketing and sales endeavors, Wistia provides deep-level analytics such as viewer history, heatmaps, and a Turnstile feature for generating leads. The platform can be integrated with the most used marketing automation programs like HubSpot.
• Cons
Wistia’s player is not as “cool” as Vimeo’s since the designers decided to go with solid playability over aesthetics. Past the primary account, this platform can also be rather pricey.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all platform for all marketing videos. As such, marketers need to study these video marketing hosts and see which platform/s will work well with their marketing campaign.