Many businesses are now utilising video on their websites. More and more seem to be discovering the power of video. We know this as we have seen a steady increase in clients using our voice over, music, sound effects and audio production services for their video soundtrack requirements.
This article explores some options for putting video on your website.
Hosting your own
You can host your own video on your own server, however, you will need media player functionality to make it easily accessible to all users.
Hosting your own videos can have its drawbacks, especially if you use budget hosting, as it may support your text and images adequately but streaming videos may cause storage and performance issues.
Unless you have suitable hosting it might be worth using a third party video hosting service instead. There is nothing worse than clicking on a video and it stopping midway through, taking an age to start playing or worse still not play at all.
Third party services don’t tend to suffer in this way, as they are setup purely for the purpose of delivering video online. Additionally, there is an added benefit as the video is also accessible to the audience on the video website.
Third party hosting options to consider
With these options you are at the mercy of the video platform to some extent, however, with the paid for services they probably won’t make changes that adversely affect your use. Whereas the free options will be more likely to change things regardless of your opinions.
At this time, I can only find one that is free and allows business use.
The following services all seem to have HD video and embed options, which allow you to have a simple code that you can use to embed into your web page.
For your convenience we have converted the meaningless upload / bandwidth limit aspects to more usable data.
We assume that a 5 minute 720×1280 HD Web Quality Mp4 will be 11.5MB approx. See one of our videos at this quality, embedded from YouTube.
These are not recommendations, just the results of our research. It is up to you to find the best solution for your business but we hope this helps and look forward to hearing your comments.
YouTube
Key Points
- Free to use
- Is the second biggest search engine and owned by Google
- Upload videos up to 15 minutes
- Unlimited plays
Notable drawbacks
- Content ID may display adverts if music is used
- Content ID can incorrectly detect copyright issues on royalty free music (see our post about Content ID)
- Adverts may appear on or alongside your video
Vimeo PRO
Key points
- Player can be customised
- Viewer statistics included
- Cost $199 per year
- 50GB storage (about 4348 five minute videos)
- Bandwidth not metered but plays are limited to 250,000
Viddler PRO
Key Points
- Free trial – 14 Days
- Player can be customised
- Call-to-action links within player
- Viewer statistics included
- Cost $50 per month or $504 annually
- 100GB storage (about 8695 five minute videos)
- 100GB Bandwidth (about 8695 plays per month)
Sprout Video
Key points
- Free trial – 14 Days
- Player can be customised
- Call-to-action links within player
- Start from $10 per month
- 10GB storage (about 869 five minute videos)
- 10GB Bandwidth (about 869 plays per month)
Vzaar
Key Features
- Free trial – 30 Days
- Player can be customised
- Call-to-action links within player
- Start from $29 per month
- Storage for 250 videos (max video length 45 mins approx.)
- 100GB Bandwidth (about 8695 plays per month)
Oculu
Key Points
- Free trial – 15 Days
- Call-to-action links within player
- Viewer statistics included
- Starts from $19 per month OR $192 annually
- 25GB storage (about 2174 five minute videos, max video length 30mins)
- Bandwidth is not metered but plays are limited to 1,000 pm
iPlayerHD
Key Points
- Free trial – 30 Days
- Call-to-action links within player
- Viewer statistics included
- Starts from $29 per month
- 50GB storage (about 4348 five minute videos, max video length 30mins)
- 200GB Bandwidth (about 17,391 plays per month)
Would be great if you could include http://www.streamingvideoprovider.com to that list of providers. We offer the most complete and affordable video platform with very powerful features and pay-per-view, video apps creating, live streaming, external uploads, white-label opportunities and many more amazing features.
In my opinion the main choice here is between YouTube and Vimeo but the pro’s and con’s mean it’s not a straightforward decision.
Clearly Vimeo should the ideal solution since the video quality and lack of advertisements mean your message can be conveyed without distraction. The site definitely has a large following with professional video producers and filmmakers (plus gladly there’s a distinct lack of videos of pets and owners being stupid, or things exploding!)
However, as part of my job producing videos for the internet I also have a big consideration to increasing the chances of the video being discovered. Clearly there’s no point making a video if nobody gets to watch it. Since YouTube is owned by Google, the video results appear within Google SERPs and having video on your website have an effect upon a website ranking it’s obviously beneficial to use YouTube. It’s all a matter of SEO and visibility.
So with this in mind I use a combination of YouTube and Vimeo:
For creative filmmaking (such as short films, wedding films etc) where I simply wish to display my work at it’s very best – I use use Vimeo.
For marketing videos (such as promotional films, corporate videos) where I want to gain the greatest recognition – I ‘sadly’ use YouTube.
A great post, Lee. Another option to consider is our online video platform https://www.vidbeo.com. Like the services you list, we provide video hosting for businesses and to individuals. You can customise the player to match your site, get detailed analytics about who was watched your content and pricing starts at just £1 ($2) per video – with no contract or commitment. Plus you get additional features like clickable video that few other providers offer.