If you’ve stumbled across this article, you are looking for a video hosting solution for your videos. For a number of reasons, hosting videos on your website is not the greatest of ideas. For starters, hosted videos can take up a huge chunk of your server resources which results in performance issues such as slow page load time or even downtime in extreme cases.
In this article, I will share the best video hosting solutions available to website owners. Some of them are free-to-use, while others offer a freemium model where the solution is free to use up to a certain limit, after which you will have to pay up.
Before I begin listing down the video hosting solutions, it would be better to understand why you need a video hosting solution in the first place, and what problems it solves.
Why Do You Need a Video Host?
As I mentioned earlier, there are a number of reasons why getting a video host could be a good idea. A video host is a third-party solution that lets you store your videos on its server. Unlike your web host, you won’t buy the server and only pay for the storage space the videos consume.
Here are a few reasons why you should definitely get a video host:
Storage Limitations
Your website is hosted on a server that generally has limited disk space and it is ideal that you utilize that disk space for your website backups, staging sites, website files. If you decide to host your videos on your website, you will actually be wasting disk space that can reduce the overall availability of server resources.
Format Limitations
Your visitors are visiting your website through various browsers, resulting in issues with format support. This is one of the biggest limitations of hosting your videos on your website because you would then have to convert your videos into various formats, a tedious task in itself.
One of the major benefits of video hosting solutions is that they accept all video formats including MPEG4, MP4, 3GPP, HEVC (h265), WebM, and DNxHR.
Higher Quality Videos
High-quality videos, in particular, HD or 4K are huge and could easily overwhelm server resources. A video hosting solution allows for HD video uploads which you can later embed in website pages using an embed code. This way you will be able to show your visitors HD videos without compromising server resources.
The Best Video Hosting Platforms
Now, let’s move to the best video hosting solutions where you can host videos and show high- quality content to the visitors. Note that these video hosts are not ranked in any way.
Let’s begin!
YouTube
You can’t have an article on video hosting solutions without mentioning YouTube. It is by far the most popular video streaming site with more than 500 hours of videos uploaded every minute. It serves 2B users, a third of all the people on the internet. Basically, everyone who has been on the internet in the past decade has either watched a YouTube video or subscribed to a YouTube channel.
There are a lot of advantages of hosting your videos on YouTube
- It’s free. You can host an unlimited number of videos without paying anything.
- The maximum upload size limit is 128GB which is sufficient for an HD quality video.
- Super easy to embed videos using the embed code. Just copy and paste it to your web page.
YouTube also allows you to set privacy options for your videos. Other than that, you can also benefit from its mega user base of more than 2B. So if you market your videos right and do a bit of YouTube SEO, you can get a good number of views.
While YouTube may seem like the ideal video hosting solution, it also has some drawbacks:
- Ads will appear automatically in the middle of your content. This usually puts off viewers.
- Recommended videos (sometimes totally unrelated to your content) pop up at the end of YouTube hosted videos
- Visitors on the website cannot download YouTube videos without third-party tools
YouTube is a pretty good video hosting solution and if you want to get started with hosting your videos, this is the platform you should opt for.
Dailymotion
A close YouTube competitor, Dailymotion is another popular video streaming site that hosts millions of videos and has over 300M unique users. It is free and you can host an unlimited number of videos on this platform, though the maximum upload file size is not as generous as YouTube.
Here are some of the advantages of using Dailymotion as your video host:
- Host unlimited videos for free
- Comes with a dedicated content management system
- Enable relevant content recommendations
They also have an Advance Partner Program which comes with more features like ad targeting capabilities, upload through mobile, and dedicated business support.
Just like YouTube, Dailymotion does have some disadvantages as well:
- Not as huge of a user base as YouTube
- Smaller file upload size limit than YouTube
- You need to pay for features such as live streaming with unlimited viewers
Dailymotion is a great place to start your video hosting journey as it offers a number of easy features without any cost.
Vimeo
Unlike YouTube and Dailymotion, which are video sharing platforms, Vimeo is more of a video hosting solution targeted towards professionals. As such, it has a lot more to offer than just uploading videos and sharing them with the platform’s audience. The free plan comes with a 5GB storage limit which is fine if you want to upload short videos. However, if you plan to upload large files, you will have to choose one of the pro plans which starts from $7/month for 250GB of storage space and a single user account.
Here are some advantages of using Vimeo as your video hosting solution:
- Ad-free
- Comes with a 30-day free trial
- Ability to control the privacy of your videos
- Downloadable videos
Vimeo also comes with a super-fast embed player that doesn’t show forced recommendations and allows for faster video streaming.
But before you decide to choose Vimeo as your video host, you must know some of its drawbacks:
- Compared to YouTube and Dailymotion, the free account upload size limit is very restrictive
- The user base is not as significant
Vimeo is a great video hosting solution for professional video makers.
Wistia
If you have already heard of Wistia, you might know it as a video marketing solution and not as a video hosting one. The thing is, its video marketing plans come with attached video upload and hosting features. Another reason is that it is pretty good and extremely professional (that comes with a higher price tag). The basic plan starts from $10/month which allows you to upload 10 videos and you can also use your own branding on the video player once you embed a Wistia-hosted video on your website.
Here are some of the advantages of Wistia:
- Customizable embed player
- Ability to integrate Hubspot, Google Analytics, and other useful third-party tools
- Video analytics
- Team collaboration
- Lead generation from within the video
You also get support with the plans which means if you do get stuck while using their services, they have got your back.
Here are some of its disadvantages:
- Expensive. The free plan allows just 3 videos uploads
- Has a learning curve
vooPlayer
Just like Wistia, vooPlayer is another video host that targets users who are looking for more than just video uploading and sharing. It’s a platform that offers several solutions including hosting, marketing, video players, analytics, and integrations. The free plan lets you upload videos of less than 1GB, and you can only upload five videos to your account. However, as you upgrade to plans starting from $14/month, you will get more storage space, bandwidth, and unlimited video uploads.
Here are some of the advantages of using vooPlayer:
- Stream video without ads
- Customize embed player to include your branding
- Global content delivery with high speed
- Integrate third-party marketing tools
Their Hybrid Video Hosting solution lets you build an experience similar to YouTube or Vimeo by letting you stream videos from their servers without any distractions.
Some disadvantages of opting for vooPlayer:
- Can get a bit too technical for beginner users
- No audience for video sharing and views
vooPlayer is one of the bigger players in the market and if you are looking for a rock-solid video host, this is the solution for you.
Final Words!
Hosting your videos on third-party video hosts is a great idea because it frees up a lot of resources on your web server which results in optimum load time for both, your website and your videos. The article covered two types of video hosts, free and paid ones. I would suggest that you evaluate each carefully to find out the best fit for your requirements. Don’t forget to let me know what you have chosen in the comment section.
Mansoor Ahmed Khan
Been in content marketing since 2014, and I still get a kick out of creating stories that resonate with the target audience and drive results. At Cloudways by DigitalOcean (a leading cloud hosting company, btw!), I lead a dream team of content creators. Together, we brainstorm, write, and churn out awesome content across all the channels: blogs, social media, emails, you name it! You can reach out to me at [email protected].
