So, your video production is complete and ready to be put out into the world, one of the last steps in the process is to choose where to host your content.
The place a video ‘lives’ affects almost every aspect of its shareability, accessibility, global reach, and overall success. For this reason, it is essential that you address the question of hosting platforms in your video marketing strategy – this will help to identify the best options for your productions before they are even made and ensure the highest possible return on investment.
There are countless hosting options open to you, each having its own set of benefits and drawbacks, it’s really important to choose the right one.
The first decision you need to make is whether to self host your video or use a third-party hosting service. Let’s take a look at how you can make this decision…
Self-hosting
Self-hosting is where your own web server stores your video, this is most often in the same place as your website. When people choose to view your video, they will do so through your website’s online infrastructure.
Although by self-hosting you maintain total control over your videos, with no pesky advertisements, unwanted branding, or unbreakable algorithms to put up with, it is the lesser option when it comes to hosting your video.
Just a few of the negatives associated with self-hosting are:
- File size limits
- Limited Server bandwidths
- Longer loading times
- Lack of standardisation
- Increased costs and effort
- No external promotion
- Strong internal IT team to iron out problems needed
For most organisations, the technical limitations and performance issues that come with self-hosting makes third-party hosting the best option. ‘Third-party’ may sound a bit daunting but don’t worry! You can still, quite freely use your videos on your website without directly hosting them through embedding.
Third-party hosting
Third-party hosting involves hosting your video on a website that is not your own. When people watch your video, it is the third-party host that provides the online infrastructure to support it.
Third-party sites allow for much higher levels of scalability as there are lesser limits on views, bandwidth, or performance. They are simple to use, negating the need for internal IT guidance. Most importantly they allow for easy access and distribution to an increasingly wide global audience.
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows though, there are drawbacks of third-party hosting that need to be considered before making any hosting decision. Essentially, through third-party hosting, you lose control of your video and have to accept and abide by the rules and conditions of the provider. For some, this is a dealbreaker, excessive external branding, unrelated adverts, and annoying pop-ups are all problems that crop up using such sites. Your SEO can also take a hit, remember, even if it is your video, it is the host that is receiving the precious clicks.
So, which third-party host?
It’s likely that your audience doesn’t really mind where your content is hosted as long as it runs without problems.
This being said, we encourage you to take a deeper look into the options surrounding third-party video hosting as we believe that it is by far the best method of presenting your content. So, let’s get started with our pick of the best third-party hosting options.
Youtube
This free platform needs very little introduction, launched in 2005, Youtube is now the second most visited website globally, just after google! The site has over one billion monthly users, who collectively watch more than one billion hours of video each day.
Uploading to Youtube places your video within a massive online content web connected to a search engine that runs fairly similarly to Google. The sheer size of the potential audience makes it a marketing tool that you should not ignore. In fact, during an average day in the U.S., more 18- to 49-year-olds visit YouTube than any TV network, even on mobile alone. Its power is hard to conceptualise!
This being said, the lack of control over your uploaded videos can detract from the positives of Youtube as a hosting site. For instance, there are numerous restrictions on how and when you can use a Call to Action, and you have to compete against Youtube’s strong branding. The main potential issue however is that you have to accept external adverts and pop-ups appearing in your content. That’s the trade-off you have to expect when using a free hosting site.
If you meet the requirements, the Youtube Partner Program gives you the ability to remove or choose advertisements, this does however impact monetisation potential.
Another great social media-orientated option, Facebook shares a lot of its positives and negatives with Youtube. The key difference separating the two free sites is that Facebook videos are only accessible directly through your channel, and through user shares and paid promotions. This negative is somewhat softened by the user popularity of the site, but remember that this audience potential is ‘throttled’ to encourage paid promotion. If you decide to engage in paid promotion, the benefits are enormous, using a decent range of metrics, it is possible to advertise directly to your most ideal customers.
Unlike other social media sites, Facebook video uploads can be up to 240 minutes long! Videos are also easy to embed on other sites of your choosing, even better, every external watch contributes to the overall Facebook viewer number. Audiences are more likely to watch a video that already has plenty of views. Facebook is undeniably one of the best sites for engagement.
Previously, uploading videos directly to your business’s Instagram feed limited you to just one minute of footage, which until recently made the social media site a defective hosting option. In 2022, between reels. stories, lives, and extended video posts, Instagram is pushing to be seen as an evermore video-friendly app (likely to keep up with its rival TikTok!).
The trick to Instagram video hosting is to pick your content carefully. Ideally, videos should be social media optimised, this includes:
- Short-form video
- Vertical orientation
- Soundless optimisation
- Interesting thumbnails
For this reason, it is likely that only some videos will be successfully hosted on your Instagram,
Instagram videos unfortunately do not embed well at all, and although a very decent option for smaller businesses or those just starting, it is best used in tandem with another hosting site.
Wistia
Whilst every hosting platform mentioned in this article has merits, Wistia is our personal favourite, especially for videos intending to be embedded on a website. There is a free option available but to get the most out of the service, the Pro and Advanced services are necessary.
Once uploaded to Wistia, your videos will be advert, pop up and external link-free. The site also offers one of the most comprehensive metric services available, including the tracking of view counts, engagement, play rate, conversions, A/B testing, and bounce rate. It is also possible to create heatmaps for each video. These features allow you to analyse your content to find out what’s working and what’s not, allowing you to constantly improve your content. To explore more of Wistia’s metric capabilities take a look at this article.
The most important thing to point out about Wistia is that it was designed with the intent to host business-related content. If you are after a professional platform that understands the goals of business marketing, is SEO-ready, generates leads, and helps you to monitor the success of your content, Wistia is the site for you.
One more thing! Customers rave about the support team behind Wistia, whether it’s their informative blog page or their ‘Customer Happiness team’, it feels like the company really cares about the success of your content.
Pricing:
Free- $0/ mo
Pro- $99/ mo
Advanced- Contact directly
Vimeo
Another paid, but affordable option, Vimeo is the perfect hosting site for those with smaller budgets. Vimeo originally started as a site for independent filmmakers to upload and share their unique creations, however, it is increasingly presenting itself as a marketing tool not dissimilar to Wistia.
Depending on your chosen plan, there are no limits on file size within the platform and the servers’ plentiful stores of stock footage allow for the material enrichment of your content at no extra cost. Vimeo also offers some of the market’s best customisation and collaboration opportunities owing to its creative origins. The video player’s colour and design can be altered and thumbnails, links, logos, and CTAs can be amended to perfection (even after publishing with no change in URL). In terms of collaboration, once a link to your video is shared, reviewers can leave comments without even registering on the platform. This is a great opportunity to gather feedback before launching a project, users can even be assigned roles such as clients, team members, or freelancers.
Whilst the site does offer analytics they are not particularly advanced, crucially also, Vimeo is not as widely used as other hosting sites, decreasing the audience reach potential. The platform is, however, known for being more upmarket and professional than sites like Youtube or Facebook, a plus if you are looking to establish your business in the world of corporate marketing.
Pricing:
Plus- $7/ mo
Pro- $20/ mo
Business- $50/ mo
Premium- $75/ mo
Vidyard
Vidyard is fairly similar to Wistia and caters to sales and marketing professionals. It does have a free package but most users will pay for the additional features of the upgraded service. It provides unlimited storage for videos, even in 4k with no pesky adverts or pop-ups. Additionally, it allows customisation of the video player and allows you to place Calls to Action throughout. It features a decent range of analytics and performance tracking options. It has effective distribution tools but lacks any kind of internal community or social network to help promote your videos.
The high price point of Vidyard means it is best suited to more mature businesses, so if you are just starting or have a smaller budget, it’s unlikely to be the best hosting option for you.
Pricing:
Free- $0/ mo
Pro- $15/mo
Teams- $300/ mo
Business- $1250/ mo
Which host should I use?
Really, this depends on the type of marketing video you have produced, consider its use, and who the intended audience is. Overall, paid services tend to be best for embedding and free services have better engagement and social reach possibilities.
Realistically, if you want to take video marketing seriously, you need to choose a paid hosting solution. The benefits are huge; reliability is likely the most important factor but others include advanced analytics, faster speeds, embedding capabilities, and ease of use.
Can I use more than one host?
After reading all of that, the obvious solution may be to just use several hosting sites in tandem, perhaps a paid service and free service to cover all bases? This is definitely possible, and in the case of sites like Instagram, it may be worth it, but it’s important to consider the potential consequences of it.
If a video appears on both Wistia and Youtube the traffic will be split. The Youtube version will likely rank higher on SERPs than your website, potentially detracting from what you really want customers to see. By having two versions you also risk losing out on the more advanced analytical data that a paid service provides. A good video marketing agency will be able to weigh up these factors and identify what’s going to work best for you.
Contact us at Kartoffel Films today to get our creative partnership started!
