Battle of the video hosting sites

If you’ve always wanted to share a wedding or travel video with friends, or if you want to reach your audience as a content creator, you have probably faced the basic question: Where do I put my videos? YouTube vs Vimeo is pretty much what it has been down to for years. These are the heavyweights. The mainstream options. The house names.

So does it matter which one you go with? Are they more or less interchangeable? Will one serve your needs noticeably more than the other?

Read below to learn what these two services have to offer, who they are likely to turn to, and what you can win or lose based on your choice.

YouTube vs Vimeo: basic functions

On the surface, YouTube and Vimeo serve the same function. You can upload videos and watch videos.

For relatively small YouTubers, they can be used somewhat interchangeably to upload videos and share them with an audience for free.

But they are very different platforms with very different goals. Which one you choose depends a lot on your specific goals.

Vimeo offers free and pay-per-view-on-demand options for viewers, all ad-free, with a high resolution image and fees billed to uploaders.

YouTube works differently. It’s free for creators who upload their work and free for viewers, but only with ads. Otherwise, it relies on user subscriptions. Video quality varies but can be very low if you prefer to only expose your content to as many eyeballs as possible.

Streaming quality

Of course, when we talk about video streaming, image quality needs to be considered.

YouTube is all about quantity. You will find tons of videos watched by tons of viewers. Unfortunately, with increasing quantity, there is also a loss of quality. That’s not to say that YouTubers don’t often post great content that is as good or better than it is on Vimeo. Many of them are. But YouTube has to manage all of this content on a technical level.

That means YouTube’s compression quality is taking a hit to manage all of this content without it taking forever for the user.

Due to its different financing model and the overall smaller footprint, Vimeo can manage content at a comparable speed without impairing the compression quality.

In short, upload the same video (same size, same resolution, etc) to both YouTube and Vimeo and Vimeo will spit out a slightly better end product.

Pricing options for YouTubers

Because of the YouTube ads, content uploads are free, although users may pay to advertise their content or purchase ads that appear elsewhere on the site. However, the upload itself does not incur any costs.

Vimeo’s ad-free model means it needs to be charged, and instead of burdening viewers, the cost is borne by the video uploaders.

Vimeo is free to use with a basic account, but if you have a lot of content to upload you’ll want a paid subscription. Weekly uploads are possible with a basic account of 500MB or less, and you are limited to 10 videos per 24-hour block and an overall limit of 5GB for your account.

To go up from there, Vimeo offers four options with additional data and other benefits:

• plus: A Plus account increases your limit to 5 GB per week and 250 GB per year and costs $ 9 / month.
• professional: A Pro account goes up to 20GB per week and 1TB per year for $ 24 / month. You can also have up to three team member logins for shared use.
• business: A business account eliminates the need for weekly limits, with an annual limit of 5TB, up to 10 team members, and a cost of $ 55 per month. This is also where you can access SEO Settings and Google Analytics to improve your game and add in-video calls to action.
• bonus: A Premium Account adds unlimited live streaming to the mix, along with live Q&A and polls, live chat, and 7TB of storage per year for $ 95 / month.

Pricing options for viewers

Vimeo users can watch either free or paid content. When paying to access videos, viewers have two pay-per-view options or one option to subscribe. You can rent or buy content for a period of time so that it will be available to you as long as it is hosted on Vimeo through a paid VOD option. And they can subscribe to a user’s channel for unlimited access. This means that prices can vary widely depending on what you want to see.

All the money you pay as a viewer on Vimeo goes directly to the uploader.

YouTube, on the other hand, can be almost entirely free, with ads that support the entire model. If you want to forego ads instead of pay-per-view or subscription fees tied to individual YouTubers, you can subscribe to YouTube Premium.

For $ 11.99 per month, a Premium subscription gives you ad-free access to all content that is normally ad-supported. You can also choose to play videos in the background while using other apps when using YouTube on mobile (e.g. you’re watching a TED talk or a music video and want to keep listening while checking your email) .

YouTube also hosts movie and TV rentals and purchases separately from ad-supported and premium content. Just as you can rent or buy content on Apple TV or Google Play, you can use YouTube to access VOD content in a pay-per-view model.

Monetization

The other side of the coin (pardon the pun) is a big one for many creators: monetization.

Here, too, it depends on advertising. The lack of ads on Vimeo means uploaders don’t make any money, at least not directly, unless they’re promoting content through pay-per-view or one-time subscription fees. This is in contrast to the type of passive income that ad-supported videos can only generate through views.

But if you’re using Vimeo to promote a product, show off your portfolio to a potential client, or share a movie or TV show with critics, you’re likely making money indirectly. This money just doesn’t flow through Vimeo and it doesn’t depend on clicks in the traditional sense.

This is where YouTube shines – and sometimes gets into hot water. While your YouTube videos can also act as advertising or help you and your work get discovered, you can also benefit from going viral. YouTube makes money from ads that play alongside (or before, during, and after) your videos. The nice thing is that YouTubers can also take part in this promotion and earn money that depends directly on how popular their videos are.

Vimeo can’t hurt your income – and it’s also less likely to remove videos in general.

privacy

If you want to share your videos far and wide, privacy may not be a top priority for you, and YouTube’s huge user base will appeal (over two billion unique logged-in users per month versus 170 million Vimeo).

With this larger user base, YouTube offers three levels of privacy for your videos: public, private, or unlisted. That’s a pretty dull tool, but it does mean you have some degree of control over who sees your videos.

In contrast, Vimeo gives you much more precise control over privacy. You can leave a video public, make it password-protected, only offer it to your subscribers or limit the number of viewers to certain accounts that you choose yourself.

YouTube vs Vimeo: Final Verdict

YouTube and Vimeo are superficially similar, but very different beasts. There is no clear winner, because the two should appeal to very different users.

If you’re trying to break through as a skin care influencer, make money by posting lots of videos, and hope to reach the widest possible audience, YouTube’s model makes a lot of sense. You can reach your audience more easily. You have realistic monetization options. And you can post anything you want without spending your own money before finding your audience.

If you’re a video artist looking to share your art with festival programmers, or an editor trying to showcase your work to specific employers, or a filmmaker trying to share your work with an existing fan base, Vimeo will do you very well make possible. without advertising, at a low cost and with great results.