There are, at the time of this writing, over thirty web sites available for you to choose from when it comes to hosting your videos. They range from terrible to terrific and finding the right one depends on your needs and wants. I’m going to concentrate on two of them. This is based on assuming that what you need to be hosted is a web commercial, event video, or something similar.
Vimeo
The first site I’ll direct you too is Vimeo. Vimeo was founded in 2004 and is a unique and popular video-sharing site with a clean layout. They accept numerous video file formats and a Basic (free) account allows for up to 500 MB of storage every week. They also provide easy tools to customize your videos to fit seamlessly into any website or blog.
Besides the Basic user features Vimeo also offers PLUS and PRO memberships. I’ve signed up for PLUS because it offers 5GB of storage space a week (5GB per video file or lots of smaller ones), 2-pass encoding for a clean look, full customization of almost every aspect of the player, and it’s only $5 a month. All that aside I really like Vimeo for the community. My videos aren’t going to be filed with the kind of comments anonymous users seem to enjoy leaving. There’s no racist remarks, no attacks, no put downs, ridicule, insults, etc. It’s a great community and the feedback you get on your work is going to be respectful and useful. One more thing – Vimeo looks better. If you’re going to embed videos on your website Vimeo is the way to go.
Don’t believe me? Here’s Jessica:
And here’s a random Vimeo video I like:
Vimeo PRO costs $199/Year and is designed for business and commercial-use with powerful tools that are easy to use. You can read more about Vimeo PRO here.
YouTube
When it comes to online video, YouTube is king. If view counts and comments mean a lot to you, YouTube is probably the way to go. YouTube offers files up to 20GB in size, 15 minutes in length, numerous file formats, and privacy. You can create a channel and build a following.
One big drawback to YouTube is the related videos that appear at the end of the videos. That’s going to draw people away from you and on to something else. Just keep that in mind if you’re using YouTube as a business video host. On the plus side if you embed your YouTube video on your web site you can turn that feature off.
YouTube is easy to learn and simple to use. Plus it can be a lot of fun just to browse around if you don’t mind a time waster.
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