Should I use Vimeo?

The PROs of Vimeo

• No Ads
  • Vimeo doesn’t make it’s money by sticking annoying ads at the front of your video. Instead, they ask for a small fee if you are using more than 500MB of upload space per week. They also don’t have annoying ads on their website.

• More professional look
  • You can customize the embedded player to have a custom color, remove buttons, remove the Vimeo logo from embedded videos (!), and change what happens after the video is done playing.

  • If you are willing to drop the $199/yr for a Pro membership, you can also replace the vimeo logo with your own logo.

    

• Very easy to use
  • The Vimeo interface is much more intuitive than YouTube’s confusing interface in my opinion.

• Only your videos are suggested at the end of each video
  • Instead of suggesting you watch somebody else’s video on their site after your video ends, Vimeo lets you choose what will happen at the end of each of your videos, so you can keep people on your page, display some custom text, or have them link to more of your videos on your vimeo channel.

• More detailed analytics
  • Vimeo goes farther than YouTube with the stats, giving you more insight about who watched your video, who liked it, commented on it, whether or not they finished watching it, how many of the plays were on embedded players, etc. These details can mean big bucks when it comes to fine tuning how to deliver your messages to your target audience.

• More customizable privacy settings
  • You can specify exactly which sites can embed your video/s and password protect them as well.

• Pay-Per-View option
  • Although not so popular these days since most people aren’t used to paying to view video content online, if this option sounds interesting to you, Vimeo might be your best bet.
• Video Review Page
  • Vimeo has a great tool that allows video-makers to receive client feedback. I personally love it and so do my clients. They can watch a video, click right on the video player and type a note to me. I’ll see their note at the exact place they left it and where on the screen they clicked to leave the note. It’s much more efficient than sending emails back and forth and me trying to guess what part they were talking about.
• Additional tools
  • Vimeo offers lots of different tools. Depending on your subscription level, you can embed clickable annotations, ‘call to action’ end cards with a hyperlink, they offer a nice way to deliver videos to other people in various resolutions, a very capable video switcher that can be used while doing a livestream, live audience chat, Q&A, polls and graphics, basic viewer-level analytics for webinars …although a Premium membership is required for many of these, while YouTube gives you a lot for free.

The CONs

• Far less traffic than YouTube
  • Vimeo has over 230 million monthly users. That’s a lot, but it’s nothing compared to YouTube’s 1.8 Billion. …so your videos tend to be less ‘visible’.
• Not free
  • For some, this is more than a fair trade to not have to deal with ads, still it’s nice to not have to pay a dime, regardless of how much content you’re uploading (YouTube).
  • Although for a reasonable fee, you can upload a lot of content to Vimeo, none of their packages are limitless. You always have a ceiling hanging over your head, whereas YouTube is game for just about whatever you want to throw at it. I’ve even found a video on YouTube that is nearly 600 hours long.

• Google search results

  • It is rumored that Google may favor listing videos that are hosted on YouTube …since Google owns YouTube. This could be a big deal… if it’s true.

Conclusion

Vimeo is the choice of many video professionals –for good reason. It is an inexpensive way to get away from the ads and suggested videos that YouTube uses to lure your visitors away to their network. Although Vimeo does have a respectable built-in network of video connoisseurs (who have a reputation for being kinder in comment sections than YouTubers can be), it does not compare in size to the massive audience that YouTube brings daily. Therefore, if you put out regular videos that are either entertaining or informative and your goal is to build a following of subscribers and potentially generate income by selling ad space to that following, YouTube is for you. But if you are just looking for a somewhere to host videos that can be embedded or shared by others, you don’t put out regular interesting or educational content and don’t care about building a following, and you want your embedded videos to look more pro and keep your visitors on your page without having to spend a bunch of money, Vimeo may be for you …but make sure you check out Wistia as well!

If you want to see concise comparison between YouTube, Vimeo, and Wistia, check out this article:

Which is better? YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia?