Vimeo vs Youtube: Which Video Hosting Site is Right for Your Business?
Last update: 14 June 2023 at 09:53 am
5.00/5Are you considering whether to choose Vimeo or YouTube for hosting your videos? With video taking up 82% of all internet data (2022) and social media being more present in our lives than ever before, Vimeo and YouTube are the most popular video hosting platforms to market and create awareness about your name, brand, product, or service.
Whether you are running a business, a passionate filmmaker, a creative artist, or a content creator – choosing the right video hosting platform is essential for the growth of your occupation.
Vimeo vs. YouTube
At first, Vimeo and YouTube seem pretty similar: YouTube and Vimeo are online video platforms where users can upload and watch other users’ videos. Both allow interaction such as comments, likes, shares, and subscriptions to different users’ channels, and live streaming is possible on both platforms.
However, there are significant differences and different reasons for choosing Vimeo or YouTube. Let’s break it down for you to make your choice easier.
Vimeo
Vimeo is a video hosting platform primarily aimed at professionals, including filmmakers. Their slogan is A tool for professionals, by professionals, already flaunting an overall focus on professional filmmaking rather than entertainment or business video marketing purposes. Vimeo has a toolkit to assist you in making, managing, and sharing videos.
1) Vimeo users
First, Vimeo has a significantly smaller user base than YouTube, with 260 million users. Although this means a smaller potential audience, it’s worth noting that a higher percentage of its users are on a paid subscription, indicating the level of dedication and engagement is already set remarkably high.
2) Vimeo member vs Vimeo free version
Vimeo offers five subscription plans, including a free plan. Each plan is built for different needs – first of all, focusing on how many videos a user can upload per year, but also with an increasing plate of options and extras such as video templates and stock photos, videos, and music, as well as the opportunity to live stream on the platform and integrate video marketing.
Users on Vimeo free plan have considerable limitations on how much content they can upload and store. However, this is helping a better focus and less spamming/unproductive critique on the website.
3) Completely free of ads
Vimeo’s revenue is primarily driven by monthly subscription fees with prices from $9 per month. The platform is ad-free, meaning no ads will be played before, during, or after videos. However, Vimeo offers a free membership with limited upload and storage options, so it’s only suitable for the more passive user and not for business matters.
All Vimeo’s members follow a channel called Staff Picks, which features pre-selected Vimeo videos of the staff’s choice every week. This is to help the best films and videos on Vimeo to get a bigger audience and is an excellent chance for the individual creator to get noticed.
You won’t have to submit anything to be a potential pick. However, your chances of staff picking your video increases with a clear thumbnail, video description, tagging, and categorizing and sharing your video in relevant groups and channels.
YouTube
YouTube is the world’s largest video platform and, not least, the most well-known one. With over 2 billion users and over a billion hours of YouTube videos watched daily, YouTube is where you find the biggest audience.
YouTube is the number two most visited site in the world after Google and the second biggest search engine. This means that visibility and exposure are the most extensive possible on YouTube.
However, significant exposure isn’t always a benefit because it can also lead to a lot more negative responses as everyone can watch and comment, so this means a bigger vulnerability to potential harmers or spammers.
1) Youtube content
On YouTube, almost only the imagination limits what kind of content can be shared. YouTube isn’t limited to specific topics. It has an enormous variety of niches and content – also with a greater possibility of discovering new topics of interest.
2) Ranking
Over the last decade, many influencers have risen on YouTube, becoming world-famous through the platform. Today the competition is more challenging, and how videos are exposed is not as coincidental anymore as it used to be, with strategic internal ranking systems playing a significant role in video exposure and popularity.
However, as an entertainer, whether a musician, dancer, or comedian, YouTube is a great platform because it allows you to create a channel with subscribers, and although you might not become noticed and famous overnight, you can reach new milestones with the right amount of passion and effort over time.
3) Ad revenue
It is free to watch and post on YouTube. The downside is that you have to put up with loads of ads before, during, and after YouTube videos – which can provoke a bit of impatience and distraction. But also be good for something! Because it opens up a valuable opportunity for businesses to advertise on YouTube and benefit from the extensive ad exposure.
Also, video creators can monetize the revenue earned from their advertisements. 55% of the generated revenue from an ad goes to the content creator. Although this sounds good, it isn’t easy to earn that way and might require hundreds of thousands to millions of views before it gives any significant revenue.
Without the ads, there would be no YouTube because YouTube generates revenue mainly from sponsored clips. This means Vimeo and YouTube have very different approaches to generating revenue. Whereas Vimeo generates revenue from subscriptions, YouTube generates revenue from ads.
4) Youtube Premium
YouTube, however, has created a way to avoid ads, and that’s by upgrading to a YouTube premium membership from $11.99 per month, so in those terms, YouTube’s revenue model starts to look a bit similar to Vimeo’s.
It can’t be so easily compared because YouTube is reaching a much bigger and more diverse audience, with many who would rather watch ads than put down their credit card details. That means the overall engagement is smaller, allowing many to be more anonymous.
Pros and Cons
Vimeo
Pros
- No ads! Goodbye to waiting for ads to finish and for their distraction! This also makes embedding videos in websites or posts much ‘cleaner’ – avoiding random suggested videos at the end of your video.
- More customized privacy system: you can choose that your video is only visible to followers or specific users. You can even create a specific password for your private video that viewers have to fill out to watch your video and send it to your friends or colleagues. This means that you can share your private video creation with an inner circle of other professional video creators before you make it public or share it with your followers.
- Higher quality videos. You can upload and stream in HD; the video won’t be compressed to save space and data. One of Vimeo’s mottoes is ‘Quality over quantity,’ and that’s not untrue because if you take a video and upload it in the exact resolution respectively to Youtube and Vimeo, you will see that the video quality of the same video is better on Vimeo vs YouTube.
- Bigger focus on film quality. Meaning you are more likely to receive constructive feedback from other video creators.
- Easy to send to others. For example, if you want to send your video content to a film festival, you can send a URL. When the receiver opens the link, there will be no distracting video suggestions at the end of your video or ads, unlike Youtube, where links to videos will come will both.
- More than 2000 video templates.
- Stock photos, videos, and music are available in some subscription plans.
- Upload length isn’t limited.
- You can change or replace Vimeo content after publishing it while keeping the statistics. This can be useful if you notice that you have made some mistakes.
Cons
- The need to join a paid subscription plan is bigger on Vimeo vs. YouTube. Users’ upload and storage have big limitations on the free plan. Free users can only store a max of 25 videos, whereas if you are on a paid plan, there are no limitations on how much content you can have on your channel. However, this is helping a better focus and less spamming/unproductive critique on the website.
- A smaller potential audience than on YouTube
- Fewer niches to fit into. Vimeo is less versatile than YouTube regarding types of video content. This means you might not find the audience you are looking for. However, with a free subscription, you can find out before deciding.
- You’ll need an advanced or enterprise subscription plan to do live streaming.
YouTube
Pros
- On YouTube, it’s completely free to watch and upload YouTube videos, which allows everyone to join regardless of financial situation. This means YouTube represents a more diverse group of channels and a more diverse audience than Vimeo.
- YouTube offers live streaming for free.
- More users, with a potentially bigger audience.
- Your video might also show up in Google searches because Google owns YouTube.
- YouTube Shorts (launched in September 2020) has been coming in strong meant to compete with TikTok’s short-form video strategy. And it has taken the internet by storm. It allows users to easily create and watch short videos up to 60 seconds long – not only one but a continuous flow playing after each other without too many interruptions. There are some commercials in between, but one can scroll away from shorts fast and effortlessly. YouTube shorts reach new audiences more easily and frequently than regular-length videos.
- YouTube shorts and video suggestions increase the likelihood of attracting new audiences not actively searching for your content.
- YouTube is ideal for brand promotion and marketing through product videos, affiliate influencers, reviews, how-to-videos, sponsored videos, and more.
- YouTube is a great place to find and share educational videos and tutorials for free.
- YouTube offers a wide variety of video content, and there’s something for everyone, regardless of age or background.
Cons
- The privacy settings on YouTube are quite limited, as you can only choose public, private, or unlisted. However, you can invite users to watch your private videos by creating and sharing a link.
- Often videos are compressed into a lower video and audio quality to decrease the use of space and data. This doesn’t happen on Vimeo.
- With default settings, you can only upload an individual video up to 15 minutes long. However, if they verify your account, YouTube can allow you to upload longer videos.
- Suppose you embed a video in a post on a website. In that case, it will still suggest more or less random videos after the video have been played, which is a disadvantage if you want viewers to only focus on the specific video you are sharing. It takes away focus from your video and from the post it’s featured in.
Practical Application
Vimeo
Vimeo is a platform where you can receive constructive critique from people in like-minded niches and improve your video and film-creating skills.
You don’t have to worry about compromised video quality; your videos can be featured in the weekly ‘Staff Picks’ and shared with a more exclusive and limited audience before making them public. Vimeo focuses more on specific niches, such as short films, animation, documentaries, and experimental/art films.
Professionals and businesses mainly use Vimeo to share content with other professional video creators. It means it’s more B2B relationships than YouTube, and given the profile, you’ll not find teenagers with millions of subscribers and views on a platform like Vimeo.
YouTube
YouTube is basically for everyone and everything! You’ll find all niches except restricted ones; whether you are two years old or one hundred, there’ll be something for you. You’ll find everything from personal training and lifestyle videos to sports, music, and movie trailers.
If you are looking for something, you’ll most likely find it, and if you have a content idea, you can unfold it on YouTube. That said, it’s more likely to drown in the crowd, and if you are sharing content, you might receive some unwanted and unfair critique.
However, you can optimize your YouTube SEO/ranking by adding subtitles and specific keywords to get discovered, posting a certain amount of times a week, and choosing to make videos about topics that YouTube ranks high. For example, finance and beauty videos rank higher than fashion content.
Should I choose Vimeo or YouTube?
So basically, Vimeo is suitable for professionals looking for a place to share videos with a more like-minded audience capable of giving constructive criticism. It’s ad free, which by many is seen as a big plus, and you don’t have to worry about compromised video quality.
Also, you are more in control of who can watch your videos on Vimeo than on YouTube, and this can be beneficial when looking to share amongst a smaller, more relevant group of people.
If you want to store more than 25 videos on your channel, you’ll have to be a paying member, and most of its users are. This means less spamming and unwanted comments because users generally have a higher level of engagement.
On the other hand, YouTube is great if you are looking for a big and versatile audience to get discovered and possibly go viral. Everyone can access your ‘public’ videos, meaning you won’t find a bigger audience anywhere else.
However, the competition has become harder than one decade ago, and many strategic factors affect how much exposure and visibility your videos will get. You must optimize your YouTube SEO by adding subtitles with relevant keywords, uploading regularly, choosing popular topics, and more.
YouTube is full of ads – unless you upgrade to a premium membership. For some, the possibility of doing sponsored advertising to such a big audience is seen as a plus. In contrast, ads are mostly considered an interrupting and time-consuming factor for others.
We hope you feel confident to choose by reading this. However, if you still find it hard to decide which platform to jump onto, there’s nothing wrong with shattering your seeds and trying out both YouTube and Vimeo.
