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General Discussion

Posted by Mark Cabangon
Mark Cabangon
3,940 Points

Vimeo or Youtube for hosting videos?

I want to put video on my website and would like to know which option is best and what has worked for you guys:

Put it in my website? -I read it can use up your bandwidth and slow down your site.

Or CDN? Youtube? Vimeo?

Also, from what I've experienced, site that have videos from Vimeo tend to take more time loading that Youtube. I'm not sure if it's my connection or if it's Vimeo.

Thanks guys! Mark JC

3 Answers

Jeff Lemay
Jeff Lemay
14,268 Points
Jeff Lemay
Jeff Lemay
14,268 Points

YouTube is king of hosting videos right now. Google knows what they're doing when it comes to speed and accessibility.

Mark Cabangon
Mark Cabangon
3,940 Points

I have a client that wants videos on her website. She sent me a link to it on Vimeo, but said she can send me the video files if I want.

My choice right now is to embed Vimeo (since it's already there), put the video on her site (because I will have the video files), or upload to Youtube.

Jeff Lemay
Jeff Lemay
14,268 Points
Jeff Lemay
Jeff Lemay
14,268 Points

If they prefer Vimeo than go with it, especially if they already have an established channel.

Mark Cabangon
Mark Cabangon
3,940 Points
Mark Cabangon
Mark Cabangon
3,940 Points

Thanks, Jeff for the replies.

It's on Vimeo because the person helping her with videos uploaded it onto his own account. I'm not sure if he is willing to host all her videos or not, but if he is, I will keep it there and link it.

Jeff Lemay
Jeff Lemay
14,268 Points
Jeff Lemay
Jeff Lemay
14,268 Points

You'll definitely want to set them up with an account dedicated to their business. Hosting them on "a guy's" account is like a business having a thebusiness@hotmail.com email address.

Kevin Korte
Kevin Korte
28,148 Points
Kevin Korte
Kevin Korte
28,148 Points

From my understanding, Youtube usually compresses the videos, a lot. Know I know lately Youtube has been offering 1080 so this is becoming a bit of a mute point. Vimeo as I understood it always was about super high res videos, at the expense of load time, youtube the opposite.

One thing Youtube has that's really nice, is to load the video faster it'll throttle resolution, starting low at first, like 480 and than automatically increasing to 720 or 1080 as the buffer gets large enough. They also have a niffty API to interact with, allowing you do some really custom stuff if you want.

Either will work, just depends on what works best for you.

Mark Cabangon
Mark Cabangon
3,940 Points

Great info! I wasn't sure why Vimeo always take longer to load compared to YouTube. I've also read that hosting your videos on your site will take from your bandwidth. Is that something I should worry about? The website should have 2-3 new videos per month, so it'll accumulate over time.