Video now accounts for over 82% of all internet traffic, and this number is expected to keep growing. Businesses worldwide are funneling more marketing dollars into creating video tutorials, video marketing, and video staff meetings. But because video content requires more storage space than text-based content, it can clog up your servers pretty easily. That’s why most companies prefer to use an online video platform to host and store their video media in a more efficient and cost-effective way. But how do you know which platform is the right fit for your company?
What Is a Video Hosting Platform?
Online video platforms are crucial to a successful content marketing strategy. With a good video platform, you can upload and share high-quality videos with a huge audience without slowing down video loading times and frustrating your end-users. Video platforms are essential for companies because even a small amount of traffic can overload dedicated servers.
What to Consider When Choosing a Video Hosting Platform
Here are some factors to keep in mind when choosing your video host:
- Cost of hosting (subscription vs. pay-per-video, etc.)
- Type of video content you are hosting
- Which hosting sites your audience prefers using
- Need for live streaming, collaboration, or internal sharing
- Special features (i.e., video display, customization, download options, etc.)
- Content restriction, monetization, etc.
Businesses have plenty of choices when it comes to hosting video. You can find sites with unlimited storage capacity, sites that make it easy to create branded content, sites that offer robust analytics, and more. If you’re wondering how to pick the best online video platform for your business, read on for a review of the best options out there.
Viostream
Viostream is hands-down the best online video platform for enterprise-grade video. It is ideal for both government and business needs and lets you easily upload, manage, and organize video assets in the cloud. From there, you can publish them to social media, a CMS, or elsewhere. It makes it simple to live stream conferences, host on-demand videos and more, and all of your assets are stored securely. You can create on-brand, optimized websites for your videos with easy-to-use templates and great analytics tools.
Viostream also offers top-notch security features as well as fluid compatibility with LMS and CRM systems, and integrations for a number of business intelligence tools for advanced analytics. These aren't things you can get with more consumer-oriented services like YouTube and Vimeo. Start your free trial and experience the difference free for 14 days.
YouTube
YouTube is the largest online video platform, with almost 2 billion users streaming videos every month. It’s an excellent choice for indie content creators who need a big audience to tap into. The site is free to use and doesn’t place any limits on data storage or bandwidth. And you can also easily monetize your videos to start making ad revenue if you qualify on the site's terms.
However, it doesn’t offer much appeal for businesses. YouTube doesn’t allow any way to customize or brand your videos — you have to use its trademark iFrame player to embed videos onto your site. They also don't offer much in the way of security, and have been the target of major security breaches in the past. This can definitely present an issue for companies that want to keep internal communications videos safe and out of the public spotlight.
Vimeo
Vimeo is another online video platform that’s almost as popular as YouTube. It is geared toward professionals, however, only a small audience of professionals actually use the site. It is mostly filled with creative material, including original short films, music videos, animations, nature videos, etc. If your business is sharing these types of videos, Vimeo might be a great choice for you. But if not, other options will better suit your needs.
Sprout Video
Sprout Video is an online video platform intended expressly for businesses. Its tools let you create unlimited video players and customize each one to match different pages of your site or social media pages. The platform offers sharing and collaboration tools as well as audience building, video analytics, and more. It’s definitely a robust platform with plenty of special features. However, the site is very complex and the learning curve is pretty steep for those not already familiar with the ins and outs of online video.
Dailymotion
Dailymotion offers free, unlimited hosting, and is popular with both independent content creators and big companies alike. It offers the option to password-protect your videos or make them private. This comes in handy if you have employee onboarding videos or other corporate communications that you don’t want to release to the public. It also has tools to help you build an audience on the platform. The downside is that the platform plays ads before, during, and after videos, which can be annoying to viewers. It also limits the size of files, and you need to use a third-party service if you want to download your videos.
Why Choose Viostream
Without a doubt, video is one of the most powerful tools that businesses can use today. Publishing and streaming videos can draw in large audiences for your company. If you need a premium, enterprise-grade online video hosting platform, Viostream can help.
With a focus on security and helping you build a strong internal communication structure, Viostream offers video streaming tools that help you improve communication, education, and more. You can also take advantage of Viostream’s live streaming video capabilities and branded video pages to create a rewarding and high-end experience for your customers, employees, and stakeholders.
Contact our customer support team or start your free trial to learn more about how Viostream's professional video hosting platform can help your business build a stronger brand and grow your audience.
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