The best free video hosting providers and premium solutions

For years, video and moving image content has been the type of content that attracts the most attention from users. To make sure that large video files don’t affect a website’s per­form­ance, video hosting is a good choice. We present free and paid premium solutions for video stream hosting.

Hosting videos yourself puts much more strain on a server than videos embedded via link or as an iframe. While image and text files are often only a few megabytes in size, even low-res­ol­u­tion videos are usually several hundred megabytes in size. This means that video files take up a large amount of a server’s bandwidth and can therefore also have a negative impact on the per­form­ance (loading speed) of a website. This is one reason why it’s advisable to use video platforms. This is es­pe­cially advisable if the host of a server limits the available bandwidth to a certain level.

Status of data: April 2022

Video hosting or video stream hosting uses platforms that allow users and companies to publish and dis­trib­ute various video files. Among the best-known video hosting platforms are companies such as YouTube or Vimeo, which also offer a large community.

There, users can search for specific videos and play them directly on the providers’ sites. In addition, YouTube and Co. also offer the gen­er­a­tion of links of the uploaded videos, which can then be con­veni­ently embedded on other websites.

The advantage: Even with free video platforms, partly unlimited storage options are available, such as videos in high-res­ol­u­tion quality and file sizes in the gigabyte range can be uploaded there and sub­sequently hosted. Website operators relieve the load on their own servers by using these video hosting sites, which in turn can have a positive effect on the per­form­ance of their own website.

Re­gard­less of whether you choose free video hosting or paid. This third-party solution is ideal for all websites that want to embed large video files or a large number of smaller videos. For example, as part of a blog to enrich texts or as part of product present­a­tions or tutorials.

Large video platforms such as YouTube or Daily­mo­tion ensure ad­di­tion­al dis­tri­bu­tion of moving image content and offer extensive analysis options for the number of views, average length of views or comment functions. This allows for direct and indirect in­ter­ac­tion options with potential target groups. Various content man­age­ment systems, including WordPress, offer practical functions for embedding moving image content. With WordPress embed YouTube videos work in just a few steps.

When comparing video hosting platforms that provide their features for free and video hosting via premium providers, the dif­fer­ence lies mainly in the features set and spe­cific­a­tions related to a single video file. YouTube, for example, is com­pletely free for video hosting, but includes ad­vert­ising, some of which is placed directly in front of a video.

The com­par­is­on of free video stream hosting and paid providers partly shows big dif­fer­ences. For example, free video hosting is usually limited to the upload and dis­tri­bu­tion options for videos, including basic analysis tools.

Paid providers also offer ad­di­tion­al functions for lead gen­er­a­tion and con­ver­sion-op­tim­isa­tion. They charge for the service monthly. The motto here is: The more expensive a package, the greater the scope of functions or the more videos or data can be stored with the provider.

YouTube is probably the best-known platform for searching and hosting and streaming videos worldwide. More than 30 billion visits are recorded by YouTube in one month alone, and the most clicked videos reach hits in the billions. YouTube thus offers video content creators not only a free hosting option but also access to an audience of billions, which in turn helps them to obtain com­pre­hens­ive analyses of their own videos and thus adapt content to the needs of many users.

In terms of the amount of available storage and bandwidth, there is no limit on YouTube - in­di­vidu­al videos can be up to 25 gigabytes in size and/or up to 12 hours long. Embedding is child’s play. Simply upload YouTube video and integrate it into your own website using the embedding function, for example via iframe.

However, if you embed videos via HTML hosted on YouTube into your website, they will always appear in the YouTube design. While this is now the standard on many websites, it’s not always the desired way for busi­nesses to display them. In addition, YouTube displays ads before videos - this cannot be turned off.

Daily­mo­tion seems to have set out to challenge YouTube. The platform is currently the network with the second most hits worldwide. The proximity to YouTube is also evident in the storage: Just like there, Daily­mo­tion allows an unlimited number of videos to be uploaded.

The first dif­fer­ence becomes apparent when looking at the spe­cific­a­tions for in­di­vidu­al files: In the free version of Daily­mo­tion, videos with a maximum length of 60 minutes and a file size of 2 gigabytes per video can be uploaded. As with YouTube, ad­vert­ise­ments within the videos are an integral part of this.

Among the best YouTube al­tern­at­ives, is the video service Vimeo. Vimeo, as a free video hosting option, is designed for video hosting. Unlike other providers that focus on social net­work­ing, Vimeo tends to target creatives and busi­nesses to create, manage and dis­trib­ute videos.

In addition to the free basic variant, Vimeo offers different plans on a weekly basis, which can be used to expand cloud storage, for example. With the free variant, 500 MB of video material can be uploaded weekly, with a limit of 5 gigabytes. Larger amounts of data, up to unlimited storage, are chargeable.

This makes Vimeo par­tic­u­larly suitable if there are no regular uploads and if the videos serve as a fixed component of existing website content. For example, as an ad­di­tion­al source of in­form­a­tion.

In addition to the big names, there is another provider that offers free video hosting. The scope of Wistia puts a strong focus on online marketing and related ad­di­tion­al features such as A/B testing, branding cus­tom­isa­tion and analytics. It’s no co­in­cid­ence that the provider describes itself as a solution for B2B marketing.

The free version of Wistia only supports the upload of a total of three videos. For the dis­tri­bu­tion of the videos, the provider supplies its own channel with a suitable link for embedding in websites.

Wistia charges a lot for upgrading the functions: $99 per month allow the upload of up to 10 videos. With this plan, cus­tom­isa­tion of the video player is also possible - with the free plan, one must resort to a Wistia-branded player.

SproutVideo is not only aimed at large companies regarding the monthly cost, self-employed in­di­vidu­als and small busi­nesses also get a variety of features at a moderate price with the provider’s video hosting solution.

As expected from a paid service, the upload options are more than suf­fi­cient, both for in­di­vidu­al videos in terms of storage. This ensures con­tinu­ous embedding of videos on websites and in news­let­ters. The latter is par­tic­u­larly in­ter­est­ing because SproutVideo includes forms for lead gen­er­a­tion.

In this way, target groups can be built up over the long term, which can be addressed via various marketing activ­it­ies and promote the sale of services and products.

Like other providers, Vidalyt­ics ad­vert­ises numerous functions that go beyond the mere upload and dis­tri­bu­tion of videos. For example, users get con­nectiv­ity to marketing auto­ma­tion solutions or lead gen­er­a­tion elements that can be embedded in videos.

The basic package is available for $25 per month, which can host a total of 10 videos. As package costs increase, the amount of bandwidth available and the maximum number of videos that can be hosted expand. However, except for premium encoding to reduce the bandwidth used per video, all important features are already included in the basic package.

If you are only looking for a basic way to relieve the load on your own server, you will already find what you are looking for with free video streaming platforms. Unlimited data storage, the in­teg­ra­tion of all common video formats and embedding via link or iframe make it easier to dis­trib­ute videos on websites or in news­let­ters.

For all those who would like to draw ad­di­tion­al benefits from video content or use videos as sales support, it makes sense to compare the paid providers. These score points with simple in­teg­ra­tions of call-to-actions or forms for lead gen­er­a­tion.