YouTube or Vimeo – How to Choose Better Service for WordPress Website

Video content is getting more and more popular nowadays. It is now simply inevitable to use videos on your WordPress website if you want to keep the loyal audience and increase it. And you do not need to create your own video content. You can just use the YouTube and Vimeo services to look for thematic content and put it to your WordPress website for your users’ entertainment.

It should be also mentioned that WordPress itself provides and opportunity to upload videos on your server. But this method of storing and showing videos is connected with lots of problems due to big sizes of video files. Services which are specially created for this purpose are much better and convenient for both WordPress admins and users.

Today we will compare YouTube and Vimeo services as two most popular video hostings of the world. Both services provide ample opportunities for video bloggers or for those who want to use the created content for the sake of their WordPress projects.

We will focus on such subjects as pricing, monetization, upload limits, audience reach, video editing options and privacy control. YouTube and Vimeo will be compared within these metrics in this article. This comparison will give you the clear picture of all main features for both services and will allow you to make the best choice for your WordPress website.

The Price for Video Hosting Service

YouTube is primarily well-known because it is free to use. The modus operandi of this video hosting is based on advertisements, which you can see nearly in any YouTube video. Furthermore, content creators can join the YouTube Red squad, which is presented as an additional payed service without any ads for the users. But in common, you can download videos and watch them on YouTube without any fee. This is also true for any embedded videos, like you can use for your WordPress website.

Vimeo is working with an opposite principle in its basis. There is no advertisement within Vimeo videos, but the uploaders should buy one of the 3 plans to evolve their video content storage. Nevertheless, you can acquire 500 Mb storage for a week for free. If you need more space, than you should buy one of the following plans: $7 for 5 Gb per week, $20 for 20 Gb per week and $50 for unlimited uploading plan.

Vimeo also sells additional services depending on your monthly plan. For example, any of the payed plans includes advanced statistics about your videos, priority user support, advanced privacy settings, professional customization options and much more. If you want to explore all the differences between the payed plans, then you should visit the corresponding Vimeo pricing table page. All YouTube services (except YouTube Red) are free for use.

Uploading Limitations

Each video hosting has its uploading limitations. But YouTube gives much more opportunities for free. New YouTube users are limited with 15 minutes for the uploaded videos. Once you will verify your account (via settings) you will be able to upload videos up to 12 hours length and 128 Gb size.

On the other hand, Vimeo has much more strict limits on weekly uploads and overall uploads pre year. For the free account it is available to upload only 500 Mb per week and 25 Gb per year. Plus account (for $7) gives you 5 Gb per week and 250 Gb per year. Pro account (for $20) allows to upload up to 20 Gb per week and 1 Tb per year. Business account (for $50) has no limitations for weekly uploads, but limited storage for 5 Tb per year.

Live Streaming

Live streaming is another fast growing trend which is fully supported for free by YouTube. You get no limitations in hours of streaming or visitors on your streams, when you are using YouTube. It is fairly easy to start and evolve your live video streaming with YouTube.

Vimeo supports live streaming only as a payed service. The prices start from $100 per month for only 10 hours of live streaming. All the prices for Vimeo live streaming you can find in the corresponding price table.

Audience Reach

YouTube1s leadership in the sphere of audience reach is obvious. As far as YouTube is the part of Google services, it acquires the world`s second search engine (by the number of users and search queries) and full support for mobile outreach via special apps for Android and iOS. Today YouTube has more than 1 billion users and 1 billion hours of watched videos daily.

Vimeo can not boast with such a wide audience, but nevertheless it has also a huge amount of users — over 170 million worldwide. Vimeo has a unique opportunity to unity users in special groups with individual access to certain videos. It also has a unique search engine which allows to find not only videos, but also, channels, groups and users.

Privacy Settings

Privacy settings are used to restrict the access to your video for certain groups of users or nearly for anyone. YouTube has only 3 types of settings according to the privacy: seen for all, seen only by URL and absolutely private. As it is obvious about the features of the first type, let us consider the preferences of the other two. Videos, which can be seen only by given URL are not listed in the search results of YouTube service. Absolutely private videos can be open to certain list of people via YouTube or Google+ accounts.

YouTube also offers the opportunity to block the embedding mode. In this case not only other users, but even you will have no chance to embed video to your WordPress website. YouTube also has an option to close video from commenting.

Vimeo has much more diversified system of privacy settings (but only for payed plans). For example, you can restrict the embedding mode for the video, but you will still be available to embed video by yourself. Another options include password protected videos, videos with access only for your channel followers or with a certain list of trusted users. In this sphere Vimeo beats YouTube with much more features available.

Video Editing Opportunities

Both of our today`s competitors have great tools for video editing. YouTube offers a bit more for the advanced and experienced users. Furthermore, YouTube can be easily joined with Google Photos service to use any of your private images directly within YouTube video editor.

YouTube and Vimeo allow the video creator to add captions, links, annotations, titles and descriptions, categories and other useful features for every video. Note, that some of free services on YouTube are payed within Vimeo.

Vimeo stands out with the opportunity to renew the video without changing its URL. YouTube has no such option, and you should delete and re-upload the video if you want to change anything inside the video content.

Monetization

YouTube and Vimeo allow you to earn real money on your video content, but in very different ways. YouTube is a large platform for advertisement and it offers you the opportunity to join this network. The easiest way to monetize your YouTube videos is to connect Google AdSense account to it. But you can not do it from scratch — first you should acquire at least 10,000 views on all of your videos. YouTube Red is also an option to sell your content directly to viewers, but it is available in few countries of the world.

Vimeo has another view onto the monetization. This platform is proud about having no advertisement. So, the only way to monetize your content here is to sell it directly to viewers. Note, that this option is available only for Business payed accounts.

Conclusion

Comparing YouTube and Vimeo we can male one essential conclusion: YouTube is better for novice users and Vimeo is a good option for professional video creators. This conclusion comes mostly from the pricing policies of the both video services.

The same conclusion is true for the WordPress users and their level of professional interest in video content.