Consumer Advocacy
What you need to know
Video Hosting
  • Look for a service optimized for a variety of platforms
  • Choose a service that includes the features you'll most use
  • Your service should be tailored to your size, market, & brand
  • Free hosting services usually don't allow monetization
Our Approach

How we analyzed the best Video Hosting Providers

Technical Specifications
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Our list of the best Video Hosting Providers

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Our Research

More insight into our methodology

Helpful information about Video Hosting

Video hosting services allow anyone with a website to easily post video content. A solid hosting service will ensure that videos are optimized for a variety of platforms (laptop, tablet, phone, etc.) and will provide features that allow webmasters to monitor, control, monetize, and secure their videos. 

Contemporary video hosting sites also offer a number of sophisticated presentation and marketing tools. Some offer video gallery templates that can be customized for fit with the surrounding website. Some offer easy video subtitling, annotations, and lead generators that collect viewers' email addresses. Some also offer more advanced integration capabilities, such as the ability to interface seamlessly with Constant Contact and other email marketing platforms. And most offer analytic tools that run the gamut from very basic to very precise.

Because of the incredibly broad variety of websites, from the smallest personal promotional site to the biggest corporate site, the firms that offer video hosting have tended to specialize in different market segments. Thus a service that may be ideal for a company that wants to present promotional about-us videos may have very different needs than a musician who is hoping to see her music shared among the largest possible number of people. While we do pick an overall best hosting service, we also cite those services that excel in meeting particular needs.

FAQs about Video Hosting

What is a video hosting service?

Video hosting services provide web-based tools that enable people and companies to easily display and manage video content on their websites.

Why do I need a video hosting service? Can't I host videos on my website myself?

While it's technically feasible to host video content directly on your website, it's a technically daunting job. Because of the many platforms that the video may be viewed on, video content must be automatically optimized for playback on the platform each particular viewer is using. It may also be important to prevent copying or embedding of the video content, to limit its hours of operation, to monetize video content, and to have sophisticated analytic tools that can tell you who is viewing a video, how, and for how long. For these reasons, even the largest companies typically use a hosting service to handle their website's video content.

What should I look for in a video hosting service?

Choosing a video hosting service may be largely driven by your particular needs. You should decide if you want your videos to be accessible to the world at large or limited to a specific audience. You should know if you want your videos to be shareable. You should determine whether your videos are to be free or viewable only by subscription. You should assess whether and how much you will tolerate advertising on and around your video. And you should understand what kind of information you need about who is viewing your videos. Understanding these needs will make your selection of the best hosting firm much easier.

Don't some services host videos for free? Why shouldn't I use one of those?

Some of the largest firms in the tech industry make it possible for people to upload, display, and share video content for free. Videos can be natively hosted on Facebook. They can be uploaded to YouTube and embedded in a website. Both these and other sites can be used as video hosting platforms without the necessity of paying them a dime. However, the free services provided by those sites don't give webmasters a lot of control over how their videos are presented, viewed, and shared. And they generally don't permit direct monetization, which means that it's difficult to keep people who haven't paid for a subscription to your site from seeing your video content.

Our Video Hosting Review Summed Up

Company NameThe Best
JW Player Video PlatformOverall
Vimeo Video Hostingfor Artists, Musicians, & Filmmakers
Vidyard Video Hostingfor Sales & Marketing
Swarmify Video Hostingfor Those with the Need for Speed
Wistia Video Hostingfor Business
Brightcove Video Hostingfor Control & Security
vzaar Video Hostingfor Affordable Solutions
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