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Wistia Video Hosting Review


ConsumersAdvocate.org Rating: 4.7 / 5 (Excellent)
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Founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Wistia is a video hosting solutions that help businesses upload videos to the Internet and track their performance. The company provides businesses with a platform that optimizes videos for playback on any device, SEO tools to improve their website traffic, and an analytics overview with multiple markers. Wistia's video hosting solutions are available for free and as part of a paid program.
 
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How is Wistia rated?

Breakdown

5.0/5
Technical Specifications
4.5/5
Security
4.5/5
Related Features
4.5/5
Support

Overall Rating: 4.7 / 5 (Excellent)

Wistia's video hosting is by far one of the best choices for businesses looking to dive into video content or hoping to upload their video library. The platform's excellent player, numerous outreach, and marketing features, and exceptionally thorough analytics tools make for a package that is hard to beat. In addition, its security infrastructure is particularly strong and provides numerous layers of protection to both users' accounts and videos. We recommend Wistia for small-to-medium businesses looking for video hosting alternatives.

Wistia Technical Specifications

Technical Specifications - 5 / 5

All videos hosted through Wistia are fully responsive, automatically scaling to fit any screen size. Excluding its free plan, Wistia does not divulge any numbers regarding storage or bandwidth for its paid plans. It does this because users paying for said plans are ensured almost limitless bandwidth and storage. A maximum file size of 8 GB is recommended for users of Wistia. Numerous other technical features of the Wistia platform can be found below.
Automatic optimization?
Yes
Storage
Storage with Wistia depends on how much bandwidth a user needs.
Bandwidth
Wistia's free plan features a total of 200 GB of bandwidth per month. For its paid plans, Wistia states that it sets bandwidth limits high enough so most Wistia users (99%) will never need to worry about it.
File Size Limitations
Wistia works best with MP4 files with an h.264 codec, a bitrate between 5,000 - 10,000 kbps, and a maximum file size of 8 GB.
Other Notable Technical Features
HTML5 video player, support for HD-resolution videos and adaptive HLS streaming, lightweight embed codes, video content control via CTA, chapters, and password protection, built-in social network sharing, fully compatible with screen readers, HD bandwidth detection, 360 video support, domain restriction for complete control over videos.

Wistia Security

Security - 4.5 / 5

Wistia maintains an internal standard of 99.9% uptime. The company's services and infrastructure are designed to scale horizontally and it employs redundant providers to minimize downtime in case of a catastrophic event. It leverages frequently tested, proven infrastructure to deliver content via multiple Tier 1 CDNs. Wistia applications are containerized, its high-scale SQL databases are sharded, and the company reserves capacity with its hosting provider to ensure it can meet customer demand. Additionally, Wistia monitors for updates to third-party security and vulnerability databases, has SSH key-based authentication for all production and staging servers, and features entirely automated server provisioning for less error-prone deployments and fast disaster recovery. All of Wistia's major hosting vendors have up-to-date SSAE 16 certification.
Downloading Limitations
Wistia users can give viewers the ability to download their videos if they choose to. Otherwise, Wistia embedded videos are normally unable to be downloaded.
Privacy Options
Wistia users can add viewers and collaborators to individual projects and give them specific accesses and controls to their videos. In order to manage how viewers access their account and your videos, users can also require a login for anyone who want to see their videos.
Secure SSL Certificate?
Yes
RTMPe Streaming?
No
Video Scheduling?
No

Wistia Related Features

Related Features - 4.5 / 5

Wistia's standard features are offered with both free and pro plans. These include a fully customizable player, unlimited users, basic integrations, easy embedding and sharing, lead generation tools, and advanced video analytics. The company's advanced plans offer even more features, integration with HubSpot, Pardot, or Marketo, and priority support.
Analytics
Wistia's analytics are based off a viewer-based tracking system that identifies and tracks the people watching your videos. This produces heatmaps which show clients exactly which parts of their video individual viewers have watched, re-watched, and skipped over. It also generates engagement graphs that compile their audience's viewing behavior, such as rewatches, drop-offs, and interactions with videos.
SEO Features
Wistia's embed codes are designed to automatically optimize any uploaded videos for search engines. Wistia ensures that videos get indexed on all major search engines, automatically injects transcripts into videos–which Google's algorithm is attracted to–, and includes each video's title, description, and thumbnail in its metadata.
Advertising Controls
Wistia places no ads whatsoever on user videos. Moreover, it does not refer to "related videos" once a video reaches its end.
Lead Generator?
Yes
Video Subtitling?
Yes
Email Marketing Integration?
Yes
Customization and Branding
Wistia's platform can match brand colors to user videos, and users themselves can customize their video thumbnails.

Other Notable Related Features

oEmbed (Wordpress), custom form that can placed at any point in your video's timeline, Google Analytics integration, marketing automation integrations, IP address filtering, complete library for integrating video, JavaScript API, JSON-LD metadata

Wistia Support

Support - 4.5 / 5

Wistia provides support through email and live chat. They decided to eliminate their phone lines after realizing that doing so led to heightened productivity and user satisfaction with their customer support. Users paying for a Wistia advanced plan are eligible to receive priority support.
Support Modes
Chat
Email
Included in Fee?
Yes

Company Profile

Full Name
Wistia Video Hosting
Company Website
https://wistia.com
Headquarters
17 Tudor Street, Cambridge, MA, 02139

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Top Rated
Our Partner
  • Fast HTML5 player that works on all mobile and desktop browsers
  • Javascript APIs allow extensive player customization
  • Content suggestion algorithms to enhance engagement
  • Real-time analytics
  • Prices start at $5/month
  • Password-protected sharing
  • Live event streaming
  • No revenue share; all ad revenue to the poster
  • Multi-bitrate HD encoding
  • Over 1 billion monthly unique global viewers
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