It’s no secret that online video is one of the fastest growing and most popular trends of this year. As I talk to marketers, I find that an incredible amount of them are creating more videos more often than ever before. So, what is the best video hosting platform to use for hosting and sharing your videos? In my last post, I compared Wistia to Vimeo. Today, we’ll be looking at Wistia as it compares against the 2nd most popular search engine in the world: YouTube.
Wistia
Pros: Wistia is a video hosting platform that is targeted directly at marketers. In addition to the incredible analytics I highlighted in my last post, Wistia can be white-labeled and looks simply incredible. Video looks vibrant and clear, and you can fine-tune the look and feel of the player. What’s more, Wistia is complete with great features for conversion like having a call to action appear at the end of the video or even requiring an email address to unlock the video in the first place. Cons: The biggest detractor from Wistia is the price tag. For better or for worse, their pricing model encourages creating fewer videos, so it probably isn’t the platform that you want to use if you are looking to include a video in every blog post. YouTube: Pros: YouTube is the most well-known video hosting service out there. Over 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. It doesn’t get much more reliable that that. Additionally, YouTube offers free HD hosting to as many videos as you would like. Using a copyrighted music track? It’s usually no problem on YouTube, they’ll just add a banner ad to the video. Cons: YouTube isn’t necessarily made for marketers or marketing purposes. Sure, it’s a great platform (especially from a social perspective), but it doesn’t offer great white labeling or in-depth analytics.
The verdict:
So, should you use Wistia or YouTube? Well, it’s not as easy as choosing one or the other. My recommendation is to take a hybrid approach. Ultimately, I feel that Wistia is incredible for your important “cornerstone” videos, while YouTube is a valuable resource for publishing videos with frequency.