Vimeo or YouTube? Which is the best solution for YOU?

Updated:

Marco Molteni

Should I go with Vimeo or YouTube, which is the best video solution for me?

Influencer

If you are an 'Influencer' there is no debate ... absolutely 'YouTube'. YouTube will allow you to earn money with its own advertising and the products you want to sell. If the quality of your video is good (according to the YT criteria), YouTube will promote your video to thousands of potential viewers. In your case Vimeo, is interesting only if you have your own website and you advertise products, have a lot of followers or you want to create a subscription platform.

Videos for business

If you work for a SME or a big company Vimeo can be the winner.

What are the advantages of Vimeo?

You can customize the video player
You can publish on YouTube from Vimeo and collect the statistics
You can decide who can see your video
You can update your video without losing url or statistics
No ads (YT could show videos of your competitors)
You decide what appears at the end of the video (no competitors or negative videos)
You can organize your video according to your preferences
It helps you to publish to multiple Social Media platform

Compared to Vimeo, the advantage of YouTube is that you can publish for free. Many would say that the audience is more on YT and this is true, for this reason Vimeo allows you to publish your videos on YouTube ... and Instagram ... and TikTok ... allowing you to reach the maximum audience.

Vimeo is clean, YouTube tries to send the visitors away

Here we have two images of a video embedded in my blog, the video has been paused to take the screenshot. With Vimeo the (default) player plays nicely with the context of the page, it's not intrusive and the rendered quality of the image is good. The player is fully customizable, you can choose the colors and the features integrated.

Vimeo

The same embedded video with YouTube has less quality and seems to promote other videos that offer the same content as my video.

YouTube

YouTube pushes your visitors to go directly to their website ... leaving yours ... with this nice addition 'Watch on YouTube' automatically added to your video:

The End Screen: Vimeo creates lead, YouTube steals viewers

Vimeo lets you decide what to show when the video finishes. You can show a form to collect the data of the visitor, show a message or show some other videos of your choice. The goal is that the user stays in relationship with you.

Here the list of MY other videos, suggested to the viewer:

or a form to subscribe to the mailing list trying to convert a viewer into a lead:

YouTube will suggest to the visitor videos similar to your, potentially some competitors pushing the visitor away from your website and your business. The goal is to 'steal' the user from your site to let him/her to spend the next hour on YouTube. In this screen at least 4 videos propose very similar content of my own video.

In 2020, YouTube changed his 'Term of Service', now it can include ads in your video even if you are not member of the Partner Program.

This means that you don't completely control what the users see. Some users find annoying to watch 5 to 10 seconds of advertising before a video.

To monetize this ads or to request YouTube to don't include them in your videos you have to enter in the 'Partner Program' that has unilateral requirements (e.g. 1'000 subscribers).

The best solution is ...

Photo by Giorgio Trovato / Unsplash

... for a small-medium business ...

as always it really depends on your goals. If you are a small-medium business that cannot reach 1'000 subscribers on YouTube and you want to add videos to your website I recommend starting with Vimeo, you won't have bad surprises and you won't distract visitors with advertising.

... if you are an Influencer or a successful creator...

YouTube and all its rules is your choice in 98% of the cases.

If your video become a hit on internet you can monetize with YouTube, on the opposite side Vimeo could 'punish' you applying their 'fair use policy' that limits your bandwidth usage to 3TB per month.

As alternative Vimeo offers an OTT program that allows you to sell subscriptions for your channel.