YouTube or Vimeo? Which should you choose in 2018?

While browsing forums or more generally Internet, you may find lots of questions and statements regarding the superiority of YouTube over Vimeo (and vice versa!) and their use in the company’s promotional activities. Those discussions are usually endless, and the supporters of both sides keep providing stronger arguments to tip the scales of victory in their favor.

Seeing how often people debate on this topic, it would only be wise to write an article and present arguments of both sides in the matter. Whether YouTube or Vimeo is better, that decision will belong to you after reading this article. A lot depends on what you want to publish and what are your expectations. You will hear about both the advantages and disadvantages of Vimeo and YouTube, so that you can decide for yourself which service better suits your taste and which one will be more effective for you and your business. To make your decision even easier, the entire article was created on the basis of comparisons.

We will start our journey through Vimeo and YouTube by presenting actual differences in the most important functions of both websites. Eventually, you will be able to decide which platform is better for you.

Paid vs non-paid

Probably one of the most important aspect for most of the users which is – how much do I have to pay for it? When it comes to YouTube, you probably know that there absolutely no fees and no limitations when it comes to uploading. What it means is that you can upload as many and as long videos as you’d like. Not only is it free, but you can also earn additional money from running ads on your channel.

The situation looks different in the case of Vimeo. Here, people using the platform must be prepared for regular fees. Of course, you have the option of having a free account, but it imposes many restrictions on you, which makes it more like a trial. The most important of these is the ban on transferring commercial files. This option is available from Vimeo PRO solution. In addition, in the free version, you can upload just one HD movie per week. The service also imposes restrictions related to the size of transmitted files (the limit of available video materials is 500 MB per week and 25 GB per year). Increasing these values to 5GB per week and 250 GB per year (Vimeo Plus) or 20GB / 1TB version (Vimeo PRO), it costs $7 and $20 per month, respectively. In the annual perspective, it is $84/$240.

Swarm of Ads

People talk constantly about how annoying Ads are. However, for many people, they are not annoying in any way, but some of the recipients often complain about them, claiming that they disturb and spoil the comfort of watching. This happens especially when a video is 1 minute long, and the viewer gets an Ad that is at least 3 minutes long. Thankfully, those can be skipped after 5 seconds. Nowadays most people (approx 75%) use Adblock extension to their Internet browsers. This topic concerns primarily YouTube, where ads appear not only at the beginning of the material but in the case of longer films – also in a middle of a video (and up to several times). In addition, you can also find banners that cover the screen, which you have to turn off every time.
Vimeo doesn’t impose ANY ads on you. After selecting an interesting video, the user immediately has the opportunity to watch it. Nothing sucks the screen or interrupts the transmission in the middle. The Internet user doesn’t have to bother with installing any type of Adblock on PC. So when it comes to Ads, Vimeo wins this battle.

The Quality

It’s hard to accurately describe the smallest among smallest of details of the quality of a video. On the web, you can find tests of the same video material placed on both Vimeo and YouTube. The conclusions are usually clear: Vimeo can be proud of the better quality of the uploaded video. In this case, technical issues can save as an advantage on your side. However, there is also the other side of the coin. For the statistical viewer, however, the difference is hardly noticeable, so I would seriously consider the theory that Vimeo crushes his competitor in this matter. However, in this element, we write a plus on the side of Vimeo.

General popularity

Another aspect that is the object of many entrepreneurs’ questions, namely the popularity of websites and visit statistics. Some of the business owners want their materials to reach the widest possible audience. In this aspect, YouTube absolutely crushes the competition, being unquestionably the most popular video site in the world. Official statistics are not publicly available, but in 2012 Google announced that YouTube has an average of 4 billion page views each day. Impressive, right? In contrast, in 2013, Vimeo could boast of 135 million page views per month. Nowadays both platforms most likely have much higher values than they used to. Similarly with the mobile version. The YouTube app from the Play Store has been downloaded over 1 billion times, while in the case of Vimeo, the result is 10 million downloads. Therefore, if you care about reaching the largest group of recipients, you will definitely get a better result in the case of YouTube.

Target group, brand image, quality and commercialization of content

Let me explain to you some basic difference that needs to be understood. The issue concerns WHAT you want (and you can) to place on individual sites. In the case of YouTube, it is very difficult to specify what can really be thrown because there is … practically everything there.

Vimeo website policy and its regulations expressly allow sending only such content that WE have created. It is forbidden to place amateur recordings eg from concerts, video games or materials that we are not the author. The same applies to all commercial materials – these are also not allowed. However, there is a certain exception: not allowed from a regular account, because a paid PRO account is intended for sharing commercial content. Considering this, as well as the issue of space limits, in Vimeo, you will meet practically only high-quality content, usually created by brand owners or artists. This is especially useful when you’re looking for real and genuine content creators. That’s what makes Vimeo great place for placing your professional creator’s portfolio

In connection with this development of the situation, you have to realize that in both of these services you can meet a diverse audience. You’ll find a valuable audience both on YouTube and Vimeo. With the fact that … in the case of the first one you have to be prepared for the fact that your video materials can be watched, among others by the audience who does not feel your subject at all, often younger people, having absolutely nothing to add and introducing only unnecessary confusion. Believe me, even if you do not know how well he tried, even the best material is exposed to online “hate”, unjust comments, even if what you published doesn’t interest those “haters” at all.

Realistically, in the case of Vimeo, the likelihood of such a situation is dramatically lower. Why? The target group is mostly professionals, who, due to the rules and policy of the website, mainly use PRO and Business accounts (placing commercial materials). It is also important that the full original content that is meant for a specific group of recipients will rather reject the majority of people who are not interested in a given topic. There are fewer viewers, but they are more focused on the specific message they are looking for. For this reason, teenagers who want to look for fun videos shouldn’t even bother looking for them on Vimeo. That doesn’t mean that you won’t find professionals on YouTube. There are also a lot of them there. However, you should be prepared for more diversity when it comes to the level of work put into creating a video.

Copyright and unpleasant surprises

Finally, one more issue, thanks to which you can save a lot of money, nerves, and also reduce the formation of gray hair. Observance of copyright is obvious. You must remember to put only those materials on which you have full rights. However … even in such situations, you may face some unpleasant surprise. This situation is primarily about YouTube, where content that has been on the site for a very long time, suddenly for unknown reasons are blocked due to alleged copyright infringement. Unfortunately, in this case, these are often common mistakes, and undoing them isn’t easy. This can be particularly painful if you are just running a paid campaign using this material that you have created, often investing a lot of money, time and energy in its promotion… until suddenly for unexplained reasons, the material was brutally blocked in the service after some time. You stay on the ice, with a partially burned advertising budget and no nails.

It seems that in such situations Vimeo is the safer option. Almost three years ago, the website’s authorities decided to introduce a mechanism for detecting copyright infringements, which assumed the name of Copyright Match. The scheme of operation is very simple. The system analyzes the file provided by the user in real time, checking whether, for example, you have full rights to the used background music. The biggest advantage is in the ongoing checking and analyzing, because if the video stays on the site for the next few weeks, its creator may be calm. A sudden surprise in the form of erasing material from the site, e.g. after one year – is unlikely.

Placing video material in Vimeo also has another plus. The person publishing the film has the option of securing it in such a way that it will be possible to view it only after entering the password. Most importantly, Vimeo offers yet another extremely useful solution. It gives you the option to make sure that our video is only displayed in the specified domain. Even if someone shares a link to the movie somewhere, against your will – no worries. Due to the ability to act only in a specific domain, no one will be able to watch it. Taking care of the privacy of what you place on the site and the lack of permission to distribute your video – these rules are more effectively observed by the administrators of Vimeo. It gives you the possibility of new solutions. By creating, for example, a training or other video product for sale and placing it in a specially prepared place, you have greater confidence that the material will not be viewed by people who have not paid for it. In this situation, Vimeo is a better choice than YouTube, which probably does not have control over the protection and inappropriate distribution of content. YouTube does have the option to show private videos to people by inputting manually email address to the “safe list”, however, that is a very inconvenient form of publishing paid materials.

Final thoughts on YouTube and Vimeo.

Both YouTube and Vimeo are totally viable choices when it comes to uploading videos. The thing is that they are just a bit different in characteristics and both promote different ideology when it comes to video sharing.

It all depends on your expectations about your content and what goals you set for yourself. If you want to promote your brand and reach the widest possible audience and interact with them – choose YouTube. It is also a good choice when you do not want to invest too much money to promote your spot. Putting video on YouTube is free and really fast (minus the time invested in video creation).

If, however, the priority is for you to create your Internet portfolio in the best quality, which you can show to your customers at any time – opt-in for Vimeo. This site is also a great solution when your materials are the product you want to sell and at the same time, you want to have full control over it. Remember, however, that this is only possible with a PRO account.

I know that a decision can be difficult, that’s why I wrote this article to help you choose. So that you can use the greatest potential of your video and have the opportunity to observe the expected benefits for your brand

How to record footage that you will upload?

If you’re a content creator, but all the work you’ve done isn’t recorded with a camera, you might be wondering, how you can record the footage from PC. The answer is simple – you need professional software that lets you record your screen in highest quality. Action! Screen Recorder is one such software. It allows not only recording screen in UltraHD but also implementing commentary from your microphone as well as webcam footage which you can place anywhere on your screen. Make sure to check it out if you’re planning on recording professional tutorials, screencasts, guides etc.

With Action! you can easily and quickly upload recorded videos to YouTube.