You did it! After dozens of hours of preparing, filming and editing you have finally finished the course you always wanted to create. Now it’s time to upload the course along with these great videos you have created. But then you realize, where should you upload them too? Not all platforms support uploading videos to them and secondly, maybe you feel better if you are in full control of your content.
In this article we cover a few different ways for course creators to host their videos.
If you decide to monetize your courses or tutorials, we always recommend that you use a premium video host. Why? What would you think if Netflix or Prime Video would show advertisements when you’re watching a movie that you are paying for?
YouTube
Yes, YouTube. YouTube can be a perfect solution for storing your course videos. One of the great things of this solution is that you can either choose to make your uploaded videos public or keep them private.
If you want your videos to be available only in an LMS or specific users, then you change the privacy setting to private. You then have to go to the YouTube Studio and when you select the video, you can choose to create a shareable URL. Use that URL for your LMS.
One thing to keep into account is that if someone copies the URL of the video, everyone with that URL can access it. On many premium platforms, like Vimeo or Publitio, you can prevent this. Another downside is that the video can contain ads and overlays, which is something that does not contribute to a professional look of your video. But, it’s free and it can be a stepping stone to a premium platform as soon as you start selling your content.
Vimeo Pro
Vimeo is a secure and reliable partner for video hosting. They offer a free plan which gives you freedom to experiment with the features. But you can not hide your video from the Vimeo search. If you make them private, they stay private. If you make them public, you can share them to the LMS, but then everyone can also find them using the Vimeo search.
The Vimeo Pro plan however gives you all the options you need to setup your videos like a real pro. With their premium plans you decide on which domains the videos can be shown. The privacy control can be edited in many ways and the player can be customized to your taste and demands. Many LMS systems support Vimeo, so you can get the most out of it.
They offer different plans. The cheapest is the Plus plan which is about $6,80 per month. It gives you 5GB storage space each week (up to 250 GB a year) and unlimited bandwidth.
Publitio
Sometimes it takes a good search to find a gem. Publitio is one of those finds in my opinion. Publitio describes itself as a platform as a service that gives you a safe and convenient way to host, upload, convert, and monetize your images and videos.
With Publitio you can upload an store all your (media) assets in a secure cloud. Images can be optimized, resized and converted to any format. If you take the premium account (which is only $9.00 per month) you get 50GB of storage space and 100 GB monthly bandwidth. You can also protect your videos with domain level protection (you decide what domains can play your videos), analytics, watermarks and more.
The free Publitio plan gives you 5 GB of storage space and 10 GB of monthly bandwidth. It’s perfect to start out with and give it a good try.
Streamable
Streamable offers a free and premium plan for individuals and businesses who are seeking to host their videos. The free plan is forever free, but has two downsides:
- A 90 day video retention
- Ad-supported playback
This means that if a video is inactive for 90 days, the video will be removed. The other downside is that advertising will be shown on the videos.
The Professional plan costs $12.99 per month, which is double the price of the cheapest Vimeo Pro plan. With 2 TB cloud storage and up to 1 TB bandwidth it could be an interesting choice.
Wistia
Wistia is more comparable to Vimeo, however some might consider them to be a marketing solution instead of being a video hosting solution. They offer interactive features on its videos that will allow tutors to collect e-mails right from the video. Another feature is that you can also include annotated links or chapter navigation in the video itself.
With the free plan you can host 3 videos for free. Their PRO plan starts at $99 per month. You can upload 10 videos and each extra video costs 25¢. Which makes it quite an expensive solution. If you are interested in the extensive marketing integrations, it might be something for you.
Bunny.net
One of the solutions we use ourselves is Bunny.net. They offer CDN, edge storage, and an optimization service. They also have a specialized streaming storage library for fluent video hosting. Their platform has a few advantages:
- It’s super easy to use and to setup
- No expensive hosting costs. You pay per GB. Storage is $0.01 / GB and depending on your plan delivery using the standard network is between $0.045 to $0.06 / GB depending on the region.
- Link a hostname using CNAME to direct to a location (perfect for CDN).
- Several advanced options to secure your uploads: Block referrers, allow referrers (so only specified hostnames by you have access to the videos), block direct URL file access and more. These things help to protect your videos from simple sharing or downloading.
List of the latest Bunny.net coupon codes:
We have compiled a comprehensive list of the latest and most advantageous BunnyCDN Coupon Codes and Deals.
| COUPON CODE | FREE CREDITS |
|---|---|
| TUTORBUNNY | $5 Credits + 20% discount on Bunny Stream services forever |
| WPBLOGGING101 | $5 Credits |
| BLOGGINGASK | $5 Credits |
| WPLOGOUT | $5 Credits |
| GET5 | $5 Credits |
| WPSPEEDMATTERS | $5 Credits |
| FRESHDASH | $5 Credits |
| BECLIPSE5 | $5 Credits |
Conclusion
After comparing many website with different video hosting solutions and visiting many websites comparing video hosting solutions, I come to the conclusion that Bunny.net is the platform to use for hosting your video in relation to courses or other solutions where you want to have control on who gets access to it. Vimeo is a great follow up. You can’t hardly go wrong with their cheap plan, especially if you aim to monetize your videos. Publitio is a close second.
Keep asking yourself: Do you need all the fancy features that some companies offer? If all you want is video storage and the possibility to embed the video on a LMS platform: keep it simple.
If your not convinced, check out this list of article that dive deeper into the subject. If we missed a solution that should definitely be mentioned here, please let us know!
Useful articles about video hosting:
https://kinsta.com/blog/video-hosting/
https://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/video-hosting-sites/
https://www.dacast.com/blog/streaming-video-hosting-services/
0 Comments