Best Platform to Upload a Web Series

Apps like TikTok, Instagram Live, and YouTube empower anyone to become video content creators, and small-to-medium businesses are no exception. While video platforms for businesses differ and the type of videos aren't quite the same—say, a sales demo or how-to tutorial rather than a viral dance—the foundation is the same. Video can humanize you and your production, engage your customers, and build brand loyalty.

Equally y'all plan your own video strategy, the first thing you'll want to consider is a video hosting site for your business concern. Once yous've shot and edited your video, you'll need a place to upload and store it on the spider web. From your video hosting service, you'll be able to share it to your website, social media, and whatsoever other online platform.

Focus your energy on creating, and permit robots exercise the rest

Modern video hosting platforms accept evolved from their beginnings as a simple piece of internet real estate for your videos. Now, they assist you customize the look and feel of your video player, ensure your videos play smoothly across all devices and browsers, and provide marketing options from within your videos.

Nosotros tested dozens of video hosting sites, and these are the 6 nosotros recommend.

The best video hosting sites for business

• YouTube for its existing viewership

• Vimeo for collaboration on videos

• Wistia for video marketing

• SproutVideo for creating branded video websites

• Spotlightr for avant-garde video features

• Dacast for video monetization

What makes a great video hosting site?

How we evaluate and exam apps

All of our best apps roundups are written past humans who've spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. We spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it's intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we prepare for the category. We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in united states to offer accurate evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog.

The all-time video hosting sites offer a few brand-or-break features that are essential for businesses:

• An piece of cake-to-use interface

• Basic analytics tools to measure the affect of your videos

• SEO tools to make your videos search-engine friendly

• The ability to embed your videos on external websites

While those are the dealbreakers, we also considered other features, such equally the option to customize your video thespian or automatically add closed captioning. At the terminate of the twenty-four hours, we were looking for apps that brought something unique to the table.

Nosotros oasis't included video platforms that primarily support alive streaming or social media apps such as TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat in this list. Yes, these apps let you to upload and host videos, just that's an add-on feature and not the cadre function of the app. That's not to say yous shouldn't upload your marketing videos to these sites—just that they don't have the aforementioned flexibility as other options.

We also excluded software similar Brightcove that offer more robust, advanced video capabilities (like video communications, digital content management, and virtual events) because those apps can be overwhelming if y'all're just looking to host and share a video. Similarly, apps similar Dailymotion—that are primarily for content publishers—also didn't make the cutting.

---

All-time video hosting site for its existing viewership

YouTube (Web, Android, iOS)

YouTube allows you to upload videos for free, and creators can even earn money for their content through ads, channel memberships, merch shelf, Super Chat and Super Stickers, and YouTube Premium views. Thanks to its popularity and built-in audition—it has well over 100 million active users per mean solar day—YouTube is often the default selection for business concern owners to host their videos. And it helps that its videos are often given prime spots in Google search results.

YouTube Studio is where you lot'll manage all your aqueduct and video details. Log in with your Google business relationship and launch a aqueduct under your personal name or business name. Once y'all've customized your channel, you can showtime uploading videos. You lot can add subtitles, an end screen to promote related content, or cards to highlight content during your video.

For many of the sites on this listing, hosting is simply the first footstep. You then need to become your videos in front of the right people. With YouTube, however, you have a congenital-in audience of millions of people already interested in video content. And then if you optimize your videos for search or encourage fans to get notifications when you add a new video to your channel, you may not even need to embed them elsewhere. Of form, you lot all the same accept the selection to do and then with a unproblematic embed lawmaking.

One final feature worth mentioning: for videos in certain languages, YouTube offers automatic captions. Click Subtitles on the left navigation, and select your published videos. If automatic captions for your video are available, you tin can add them directly to the video, where y'all can review and make whatsoever necessary changes. If not, you tin can likewise add subtitles or captions manually or upload a file (like if you lot used another app to transcribe the video).

YouTube also integrates with Zapier, helping yous automate marketing and promotional activities for your videos. These pre-made workflows can get y'all started, or you can build your own workflow, connecting YouTube to thousands of other apps.

YouTube Pricing: Free for uploading and hosting videos.

Best video hosting site for collaboration

Vimeo (Web, Android, iOS)

Vimeo began as a video-sharing platform, similar to YouTube. And while the platform withal allows users to post videos and follow their favorite creators, information technology also helps businesses customize video players, interact with their team, and access analytics and other marketing features.

Vimeo's most impressive characteristic is the effortless collaboration it facilitates: it allows creators to invite clients, squad members, freelancers, and other collaborators to preview their private projects. And information technology offers dissimilar permission levels for each reviewer or collaborator, which y'all can alter depending on the projection.

Once you share a link to your video, reviewers can leave comments without even registering on the platform. Don't savor the music in a scene or retrieve a item dialogue could exist snappier? Pause the video and leave a annotate at the exact moment it's relevant. All comments are automatically saved and announced on i side for the creator's review, who tin respond right inside the video from any device. If you prefer to communicate ideas and feedback visually, use Vimeo Tape to record your screen, webcam, or both and share the clip with others on your team. And each time a tweaked version of a video is uploaded, previous versions are saved, and so collaborators can run through all the changes fabricated in a video. Recollect of information technology as Google Docs for video.

You can automate your processes with Vimeo too, using Zapier's Vimeo integration to automatically accept actions in other apps whenever y'all upload a video to Vimeo. Here are some examples.

Vimeo Pricing: Free for Vimeo Basic; $20/month (billed annually) for the Pro plan that includes version history, review and approval features, and private squad projects.

Best video hosting site for video marketing

Wistia (Web, Android, iOS)

Wistia is packed with marketing features that help businesses rail a video's progress, collect leads, and get the all-time ROI on their content.

One of its flagship features is Wistia's Turnstile e-mail collector, which helps you generate leads. Here's how information technology works: Select Turnstile from the Customize bar, and cull whether yous desire the form to appear in full screen, while the video is paused, or appear overlaid on hover. You tin add the class at any point in your video and customize the text (you can't, however, change the form fields). Once a viewer enters their data, they're added to your email list using Wistia's email marketing integrations, including platforms such as Campaign Monitor, Mailchimp, and Abiding Contact.

If you lot don't want to add together a Turnstile to your videos, Wistia however offers powerful marketing features. You can use annotation links to guide viewers to a website of your selection. These links announced on the upper-correct corner of your video, for every bit long every bit you like, without disrupting a viewer'due south experience. You tin besides add together a call-to-action or link to another video or spider web page at the end of a video. And tying information technology all together is the Stats folio that lets you gauge the operation of each of your videos at a glance: every action a viewer takes, be it clicking a link or filling a class, is recorded on this page.

Wistia'southward Zapier integration allows you to trigger actions in thousands of other apps whenever new videos are uploaded or users have certain actions on your videos. Or y'all tin automatically create an embed code and ship it to the app of your choice whenever you upload a new video.

Wistia Pricing: Free for three videos and standard features such every bit a fully customizable thespian, lead generation tools, video analytics, and unlimited users; from $99/month for the Pro plan that includes standard features, ten free videos, and no Wistia branding.

All-time video hosting site for creating branded video websites

SproutVideo (Web, Android, iOS)

SproutVideo helps businesses create basic websites effectually their video content. These websites can be used to showcase your portfolio, share tutorials with your squad, or share gratis video content with your audience.

You'll pick from six available themes and then enter your site name and logo. The Settings tab allows you to tweak theme colors, decide what gild to brandish your videos in, select how many videos display per folio, and cull whether videos should autoplay. You can also add an About and Contact folio to your website along with social sharing buttons.

The videos yous upload to your SproutVideo business relationship appear automatically on your website based on tags. For example, if you create a "Tutorials" tag, every video that has that tag will be added to the site.

Past default, all videos on SproutVideo are login protected, which ways visitors demand to log in to your website to view them. You tin can also choose to password-protect sure videos, prepare them as private, or leave them open for public viewing. And, of class, the platform still allows you to embed videos to an external webpage—embedded videos volition be visible to the public, no matter what their permission level is on SproutVideo.

SproutVideo Price: From $59.99/month for the Sprout plan that includes analytics, video marketing, video websites, and 125 login-protected viewers.

Best video hosting site for advanced video features

Spotlightr  (Web, Android, iOS)

If you lot're looking for a deep dive into your videos' performance, including who views them, where, and for how long, Spotlightr (formerly vooPlayer) gives yous all the data yous need. The platform offers numerous reports based on viewer location, engagement, play rate, conversion, and completion.

Ane of the most impressive features is Spotlightr'southward video funnels, which let you lot create a branching organisation that interactively controls what your customers come across based on their answers to questions yous ascertain. For case, let'due south say yous created a sales demo video for an animation visitor. You could make a funnel that asks customers what kind of animations they want to create, with the answers being "whiteboard animations" or "cutout animations." Depending on what they choose, they'll be presented with tailored video content. Yous could jump to a specific timestamp in the video with relevant content, jump to a new video completely, or redirect to a URL of your choice. In this case, yous could choose to display this question at the end of a video, and based on the answer, redirect customers to a specific landing folio.

Some other powerful characteristic is audience segmentation. The main dashboard gives you an overview of all of your viewers, pulling information from LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to show y'all their name, task title, and location. From this information, you can create segments and automate them based on triggers. For example, you could create a segment based on people who accept viewed more than than 50% of a specific video and develop targeted campaigns for them.

Spotlightr Price: Free for 5 videos, 5GB storage, and branded player; from $24/month (billed annually) for the Polaris plan that includes unlimited videos, video funnels, and audience segments.

All-time video hosting site for video monetization

Dacast (Web)

Dacast lets y'all monetize your video content in iii different ways: weekly, monthly, or quarterly subscriptions; pay-per-view (viewers pay for what they want to watch); and via ads (you have the choice to serve ads on your content that are funded past your advertiser).

Once you upload a video to Dacast, click on it from the Videos tab and select Paywall from the top navigation. Here, you customize the pricing for subscriptions and pay-per-view, deciding how much to cull, how oftentimes, and when the payment period starts (bachelor on buy or available at a set date and time). You can also generate promo codes and create group pricing, which allows viewers access to multiple pieces of content past paying only once (rather than for each piece of content).

If you desire to monetize your videos from ads, you lot must have your own ad network. You then enable ads in the Date settings and copy and paste the URL of your ad so information technology appears in your video.

One time your video is ready, you go JavaScript or iFrame embed codes or a Dacast-hosted video link to share your video, complete with the paywall. Customers do need their own Dacast account to buy video content and tin can pay via credit card or PayPal.

Dacast Price: $39/month (billed annually) for 1.ii TB of videos per year; $63/calendar month for the Issue plan, which includes paywall and pre-roll ad features.

---

Ultimately, the best video hosting site for your business volition depend on your unique needs. If you're looking to earn money from your videos, opt for a video hosting service that supports ads or lets you fix a subscription programme. If promoting your business organization is your main goal, yous might look for a service with robust marketing and analytics tools. The most important thing is that you're getting your videos in front of the people you want to see them.

This article was originally published in March 2019 by Farheen Gani.

Get productivity tips delivered direct to your inbox

We'll electronic mail you 1-3 times per week—and never share your information.

simstwentortund.blogspot.com

Source: https://zapier.com/blog/best-video-hosting-sites/

Share this post