Cost of Video Hosting is Now (Prohibitive)

Since 2022, the Pricing Model Changed

Prices for video hosting, was based on the size of videos, in TB's (Terabytes= 1000's of GB's).

The leader in this, and holder of the biggest market share was Vimeo (offering everything like YouTube, yet without ads, and geared towards businesses and creatives).

Old prices in early 2022:

• Business Plan: $50 USD per month ($600 USD paid annually), for 5 TB of video uploads, that is 5000 GB's! No limits on bandwidth (almost), or weekly uploads, or number of videos. Feature-full!

What happened to the old (TB's of hosting)? Here's are some highlights from The Verge news piece:

• Lois van Baarle, a digital artist based in the Netherlands, joined Vimeo 13 years ago. When van Baarle started making subscriber-only Patreon content in 2020, Vimeo seemed like the best option for hosting her videos.

• “I was already paying $200 a year, which I think is pretty expensive”.

• She’s uploaded 117 subscriber-only videos so far, and each one only gets around 150 views on average, van Baarle says. Her most viewed video has around 815 views.

• So the notice Vimeo sent van Baarle on March 11th 2022 shocked her. Her quoted price: $3,500 a year. She was given a week to upgrade her content, decrease her bandwidth usage, or leave Vimeo.

• Channel 5, a popular account doing man-on-the-street-style interviews, received a similar message in January. It had around 500 subscribers.

• Screenshots posted by Channel 5 show their price for a new custom plan starting at $7,000 a year, and that an upgrade or migration off of Vimeo was required.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/15/22979126/vimeo-patreon-creators-price-increase

Other examples, come from Zoom video recording of meetings and educational sessions:

• It costs $100 USD + taxes to host only 1 TB of videos (only less than 300 hours of video), with no option for more.

• Overage costs $1.5 USD per GB (based on the highest number reached during the month)! Thus entities are hits with a one-month overage charge of $20,000+ out-of-the-blue (all options are complex and fine print is hidden intentionally)!

Sources: https://community.zoom.com/t5/Billing-Account-Management/I-was-over-charged-for-3-995-92-USD-for-a-cloud-storage-that-I/m-p/127959

https://community.zoom.com/t5/Meetings/Dispute-Charge-on-Overage-Recordings/m-p/97276

New prices since 2022 and now in 2023:

• Standard Plan: $33 USD per month ($240 USD paid annually), for only 120 videos MAX (cancelling the size-based pricing)! Bandwidth limited to only 2TB. Features much much less!

Source: https://vimeo.com/upgrade-plan

It's All "Limited" Nowadays with Much "Fine-Print"

The Top 6 Private Video Hosting Platforms for Businesses & Creators have so many limits embedded in their pricing models as of 2023, and price hikes keep coming periodically.

Top Limitations and Examples:

• SproutVideo (around $300 USD per month) limits bandwidth at 2 TB with that same number for storage, so videos are viewable only once before being hit with overage charges!

• Spotlighter (around $50 USD per month) limits bandwidth at 600 GB with that same number for storage, so videos are viewable only once before being hit with overage charges!

• Wistia (around $340 USD per month) limits video file numbers to 250 max.

• JetPack VideoPress (for $60 USD then $120 USD per year) has a very limiting catch, file size limit of 5 GB (that around 1 hour videos only at 1080p!), so even with 1 TB of space its capped use.

• Vidyard (around $230 USD per year) limits the length of video to 1 hour max, with only 20 embeds allowed!

Source: https://jetpack.com/blog/private-video-hosting-platforms/

So What's the Solution?

Here is where BECTing (video reduction) comes to the rescue.

First step: Reduce Full High Definition (1080p) video to become only 20% of their original size, 100% of their quality (click to purchase).

Second step: Go with simple to purchase hosting or storage space:

• To simply upload and share instant download links, check out MediaFire offering 1-2 TB storage at $7 USD per month; with file sizes up to 50 GB. No limitations!

• To embed videos, create a special domain with a simple WordPress site, and get 200 GB + dedicated VPS server at around $70 USD per month, with unlimited bandwidth, for streaming and download, we recommend HostXNow. No limitations!

With BECTing (video reduction), you are no longer hostage to increasing costs, and you have the freedom to host and stream TB's of Full HD 1080p videos at a fraction of the cost!

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