Given its larger audience base, many people may consider YouTube to be the obvious choice. But it’s not so straightforward. There are enough differences between the two platforms – including in community, membership, advertising, quality & privacy – to make it an important choice for your business.
As a video production company, Blueprint Film has extensive experience in using both platforms for hosting and sharing videos, as well as advising our clients on using them.
In this post, you’ll learn about the key similarities and differences between YouTube and Vimeo, to help you decide which platform is a better fit for your business.
When it comes to Vimeo vs YouTube, YouTube easily has the biggest audience base: the platform boasts over 2.3 Billion users worldwide (Oberlo). In comparison, Vimeo has 200 million users.
But size is not everything. What kind of community can you expect from each of the platforms? Well, given the number of users on the platform, the YouTube community is very much a mixed bag. It is also known to be plagued by trolls and bots who may leave negative or spammy comments on your videos, turning viewers off your channel.
On the other hand, Vimeo benefits from a more mature, focused and constructive community of users.
YouTube is fairly straightforward in its accounts and membership option. Everyone starts off with the default free version of YouTube. With this, you get unlimited uploads and storage, the full range of analytics, and access to its support and creator community.
There is also a paid version called YouTube Premium. With this, you get access to ad-free and background play, can save videos for watching offline, and also get access to YouTube Music Premium. This is more for an improved viewing experience and offers nothing new to businesses.
Vimeo is more complicated. It offers a free version (Vimeo Basic), but unlike YouTube, this has a limit of 500MB maximum storage per week. Alongside this, it has 4 different tiers of paid memberships, with varied features and storage limits. See the image below for a summary:
Both YouTube and Vimeo support uploading and sharing HD videos (1080p) and Ultra HD 4K videos. However, there is a difference in video quality between the two platforms.
Why? It’s to do with the nature of the two platforms. On YouTube, 500 hours of video are uploaded every minute. Given the sheer amount of video content being hosted by YouTube, video and audio quality has to be compressed for space and data purposes.
Vimeo does not have to deal with the same volume of content being uploaded – partly because it puts limits on video storage. That means the platform can focus more on maximising the quality of each uploaded video.
As a result, the same video uploaded to both platforms will look better when played on Vimeo than on YouTube.
A variety of video analytics are available on both Vimeo and YouTube. The difference lies in which accounts have access to the full range of data and statistics.
Over on YouTube, you can access all your video and channel analytics with a free account. There is plenty of data to explore on the main analytics dashboard – reach, traffic sources, engagement, audience demographics and more. You can also try out advanced mode to access groups, filters, comparisons, and customisable charts.
All Vimeo users can access the basic analytics dashboard with stats such as total views, unique viewers, finishes, and average % watched. However, certain advanced analytics options are only available with paid accounts:
Advertising is a subject on which the two platforms massively differ – so keep this in mind when choosing between the two platforms.
Vimeo makes its money from its various paid membership plans. Because of this, it has no ads whatsoever on its website. Naturally, this makes for a better viewing experience. Your audience is less likely to get turned off by waiting for an ad to finish.
In contrast, YouTube has ads all over its website – on the homepage, before, during and after videos, and on the sidebar.
For marketers looking to advertise on YouTube, this means the having the opportunity to reach specific audiences with highly targeted ads.
But if your business is primarily looking to engage your audience, the number of ads on the platform can deter viewers (though viewers can avoid ads with YouTube Premium). Also, you cannot control which ads appear on your channel. This means that ads could appear on your videos for competitors.
Vimeo provides more privacy settings than YouTube. For YouTube, there are three privacy options to choose from for your videos and playlists: public, unlisted and private. Unlisted means that the content can be seen and shared by anyone with a link, while private content can only be seen by you and whomever you choose.
Vimeo gives you considerably more options. For each video, you have the following privacy options:
Access to Google’s YouTube Help Centre is available to everyone. You can check out the YouTube Help Community, where you can ask questions and get responses from other users, or read existing posts. There’s also the YouTube Creator Academy, a platform providing free online courses and resources to users.
Similarly, Vimeo has a help centre (with a chat bot), blog, and Video School that anyone can access. But what sets Vimeo apart is the additional support it offers to paid members.
With a Vimeo paid account, you get access to priority support. This ranges from staff email responses within 4 hours during business hours, to live support for setting up and streaming your event.
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