Best video hosting solutions for online courses and LMS

This digital world has changed many facets of life. One of the most significant and indispensable things we got from this world is the propensity to dole out the data from one corner to another corner of the world in the blink of an eye. Taking the advantage of this, Video-based learning has become a general practice in e-learning. Today, Video content has really expropriated the internet and has become the most favoured content format online, be it for creating online courses, marketing or many other things. It also holds a reasonable amount of space in the web traffic market and inside this market, a video hosting platform for online courses is a key division.

According to analysts, the e-learning market is poised to alleviate to $325.10 billion by 2025. Within this market, video hosting for online courses forms a key sector. Presently, Educators/Mentors all over the world are either trying to create video-based courses or are already using one. However, choosing a hosting platform for a video course is a herculean task oppose to creating it.

With the rising number of video hosting services available, like YouTube and Vimeo, Vadoo.tv, choosing the right platform can be difficult. 

In this article we will try to provide you with relevant information which will help you pick a suitable video hosting platform for your online courses in an efficient manner.

Wait !

There is a question that may strike your mind that - What is Video Hosting and Why Does It Matter?
Although we have already discussed it in detail in our previous blog, we will discuss this briefly over here once again.

What is video hosting?

Video hosting is the idea of uploading your video content to a service that helps you distribute your content online in all the spots where it needs to be. The video-focused social network YouTube is a perfect example: you upload it to one spot, and suddenly it’s available across the world. They all provide the same basic functions—you upload your content to their site and they host the video on their server. A video hosting platform takes care of video playback, streaming, and ensures an even running video experience for its customers.

Best video hosting  platform for online courses

A professional hosting platform is a perfect option for video hosting for online courses. Every hosting platform offers various features and abilities. To put it straight, no two online video hosting platforms are created simultaneously. As a result, the process of selecting the correct hosting solution as per your use can be tedious and time-consuming.

Fortunately, we’ve done the hard work for you by recognising and putting together a list of considerations that everyone should take note of when comparing different video platforms. Having worked with hundreds of mentors and educators over the years, we have a really good idea of what components are most imperative to ensuring video success.

Before we dwell on the top 5 video hosting platforms. Let’s take a look at some of the necessitous VHP features for online courses and video training:

1. Cutomizable player:  

A professional Video hosting platform provides you with the ability to customize the video player according to one’s needs like including logo, changing titles, player color etc. helps your recorded content gain credibility and makes your course look suitable.

2. Customer Support:  

In terms of hosting, technical glitches may become unavoidable. After lots of taxing work, one surely needs reliable support in the end. Thus, if a problem appears, you feel assured that you will be supported by your chosen platform in real-time. Moreover, if you take professional services, you always have access to the professional team for solving your emergent queries.

3. Security:  

Your content is very crucial for both you and your viewers. Without security features, your precious content is left susceptible to piracy, illegal downloads, and unauthorized access. The most important thing you need to look upon before using any hosting platform is the security of the data.  So, try to seek out platforms that have decent security features. For example, Vadoo.tv has HLS encryption, password security, watermarking features that prevent your video from unauthorized access and also prevent them from being downloaded unethically.‍

4. Simplicity: 

The platform must be unadorned and easy to set up so that a layman would also be able to customize it as per his needs. That's why always take your time to compare before jumping to a decision and choose the one which is apt for you.

5. White-Label Option:  

To look highly professional white-label is a must-have option that you have to look at before choosing any platform. It provides you with the ability to customize everything from the logo in your video to the end-of-video options. It pulls out any kind of third-party branding from the player and aligns as per your own branding. This feature steals the show as it usually doesn’t come with free hosting platforms.

Top  5 Video Hosting platforms for Online Courses

Now that you have a better understanding of what features are relevant for video hosting for online courses, let’s take a look at some of the best VHP that you can deploy for your videos:

1- Youtube: 

YouTube is the most popular video sharing platform with over 2+  billion users worldwide. It is the world’s biggest free video hosting site so it’s impossible to think of free online video hosting without considering this. It’s user friendly, easy to share and supports video in high definition (HD).Since it contains numerous video content, your content might get lost in the ocean of videos, but you also have a unique opportunity for massive viewership and engagement. 

It has an autoplay feature, that only gives you a few seconds to convince your viewers to click through to your site and if you miss that window, chances are  there that viewers may move away and are no longer view your content.With Youtube, you can create your own Youtube channel, create playlists, upload unlimited videos, do live streaming and you can share them with others.

Despite all this, YouTube videos are easy to download by any video downloader, which means your content can easily be copied and distributed. Consequently, there are more privacy breaches. But, the paid version of YouTube offers security options with ad-free services and other premium features.

Another unpromising downside of YouTube is the ad presence. A large number of users have observed that ads for their competitors actually play within, or adjacent to, their own brand’s content, leading to a clear negative impact on the engagement they were expecting to generate.

Please note that Youtube won’t be a wise proposition in case you want to host any brand video, online course or any video content that needs to be uploaded on your website.

2. Vadoo.tv:  

Vadoo.tv is a professional video hosting platform with a clean user interface. It is among the leading hosting platforms and is known for its great services and the one-stop solution for people who are serious about video hosting. They have earned this honour by providing their valuable services to their customers. 

Vadoo.tv, unlike YouTube, doesn’t show ads with your video content. This platform is beneficial for creative professionals, including educators who wish to share their work with a substantial audience. It offers comparatively less uploading space than youtube but has more privacy controls. 

With a vadoo.tv free account, you will get 1GB of storage space within and you can upload 10 videos/audios. Although there are a few customizations available in the free version, they offer three paid account levels: Starter, Pro and Advance. In each level your limit for uploading gets increased, it also adds up a few other features and every feature has its unique functionality like HLS encryption and password-protection help to prevent your video from unauthorized access and unwanted distribution, domains security- helps you to set limitations as in whether other websites will be able to embed your videos or not, remove branding option– gives you the advantage to create your own branding.

Vadoo.tv has a mighty embedding feature that is easy, fast, and doesn’t include forced ad recommendations. In addition to it, you can customize the look and feel of your video player too which is wonderful.

Another stand-out feature is that they provide an absolute collaboration option that allows you to invite team members to work with you on specific projects. They offer a lot of useful marketing features as well which include the ability to add CTAs in your videos, lead generation tools, integration with popular email marketing solutions, video analytics, etc. 

At last, vadoo.tv provides good customer support to their customers, they are proactive and always care about their customers which is really worth shouting about. They have a great reputation for giving satisfactory after service to their customers.

As far as pricing is concerned, Vadoo.tv is one of the most reasonably priced platforms with their paid plan starting at just $10/month. This has made Vadoo.tv a favourite hosting platform for online courses and training without any second thought.

3-  Vimeo:

Vimeo is one of the most popular and widely used online video platforms that are similar to Youtube in some regards. Many people use Vimeo because of its fantastic features that automatically generates your interest to explore it more. If you want a more professional video hosting platform, it may be one of the best choices. With this, you’ll get a superb looking interface for sharing your online video courses. It does receive lesser traffic than YouTube, but a number of people prefer it as a more professional clear-cut substitute. 

Like vadoo.tv, Vimeo also has privacy options that includes password-protected features and domain security to protect your content from unwanted authorization.  As compared to other platforms Vimeo has a puissant video analytics feature that helps you analyze the action of your audience. Apart from hosting videos, you will also get the advantage to do live streaming through Vimeo. Not only can you just embed the live stream on your website but you can also simultaneously use that for Facebook and Youtube Live. 

Vimeo too offers a free account wherein  you can only upload 500MB per week, with a cap of 5 GB. You can increase your yearly storage allotment to 250GB by selecting a plan of $7 per month. There are four different levels of pricing packages: Plus, Pro, Business, and Premium. Each level provides you with some extra privileges like increasing the uploading limit and other features mainly include easy customization for embedding into websites and social media. 

In our opinion, Vimeo is a complete platform for all types of users and it is among the most affordable video hosting platform available out there.

4- Wistia:

On our list, Wistia is at number four that’s capturing the attention in the video hosting market.  Wistia is a professional video hosting service that is mainly focused on providing you the video marketing tools that are required to grow your business. It offers a wide range of really powerful marketing tools which include the ability to add CTAs, perform A/B testing, and much more. It also offers important SEO features which include the ability to generate search-friendly video pages and automatically optimize your videos thus, helping your videos rank better in Google.

Wistia is a platform that is widely used specifically for businesses, so it doesn’t host your videos publicly. It just hosts video content so that you can put them on your site. Their analytics dashboard is very advanced, but at the same time, it is easy to analyse. Among other stats, the dashboard shows average engagement, play rate, and even a heatmap view. There are three different plans, including a free one for businesses that are just getting started with video.

To start with, you can host your videos on Wistia, customize the video player appearance, embed the videos on your own website and deliver them with a high-quality playback experience across devices.

Wistia also lets you create your own channel where you can organize and showcase your videos. However, unlike Youtube, you have complete control over customer experience. So, you don’t have to worry about your users getting distracted with ads or unrelated video recommendations.

Finally, Wistia offers advanced analytics tools which let you track every action that a viewer takes, right from viewing your video content to pausing it to clicking on a form. You can also pass this data to Facebook and Google pixels so that you target new audiences or retarget existing ones.

As far as pricing is concerned, Wistia is one of the most expensive video hosting platforms on the list. It has a free plan that is very basic, with a three video limit and Wistia branding across all videos. The ‘Pro’ plan is $99/month in which you can remove the Wistia branding from your videos and also add as many videos as you want (the first 10 are free and the rest are charged at $0.25 each per month). If you’re serious about the video hosting and ready to pay a little more, then you’ll probably want the ‘Advanced’ plan. 

5- Vidyard:

On our list, Vidyard is at number fourth Like Wistia, Vidyard is also a hosting platform exclusively for businesses, broadly used for sales and marketing. They mainly focus on raising the value of your video, whatever that may mean for you, e.g. increasing conversions, engagement, and so on. It has all the necessary features which you generally get in all good hosting platofrms like video player customization, video storage, video security, password protection and high-quality playback without ads or distractions. However, it has all the significant sales and marketing tools too like call to action, lead capture forms, easy SEO optimization, CRM integrations, advanced analytics, etc. 

Moreover, there are a few standout features that Vidyard offers. Like, ability to create customized videos for separate users promptly, based on their personal information. You can also use these customized videos on your landing pages as well as in your email campaigns. 

In addition, they have their own recording tool that allows you to record your screen, webcam or both and you can perform basic edits with your recorded video inside the platform as well. It also provides you with the ability to do a live stream and it will automatically be saved as an on-demand video once it is over.

About the pricing, Vidyard offers one of the most reasonable prices. Like other platforms, they also have a free plan which allows you to create and upload unlimited videos, even though you can embed up to 5 videos only. If you want more features and storage for videos, you can upgrade to a paid plan starting from $15/month. If you want to use Vidyard with your team, the pricing starts from $300/month and for businesses $1250/month.

Conclusion:

In this ever growing world of cyberspace, video content in terms of online courses is one of the most voguish concepts. If used rightly and wisely may lead to greater revenue generation in the businesses. Online learning video content may seem flawless when being watched but it has a lot of backstage efforts. Among those efforts picking the right hosting platform is the most prominent one. This article has surely discussed the features or key parameters that one must consider before deploying any particular hosting solution for one’s online course/s. After analyzing all the available alternatives on these parameters one must decide the right course of action. This article has also enlisted top 5 platforms for hosting your online course/s. The list is the outcome of a lot of research and experience thus, is quite reliable. 

So, having done this homework for you, we are quite sure you will now take the right decision and flourish.