Which do you prefer: YouTube or Vimeo?

You have a video you want to share. Where’s the first place you’d think to put it?

Most of you would probably default to YouTube, and it’s easy to understand why: with more than a billion unique visits each month and hundreds of hours of video content uploaded every minute, it’s clearly a safe choice. It is the video giant, but it might not always be the right choice for your business.

Think about your goals. If your goal is simply getting more views and exposure, tapping into the largest possible audience on the Internet, then YouTube will work just fine.

But if you’re looking to demonstrate quality, tap into a more creative and professional demographic, there’s a better option out there.

Vimeo is smaller than YouTube, attracting roughly 100 million unique visits each month. Yet despite this smaller reach, Vimeo has a reputation for offering quality video content—much of which is professionally created (no grainy Smartphone-shot cat videos here). Plus: Vimeo filters it’s content carefully. The audience is much more industry-friendly to film and video professionals.

Like any choice, there are several pros and cons. Let’s take a deeper look at each video channel individually:

YouTube.

Pros:

• Over 1 billion users each month
• Free accounts; Free to upload video
• No upload limits
• Strong search function (it is, after all, owned by Google)
• Allows commercial content/ads

Cons:

• It’s noisy—with over 100 hours of content uploaded every minute, it’s hard to rise above the chaff or stand out against your competition
• Ads, Ads, Ads. Lots of them. So many, engagement and interest may suffer. YouTube generates significant ad revenue for Google, so many videos contain ads, some of which play before the actual video content itself.
• Lack of control over the videos that display alongside your content.
• Low-quality video content (high-definition is not the default setting)
• Comments are often juvenile; unproductive

Vimeo

Pros:

• Amazing video quality
• Users can create custom video thumbnails
• Clean look-and-feel and a customizable video player
• No ads
• User pages can be fully branded and they have a much more polished look than YouTube
• Videos can be password-protected
• Discussion and comments tend to be much more professional, less spammy

Cons:

• Cost—to unlock all of Vimeo’s advantages, a Pro Account is strongly recommended and Pro Accounts aren’t free (they cost $199.99/year)
• Limited uploads (unless you have a Pro Account)
• Smaller audience
• Doesn’t play as nice with the search engines
• Content and audience skews more towards filmmakers or artists, so reaching your target demographic may be challenging

So—which do we prefer? The choice ultimately depends on what you want to do with the video. YouTube is the best bet for seeking views and hoping for something to go viral. But Vimeo is a great option to convey brand reputation and to control the image and quality of the video content.

Of course, you don’t have to choose just one or the other. Uploading content to both sites won’t necessarily hurt your content.

If you’re struggling with what to do with your video content, don’t worry—we’re here to help! Whether it’s animating a video, shooting a reel or optimizing content you already have, our creative and video team is standing by to meet your digital video needs. Call us, or leave a comment below.