YouTube Vs. Vimeo: The Pros And Cons Of The Two Best Video Services

In just eight short years YouTube has grown from an experimental video platform to an international mega community with hundreds of millions of contributors putting up videos of various quality and appeal every second. Vimeo, however, is much younger and smaller but it seems a lot more circumspect when selecting videos for display, giving its users a better frame to panache ratio. So, is it really a fair question to ask, which one is better?

Youtube New Design | Stock Photo © Depositphoto | Anatoliy Babiy

Right from the start you can see the differences between the two. They simply appeal to different audiences. Just by having a look at both, you would know, whose customer you’d rather become. But there are some fairly significant points that are worth making for one or the other.

YouTube is very user friendly, especially if you are a non-tech person. YouTube has a great option for you; it allows you to record and edit (which in itself is a fantastic option) your video right from your web cam and it uses for it a very simple interface.

Creating channels in YouTube is also a great feature. You customize it almost to no end, dropping different colors, logos moving videos top to bottom etc.

YouTube allows you to make money. It’s a tremendous advantage over pretty much any video service on the web. If your videos are getting some traffic on YouTube, it allows you to profit share with it, since it’s an add based web service.

YouTube gives you the unlimited HD upload. The only limitation here is that your video has to be no more than 15 minutes in length. Debatable, but we think that 15 minute high res video is more than enough for the YouTube format.

The drawbacks are a few. One of the major ones is that on YouTube you’re competing with a lot of garbage videos. The way around that is to create your own channel with just your videos on there.

Vimeo video | Stock Photo © Depositphoto | Aurelio Scetta

However, with Vimeo one can immediately see that it’s a premium video service, there’s an added polish to everything that appears there. Right off the front page one can find great works of visual art without even trying too hard.

Filmmakers and visual artists of all walks of life choose to upload their short (and not so) films and demo reels to Vimeo precisely for that, as well as the unlimited video length. The obvious shortcoming there is that as a basic customer you’re only allowed certain upload speeds and 500 megs or one HD video per week. Then again, how many short films are you planning on shooting in a week?!

Vimeo also offers “+” and “Pro” accounts, so if you’re willing to pay a premium, you can get some really cool features like comprehensive analytics for your videos, you can get branded video players, so if you put a video on your website, you can have your logo on it, a certain level of privacy where you can control exactly where your videos can play and much of other cool stuff.

Also, Vimeo doesn’t allow any content that you haven’t actually made, unless you pay for “plus” or “pro” account.