Vimeo OTT Review in 2024: Pros & Cons, With Tutorials & Alternatives

Vimeo OTT is a great platform, but it’s not the only option. Here’s how it compares to similar platforms.

Vimeo OTT is a good option for businesses that want to create a branded, customized streaming experience.

It offers all the standard features of a good streaming platform and then some. But if you’re looking for something less expensive, more flexible or with more direct customer support, there are other options worth considering.

The first thing to do is think about the specific features that are most important to your business. If you need a lot of customization and flexibility beyond what Vimeo OTT offers and don’t mind spending on it, Brightcove might be a better fit.

If price is a concern, you can find less expensive alternatives — like Dacast or Uscreen — that offer similar features for less.

Vimeo OTT – Introduction

What is Vimeo OTT? Vimeo OTT (Over-the-Top) is a direct-to-consumer distribution platform that provides premium content owners with tools to launch and monetize their own branded streaming services.

Vimeo OTT has a number of features that help bring your streaming service to life and differentiate it from the competition, including:

1. Customization & Branding – Customize the look and feel of your service by choosing from a variety of themes.

Add custom CSS to further style your site. Upload your logos, backgrounds, fonts and more to create a seamless customer experience across all devices.

2. Video Management – Upload videos in a variety of formats and sizes through our user-friendly interface.

   

Drag-and-drop video files into your upload queue and check the status of each in real time. You can even upload multiple file types at once (i.e., SRT, PNG, JPEG).

3. Video Publishing – Publish or unpublish videos as you see fit with one click.

Grant access to specific content by creating password protected pages or give everyone access to all videos on your homepage as soon as they log in. It’s up to you!

Vimeo OTT Review

Vimeo OTT, the company’s over-the-top video platform, has grown to over 370 million views since launching in 2017. In this Vimeo OTT review, we’ll break down exactly what it is and how it works.

What Is Vimeo OTT?

Vimeo OTT isn’t really a traditional video hosting platform.

It’s more of a white-label service that lets you sell and distribute your own branded video content to customers.

Think of it like Netflix: Each account can be customized and branded for the individual customer so that you don’t share anything with anyone else. (The main difference between Netflix and Vimeo OTT is that you don’t get nearly as many subscribers, which means you may not have to pay as much for bandwidth.)

How Does Vimeo OTT Work?

Vimeo OTT is a bit different from other online video platforms because it focuses on selling videos directly to consumers, rather than publishing them publicly across social media or on a website.

You’re able to sell subscription plans or single rentals of your videos through the platform, and each customer gets their own account where they can watch their purchased content on any device — including mobile

Vimeo OTT Overview

Vimeo offers a wide range of tools to control the access and availability of your videos.

Here are a few ways to protect your videos:

Password Protecting

Vimeo Videos In order to password protect your video, you must first make sure that the video is set as “Private”.

To do this, go to your privacy settings. If you need further instructions on how to set your video as private, see our article on changing the privacy settings of your video. Once your video is private, click on the “Settings” tab and then navigate to the “Password Protect Video” section. Here you can enter a password for your video.

This password will be required in order for anyone to view the content. To set a password for a specific embed of your Private video, navigate to the embed tab under your Settings section. You can then enter an extra password on an individual basis for each embed code that you’d like to have protected with a unique password.

Limiting Embedding & Sharing Vimeo Videos

In order to limit embedding & sharing of your video, you must first make sure that the video is set as “Private”. To do this, go to your privacy settings. 

Vimeo OTT Features

VWith a Vimeo OTT subscription, you’ll be able to access all the tools you need to launch, scale and manage a successful video-on-demand (VOD) business.

1. Customize your website
2. Choose from a variety of customizable themes to create a unique streaming experience for your viewers.
3. Personalize your site with custom colors, fonts and logos.
4. Create landing pages and collect leads with our easy-to-use web builder.
5. Use your own domain name or connect your site directly to Facebook. Personalize the viewer experience
6. Build relationships with your audience by offering personalized recommendations based on their viewing history.
7. Offer multiple pricing options to fit every budget — including individual purchases, subscriptions, rentals, and pay-per-view.
8. Display watchlists and let viewers track their progress by adding videos directly to their accounts.
9. Manage subscription plans
10. Create free trials or offer monthly, annual or lifetime passes at various price points.
11. Allow new subscribers to view content instantly or require them to sign in first.
12. Create specific discount codes for certain promotions.
13. Send confirmation emails when customers sign up for trials or subscriptions.
14. Easily export subscriber data for marketing purposes or as required by law.
15. Monetize content.

1. Vimeo OTT Uploading And Selling Content

Creating a new store and uploading content with Vimeo OTT. The first thing you need to do is to sign up at Vimeo OTT.

https://vimeo.com/join Enter your name and email address, then click on the “Join” button. Fill in your details, pick a password and click on the “Register” button. You will receive a confirmation message on your email address.

Click on the link inside that email to confirm your registration. You can then log in to the platform.

You will be taken to a dashboard where you will see an announcement about two new features — VOD and Live Streaming. Click on the “Learn More” link under the “Live Streaming” section.

Click on the “Get Started” button in the popup window that appears on the screen. Enter your details, such as website name, industry category and contact information, then click on the “Save and Continue” button at the bottom of the page.

On the next page you can configure various settings for your store, including payment options (you can use PayPal or Stripe), currency (choose from USD, CAD, EURO or GBP) and tax rates (select whether you want to charge VAT). 

2. Vimeo OTT Distribution Platforms

Vimeo is a video hosting platform for businesses that allows users to upload and market their videos on their own website or across other devices. Vimeo OTT is an all-in-one subscription video platform that allows you to distribute content directly to your viewers on the web and mobile devices.

The service offers a complete video monetization solution, allowing you to sell both rentals and subscriptions through one powerful platform. Vimeo OTT lets you create an app within minutes with no coding required, then customize it to fit your brand.

The platform provides access to important tools such as analytics, live streaming, EPG, localization and more. Vimeo OTT is a white-label, end-to-end streaming solution for premium video owners.

   

We’ve created a unified platform that combines the best of Vimeo’s technology, services and resources with a partner program to help you connect with viewers around the world. We make it easy to upload videos, create subscription tiers and customize your viewing experience.

Then, we work with you every step of the way so that live events can stream beautifully and videos are guaranteed to play everywhere.

Vimeo OTT Websites

Vimeo OTT websites are web landing pages designed to increase engagement and sales for your channel. A Vimeo OTT website is a custom-branded web landing page designed to increase engagement and sales by providing an additional destination outside of Vimeo where you can promote and showcase your content.

When you sign up for the Vimeo OTT websites product, you’ll be able to create a unique, customizable website that comes with a free domain name (unless you choose to use your own domain name) from Wix, our website building partner.

We recommend setting up a website for your channel if you want to:

• Share videos on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter that direct viewers to a customized webpage instead of the video’s Vimeo page
• Learn more about how many people visit your site and their locations with Google Analytics integration
• Collect viewer email addresses and build a mailing list for future marketing opportunities
• Feature multiple sections on your site so viewers can easily navigate between different types of content

Vimeo OTT Apps

Vimeo OTT Apps are native apps for Roku, Apple TV, Android TV, Fire TV and Samsung Smart TVs that make it easy for viewers to watch your content from anywhere. You can also publish them directly on iOS and Android with a simple webview wrapper.

The Vimeo OTT platform offers many benefits:

1. A full suite of APIs to manage your content, subscription plans, membership information and analytics
2. Easy publishing to new devices using our integrations with partners like Roku or Brightcove or by building your own app for iOS or Android
3. An ecosystem of tools that includes a storefront API, paywall API and product catalog API 

3. Vimeo OTT Monetization

It’s no surprise that the market for OTT services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video is growing at an exponential rate. Over 190 million people in the US are expected to be subscribed to OTT services by 2020, collectively spending over $50 billion on subscription fees.

But while consumers are eager to cut the cord, they’re also open to alternatives to the big-name players like Netflix. People are looking for content that speaks directly and personally to them — which is why niche content creators are taking advantage of this opportunity by developing and distributing their own direct-to-consumer streaming services.

The benefit of being able to tap into a passionate audience is huge, allowing you to build your fan base and revenue stream directly, with no middleman involved. That’s why we built Vimeo OTT — a platform designed specifically for direct-to-consumer distribution.

It gives you everything you need to launch a beautifully branded streaming service across mobile, smart TVs, web and more, all within a unified experience.

1. Vimeo OTT Monetization Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD)

An OTT service is a streaming service that is delivered to your viewers via the internet, rather than a cable box. OTT services include Netflix, Hulu, and Vimeo OTT, among many others.

To start building your OTT video subscription business, you’ll need three main things: A means of accepting payments from your subscribers. A way to upload and manage your videos.

A platform to serve your videos to subscribers. You could have one vendor do all three of these things, or you could use multiple vendors and stitch them together yourself.

If you’re a Vimeo Pro or Business member already, you already have the second thing nailed — our video review and management tools are second to none.

(You can also get access to our video hosting platform through Vimeo OTT’s Managed Service package.) But what about the first two?

For those, we’ve partnered with some top-notch vendors so you can easily set up a comprehensive system for selling and delivering your content.

Vimeo offers a range of tools for creating, publishing, and monetizing videos. 

2. Vimeo OTT Monetization Transactional Video On Demand (TVOD)

Vimeo OTT is an end-to-end solution for selling subscription and transactional videos right out of the box. You can customize your viewer experience with branding, personalized recommendations, flexible pricing, multiple currencies, and more.

Vimeo OTT offers a variety of features that make it a perfect fit for independent video creators and distributors. The platform is completely customizable to your brand, with the ability to monetize content in ways you never dreamed of!

You can sell or rent single episodes or entire series from anywhere in the world using one simple dashboard.

With Vimeo OTT, you have complete control over how much exposure each film receives by choosing its availability window for each region. This makes it easy to release new movies on a staggered schedule without worrying about piracy issues.

And best yet – there are no contracts or monthly fees so you only pay when someone buys something from you! Just sign up today and start selling your video content around the world without having to worry about annoying contracts or monthly fees!”

3. Vimeo OTT Monetization Ad-supported Video On Demand (AVOD)

Ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) gives your audience a way to enjoy your content for free, with the freedom to choose from a wide selection of your videos — without ever having to enter in their credit card. With Vimeo OTT’s ad-supported monetization model, you can make money with every impression.

Our platform makes it easy for you to upload and manage your video library, create collections, sell subscriptions, and add ads to your videos — all in one place. We partner with the leading ad networks, including SpotX and Teads, which make it easy to monetize even your most niche content.

Ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) is the opposite of subscription video on demand (SVOD). Rather than paying a monthly fee, viewers get access to your content for free and watch ads in exchange.

The economics of AVOD work by cutting you into the revenue generated from ads. You’ll want to make sure you understand how much ad revenue you might earn and how that compares to other business models.

4. Vimeo OTT Monetization Streaming Live Events

Vimeo has unveiled a new live streaming product that will provide a new revenue stream for on-demand video creators. Originally a video hosting and sharing site, Vimeo has moved into the on-demand space, where it now provides an end-to-end solution for creators to distribute and monetize their content.

Now, Vimeo is expanding further to allow creators to monetize live content as well. The new service will allow creators to stream any kind of live event — from concerts to conferences or sports competitions — on a pay-per-view basis.

The service is integrated with Vimeo’s existing distribution system, meaning that creators can use the same account and platform they already use to distribute their on-demand videos. Creators just need to set up a new ‘Live Event’ within their account before they start streaming.

The system also allows users to schedule events in advance, with an option to promote them via an event landing page ahead of time, helping drive ticket sales. The ticketing system allows users to set prices, bundle tickets with other products (such as merchandise), and even offer free events if they wish.

5. Vimeo OTT Monetization Analytics And Reporting

Monetizing your content with Vimeo OTT is more than just selling subscriptions. It’s about building a direct relationship with your audience and knowing how to best serve them.

Our platform was designed from the ground up to give you all the tools you need to run a successful business, so we’ve packed our analytics dashboard full of powerful insights that will help you make smart business decisions.

Engagement Reports: Use these reports to learn more about how your customers are interacting with your content and to identify areas that could be improved upon.

Metrics:  Subscribers — Total number of subscribers who have signed up for this plan

Views — Total number of views or streams over the selected time period

Completed — Total number of completed video views or streams over the selected time period

Average Runtime — Average length of time watched per view or stream over the selected time period

New Subscriptions Chart: This chart represents total new subscriptions for each day within the selected date range.

Hovering over any point on the graph will show you exact figures for that day, including new subscribers, new cancellations, and net change in subscribers.

Video Views Graph: This graph represents total video views, completed views, and average runtime for each day within the selected date range.

Vimeo OTT Pricing Plans

Each plan increases in storage capacity, features and customization options.

Key features include:

• Unlimited live streaming channels
• Customizable player, checkout page, and marketing pages
• Advanced analytics
• Progressive web app for offline viewing on Android get started now with a free trial and see what your audience thinks of your content before you pay a dime.
• With the simple, all-inclusive pricing of Vimeo OTT, you won’t have to worry about complicated revenue share agreements.
• Free trial with full access… no credit card needed
• Generate unlimited revenue from subscriptions, pay-per-view rentals, or transactions on your own website
• No setup fees
• No long-term contracts or commitment
• Vimeo OTT offers a variety of pricing plans to meet the needs of different types of businesses.

Basic Plan $1 Per Subscriber Per Month

1. 100GB bandwidth included
2. Unlimited videos and live event

Premium Plan $2 Per Subscriber Per Month

1. 300GB bandwidth included
2. Unlimited videos and live events

Vimeo OTT: Pros And Cons

Vimeo OTT Pros

1.  Create pre-order pages for future releases
2. Protect your content with paywalls and device limits
3. Sell subscriptions and pay-per-view content
4. Integrate video into any website or app Vimeo OTT Pro allows you to deliver your video content to anyone on any device.
5. It’s built for creators with advanced privacy features and provides detailed analytics so you can see how your content is performing.

Vimeo OTT Cons

Cost: This is one of the biggest cons with Vimeo when it comes to their OTT platform. The cost, which ranges from $1,000 to $7,500 per month depending on the features and features you want, is quite high compared to other SVOD platforms.

If you are starting up and looking to launch an SVOD service with ease and generate revenue, this may not be the best solution for you. It will also depend on many factors like the number of subscribers you expect and how much content you have for them.

No recurring billing: You will have to turn this feature on if you want your customers to have a continuous subscription. Without it, they will have to re-subscribe every time they want to watch new content on your platform.

This could be an inconvenience for them and could affect your retention rate.

No free trials: Unlike many SVOD platforms that offer free trials, Vimeo OTT does not offer free trials.

Vimeo OTT Alternatives

Vimeo OTT Alternatives Price: Starting at $15/month. Vimeo is the second largest video sharing platform in the world, behind YouTube.

Vimeo offers a monthly plan that allows you to upload up to 5GB of HD content and receive 250 GB of bandwidth.

However, if you’re looking for an all-in-one live streaming and on-demand video solution, you’ll need to shell out some cash for Vimeo’s OTT service. This platform is great for those who want a professional-looking website with a branded player and customization options.

Price: starting at $15/month The big plus with Wistia is that they also offer marketing tools such as heatmaps (which let you see where viewers click or hover their mouse) and call-to-action overlays (which are interactive elements that encourage viewers to take action).

The downside is that Wistia doesn’t offer any live streaming capabilities! This platform is great for marketers who want to create prerecorded videos and attract leads.

Vimeo OTT is a powerful and feature-rich video streaming platform.

It’s not cheap, but it offers a lot of value for the price. That said, there are some strong Vimeo OTT alternatives out there. Here are 6 of the best ones:

1. Dacast
2. Muvi
3. Uscreen
4. Zype
5. VdoCipher
6. VIDISEO

1. Uscreen

Uscreen is a video monetization platform that helps businesses and individuals build their own subscription-based video streaming service. It offers a range of features such as an OTT app builder, analytics, customer management tools, and more.

In this article, we cover Uscreen reviews and pricing. Ready to get started? Visit its website. Uscreen pricing is based on four paid plans that you can choose from: Basic ($99/month), Advanced ($199/month), Premium ($499/month), and Enterprise (customized pricing).

The main differences between the plans are the number of videos and seats included per month, among other features. I’ve been following the Uscreen team for a couple of years now and I can honestly say they’ve built something very unique.

They provide a platform to upload, organize and stream your videos, as well as offer you both an OTT app for watching your videos on Roku or Apple TV and a beautiful website that integrates with their platform.

What’s even more amazing is that they don’t force you to use their own built-in payment gateway. You can use whatever payment gateway you like (Stripe, Paypal, Recurly) or even integrate your own custom payment solution to their platform.

Features

Easily Sell Your Videos

Uscreen’s platform is designed to help you sell your videos online. It’s built for video entrepreneurs looking to build a video business, creators looking to sell their videos online, or businesses looking to create their own video on demand / subscription service.

You can easily sell your videos online with Uscreen’s built-in marketing, sales and payment processing tools.

Sell Videos Online

With Uscreen’s powerful video platform, you can easily sell your videos online and start making money from your content! You can:

• Setup a membership site to sell your videos and make money from monthly subscriptions
• Monetize your videos with pay-per-view rentals and purchases (VOD)
• Create coupons for discounts on memberships or individual videos
• Sell merchandise like t-shirts and branded products alongside your videos
• Make money from sponsorships, ads and affiliate links

Collect Payments For Your Videos

When you sell your videos online with Uscreen, you keep 100% of the revenue from all sales.

We don’t take any percentage of sales like other platforms do. Plus, we provide an integrated solution that helps you collect secure payments via credit cards or PayPal. 

Pros

1. Uscreen is the best and most modern video monetization platform. It has all of the necessary tools for a video creator to get off the ground, including a membership site builder with custom pricing and payment plans, video hosting, analytics, affiliate management, more than 25 payment gateways (including cryptocurrency), fast support, Rest API integration and more.
2. Great video product delivery options. Uscreen lets you choose between multiple platforms for delivering your videos: on their website, inside an app or embedded on another platform.
3. You’ll have to go through some extra work to create your own app if you decide to go that way, but it’s absolutely worth it for those who want to reach mobile audiences. The app feature is completely free and works on iOS and Android devices.
4. Fast support team available 24/7 via chat or phone (US). Uscreen has an active community forum as well where creators can share ideas, stories and help each other out with any issues they’re having.
5. A lot of useful integrations right out of the box, such as MailChimp, Stripe (for recurring payments), PayPal, Zapier (for connecting to hundreds of services) and more. 

2. Muvi

Muvi is a SaaS based product that enables you to launch an OTT Platform in a matter of hours. It comes pre-integrated with payment gateways and features like DRM, mPayment, Multi-screen, Analytics and many more.

Muvi also offers white-label Mobile Apps for Android, iOS and Fire TV on top of your website. You can also choose to launch a Roku channel by opting for our Roku SDK integration.

Features

Multiple Video Uploads

With Muvi, you can upload and manage multiple videos at a time. You can either upload the videos on your own or avail our high-speed FTP service wherein we will simply copy over the files directly to our storage servers.

Powerful Video Player

Muvi comes with an inbuilt feature rich video player which supports multiple streaming protocols and is capable of playing any format of video available on internet. It has wide range of features like captions, playlists, analytics, plugins etc.

Multi-language & Subtitles Support

You can upload your videos with subtitles in multiple languages so that your users can watch it in their native language itself. We support all the formats for captions files including the WebVTT format.

Analytics & Reports

Muvi provides you detailed reports on your streaming platform to help you understand how users are consuming your content and what is working for you and what isn’t. With these reports you can also analyze how much revenue you are generating from each title and how much from subscriptions and what is the geographical distribution of your viewers as well as find out which are the devices that your users are using to access your content.

Pros

1. Muvi helps you create e-commerce store faster than any other platform. The main reason is you don’t have to deal with coding or find a developer.

2. You get all the necessary features right out of the box. You will not have to do any customization, which saves a lot of time and money.

3. Establishing an online brand is vital to your long term success, and Muvi has everything you need to build and grow your business, including custom domain name and web hosting services.

4. With Muvi, you can easily sell on multiple channels at once, so that means you can sell your products on Amazon, eBay, Etsy, etc., in addition to your own website.

5. Integration with social media platforms like Facebook lets you promote and sell products directly from social media sites such as Instagram and Pinterest.

3. Dacast

Founded in 2009, Dacast has grown to fill an important niche in the video platform space. The company’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) model allows customers to create and manage their own video platforms without needing any special hardware or software.

Dacast offers a range of solutions for different customers and use cases. Here are some of the key features that set it apart from the competition: End-to-end solution. Dacast is a live streaming and VOD platform that covers all aspects of the process, from encoding to hosting to monetization and analytics.

This means you can consolidate your video operations under a single provider, which provides significant economies of scale and efficiency compared with using multiple separate services. White label streaming.

With white label streaming, you can deliver content through your own branded domain name on a custom website, rather than through a standard dacast.com URL that is branded as Dacast. This enables you to build your brand as a media company, rather than reinforcing Dacast’s brand on your site.

Paywall monetization options. There are several paywall options available for monetizing your videos through Dacast’s platform, including pay per view.

Features

Dacast has a wide variety of features that allow you to reach your audience in the best way possible.

• Live streaming video hosting
• Paywall protection
• Video on Demand (VOD) hosting
• Mobile streaming
• Web-based video player (HTML5 video player)
• Player customization with white label option
• Social media live streaming (Facebook live, YouTube live) and social media video hosting (Facebook, YouTube)
• Analytics and reports

Vimeo OTT Review – Frequently Asked Questions

What Is Vimeo OTT?

Vimeo OTT is an end-to-end product that enables content creators and owners to launch their own branded streaming service. This includes a customisable, white-label mobile app for iOS, Android, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Roku devices as well as a web platform.

You can use Vimeo OTT to sell or rent videos using subscription plans, pay-per-view rentals, and purchases.

How Do I Sign Up For Vimeo OTT?

To start using Vimeo OTT today, click here to create your account. Can I try out Vimeo OTT before paying for it? You can start creating your Vimeo OTT account and get access to the Admin panel right away.

From there you can upload videos and preview what your site and apps will look like once they’re live in the App Store or on Google Play. You can also invite your team to collaborate on the Admin panel with you before launching your site

Vimeo OTT Review – Wrapping Up

So, there you have it – the Vimeo OTT Review. Overall, the platform is easy to use and has a lot of different features that will suit most indie filmmakers out there.

It’s important to note that Vimeo OTT isn’t for everyone. If you want to make your films available on popular platforms like Amazon Prime and iTunes, then Vimeo OTT might not be for you (although they do have an agreement with Google Play).

Instead, Vimeo OTT is more targeted towards creators who want to build a community around their films. This can be done through features like the creator storefronts, which allow users to upload their films alongside merch and more.

It’s also good for creators who want more control over their content (like exclusive releases). Overall, we recommend Vimeo OTT as a great platform for indie filmmakers to put their films out there and make some money.

If you have any questions about this review or how Vimeo OTT works, then feel free to leave a comment below!