7 Vidyard competitors and alternatives for business video hosting [Film School For Marketers Podcast, Ep. 27]

On today's episode, we’re going to be talking about one of the most common questions we get, how does Vidyard stack up against other video platforms? 

We aren’t just providing our experience with other platforms but pulling in feedback from G2 Crowd to share what reviewers are saying. 

As we dive in, we’re going to be looking at the platforms from two different angles.

Some of the ones we’re talking about are 1:1 video products, while others are simply video hosting platforms. 

Listen to the full episode here (or scroll down to watch the video):

Vidyard competitors and alternatives for business video hosting

1. Brightcove

Brightcove is primarily an enterprise video hosting solution so for a smaller business or team, it may not be something you'd usually consider.

Brightcove is a publicly traded company, which means there is one major interest and that is the one of the shareholders. That usually means a higher price tag.

With a higher price tag, however, comes a more white glove experience. You get a dedicated launch team and customer service team.

If you are a company who wants high-level insights, or you're on the publisher side of things, this platform might make sense. 

On the other hand, G2Crowd reviews tell us that Vidyard beats Brightcove in meeting requirements, ease of use, and product direction. 

2. Wistia

Wistia has a lot of great qualities. When we recommend video tools we typically talk about both Wistia and Vidyard because they are both great products.

Wistia tends to be a more user-friendly product, and also beat Vidyard on price, nine times out of 10.

Vidyard customers are very pleased with the company's customer service. They also get a launch team and dedicated team member at Vidyard, whereas Wistia isn’t setup that way. 

Another big difference is the way pricing is done.

Over a certain threshold, you’re paying per video with Wistia whereas with Vidyard, you have unlimited videos and bandwidth with most of their packages. 

Both offer transcription services, but while they are free with Vidyard, with Wistia you pay 25 cents per minute. 

Wistia also does not have a personalized video product like Vidyard which allows you to add in personalization tokens to your video to populate a contact's name. 

Wistia doesn’t have is a Salesforce integration and it also does not integrate your YouTube and Facebook analytics into your video portal, though it does integrate with HubSpot. Vidyard is HubSpot's official video partner.

On G2 Crowd, reviewers noted that there are certain areas where they prefer Wistia over Vidyard such as meeting requirements and ease of use.

Vidyard, did however, beat out Wistia on ease of doing business with. 

3. TwentyThree

TwentyThree is a big player in Europe and has naturally become one here in the states.

They have a great hosting product to check out. Similar to Vidyard, you can easily create and design players, add interactive calls-to-action, create video hubs, and collect viewer data which integrates with major platforms like HubSpot and Marketo.

Price wise, TwentyThree's hosting package is $499/month compared to Vidyard's similar package at $850. However, if you wanted to run a similar yet lean version of Vidyard's product, they also have a $150/month starter package. TwentyThree doesn't currently have a smaller package.

One of the major differences about TwentyThree and Vidyard is that it has a webinar tool. It is somewhat similar to live streaming function Vidyard has.

Full disclosure, we haven’t used either of those products (webinars from TwentyThree and live streaming from Vidyard), so we can’t speak to it from experience, but we’ve heard from others they are both great. 

We recommend checking out TwentyThree and Vidyard and looking at the features that are important to you to decide which you should go with. 

4. Vimeo

Now, we wouldn’t consider Vimeo a marketing and sales tool, but rather just a hosting platform so it wouldn't be a fair comparison to Vidyard.

It’s made for filmmakers and creative people making video content who want high-quality streaming and fewer limitations than YouTube.

They were the first video hosts to have HD video.

The only real thing that would make Vimeo a viable sales and marketing tool is if you're a start-up or solo-prenuer and you want to host videos on your site and the only call-to-action you want to have is to be able to sign people up to your newsletter.

Vimeo business allows you to collect email addresses and integrates with email marketing platforms. 

5. YouTube

YouTube is an important tool to use in your video marketing strategy as it’s the second largest search engine in the world. 

I’m sure you’ve heard us typically preach using both YouTube and a tool like Vidyard. You need both, plain and simple.  

Reason being they are both important for different stages of the buying process. YouTube is a great place to educate prospects with top-of-the-funnel content for viewers who realized they have a problem to solve.

Whereas Vidyard comes in for more bottom-of-the-funnel viewers where you want to provide a way to convert people who are watching your video content.

6. Drift Video 

Drift Video is a tool created by Drift that you can use alongside your conversational marketing strategy.

We wouldn’t recommend Drift Video as a stand alone 1:1 video product, but rather something to take advantage of if you’re using Drift as your chat tool.

Drift Video has a free tool you can use, just like Vidyard has a free tool. 

It’s also important to remember that Drift doesn’t specialize in video, but rather conversational marketing so this tool may not be as robust as others. 

The point of Drift video is to take a user to a page where chat exists and to offer the person thee ability to chat in real time after watching a video. 

There is also an integration with Vidyard and Drift.

7. BombBomb 

BombBomb specializes in 1:1 video with email marketing. This might be appealing to small businesses that are out in the field and do quick videos.

On G2 Crowd, BombBomb has a higher "meets requirements" rating than Vidyard or Wistia. 

As far as quality of support, the company also has a higher rating than Wistia, while its ease of doing business was higher than Vidyard. 

BombBomb is heavier on the email management side of things. The video playback happens in a web-based email instead of a sharing page like Vidyard. 

BombBomb and Vidyard both have a mobile app, great for companies out in the field.

It’s also important to note that BombBomb is not a host, they are just specific to 1:1 video. 

Bottomline: Focus on your needs and goals with video

Well folks, that’s a wrap for this episode.

We hope you find this helpful as you determine the right video host for your organization, but don’t just take our word for it, reach out to these companies and ask them how they can work for you. 

We are a partner of Vidyard's, so we talk about it frequently and we’ve really seen great success using it so far, but if you’re a company that doesn’t have a ton of needs, it could be overkill for you.

When looking at video host options dive into what your organization needs. You don’t want something that is going to be too much or too little. 

If you ever have questions reach out to us, we’d be happy to help out!

Also, feel free to check out the Film School for Marketers Facebook group and see what other people think and what they’re using.

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