When you have video content to share with an audience, it’s tempting to deliver the video with the most widely used, best known platforms, while saving money in the process by availing yourself of the many free services available online. But if you want to present the public with a quality viewing experience, are these the best choices? Even if you want to upgrade to a content delivery platform that supports live streaming and HD broadcasting, how do you know which of your options are the best choice?
Enter TikiLIVE, the premier HD content hosting and delivery platform. While other services may lure you in with free video hosting and playback, these often become situations where you need to take the good with the bad – low video quality, advertising, inability to handle traffic, and other issues. With TikiLIVE, the robust infrastructure reliably delivers top-quality HD video with no ads (unless you choose to add them), makes your video accessible across devices, and bears your branding (not ours) when you use TikiLIVE’s white-label services.
So how do other top content-delivery services such as YouTube, Vimeo, and Ustream compare? They all have their good points, but let’s take a look at how TikiLIVE compensates for their shortcomings, making it the obvious choice for first-class video delivery.
YouTube: The Mixed Blessings of Being a Household Name
When it comes to watching video online, chances are the first word you think of is YouTube. There’s a good reason for that: they were one of the first applications to simplify and democratize video sharing on a wide scale. When YouTube was acquired by Google, their profile went from huge to astronomical: according to their own statistics, YouTube is visited by over a billion unique users each month. Most online publishing applications make it a snap to embed YouTube videos into page content. Speaking strictly in terms of internet traffic, YouTube’s viewership is tough to beat.
This high profile does come with some drawbacks if you are trying to present a first-class professional image with your video content, however. YouTube’s compression often sacrifices video quality. Most YouTube videos are prefaced by ads for unrelated products and display banner ads in mid-playback. And while your goal for creating videos is to get viewers to want to learn more about your product or service and click into your website, YouTube’s goal is for viewers to watch more YouTube videos, so they present related videos that can distract viewers away from pursuing your product or service. YouTube also attracts many casual users, who may post spam or other inappropriate content that can appear adjacent to yours in searches and related-videos links. YouTube comments also have a reputation for attracting provocative behavior from the public that you likely wouldn’t want associated with your content in any way.
Vimeo: Good Quality, No Ads, But…
Vimeo is another provider that has free and low-cost video delivery options, and though they aren’t as well known as (and therefore generate less traffic than) YouTube, they offer some benefits that YouTube doesn’t. They don’t run ads with their videos, and their business plans start at a very affordable $17 a month. With fewer casual users, Vimeo users tend to be more focused on quality content and substantive discussions in the comments and forums.
With these pluses come a few minuses for Vimeo, however. All Vimeo plans have limits on the number of videos users can upload, while even YouTube gives its free users unlimited uploads. In addition, it is believed that Vimeo is less favorable to search engines such as Google than YouTube. With Vimeo, you also need to generate and maintain separate mobile versions of your videos. That may not seem like a big deal, but if you have a large video library, this added overhead can be a real headache.
Ustream: A Platform Solution That Doesn’t Quite Do It All
Ustream is a content delivery platform that offers a more comprehensive suite of options than just video hosting and playback. Ustream provides users with various broadcasting tools to stream video, including live video, as well as audio and video playlists to be broadcast over the user’s channels. They also give users the opportunity to try these services in a limited capacity for free.
While the support for live streaming does give Ustream an advantage over YouTube and Vimeo, it does have certain drawbacks that may affect the user experience. For one, all paid plans have a cap on the number of ad-free hours your subscription buys you. The highest-tier plan offers 5,000 hours of ad-free views, while the lowest-tier paid plan only offers 100 ad-free hours.
If your content stands to generate a lot of traffic, ads could start appearing rather quickly and their appearance would be a turn-off for some users, creating an unprofessional appearance at the very least.
You also have to pay for the highest tier of service to have the Ustream branding removed from your content. In addition, Ustream has discontinued support for pay-per-view streaming content, so that avenue for monetizing your content no longer exists. Live phone support is also not available to all users.
TikiLIVE: The Best of All Worlds
When you look at all the ways the other video delivery services don’t deliver, TikiLIVE becomes the obvious choice for your all-in-one content delivery platform. TikiLIVE’s Monster Encoder makes your video instantly viewable on all iOS and Android devices and set-top boxes such as Roku, which means no maintaining separate libraries of mobile-ready videos for you.
TikiLIVE’s robust infrastructure delivers HD quality you can depend on always, without the bandwidth and capacity limits imposed by other services that can hinder your growth in traffic. You can easily brand your content with TikiLIVE’s white-label services, and the only ads that appear with your content are the ones you choose to run. TikiLIVE includes comprehensive social media integration tools and forums that are easy to moderate and maintain to your business’ standards.
Live streaming is as easy as connecting your smartphone and turning on the video camera; no specialized tools or training are needed for broadcasts. TikiLIVE’s ticketing features give you a hassle-free way to collect pay-per-view fees for your content. TikiLIVE gives you a WordPress front end for hosting your content, with the option to add a shopping cart for selling your products. And TikiLIVE provides you with top notch live support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Where the other services fall short, TikiLIVE steps up and emerges as the clear leader, one that can be depended on to deliver your valuable content anytime, anywhere. To talk further about what sets TikiLIVE apart, contact us today!
