If you’re a blogger and you’ve made a few videos in your time, you’ve probably realised that hosting your own video can get quite expensive really quickly. Most of us bloggers are therefore quite content to host our video with an online third party and simply embed it back into our own website. The only real question is, which one to use?There are a number of things to look out for when choosing a third-party video host, such as quality, ease of uploading, annotation features, editing online, embedding features, upload limits, promotion of your videos, the ability to earn money for your content and more. The best embedded video players are generally equal in the important things, but quite different in others. You may find it best to use a mixture of sites for your needs.
YouTube
YouTube is the Google-owned giant of video hosting. They have an enormous amount of features available to users.- Standout Features: HD video, group privacy and private URLs, video editing, annotations, and multiple video uploader.
- Limitations: Video length is limited to 15 minutes unless your account is in good standing.
Vimeo
Vimeo is the other giant of the video uploading world. It has had HD upload abilities for a lot longer than YouTube and was therefore preferred by many for a long time.- Standout Features: HD video, great URLs and password protected videos.
- Limitations: 500MB per week uploads for basic accounts.
Flickr
Flickr is by and large a photo sharing site, but with people using their cameras to film many personal videos they have expanded to host video as well. This is designed to be for personal use and really just an extension of your photo collection.- Standout Features: Can group video in collections with relevant photos.
- Limitations: 90 seconds in length and HD can only be viewed when the uploader has a Flickr Pro account. Free members are limited to 2 videos per month.
DailyMotion
Dailymotion is a very sociable service with many videos designed to share news and viral video. It’s easy to browse content in many languages.- Standout Features: HD video, Multiple file uploads.
- Limitations: Privacy of videos is limited to Dailymotion users.
Ustream
Ustream is a streaming video service which anyone can use to stream live video. Shows can be embedded for easy viewing on your own website.- Standout Features: Live streaming is a very useful tool and can be recorded and streamed straight from your phone.
- Limitations: This is not a video host. You can embed the video stream, but when you stop streaming you will not be featuring any video in that embedded window.
Honorary Mentions
VodPod
VodPod is a video site you can use to display your videos in the sidebar of WordPress.com blogs. Rather than using it to host video, you can use it to create collections of videos from elsewhere, imported by RSS. Then you can embed it or display the collection in the sidebar.MetaCafe
Metacafe seems to be full of fun stuff designed to be shared, like videos of things blowing up. However, it can be perfectly usable for hosting and embedding your own content if you wish.More Embeddable Video Content
If you’re looking to embed other people’s content, check out our list of 12 video sites that are better than YouTube. Particularly, check out Blip.tv and TED.Which is your favourite and why?
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