If you want to add video to your website, it’s usually better to upload it to YouTube or Vimeo and embed it on the page rather than uploading the video file directly to WordPress.
Why not host the video on your website?
Video files are large and demanding.
A standard web server is designed to serve website pages, images, scripts and database content. It isn’t a dedicated video streaming platform.
Hosting videos directly on your website can:
- use a lot of server storage and bandwidth
- put extra load on your hosting account
- result in slower or less reliable playback
- create problems for visitors on slower connections
- make backups much larger
- potentially affect overall website performance
YouTube and Vimeo are purpose-built for video. They automatically process videos into different formats and resolutions and deliver them using infrastructure designed for streaming.
You still display the video directly on your website – the video itself is simply being delivered by the video platform.
YouTube or Vimeo?
For most businesses, YouTube is the obvious starting point.
It’s free, easy to use and gives your video another opportunity to be discovered through YouTube and Google search.
That doesn’t mean putting a YouTube video on a page automatically improves the page’s SEO. The advantage is that the video itself can also be found independently through search.
Vimeo is more focused on presentation and control.
It can be a good choice when you want a cleaner player, fewer distractions and more control over how the embedded video appears on your website.
Vimeo does have a free plan, although many of its more useful customisation, privacy and player controls are part of its paid plans.
For most business websites, the important part is less about choosing between YouTube and Vimeo and more about not asking your normal web hosting account to act as a video streaming service.
Upload the video to a platform built for the job, then embed it into the website.