Vimeo introduces "storage limit" for free accounts (5GB max for all videos)

O

Oller Visuals

Well-known member
Just got this email:

"Supporting our community of creators is, and has always been, our top priority. As we invest in more tools to help our creators — and continue to be an ad-free service that relies on member support instead of ad revenue — we have to adjust what we offer for free (like storage, which, between transcoding and hosting, is pretty expensive).

This is to let you know that starting January 29, we’re introducing a 5GB total storage limit for Basic members. You’re currently 2.35GB over the limit. You won’t lose any of your current videos, but you won’t be able to upload more videos until you either upgrade your membership or free up some space on your account."

Personal thoughts:

Honestly, this is pretty baffling. Rather, I was waiting for them to increase that ancient 500MB weekly limit and poor HD quality for free members. If they have to put even more restrictions in place, it's evidence that they have problems with their business model (which I've been scratching my head about for the last few years, Vimeo used to be cutting edge, but they seem to have lost themselves along the way).

I was a Pro member back in the day but returned to freebie simply because I didn't see enough technical progress on their part. I'd honestly rather stick to YouTube at this point. Vimeo these days seems mostly the place for R-rated videos that aren't OK on YouTube... DeviantArt went the same route when they started losing their user base, allowing more and more explicit content. Desperate times require desperate measures, I guess.

Are you happy with Vimeo and their services?
 
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Vimeo is much better quality than YouTube, and I would think it's unrealistic to expect them to store more than 5 GB of video files for free. They are not Google, and their business model is not like YouTube.

While I do use YouTube to host the videos I've produced for clients, I also have a Vimeo Pro account for work that I only want current clients and prospective clients to see. I can easily put together a quick Vimeo portfolio sample for a potential client, make it password protected, and then change the password once the evaluation period is over. The last thing I want is for clients to sit through YouTube ads just to see some of my sample work.
 
Oller Visuals said:
Just got this email:

"Supporting our community of creators is, and has always been, our top priority. As we invest in more tools to help our creators — and continue to be an ad-free service that relies on member support instead of ad revenue — we have to adjust what we offer for free (like storage, which, between transcoding and hosting, is pretty expensive).

This is to let you know that starting January 29, we’re introducing a 5GB total storage limit for Basic members. You’re currently 2.35GB over the limit. You won’t lose any of your current videos, but you won’t be able to upload more videos until you either upgrade your membership or free up some space on your account."

Personal thoughts:

Honestly, this is pretty baffling. Rather, I was waiting for them to increase that ancient 500MB weekly limit and poor HD quality for free members. If they have to put even more restrictions in place, it's evidence that they have problems with their business model (which I've been scratching my head about for the last few years, Vimeo used to be cutting edge, but they seem to have lost themselves along the way).

I was a Pro member back in the day but returned to freebie simply because I didn't see enough technical progress on their part. I'd honestly rather stick to YouTube at this point. Vimeo these days seems mostly the place for R-rated videos that aren't OK on YouTube... DeviantArt went the same route when they started losing their user base, allowing more and more explicit content. Desperate times require desperate measures, I guess.

Are you happy with Vimeo and their services?
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Nobody wants to work for free.
The fact that they allow 500Mb of uploads a week and a total storage of up to 5GB storage is basically a gift.

For about $7 a month you can upload up to 5GB a week, that's less than two grande lattes at Starbucks!
 
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I can't understand how spending $84 a year to show your work at its best with a Vimeo Plus account is not a good investment. Especially since a "Plus" account has so many benefits over the free service.
 
TheDingo said:
Not if it's not monetized, but most people have grown to associate YouTube with annoying ads, so I want to get as far away from YouTube as I can when courting potential clients.
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Than I don't understand the argument, if you don't want ads on your work you don't monetize it, also there are different levels.

Unless your work is (forever) non-commercial I do not see the argument of avoiding a commercial platform.
 
Cary Knoop said:
Unless your work is (forever) non-commercial I do not see the argument of avoiding a commercial platform.
Click to expand...

YouTube has it's place, but it's not a platform I would choose when I want my work to look it's best. Right from the get-go, I have always found the visual quality of Vimeo playback to be noticeably better than YouTube.
 
The hypocrisy in this business cracks me up. Everyone wants to be paid for their work, but then they want everything for free.

My .02... Vimeo is a much more professional "environment"/platform. Most of my clients(network & production companies) that upload the finished pieces for viewing(for internal personnel and crew) do so on Vimeo. At the behest of a producer several years ago, I finally put some of my work on-line so that other producers, etc. could see a sample, if needed. I have a paid Vimeo account. It's billed to a CC and auto-renews, I believe. I never have to think about it. A Plus account is $7/month/$84/year. If you can't afford that as a professional business expense, maybe you're in the wrong business. And although the vast majority of my work is existing clients and referrals, if you get JUST ONE job based off of your work that was viewed on-line, it paid for it-self, hopefully, 15-20 times over, at least.
 
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TheDingo said:
YouTube has it's place, but it's not a platform I would choose when I want my work to look it's best. Right from the get-go, I have always found the visual quality of Vimeo playback to be noticeably better than YouTube.
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True, the quality is better.
 
I have to say that I am a big fan of Vimeo.

I've had various PLUS memberships for about a decade (different clients) and my own PRO account for about 4 years now.

Their portfolios and their feature of replacing a video (which just received a new update where it doesn't delete the old video but keeps it in a 'version history') has been simply priceless for me.

To be honest, I'm surprised they haven't terminated the free membership altogether. They are an absolutely massive monster of data storage for a population of users that has probably grown beyond belief since they started the company.

I don't know what competitive prices of data storage are or should be, but what they are providing me with a PRO account for $200 or so annually is nickels and dimes based on what it's worth to me and how easy it makes my video/business life. Plus the customer support has always been excellent.
 
Oller Visuals said:
Just got this email:

"Supporting our community of creators is, and has always been, our top priority. As we invest in more tools to help our creators — and continue to be an ad-free service that relies on member support instead of ad revenue — we have to adjust what we offer for free (like storage, which, between transcoding and hosting, is pretty expensive).

This is to let you know that starting January 29, we’re introducing a 5GB total storage limit for Basic members. You’re currently 2.35GB over the limit. You won’t lose any of your current videos, but you won’t be able to upload more videos until you either upgrade your membership or free up some space on your account."

Personal thoughts:

Honestly, this is pretty baffling. Rather, I was waiting for them to increase that ancient 500MB weekly limit and poor HD quality for free members. If they have to put even more restrictions in place, it's evidence that they have problems with their business model (which I've been scratching my head about for the last few years, Vimeo used to be cutting edge, but they seem to have lost themselves along the way).

I was a Pro member back in the day but returned to freebie simply because I didn't see enough technical progress on their part. I'd honestly rather stick to YouTube at this point. Vimeo these days seems mostly the place for R-rated videos that aren't OK on YouTube... DeviantArt went the same route when they started losing their user base, allowing more and more explicit content. Desperate times require desperate measures, I guess.

Are you happy with Vimeo and their services?
Click to expand...

I take it you have never done video streaming for al living. Let me let you in on a little secret, it is extremely expensive and what Vimeo gives us for free is completely mind boggling. I think you have it completely wrong and what is confusing about their business model is how they can afford to stay in business by giving so much video storage and unlimited streaming of that content for free, forever, until you die.

If you like it put a ring on it. If you made great professional use of Vimeo for the love of keeping a great service around please upgrade your account. I have used many CDNs for on-demand and live video streaming and hands down one of the best I have ever used is Vimeo Pro in terms of what we get for the price. A CDN typically charges per the amount of data streamed so if 1000 watch your video you pay for each of those viewings. With Vimeo Pro you can reach tens of thousands of viewers and besides the yearly cost you pay absolutely nothing, zilch, nada, zip.
 
Because of what Vimeo offers, I do pay the premium ($200/year Pro). While I have no problem paying for the service given what it offers VS platforms like YouTube, I will admit to feeling irked by Vimeo lately and no longer having such high praise for it. First, I run into slow streaming problems a bit too often, which is very frustrating when trying to showcase work. There was also the whole auto-quality level downrezzing my work which I want to display in HD only to some fuzzy monstrosity, and then them claiming it was "slow bandwidth" and "check your router or ISP". BS. Then, $200 pro wasn't the top tier anymore and I've got restrictions on that now VS the "real" pro level which is exorbitantly priced, and makes me feel like a 2nd class citizen (it's like buying first class plane ticket, and then Delta decides, hey, let's add a Premium Diamond Class, and now my first class ticket is really 2nd class.). Lastly, in the past 4+ years or so, the Vimeo Pro features really haven't imrpoved much. Their website portfolios are still as lame as ever and never improved, streaming got worse/slower, etc.

So, yeah, I have mixed feelings. But the platform is still definitely worth paying for. Regarding the cost, frankly, I think they have come at the problem from the wrong angle. I don't like how $200/year Pro is no longer top tier, and instead of them charging more for an even more elite service, I would rather see them just cut out or cut down the free service in order to free their bandwidth and storage up for users like me already paying a pretty penny.

That was a long way of saying I don't have a problem with them limiting free users like this :)
 
Vimeo (Plus) is my choice for samples of my work for clients, and sometimes hosting their videos too.
But I agree with filmguy ("that's guy... filmguy")- Vimeo's auto-quality cop out, and having to proactively click on 1080 or 4k is really annoying.
The gear doesn't even say HD anymore (I guess because of 4k), so clients are unlikely to go for optimal quality unless you tell them too.
Even then, will they? Ha, you know clients...

OTOH, YouTube always plays max quality, quickly/instantly, automatically.
But would I send a client there to see my work? No, of course not. Even with their search advantages from being owned by Google, plus I'm not monetizing.

So if Vimeo chooses to eliminate free accounts, so be it...
 
Yes - auto quality is a bummer, yes its not perfect, but also YES it is amazing what you get for free or for such a low yearly rate I'm happy to pay for PRO and even more YES the Wipster like review page is great for clients as is the replace video ESPECIALLY now that it saves old versions. Best I've found.
 
My feelings match what filmguy123 is saying. I've gradually worked up from the free package to the Pro level. The removal of the ability to lock-in the playback quality was a bad move on their part. Also, it really irks me that even if I put the title of a video, exactly, into the search panel, it usually does not list that video first in the search results. I don't know what their algorithm is, but it's hosed up in my opinion. Why not have the search engine give preference to the video title, then go into the keywords? I just did a test and added the full title into the keyword area and when a search is done, I have to wade through over a 100 other videos with very distant association to the search string I entered. Makes no sense. On the other hand, there must have been some successful litigation because when I do a Google search now, my Vimeo stuff actually appears, whereas it had a strong preference to list YouTube results previously.

Not sure how long I'll keep the account, but it just appears more for pro use than YouTube. I have opened a free account on YouTube just a week ago and the quality is not as dire as I thought it would be. I won't monetize, so hopefully distracting ads will not pop up. My understanding is most people with a channel and constant uploads of new material are not making a living off the monetization. If you still live with your parents, maybe it works, assuming you don't have a girlfriend.
 
Three or four years ago, Vimeo's image quality was clearly better than YouTube's. But then YouTube improved their codecs and bitrates, and Vimeo was still looking like 720p to me. Many of you say it's got better image quality than YT right now, but I wouldn't know, I just left the platform at some point.

When I got the email from Vimeo, my first thought was "damn I have to upload my new stuff to Vimeo, I always forget" but then I read the email and well, it seems I just won't upload anything new there.

Yes, what Vimeo gives us is amazing. But they don't live in a vacuum, YT also gives us something amazing, and it's not just free, they actually pay me for the privilege of showing my videos to people. All while bringing me an audience that I just can't reach on Vimeo.

In any case, I understand I have a very different perspective on this, because I'm not trying to reach clients, I'm trying to reach an audience, and the audience is on YT. My videos are about to reach 5 million views on YouTube, whereas on Vimeo they are still at around 150k. It's true that the audience at Vimeo is of much higher quality: professionals that will give you valuable feedback, and clients that may hire you. But the size difference is just killing Vimeo for me: four years ago, I was getting more paying customers on Vimeo than on YouTube, but that has changed completely, YT is also king for this right now, just because it reaches so many people. At least for me. YMMV.
 
Some people have a misconception that ads will automatically pop up in each youtube video. NO.

After you upload a video in youtube, you have to select the option of monetization. And if Youtube's AI algorithm decides that your video is ok for monetisation only then ads will show up in your video. Now Youtube has decided that if your youtube channel doesn't have atleast 1000 subscribers and if your channel doesn't have 4000 hours of views in the past year, then your channel is not eligible for monetisation.
 
Well that is a very important issue if like us you have a Vimeo account per film you produce. I have a Plus account (https://vimeo.com/progressivepictures) for all my general work but when I bring out a film I like to have an account with only the film (https://vimeo.com/251495937). Each time we pay a monthly deal just to upload big files then we leave it as a free account.

Or is there a way to have a Vimeo video with no link to your account?

Steven
 
^ The new limit doesn't affect the videos that I have already uploaded: I'm currently three times over the limit but they say they won't take the videos out. So maybe for your user case it would be OK as well.
 
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