Build vs Buy: Private Video Hosting Platform vs Hosting Your Own Videos (self-hosting)
Hari Krishnan - October 17, 2022 - Leave your thoughts.
When 82% of internet traffic comes from videos, it only makes sense to build your content around videos. Today, videos are used for various purposes. Be it marketing, corporate training, branding, and so on. However, videos need the right kind of positioning to fulfil their purpose. To ensure that videos meet their end goal, you need to choose the right way to host them.
What is video hosting?
As the term suggests, video hosting is uploading or hosting your video online to ensure its distribution. For instance, YouTube and Dailymotion are both prime examples of third-party video hosting apps. However, as we have explored before, both platforms have their own as they cater to a general audience and look to reap the benefits rather than helping the videos reach their intended target audience.
Apart from the two aforementioned platforms, there are two other ways to host videos.
(i) Self-hosting
(ii) Private video hosting platforms.
Let’s have a look at them individually before choosing the right way to host your videos.
Self-Hosting: Hosting Your Own Videos
The term is self-explanatory. Hosting your own videos using your website’s servers is known as self-hosting. The videos that you would upload would get stored on your website’s content management system and use the website’s storage space.
Your website will be burdened with videos among other things. Your videos will not be secure and optimized for SEO, and you will not get your hands on in-depth analytics if you opt to host your own videos.
Private Video Hosting
Private video hosting means using a private video hosting platform to host your videos. With a private video hosting platform, all you have to do is embed your videos on a website. The videos uploaded via a private video hosting platform will not add any burden to your website. The responsibility to store and manage the videos will lie on the private video hosting platform’s content management system.
Apart from shouldering the responsibility of hosting and managing your videos. The onus to get incisive analytics, automate your videos for SEO, secure your own videos, automate email marketing, and so on lies on them.
Factors to Consider
1. Control and Autonomy.
Private video hosting platform
You will not have everything tailor-made according to your requirements. You might not have the features that you are looking for. However, if you join hands with a credible video hosting platform. Chances are that they already have every feature that you are looking for. There are chances that they will include the feature you are looking for and add it to their product roadmap.
Hosting your own videos.
You will have complete control and autonomy over your video hosting platforms. You need not be worried about factors like bandwidth and customer limits. However, you would need to invest a lot of resources that could be better spent elsewhere.
2. Monetary Cost
Private video hosting platform
Apart from subscription costs, you do not need to spend a penny on a private video hosting platform. All the operating, maintenance and miscellaneous costs are going to be borne by the private video hosting provider. As your vendor has probably scaled the product, he is also going to provide it to you at a cheaper price than it would cost you. Therefore, after paying according to the contract, you can forget about the financial outflow due to the video hosting platform.
Hosting your own videos
While hosting your videos, you are bound to spend a bomb on content delivery networks and FTP servers. In addition, you are also going to be burdened with the cost of spending on manpower, maintenance and operational costs. If you are planning to host a considerable amount of videos on your own, you better brace yourself for raising costs. However, if you choose to tie up with a private video hosting platform, you can invest your resources in your business and make it more profitable.
3. Maintenance
Private Video Hosting Platform
Zero. You are not going a dime or a single minute on the maintenance of your private video hosting platform? And why would you? The subscription costs for your maintenance. The onus of maintenance is on the private video hosting service once you have signed up.
Hosting your own videos
The maintenance cost and time will constantly keep you on your toes. You never know what comes up when. And because you do not possess the expertise of running your own video hosting service, you might take time to deal with the problem and end up disrupting your video marketing strategy on the whole.
4. Opportunity Cost
Private video hosting platform
Zilch. You will not lose out on anything by subscribing to a private video hosting platform. In fact, it enables you to focus more on the core constituency of your business. You are better off directing your resources to profit-generating activities rather than trying to host your own videos.
Hosting your own videos
Look at the manpower, technology, time, and overall resources that could have been used more judiciously instead of trying to host your own videos. The sheer amount of mounting costs is going to burden and hurt your business to an alarming degree. You will not even realize it until you end up breaking the bank.
5. Time to Value
Private video hosting platforms
The time to value is quick. More often than not, it’s instant. You are getting a finished product in your hand, and you can start using it instantly to realize the value it adds to your company instead of waiting in bated breath for your video hosting solution to come to fruition.
Hosting your own videos
It will be aeons before you can meet your goals by hosting your own videos. Your own video hosting strategy will never match a company that lives and breathes video hosting.
6. Piracy
Private video hosting platform
A private video hosting platform is bound to protect your videos from getting pirated. Features like IP filtering and domain filtering tackle the issue of privacy effectively. You do not need to fret about your videos finding their way out of your website.
Hosting your own videos
The pirates can copy the link to your video and paste it into a box to download it. Once downloaded, the video is not under your watch, and not only does this affect your website security but also impedes you from measuring your video’s success.
7. Speed
Private Video Hosting Platform
With a private hosting platform at your disposal, all you have to do is copy and paste an embedded link to your website to have your video on your website. This does not burden and slows down your website in any way. As they are in the business, they also own lots of CDNs that allow them to deliver videos swiftly.
Hosting your own videos
By hosting your own videos, you are bound to slow down the speed of your website. This, in turn, is going to spoil the user experience of your website and can have a catastrophic domino effect on your business.
8. Storage
Private video hosting platform
Your subscription plan already commands a storage place for your videos in a video hosting platform. You do not have to worry about buying more storage space for your videos, as the video hosting platform will take care of housing your videos.
Hosting your own videos
Over time, your videos will consume a lot of storage space. Not only will you shell out money to purchase more storage space, but it might also make it difficult to manage and organize your videos. While a private video hosting platform provides you with an inbuilt video hosting space.
Roundup
| Factors | Private Video Hosting Videos | Hosting videos on your own |
| Control and autonomy | Less control | More control |
| Monetary Cost | Not a penny more than the subscription costs | Constantly increasing costs |
| Maintenance | You do not have to worry about the maintenance as the hosting platform will take care of it | Constant waste of your resources to maintain the product. |
| Opportunity Cost | No opportunity cost. In fact, it frees up your resources for your own business. | The opportunity cost is high, as you are bound to waste a lot of resources that could have instead been used for your business. |
| Time to Value | The time to value is instant. You have got a readymade video hosting platform. | The time to value is quite late, as you have to build your product from scratch |
| Piracy | A reliable video hosting platform offers you piracy protection features like IP filtering and domain filtering to protect your videos from getting downloaded | Unless you waste your resources on IP filtering and domain filtering, your videos are free to get pirated. |
| Storage | The video hosting platform provides you with ample storage space according to your subscription plan | You have to invest to store your own videos. Storage costs will bleed a lot of money from your business. |
In conclusion, opting for a private video hosting platform makes more sense. It will cost you less, give you more storage space, save you maintenance costs, offer you blazing speed, provide you with video security, and will also get you a readymade hosting platform where you can get started instantly. Even when it comes to attaining control, you can always give suggestions to your private video hosting provider and they will probably incorporate it into their software. We have included a table to help you get a clearer picture.
