Best YouTube Alternatives for Content Creators and Businesses

Many course and content creators use YouTube to host their videos because it is free and familiar. Not many people just starting out are looking for YouTube alternatives to share their video content.

YouTube changed how embedded videos appear as they’ve inserted a “Watch on YouTube” prompt in the bottom left corner of the video.

Depending on your business goals for your videos you may want to move your videos to another hosting platform, alternative to YouTube.

I’ll break down my recommendations based on common goals for your video usage:

1. Creating awareness through a YouTube channel.
2. Creating awareness and engagement primarily outside of YouTube.
3. Delivering paid content within courses and memberships.

Creating awareness through a YouTube channel.

Continue to use YouTube for your videos.

Although they may be embedded in your website to gain new leads through search engines, if a visitor clicks to Watch on YouTube it will increase the metrics of your YouTube channel. They may subscribe and follow you on YouTube which will increase the visibility of your business.

Creating awareness and engagement primarily outside of YouTube.

If your business is not dedicating resources to grow on YouTube and simply using this platform to host your content, I recommend you move to another video hosting service or YouTube alternative.

Although Google seems to favor showcasing YouTube videos on their search engine, they have not made any official statement confirming this. In fact, they claim that the most relevant content will appear on their search engine. I’ve confirmed this myself as I have seen videos hosted on Vimeo displayed within Google search results.

Any favoritism by Google regarding YouTube is minimal and since your business doesn’t have a YouTube sales strategy you are better investing your resources in other more successful channels for your business.

You’ll want to replace YouTube embedded videos from your website to avoid having visitors click on “Watch on YouTube” which would have them leave your website. To maximize your leads and sales, you must keep your visitor engaged within your website.

Delivering paid content within courses and memberships.

Switch your YouTube embedded course, membership and paid content videos to another hosting platform. The “Watch on YouTube” prompt reduces the perceived value and quality of your product.

For most users, this may also lead to your customers accessing your video URLs on YouTube and sharing it with people that have not purchased your product or service more easily which will result in lost revenue.

Which hosting platform do you recommend and how can I quickly move my videos?

As a YouTube alternative, I strongly recommend Vimeo as it is affordable and contains several security features. My favorite is that you can limit the domains in which your videos can be embedded. For example, if you upload course videos using LearnDash for WordPress, you can prevent people from displaying your paid content outside of your website.

Depending on the Vimeo plan you chose there is an upload limit which resets weekly. If you have many videos to move over you may need to purchase a higher monthly plan during the initial transfer period, after which you can probably downgrade to a lower plan.