Vimeo.com announced Monday (Aug. 1st) a new level of service called Vimeo Pro.If you, like me, are a Vimeo PLUS user you might be confused as to the differences between a “Plus” account and a “Pro” account.
Simply put, Vimeo Pro is designed to give users a privately branded and separate commercial video service. In other words, Vimeo Pro removes your video content from the Vimeo community and gives you complete control over said content.
For example you can:
- Brand their video player – Add your own logo and color scheme.
- Use your own video player – Don’t even bother with Vimeo’s, just use video content streamed fromt he Vimeo servers in your own player (I happen to like the Vimeo player quite well).
- Create a Portfolio – No coding necessary. Create your own video portfolio using one of Vimeo’s well designed templates.
All this for $199 per year (a $140 price difference for Plus users).
Now for the real question:
Should You Upgrade?
The first point to clarify is that this is not an upgrade. Vimeo themselves make it clear by stating:
Is PRO an upgrade over Plus?
No! We built PRO specially for businesses and Plus specifically for people.
If you are church video content manager there are few good reasons to consider it.
1. Access to your video files.
Vimeo Pro gives you access to HD, SD and mobile versions of your video as an actual video file. This is somethings they did NOT do up until now.
Previously, it had been impossible to do a video podcast using Vimeo because podcast feeds require a reference to the actual media file. Many Churches do video podcast versions of their Sunday sermons. Now Vimeo gives you that option.
2. Price.
$16 a month for 50 gig of storage and 250k plays. Granted, it’s impossible to calculate how much bandwidth you’ll actually be using this way, but here’s are my imaginary calculations.
40 hours of highly compressed HD footage is roughly 800 GB of data. So lets assume you sream 40 hours of video content a month (sermons and whatnot).
If you used 800 GB/month, your Amazon Web Services bill would be $93.63 for one month.
My calculation could be way off here, so feel free to jump in and prove me wrong. but it seems like Vimeo is giving us a good deal.
Should you hit your play limit or storage cap, you just have to buy an additional package to continue to stream content. Vimeo states that they will notify you long before you hit the limits.
Conclusion
I’ve changed our Church account to Vimeo Pro and am trying it out. The main incentive for me is the access to video files for video podcasts of our sermons. If you already have some other way of doing this, I see no need for most Churches to get a Pro account. Video professionals, however, could see many more advantages.
Are you going to try Vimeo Pro?
Update: As Blake from Vimeo pointed out in the comments, Vimeo Pro users will not see ads on their video pages like all other Vimeo users.
This could definitely be a motivating factor for churches to move to Pro.
Josh Bartolomucci says
Just visited with a church client about the lack of Vimeo podcasting. This may be our answer. Thanks for the write up Brian.
Brian Notess says
I was excited about it too. Glad to be helpful.
Clayton Bell says
Hey Brian!
Great post, thanks for the insights. I have our church on Plus but was hesitant to go PRO. Can you help me a bit with the podcasting past? How would that work? is there a feed Vimeo now provides, or would you have to manual enter the file each week somewhere?
This would be worth every penny if it allowed podcasting, just not sure how it does that…
Brian Notess says
Most people use some kind of service to set up their video podcasts, but in any case, you’re required to have the exact url for the media content of your podcast in the tag.
Previously, Vimeo hasn’t linked directly to Users’ video files (for good reason), now it’s a feature of of Vimeo Pro.
Vimeo doesn’t host your feeds, you have to set up the RSS feed yourself. If you use something like WordPress, this should be pretty easy. Otherwise there are lots of tools that will help you create and maintain a feed.
https://churchm.ag/podcasting-sermons-recording/
This series on podcasts (even though its audio) might help get you started.
Clayton Bell says
So since I use WordPress, I would put the link to the actual file into a post (tagged in a video podcast category) like I do with an MP3 for the audio podcast, put that wordpress category feed into feedbruner, and then submit that feed to iTunes?
Brian Notess says
There are a bunch of plugins that help write your XML for your WordPress feed. I’ve used
http://www.blubrry.com/powerpress/
But I know there are a bunch of others. With blubrry you just add the media URL when you are drafting the post. it can be audio or video.
Eric Dye says
Brian is pure awesomeness!
Phillip Gibb says
hmm, not me – I can’t motivate the move to plus.
But will move the church’s vimeo account to plus; pro is out of budget and we don’t need to podcast – just yet
Brian Notess says
Plus was a no-brainer for me personally. Not having my videos playable on mobile devices was enough motivation for me to pony-up the $60 a year.
Nathan Creitz says
Can you stream services live on Vimeo Pro?
Brian Notess says
No. At least not in the way you can with something like Amazon.
http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/04/live-streaming-with-amazon-cloudfront-and-adobe-flash-media-server.html
To stream from Vimeo you have to have a complete and uploaded video file. A lot of churches pre-record their services for the “live” stream though.
Blake Whitman says
Hey Brian, great post. I just wanted to add that PRO members also enjoy no ads on their videos, for them or for their viewers, which we know is a feature the Church community has been asking for for a long time. Just thought I’d mention it!
Blake Whitman
VP, Creative Development
Vimeo.com
Brian Notess says
Cheers, Blake, I’ll add it to the post.
Eric J says
Please Please Please do a follow up post in 2 months to let us know how things are going 😀
Brian Notess says
Will do! 🙂
Brian Nicholson says
I looked into this when I first read the announcement. I have a handful of Vimeo Plus accounts for our church, school, etc. It seems clear to me that podcasting support (which I didn’t know about until I read your post–thanks) is the only possible justification for most churches. While some of the other features are nice (being able to add a logo to the player, for instance), they don’t justify the expense.
Quick price comparison: The sermons I upload weekly to Vimeo are 1 GB or 2 GB, depending on the quality level I choose. Let’s assume 1 GB per week, or 50 GB per year. Let’s also assume that we don’t approach the 250,000 view limit, and that we don’t upload anything other than sermons.
Vimeo Plus:
$60/year x 4 years = $240
Vimeo Pro:
$199 first year
$398 second year (50 GB more space)
$597 third year (50 GB more space)
$796 fourth year (50 GB more space)
Total: $1990
Jason says
We currently use Vimeo Plus. I’ve heard conflicting reports on whether or not you can submit your Vimeo Pro feed to iTunes as a video podcast. Since you have it, would you be willing to try it? I’m happy to pay the $200/year if it does that for us.
Thanks guys!
Matt says
Hey Jason,
did you end up trying to pull content from vimeo for Podcast distributed on iTunes Music Store?
Matt
john says
It’s unclear to me whether you can or cannot use Vimeo (Plus/Pro) for iTunes PodCasts. Is someone successfully using their Vimeo hosted videos on an iTunes podcast?