Rampant video piracy has skyrocketed with the rise in video platforms. Broadcasters are now moving on to private video hosting platforms to ensure their viewers get high resolution videos streamed to them like it was meant to be. Free online video hosting platforms for creators, come with heavy restrictions on rights to published content, secure hosting, monetization, branding, and more. In this blog, we will elaborate on the best private video hosting services for 2022.
What is Private Video Hosting?
A private video hosting platform ensures businesses to easily upload, manage and securely monetize their videos on the platform. Private video hosting software ensures that your premium content is not easily downloadable and shared among users.
These are paid platforms, unlike free video hosting platforms like YouTube that provide the security, speed, and consistency broadcasters need to deliver exceptional video playback experiences to their audience.
Private video hosting for businesses leave no space for video piracy and allow content owners to maintain full ownership of their content.
Why host your videos on a private platform?
Hosting your videos on a private platform offers several advantages, primarily revolving around control, site performance, and user experience:
Complete Control Over Content:
When you host your videos on a private platform, you retain full control over how your content is used, accessed, and distributed. Unlike public platforms like YouTube or Vimeo, where users can embed your videos elsewhere or access them without your consent, a private platform allows you to restrict access to authorized users only. This is particularly important for sensitive or proprietary content that you want to limit to a specific audience, such as internal training materials or premium course content.
Site Performance:
Videos hosted on private platforms don’t impact the loading speed of your website. Embedding videos from public platforms can sometimes slow down your site’s loading times, especially if the external platform experiences downtime or latency issues. By hosting videos privately, you ensure that your site’s performance remains optimal, providing a seamless and uninterrupted user experience for visitors.
No Third-Party Ads and Distractions:
Public video hosting platforms often display third-party advertisements and suggested videos, which can distract users and draw them away from your site. These ads may not always align with your brand or messaging, potentially undermining your efforts to engage and retain visitors. By hosting videos privately, you eliminate these distractions, allowing users to focus solely on your content without any external interruptions or competing calls to action.
What to Look for in a Private Video Hosting Platform?
When considering a private video hosting platform, there are several key features and aspects to look for to ensure that it meets your needs in terms of content management, security, accessibility, and scalability. Here’s a detailed breakdown of each aspect:
Video Content Management System (CMS):
- A robust CMS allows you to organize, upload, manage, and distribute your video content efficiently. Look for features such as customizable metadata, categorization, tagging, and search functionalities.
- A user-friendly interface is essential for content creators and administrators to easily navigate and manage the platform.
Encoding & Transcoding Capabilities:
- Encoding and transcoding are crucial for ensuring that your videos are optimized for playback across various devices and network conditions.
- The platform should support a wide range of video formats and resolutions, and offer automatic transcoding to adapt videos for different devices and bandwidths.
- Look for features such as adaptive bitrate streaming to deliver the best possible quality to viewers based on their internet connection speeds.
Security:
- Security is paramount when hosting private videos, especially if you’re dealing with sensitive or proprietary content.
- Features to look for include encryption for data in transit and at rest, role-based access control (RBAC) to manage user permissions, watermarking to deter unauthorized sharing, and secure playback mechanisms.
- The platform should also comply with industry standards and regulations regarding data security and privacy, such as GDPR or HIPAA.
Content Delivery Network (CDN):
- A CDN helps deliver videos efficiently by caching content on servers located closer to the end-users, reducing latency and buffering.
- Look for a platform that integrates with a reliable CDN with global coverage to ensure fast and reliable video delivery to viewers worldwide.
- CDN also helps mitigate against DDoS attacks and ensures scalability during traffic spikes.
Multi-DRM (Digital Rights Management):
- Multi-DRM capabilities are essential for protecting your content from unauthorized access, copying, and distribution.
- The platform should support industry-standard DRM technologies such as Widevine, FairPlay, and PlayReady to encrypt your videos and enforce access controls.
- DRM solutions should be flexible enough to support various playback devices and platforms while providing a seamless viewing experience for authorized users.
Who Needs Private Video Hosting?
Businesses and Corporations:
Many companies conduct internal training sessions, seminars, and workshops for their employees. These sessions often contain proprietary information, strategies, or sensitive discussions about company policies or products. Hosting these videos on private platforms ensures that access is restricted only to authorized personnel, maintaining confidentiality and security.
Educational Institutions:
Educational institutions, online course providers, and training organizations often utilize private video hosting to deliver educational content to their students or learners. These platforms may include universities offering online courses, vocational training programs, or specialized educational content. Private hosting ensures that access is limited to enrolled students or subscribers, protecting copyrighted material and maintaining the integrity of the learning experience.
OTT (Over-the-Top) Platforms:
OTT platforms deliver video content directly to viewers over the internet, bypassing traditional distribution channels. While many OTT platforms offer public access to their content, some may require private video hosting for exclusive or premium content. This may include original series, movies, or live events that are only accessible to paying subscribers or selected audiences.
Platforms Susceptible to Video Piracy:
Any platform that distributes copyrighted content is susceptible to video piracy. Private video hosting helps mitigate this risk by implementing security measures such as encryption, access controls, and digital rights management (DRM) to prevent unauthorized redistribution or downloading of content. Platforms offering premium or exclusive content are particularly vulnerable to piracy and therefore rely on private hosting solutions to safeguard their assets.
Government Agencies and Nonprofits:
Government departments, agencies, and nonprofit organizations often handle sensitive information and require secure platforms to host and distribute videos related to public policy, public service announcements, training programs, and advocacy campaigns.
Healthcare Providers:
Hospitals, medical schools, and healthcare organizations use private video hosting to share educational resources, patient information, training videos, and other healthcare-related content securely and in compliance with patient privacy laws such as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) in the United States.
Top 5 Private Video Hosting Platforms
Muvi Flex
Muvi Flex is an enterprise-level cloud video hosting platform offering VoD solution. It is an end-to-end cloud video platform that offers a variety of advanced features like cloud encoding, top-tier delivery, video security, and cross-device playback that enables enterprises to launch a VoD platform instantly, without any coding knowledge.
Muvi Flex is a robust and customizable video hosting platform that allows you to upload, manage and distribute videos and also lets you build responsive video solutions on your apps/websites. Muvi Flex caters to every industry from Ecommerce to Elearning and is best suited for content creators and marketers.
Its built-in multiple monetization options enable content creators to monetize their content by opting from its varied content monetization models including PPV, subscriptions, and AVoD.
Features of Muvi Flex:
- Private video hosting
- Video encoding and transcoding at multiple bitrates
- Advanced HTML5 video player supported adaptive bitrate video playback
- Multi CDN option for a fast, latency-free video delivery
- High-end video security features like multi-DRM, watermarking, screen record protection and IP restrictions among others
- Cross-browser and cross-device video playback capability
- MRSS (Media RSS) that allows you to publish your videos on multiple third party websites
- Seamless social media integration for all major social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn etc. so that you can target all the users of these platforms
- An advanced CMS with an array of content management features
- Multiple monetization models that include subscriptions, ad-based and TVoD
- Integration with most-popular payment gateways like Paypal, Stripe, PayU, Authorize.net, etc
- Full video API integration
- SDKs for iOS and Android developers
Muvi Flex Pricing
Muvi has multiple pricing tiers for organizations with different sizes and budgets:
- Standard: $199 per month + infrastructure fees (includes 1TB of bandwidth and 1TB of storage and 2000 concurrent viewers)
- Professional: $899 per month (includes 2TB of bandwidth and 2TB of storage, 10000 concurrent viewers, AI-based recommendation engine, and other premium features)
- Enterprise: $2899 per month (includes 5TB of bandwidth and 5TB of storage, unlimited concurrent viewers, a dedicated server with auto-scaling, and enterprise level support)
- Ultimate: Custom plan for elite customers including all enterprise level features and premium consulting services
Wistia
Wistia is a private video hosting platform ideal for marketers. It’s a customizable platform with some robust tools for marketing allowing marketers to create, manage, and stream video content.
Features of Wistia:
- Custom video layer
- Video tools
- CRM integrations
- Seo automation
- Analytics
- Customizable player
- Embeddable channels
Limitations:
No China video delivery
Wistia Pricing:
Wistia has a three-tier pricing plan
- Free: Up to 250 subscribers and 3 videos; cannot remove
- Pro: $99/month, including 10 free videos with additional videos for $0.25/each
- Advanced: Custom pricing, 100 free videos with additional videos for $0.25/each
IBM Video Cloud
IBM Video Cloud is a video streaming platform packed with features like video hosting, transcoding, and live streaming required for creating a professional VoD platform. The cloud video platform has built-in features from encoding, analytics, security to delivering AI-based automated speech to text. The VoD platform is designed for large organizations and enterprises.
Features of IBM’s Video Hosting Platform:
- Video encoding at multiple bitrates
- Adaptive video player
- VoD hosting and live streaming
- Video security features
- AI-powered captioning services
- Video analytics
- Round-the-clock support system
- Video monetization including ad-based and subscriptions
Limitations
- Does not support multiple monetization models
- No built-in SSL secure paywall
Pricing Plans
IBM Video Cloud has a 4-Tier Pricing plan:
- Silver – $99 per month (includes 1 TB of video storage and 100 viewer hours)
- Gold – $499 per month (includes 2 TB of video storage and 2000 viewer hours)
- Platinum – $999/month (includes 5TB of video storage and 5000 viewer hours)
- Custom – This is a custom solution and one has to contact IBM Cloud video for the quotation.
Brightcove
Brightcove is an old player in the video streaming industry and offers video hosting solutions including cloud encoding, video-on-demand hosting. It also offers live streaming solutions. The Brightcove platform is easy to use and has a lot of pre-built features that make the streaming journey of content creators hassle-free. The company supports all kinds of revenue generation models for online video and is best suited for larger enterprises.
Features of Brightcove’s VoD Platform:
- Video encoding at multiple bitrates
- Adaptive streaming
- Scalable cloud-based transcoding
- Security features such as DRM, AES encryption, and watermarking
- Global CDN
- API-based upload and migration tools
- Ad-based video monetization
Limitations:
- High pricing plans are only suited for large enterprises
- China video delivery is not supported
- Additional purchase is required for 24X7 support facility
Pricing Plans
The three-tier pricing plan of Brightcove includes:
- Starter: Includes up to 50 videos and 5 users
- Professional: Includes unlimited videos and 10,000+ plays with no overage plays and 10+ users
- Enterprise: Includes unlimited videos, 100,000+ plays with no overage plays, unlimited upload, and analytics-only users
Kaltura
Kaltura’s video platform is known for its customizable feature, offering video hosting services for enterprises. The platform is feature-rich as it incorporates a host of features including video creation tools, a robust CMS, and enterprise-grade security. However, as reported by customers, their pricing policies are quite hefty which makes it only suitable for large enterprises.
Features of Kaltura’s VOD Platform:
- VoD hosting and live streaming
- Video encoding at multiple bitrates
- Adaptive video player
- Cloud encoding and transcoding
- Integrated CMS Module
- A host of security features
- Video creation tools
- Video Metrics and Analytics
Pricing Plans
Kaltura does not disclose its pricing structure. One needs to contact them for getting customized quotes. Please note that they have different pricing options in terms of their VOD services and Video-Platform-as-a-Service.
Limitations
- Kaltura only allows monetization with external integrations.
- No TVOD, SVOD, or AVOD support
- Kaltura does not support an SSL built-in paywall
- Slow uploading
Wrapping Up
There are many private video hosting platforms available in the industry today. The one you select from this wide range would depend on what features you are looking for, the target audience you want to cater to, and your budget.
Take advantage of Muvi’s Flex’s 14-Day Free Trial to take a test drive of our enterprise-grade video hosting platform.
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