Hosting
Video hosting for your own pages
Upload once, and have your video play inside your own site behind your own rules — no advertising, no recommendations for somebody else’s content, and no vendor logo on the surface your audience sees. What it costs is decided by two numbers you can predict.
- Transcoding
- HLS ladder
- Ready to embed
Upload once; the ladder and the embed follow
The basics
What video hosting actually is
Video hosting stores your video files on infrastructure built for delivering them, and serves them to viewers through a delivery network rather than from your own web server. Serving video from a normal web host is the classic mistake: a single large file, a single origin, and a page that collapses the moment more than a handful of people press play at once.
A platform does more than store the file. It transcodes your upload into several quality renditions so playback can adapt to the viewer’s connection, delivers those renditions from close to the viewer, and provides a player and an embed so the video behaves consistently across the pages you put it on.
The distinction that matters commercially is whose surface the video lives on. A free public platform gives you hosting and takes the audience: advertising you did not choose, recommendations for other people’s content, and viewer data you cannot see. Hosting it yourself keeps the page, the branding and the analytics on your side of the line.
The mechanism
What happens to a file you upload
The pipeline, described as far as it is verified — and no further.
- Account-scoped uploadIngest
- The file is accepted into your account, through the dashboard or the API. Uploads belong to a project, which is the unit that carries protection and player settings.
- Transcoding into an HLS ladderProcessing
- Outputs are planned from your project settings and produced as HLS/CMAF renditions. That ladder is what allows a viewer on a poor connection to keep watching at a lower rung instead of buffering.
- Encrypted on-demand deliveryOptional per project
- On-demand HLS can be packaged with AES-128 encryption. An intercepted encrypted segment is not a directly watchable media file. A project uses one protection mode — AES or certified DRM, not both.
- Domain-restricted playbackAccess
- Where you have listed origins and the account-level encryption-key exemption is off, playback keys are refused to anywhere else, which is what stops an embed copied to another site from continuing to serve your video from your account. An empty list or that exemption leaves key requests unrestricted.
- Playback through the playerDelivery
- The same player and embed serve every surface you put video on, carrying your branding on plan-entitled accounts and presenting subtitle and audio tracks where they exist.
- Customer-identified analyticsPlus and larger plans
- Supply your own user ID in the embed to connect accepted playback events to that identifier for per-user reporting alongside aggregate analytics.
The decision
Free platforms versus hosting it yourself
Retained from the legacy comparison, with the competitor prices and savings percentages removed. The trade is structural, not a price argument.
Without control
A free public platform
Genuinely good at reach and discovery, and free. You pay in control over the context your video appears in.
- Advertising on your content that you did not select.
- Recommendations at the end, sometimes for a direct competitor.
- Platform branding on the player and the page.
- Viewer data the platform holds and you see a summary of.
On your own terms
Hosting on your own pages
You provide the audience; the platform provides delivery, protection and measurement. The page stays yours.
- No advertising and no third-party recommendations.
- A player that carries your brand on plan-entitled accounts.
- Access you control by domain, signed link and subscription state.
- Aggregate reporting you can pull into your own dashboards.
How to choose
What to compare when you evaluate platforms
Retained from the legacy five-factor guidance, which was the most useful section on the page. Written so it works even if you choose somebody else.
Protection, and its limits
Look for encrypted delivery, domain restrictions and signed links. If content is premium or contractually protected, ask about DRM — and be sceptical of anyone who tells you screen recording can be prevented.
Delivery and storage arithmetic
Work out your monthly delivery before you compare prices, because delivery is the number that moves. Ask whether it is included in a band or billed per gigabyte, and what happens in a month that runs hot.
Player customisation
The player is your brand surface. Check which parts are actually configurable and which are fixed, and confirm whether branding is plan-gated before you assume it.
API and integration
If video is part of your product rather than beside it, you need programmatic upload, organisation and access control. Check the current API contract rather than a feature list.
Pricing you can predict
Look for a model you can model. Overage terms matter more than headline price, and a platform that will put terms in writing before you commit is telling you something useful.
Where this fits
What people host this way
Retained from the legacy use cases, each with the reason self-hosting is the right call.
Online courses
Lessons belong inside the course, behind the enrolment that paid for them — not on a public platform with a competitor’s course recommended afterwards.
Corporate and internal video
Training and internal communications on your own intranet pages, with playback restricted to your own domains.
Marketing video
Product and landing-page video with no advertising, no vendor logo, aggregate reporting and optional customer-identified viewing you can connect to the rest of the funnel.
Media libraries
Back catalogues where adaptive delivery and a consistent player matter more than discovery, because you already have the audience.
Questions
Video hosting questions
Carried over from the legacy FAQ, with the held facts and over-promises removed.
Can I host video on my own website without a public platform?
Yes — that is the whole point of this product. You embed a lightweight HTML5 player on your own pages, with no advertising, no suggested videos and no vendor branding on plan-entitled accounts. The video is delivered by the platform; the page and the audience stay yours.
How much storage do I need?
It depends on your source quality and duration, so measure rather than guess: check the total size of the files you already have, and add the rate at which you publish. The pricing page renders the current per-plan storage from the catalogue, and the bandwidth calculator handles the delivery half, so the two live figures stay in one place each.
How do I stop my videos being downloaded?
Encrypted delivery means an intercepted segment is not a watchable media file, and domain restrictions mean playback keys reach only the origins you list, once that list is populated and the account-level key exemption is off. Signed, expiring links limit how long access lasts. Screen recording by a viewer who is already entitled to watch is a separate problem with its own layer — Screen Shield and dynamic watermarking address it, and the secure video hosting page sets out which layer answers which risk.
What is the difference between hosting and streaming?
Hosting is storing and delivering pre-recorded video on demand. Live streaming is broadcasting in real time. Both are available here, but they are priced and protected differently — on-demand delivery is encrypted, while live segment encryption is available for eligible streams and plans, so confirm it for your stream.
Can I use it with my LMS or course platform?
The embed is standard, so it works anywhere you can place an HTML embed and the platform permits it. We have removed the previous list of named course platforms rather than imply tested integrations we have not evidenced — if a specific platform is decisive, test the embed there or ask us.
Where is my video stored, and can I choose?
Storage regions are a plan property, so which are available to you comes from the current catalogue rather than from this page. If data residency is a compliance requirement, tell us the jurisdiction and we will confirm what is available in writing — a page like this is not the right place to make a compliance assertion.
What does video hosting cost?
Plans are priced on storage and monthly delivery, and the pricing page renders the current catalogue directly. Estimate your delivery first with the bandwidth calculator; that decides which band you are looking at more than anything else.
The video hosting cluster
Every page under video hosting, and the question each one answers
This page is the authority for the cluster. Each entry below goes deeper on one decision, so follow the one that matches the question you actually arrived with.
Secure video hosting
Which protection layer answers which risk, and how encryption, DRM, watermarking and Screen Shield relate to each other.
Video download protection
Why an HLS ladder has no single downloadable file, and what a determined viewer can still do.
Private video hosting for internal training
Domain-restricted playback and expiring links for briefings and training that must not travel outward.
Video hosting with advanced analytics
What playback reporting returns, and where per-user reporting starts.
Video hosting with subtitle support
How subtitle and caption tracks are attached and how the player presents them.
Video hosting API for developers
The integration-shaped version of this page, for a team putting video inside their own product.
Ad-free video hosting for online courses
Why a course page cannot afford a recommendation strip, and how a gated lesson is put together.
Video hosting for creators
Publishing to an audience you own rather than to a discovery feed.
Best video hosting platform for creators
The comparison a creator runs before moving a library, written so it still helps if you choose someone else.
Video hosting for marketing videos
Keeping a conversion page free of another company’s catalogue, and measuring what the video did.
Affordable video hosting for small business
What a small library and a modest audience actually cost once storage and delivery are separated.
What a small-business plan includes
What a specific small-business plan covers in storage and monthly delivery, checked against the live pricing page.
Cheap video hosting for many videos
Why the number of videos matters less than storage and monthly delivery, and how to check that before you commit.
Video hosting for large libraries
Organising a large catalogue into projects, and how storage allowances are read from the catalogue.
High bandwidth video hosting
What a large audience consumes in delivery, and how to estimate it before a launch.
Scalable video hosting for growing businesses
What changes as a library and an audience grow, and which decisions are worth making early.
Fast video hosting
How adaptive HLS keeps a viewer on a poor connection watching, and what start time depends on.
Reliable video hosting you can verify
How to test delivery reliability yourself rather than take an availability figure on trust.
Easy to use video hosting platform
The upload, project and embed workflow, for a team without a video specialist.
Video hosting platform comparison
The factors worth comparing across platforms, and how to run the comparison on your own content.
Vimeo alternative video hosting
What moves across when you migrate, and which differences matter in practice.
White-label video hosting
Which player and page surfaces carry your brand, and the plan gates on each.
Automatic subtitles
Generating subtitle tracks and getting them onto the player.
Video analytics
Aggregate reporting by default, and the per-user reporting you can opt into.
Live streaming
The live side of the platform, with its own cluster of ingest, scheduling, recording and encryption pages.
Try it with your own video and your own domain rules
Upload a real file, list your domain, embed it on a page, and try to play it from somewhere else. That is the product in fifteen minutes.