It appears that Vimeo issues ultimatums for independent creators. Filmmakers claim that Vimeo demands them to pay thousands of dollars or their videos will be deleted. That’s because of a business shift Vimeo declared on. As stated by Vimeo: “Today we are a technology platform, not a viewing destination. We are a B2B solution, not the indie version of YouTube”. This announcement indicates that Vimeo is not the home of independent creators anymore.
$3,500 per year or your videos will be deleted
“I was already paying $200 a year, which I think is pretty expensive,” said Lois van Baarle to The Verge. “But I thought, well, it’s a quality platform.” She’s uploaded 117 subscriber-only videos so far, and each one only gets around 150 views on average. Her most viewed video has around 815 views. So the notice Vimeo sent van Baarle on March 11th shocked her. Her bandwidth usage was within the top 1 percent of Vimeo users, the company said, and if she wanted to keep hosting her content on the site, she’d need to upgrade to a custom plan. Her quoted price: $3,500 a year. She was given a week to upgrade her content, decrease her bandwidth usage, or leave Vimeo. Other filmmakers were forced to pay thousands of dollars per year, or their videos will be deleted.
Vimeo is getting rid of indie creators
Back then we’ve reported on cases in which Vimeo’s users were surprised to discover that their videos were deleted after switching from a Premium account to a Basic account. This situation forced users to continue and pay Vimeo to keep their videos alive. Vimeo said that it is due to storage, feature development, and more factors. As stated by Vimeo: “ Most video platforms that offer free storage are financially supported by in-stream advertising. Vimeo, on the other hand, is a proudly ad-free and subscriber-supported video platform. The cost of our Plus, PRO, Business, and Premium memberships covers the expenses of all of the services we provide, including feature development, uploading and conversion, video storage, and video playback. Because video storage and delivery are ongoing costs to our business, there is a limit to how much storage we can offer to our free members”. However, even ‘light’ users (not the ‘heavy’ ones) needed to pay a vast amount of money in order to keep their videos on the platform.
The cost of our Plus, PRO, Business, and Premium memberships covers the expenses of all of the services we provide, including feature development, uploading and conversion, video storage, and video playback.
Vimeo
Pray that your audiences will not watch your videos in 4K
This is how Vimeo describes the basics of bandwidth usage: “As a general rule, we do not limit or impose overages on the amount of bandwidth that someone on our platform is using. However, this is subject to fair use. If the bandwidth usage reaches unusually high levels (i.e., in the 99th percentile of users when it comes to bandwidth consumption, which starts at 2 TB per month), we do require that they work with our team to transition to a custom plan. If this occurs on your Vimeo account, someone on our team will reach out to you about the next steps. It’s worth noting that most accounts on Vimeo never reach this threshold”. Hence, you don’t want your audiences to watch your videos in 4K, since it’ll elevate the bandwidth, and you’ll have to adapt a ‘Custom’ plan that can cost thousands of dollars.
Vimeo: “We are not the indie version of YouTube.”
The ultimatums to indie video creators come as Vimeo is shifting focus toward large corporate clients, leaving longtime Vimeo users to scramble for an alternative. As stated in the Vimeo 2022 Annual Shareholder Letter: “Today we are a technology platform, not a viewing destination. We are a B2B solution, not the indie version of YouTube”. Therefore, Vimeo clearly states that it’s not the home of independent creators anymore.
If so, what’s Vimeo?
10 months ago, Vimeo spun out of IAC as its 11th independent publicly-traded company and the first SaaS business born from its formidable portfolio. Vimeo went public during a pandemic, experienced a share of growing pains, and ultimately did not achieve the ambitions it set for the year. “All of this has made us stronger, more self-aware, and more disciplined” the company states. Also, Vimeo has elaborated on its identity. As stated in the Annual Shareholder Letter: “The majority of our potential customers don’t yet know the answer to this question, largely because Vimeo has evolved so materially over the last few years. Today we are a technology platform, not a viewing destination. We are a B2B solution, not the indie version of YouTube”.
We are a B2B solution, not the indie version of YouTube.
Vimeo
Final thoughts
So there you go. Vimeo has turned/pivoted to be a B2B company. It’s not an alternative to YouTube. As such, if you are an independent creator, filmmaker, or videographer, Vimeo is NOT for you. There’s no reason to use the Vimeo platform for filmmaking. It’s slow, un-friendly (from a GUI perspective), very pricy, and inferior to YouTube, which offers better quality, faster speed, and much higher exposure to potential audiences.
Are your videos still on Vimeo?
I paid about $250 for a Vimeo pro plan just so I could publish a recent fan tribute movie montage. It was blocked by YouTube for copywriter infringement so I didn’t know any better alternative. If Vimeo ever decides to ask me for more money, my future montages will have no home I’m afraid.
People that think things are always free forever without thinking that behind a bussines you have real humans with families needs and dreams. If you can’t afford it you don’t need it. In 2022 being an independent filmmaker means also you have a real business plan for your production and your movie distribution otherwise you are juste a clown.
You have many platforms to share a movie or a video art work even alternative way like peertube if you like to be out of the commerical system.
But just complain that a business want to gain some money is just pathetic.
Vimeo has been slowly going down hill for years and years.
One day I woke up to all my videos (800) deleted and my account banned by vimeo. All in the claim of music copyright. None of my videos were public and all private with passwords and with copyrighted music. These were videos for major brands that we had complete copyright to music as we were the ones hired to do it. They never had anyway of letting us prove it and just flipped the switch overnight to turn on copyright.
So F**K vimeo and hope this latest idea helps them go even more downhill.