Wistia vs. Vimeo: Which is the best video marketing platform?

If you’re looking for a video hosting platform with more branding controls than YouTube, you really can’t go wrong with Wistia or Vimeo.

Both platforms include tools for creating videos, live streaming, video hosting, customizing your player, sharing your content online, and more.

So how do you decide which one is better for your business? Let’s find out!

What’s the difference between Wistia and Vimeo?

While Wistia and Vimeo have similar product offerings, there are some important differences in who they’re built for and how hard they work for your business.

Vimeo is primarily built for creators and filmmakers who want to showcase and monetize their videos. It recently acquired several companies to enter the enterprise video space, and now it offers corporate video templates and video editing capabilities.

Wistia has been a video marketing platform from day one — it was built specifically for marketers by marketers. Wistia is all about helping marketers use video to boost their return on investment (ROI) and nail their business goals.

Both platforms offer distinct user experiences because they serve different users. Wistia’s user experience revolves around streamlining the entire video marketing process from video creation to advanced analytics, saving you time and effort.

Vimeo vs. Wistia side-by-side comparison

Don’t just take our word for it. We put together a side-by-side comparison of Wistia and Vimeo so you can see what’s similar and what’s different and figure out which video platform will better meet your marketing needs.

Wistia may cost more than Vimeo for premium plans, but you’re getting a comprehensive business-oriented product built brick by brick that’s user-friendly and backed by excellent customer support.

Why Wistia is better for video marketing

While Vimeo is a great platform for video creators and consumers, Wistia offers more robust marketing tools that help you hit your business goals with video. Here are several things you can do with Wistia:

1. A/B test videos to find the best one

If you have two different versions of a video (or two entirely different videos) for a given web page, how do you know which one will get the most plays, engagement, or conversions? It’s easy: A/B test them!

Vimeo doesn’t offer A/B testing, so split testing videos with it would be quite a tedious and nearly impossible task. Wistia, on the other hand, has an A/B testing feature that lets you easily compare two videos with a single embed code.

With Wistia, you can split test thumbnails, versions, or even timeline actions like calls to action (CTAs) and lead capture forms in real time and then choose the winning version to keep on your site.

2. Generate leads with MAP forms on your videos

Videos are a great way to put your brand out there and grow your audience, so why not take it a step further and turn your audience into leads?

Lucky for you, both Wistia and Vimeo let you capture emails straight from your videos with lead generation forms and send them to your favorite email or marketing automation platform! You can also collect emails from webinar registrations and channel subscriptions.

While Vimeo can only sync contact submissions to email platforms, Wistia can also embed lead capture forms from HubSpot, Marketo, and Pardot directly onto your video. This means if you create a form within those platforms, you can use it right in Wistia!

3. Track the performance of your videos

Vimeo shows you how many people have watched your video. However, understanding the quality of these views will help you fine-tune your videos to connect better with your audience. And Wistia helps you do just that.

You can get in-depth video analytics from your Wistia dashboard to track plays, engagement, and conversion rates for your videos. You can see who watched your videos, how many videos they watched, and exactly where they dropped off in each video.

4. Automate lead nurturing with video

To effectively nurture and convert your leads, you need to track when a lead watches a video, how much they watched, and whether they clicked a CTA or filled out a form.

Wistia gives you access to all that information. Heck, when you integrate Wistia with your CRM or marketing automation platform (like HubSpot, Adobe Marketo Engage, and Pardot), you’ll see all that info right in there. This lets you easily segment and score leads based on their viewing activity — and then set up a variety of automated workflows for your sales team, nurture email strategy, and more.

When you integrate Vimeo with these platforms, you’ll only see if your video was viewed or an email was captured. These basic insights can still be useful for tracking general viewer engagement, but you won’t have much to work with if you want to find and nurture your most engaged viewers.

What’s the best alternative to Vimeo for marketers?

Wistia is a great alternative to Vimeo because of its focus on marketers. Every tool is engineered for marketers, and every video is optimized to make your website — not Vimeo.com — rank in search.

When it comes to video marketing, Wistia offers in-depth video analytics, video A/B testing, lead generation tools, and powerful integrations that make video the driving force behind your marketing efforts.

Embed videos that point to your site, not theirs

The main goal of embedding videos on your web page is to drive traffic to your site, not the hosting platform. With Wistia, every video or gallery you embed is optimized for search so that when someone clicks on your video from Google, they land on your web page.

“With Wistia we have more control over our data. The content is hosted only on our site, not in multiple places like you see with YouTube or Vimeo.”

While Vimeo also offers SEO for your videos, the search results often point to their site domain and not yours. This is especially true for their showcase playlists. At Wistia, we believe that all your video content should bring traffic to your website and not Wistia.com, so we’ve made every SEO embed do exactly that.

Video tools for marketers, not creators

As a marketer, you don’t always have the time or budget to create a perfect video. And that’s okay! Video marketing statistics show that audiences often prefer watching less polished videos. That’s why Wistia has a suite of tools for producing impactful videos on a zero-dollar budget, like a video recorder, video editor, webinar software, and team collaboration tools.

Vimeo offers some pretty awesome features like OTT, video on demand, and video subscription for filmmakers and videographers. While these are all great options for creators looking to monetize their content, they don’t help the average business or marketing team achieve their goals. At Wistia, we believe in focusing on what will make a difference in your marketing strategy.

Which is better, Wistia or Vimeo?

When getting started with video for your business, both Vimeo and Wistia have you covered. Vimeo is a great platform for creators and is priced accordingly. If you’re serious about investing in video to grow your business, Wistia is the platform for you!

Wistia is the best video hosting platform for driving traffic to your site, converting viewers into customers, and measuring the ROI of your videos with in-depth analytics tools.

Get started with a free Wistia account today and discover how we can help bring your video marketing strategy to the next level!