How These 3 Best Online Video Platforms Are Driving Success to Businesses

You’re looking to stream new videos, or maybe you’re dipping your toes into the exciting world of video marketing. Either way, you’ve likely stumbled upon many platforms offering to showcase your content. But how do you determine which one is the right fit for you?

In this blog post, I dive deep into 3 of the best online video platforms, covering their features, the pros, the cons, and everything in between.

I’ll also share some inspiring success stories to see how businesses like yours have leveraged these platforms to achieve incredible results.

Best Online Video Platforms with Success Stories

1. Uscreen

#1 all-in-one platform for growing your streaming business.

Pros and Cons

Uscreen is a leading all-in-one platform that makes it easy to build and grow your streaming business across multiple platforms. It helps users reach, engage, and cost-effectively monetize their audiences regardless of age or buying power.

Uscreen is the best choice for content providers looking to maximize their audience and revenue potential online while minimizing risk & operational overhead.

Founded in 2015, Uscreen has since grown to solve many businesses’ problems in diverse ways. Its unique features set it apart from its competitors.

The platform comes with branded OTT (Over-the-top) apps that allow you to deliver your video content via the internet instead of cables or a satellite TV. With these OTT apps, your customers can easily stream videos on Android and iOS devices and TV using Android TV, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Roku Box.

It also offers unique themes and customization abilities to help you turn your ideas into beautiful digital video experiences. Best of all, you don’t need to hire a developer, as the platform comes with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface that allows anyone to customize their videos without any coding knowledge.

What’s more, you can easily monetize your videos using the platform’s turn-key monetization platform, built to help you upload, distribute, and monetize your videos.

Its key features include:

• Mobile TV Apps: You don’t need coding skills to launch your own Mobile TV Apps.
• Live Streaming: Offering a five-star live viewing experience for your audience.
• Video Experience: Easy to upload, organize, and distribute your videos all in one place.
• Video Monetization: This enables you to earn recurring revenue from your content.
• Membership Tools: Unlocks the true potential of your videos.
• Community Features: Helps to forge a strong bond with your audience using community features.
• Marketing Tools and Analytics: Provides marketing tools and automation pre-built for ease of use and insightful analytics on payments, user engagement, video performance, and more.
• Flexible Monetization Tools: Allows for a design of your subscription offering however you want, including free trials, one-off courses, and a variety of payment options.
• Support: Provides a dedicated expert for onboarding and account management and 24/7 customer support.

Uscreen Success Story

Jason David, the creator of MyTRIBE.watch, used Uscreen to launch a successful video streaming business. After facing personal health issues and a career setback, Jason decided to turn his life around and create content for a community he deeply cares about—families who desire Christian content to enjoy together.

MyTRIBE came into existence during the pandemic when families were stuck at home and there was a discernible lack of content that could engage all family members together. Seeing this gap, Jason decided to partner with Uscreen, which enabled him to launch his service in just two weeks.

Uscreen’s customizable platform allowed Jason to quickly upload and share content. Even when starting with a minimal content library, he worked steadily, creating a full-length episode around each key Bible story or lesson every week. As more content was added, the service’s value grew, enabling easier sales.

Uscreen’s aesthetically pleasing, modern, and clean design also attracted Jason. He appreciated how professional Uscreen-enabled platforms looked, which played a crucial role in his choice of service provider.

Uscreen then helped Jason launch a special Over-The-Top (OTT) app a few months later. This app included more engaging content like an educational Llama game and opportunities for his subscribers to connect more interactively with his service.

Uscreen handled all the technical aspects of creating this app, making it available on platforms like Roku, Amazon, and Fire TV.

Roughly a year after launching, MyTRIBE has grown immensely, with over 50 episodes and 1500 paid subscribers, growing by 25 customers per day. Jason credits a lot of the business’s success to Uscreen’s features, like their upsell feature, which boosted his revenue and subscriber count, and the abandoned cart feature, which helped gain customers through targeted email marketing.

So, to sum up, Uscreen was instrumental in helping MyTRIBE kick off and achieve phenomenal success by providing quick launch capabilities, effective add-on features, sleek design, and comprehensive technical support for app creation.

2. Vimeo

All-in-one video platform used by over 230 million users globally.

Pros and Cons

Vimeo is a video-sharing website launched in 2004, creating a platform for creatives to seamlessly and elegantly expose their work to the world.

Over the years, Vimeo has evolved into a complete video platform that provides filmmakers, animators, and content creators with powerful tools to manage their projects.

Some of the more popular features include:

• Video Recording and Sharing: Vimeo lets you upload lengthy videos and share them on multiple platforms.
• Video Analytics: Track your video’s performance with detailed metrics provided by Vimeo.
• Vimeo OTT: Filmmakers can monetize their work with Vimeo’s unique features.
• Multiple Video Formats: Upload your videos in multiple formats, including MOV, MPEG-DASH, or WMV.
• Vimeo App: Get the Vimeo app on your mobile device for video viewing on the go.
• Video Playlists: Vimeo’s CMS lets you create and manage your own video playlists.
• User-Friendly Interface: Enjoy a fast and customizable experience with Vimeo’s clean user interface.

Vimeo is a great online video platform for professionals who want to host their multimedia content in an easy-to-use and well-designed site that will help them grow their business or brand.

Best of all, Vimeo offers its users unlimited bandwidth, meaning you won’t have to worry about traffic limits on your videos.

Vimeo Success Story

Kengos is a shoe brand founded by Dave Costello and Micah Heftman that has committed itself to sustainability and transparency in footwear manufacturing. The Brooklyn startup utilized the power of video to share its sustainability-focused message globally.

Kengos recognized the value of video in telling their sustainability narrative from the onset. The company’s first product, the Lace Up shoe, is predominantly plant-based. To promote this eco-friendly product, the founders turned to Kickstarter, where their video-centric campaign generated over $50,000 in sales. This campaign not only enabled them to expand their market reach but also grew their email subscriber list to 14,000 potential customers.

For Kengos, their website is instrumental in driving their brand’s ethos, and Vimeo’s video capability plays a vital role. A primary video, “The Production Process,” showcases the brand’s principles, distinctiveness, and commitment to making climate-optimized footwear stylish, comfortable, affordable, and durable without compromising sustainability. Using Vimeo, the videos uploaded by Kengos have reported 34% more engagement than their photos.

The young startup is now brainstorming more behind-the-scenes video shoots to reinforce their dedication to sustainability. These and more embedded videos on the site will continue to serve as a tool for keeping customers engaged and informed.

Vimeo has been instrumental to Kengos, supporting the startup’s strategic communication and growth and providing a platform to effectively narrate their sustainability journey. By leveraging the power of video, Kengos has been able to vividly share their story, attract a large customer base, and ultimately make their vision a reality.

3. Wistia

A leading video platform that converts users’ videos and podcasts into marketing machines.

Pros and Cons

Founded in 2006, Wistia has consistently offered the best video creation, measurement, and distribution features globally. This has seen the platform attracting over 500,000 businesses/users globally to date.

With Wistia’s fully customizable player, users can deliver high-impact videos on any page of their website. As a result, it will have the highest SEO rankings among all online video platforms!

Wistia’s dashboard enables users to track how many people watch their videos, where they watch, and how long. It also detects who watched to the end of your video to understand audiences’ needs better and improve content marketing strategies.

Wistia’s powerful analytics helps users identify which videos perform best by revealing which ones generate more leads or sales each month. This enables users to optimize future efforts to produce more profitable videos.

As one of the best online video platforms, Wistia boasts embed channels where users can publish a collection of videos from various sources. These channels can then be shared with others, including Gmail contacts and social media profiles like Facebook or Twitter.

The software integrates perfectly with your favorite marketing tools to make your marketing work easier and more efficient.

Wistia Success Story

Kovai, a multi-product SaaS company, has leveraged the power of video marketing with Wistia to enhance audience engagement and increase customer conversion rates. They host their extensive video library on this platform, which has not only improved their engagement by 60% but also converted 30% more free trial users into paying customers.

With an ever-expanding database of over 1,000 videos, Kovai places heavy reliance on product tutorial videos to help customers understand and appreciate their products. Moreover, the use of Wistia analytics empowers them to optimize their content tailored specifically for their audience needs.

In addition to hosting their video library, Wistia also aids Kovai in several other ways:

• Engagement Optimization: Through Wistia Analytics, Kovai’s product marketing team assesses video performance to strategize their marketing campaigns effectively. Wistia’s engagement graphs and heatmaps offer far more detailed insights compared to Google Analytics or YouTube Analytics, helping them to understand their audience better.
• Personalized Outreach: Wistia’s video heatmaps allow Kovai’s sales and customer support teams to pinpoint exactly where their viewers are most engaged and losing interest, inform their contact strategies, and aid in customer education and product training.
• Lead Generation: Wistia’s email capture form, Turnstile, helps Kovai capture leads from their on-demand webinar videos.
• Customer Conversion: Using Wistia’s customizable video player, Kovai boosts customer engagement and prompts free trial users to transition to paid status.

Essentially, Kovai’s use of Wistia has turbocharged their video marketing strategy and improved product adoption.

What Is an Online Video Platform?

An online video platform is a way for organizations and people to deliver video content to their audience.

In other words, it is a technology that lets you upload, host, store, share, and play videos online without being there at the same time. You can use an online video platform to have fun, learn something, or talk to others.

With a modern online video platform, you can upload a video in any format. It will be automatically encoded to work best on all devices and networks.

Most of these platforms also offer features and functions like closed captions, customizable players, video analytics, and the technical infrastructure for video delivery like edge caching, eCDNs, etc.

What Is Video Streaming?

Video streaming is a popular way to deliver video content over the Internet. It allows users to watch videos at their convenience, as opposed to traditional television, which is usually scheduled and watched live.

The main advantage of video streaming is that it does not require large amounts of storage space and can be viewed on any device with a screen and an Internet connection.

It is commonly used for live events such as concerts or sporting events. Video streaming providers use adaptive bitrate streaming technology to optimize the quality of the video being streamed based on the user’s Internet connection speed, which helps ensure that viewers see high-quality streams even if they’re on slower connections such as 3G/4G mobile data plans or other slower Wi-Fi networks.

There are many types of video streams, including:

• Live streams (live broadcasts) are typically used for breaking news or entertainment shows with no pre-recorded content available.
• VOD (video on demand) refers to movies and TV shows that are available for viewing at any time after they have aired (typically by renting or purchasing them).
• DVR (digital video recorder) refers to recording live TV programs so that users can watch them later without missing out on anything important while they are gone.

Should I Host My Own Videos or Use a Video Hosting Server?

Even whether you have a dedicated server or a virtual machine, the very presence of video on your server might cause it to experience a large burden, even if there is only a moderate quantity of traffic.

In most cases, the size of a single 720p film will be greater than 100 gigabytes. In comparison, the normal size of a standard webpage with photos will be less than a couple of megabytes.

Therefore, the server needs one gigabyte of bandwidth for just ten users who watch one minute of high-definition video. For the same amount of bandwidth, a page with both text and images could receive a thousand or more visitors.

Why Can’t I Just Use YouTube As a Video Hosting Site?

There is little doubt that YouTube was the service that pioneered the video movement. It continues to be one of the most influential companies in the business. Nevertheless, as we’ve seen, there are many options besides YouTube.

The market for online video content has been flooded with numerous providers in recent years, including those in the above list. Each of these products is designed to meet the needs of a particular segment of businesses and customers. In addition to this, they provide one-of-a-kind toolkits that make the video production process much more efficient.

As streaming platforms, the above services offer a multitude of benefits to both individual producers and companies alike. While YouTube is more geared toward the average consumer, paid OVPs allow you to target specific audiences, which results in greater traction for your videos.

One more benefit that online video platforms have over YouTube is that their business approach relies not just on advertisements. You can offer your customers a subscription-based or pay-per-view payment approach, depending on the platform you’re using.

Suppose you run a company that needs to generate videos for internal communication and training. In that case, protecting your employees’ privacy is an important consideration. It is not possible to simply upload movies to YouTube containing private and secret company information.

OVPs provide users with significantly improved safety and privacy options in this regard. In addition to this, when you publish videos to any of these platforms, you keep complete ownership of the videos. There’s no way you’ll lose any creative rights related to your work.

What Is An OTT App?

Over-the-top (OTT) apps are software applications that run over the internet instead of on a local device. The best part about OTT apps is that they don’t require any kind of installation or download. Instead, they’re accessed through an internet browser on a computer or mobile device.

OTT apps allow users to watch live TV and on-demand content on their TVs through networks like Sling TV or DirecTV. They also let viewers stream movies and TV shows from services like Netflix and Hulu.

The growing popularity of OTT apps has prompted many OTT apps development companies to create their own versions for consumers who want access to all their favorite content in one place.

Now, dozens of streaming platforms are available for anyone looking to cut cable or satellite TV service and save money on entertainment costs by watching movies and shows online instead of paying for cable.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some of the most prevalent questions users ask concerning the best online video platforms.

What’s an OVP?

OVP stands for Online Video Platform. It’s a platform made specifically to support video content, where users and businesses can upload, share, watch, and even monetize their videos.

Can OVPs integrate with social media platforms?

Yes. Most online video platforms are integrated with the most prevalent social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

This feature helps you connect with your existing audience through linked social media platforms and increase your audience reach.

Can I monetize an OVP?

Yes. Most online video platforms offer tools and features to help you monetize your website.

You can also sell advertising space on your videos, for example, or charge a subscription fee for exclusive content access, depending on the platform you choose.

Can I stream live events in an OVP?

Yes. Many online video platforms offer live-streaming capabilities to help you connect with your audience in real-time.

The type of OVP you choose will determine how much you need to know about the technical aspects of live streaming, but most platforms offer resources to help get started.

Is it better to choose a free or paid plan?

This largely depends on your needs and how much you’re willing to invest.

Many free OVPs offer advertising opportunities, but if there are too many intrusive ads on your videos or they don’t generate enough revenue, then a premium plan might be the better bet.

Most OVPs will also not include the best features in the trial or free plans and will only offer basic features to help you grasp what they can do.

Even if you don’t intend to make money from your channel, it is still worth investing in a paid plan as the unlimited uploads and lack of ads can help give you peace of mind that your videos are safe.

A paid plan offers better customer support than free plans, which is a big plus point.

Best Online Video Platforms: Conclusion

There’ll always be a need for online video platforms, but the most advanced ones will always be in higher demand.

If you’re looking for the best online video platforms to save videos or just to get started, you can’t go wrong with the tools I mentioned above.

With their vast user base and impressive features, these platforms are all worth considering for anyone looking to start turning their videos into profitable businesses.