YouTube is completely free, and it’s the world’s biggest video platform. So, why should we pay for a hosting service like Wistia?
We hear this question from many businesses dipping their toe into video marketing.
There are many reasons why we became a Wistia customer and partner agency, which you can read about here, but to answer the question:
Wistia is designed exclusively to serve companies using video on their websites for inbound marketing, support, and sales.
YouTube, on the other hand, is designed to primarily serve companies doing large, brand-building campaigns.
Let's hear it straight from an embedded video.
Wistia Features |
YouTube Features |
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No ads |
Ads shown by default for all non-YouTube Red customers |
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Fully customizable player controls and colors |
Standardized player design with no customization |
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Responsive embeds as standard |
Additional work required to make embeds responsive |
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Video served at the highest quality your viewer’s connection is able to handle |
Video quality determined by size of embed on page |
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Ability to replace and update videos |
No replace video feature |
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Asynchronous JavaScript & iFrame embed options |
iFrame embeds |
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Domain restrictions to control where your videos can be embedded |
No restrictions on where the video can be embedded |
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Ranks in Google search for your website |
Ranks in Google search for YouTube.com |
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Able to include SEO metadata on every page automatically with JSON-LD |
No SEO metadata included with embeds |
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Real-time changes to embeds |
Lag in accepting changes |
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Lead capture with Turnstile email collectors |
No lead capture tools |
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Annotations and full-screen calls to action |
Annotations and cards |
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Can link out to any destination of your choosing |
Can only use annotations and cards to link out to one external website (once approved) |
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Share buttons share version of the video on your website |
Share buttons share version of video on YouTube.com |
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Complete playback data for each viewer, with user-tracking, heatmaps, and ROI-tracking |
Sampled and aggregated playback data only |
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Playback data passed automatically into Google Analytics as events |
No Google Analytics integration
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Integrations with Marketo, HubSpot, Salesforce, Infusionsoft, and Pardot |
No way of getting playback data into CRM or marketing automation platforms |
For many companies, using both Wistia and YouTube can be the right way to go. Wistia is the ideal platform to deliver videos across your site, and YouTube can be a useful supplementary tool to help you increase brand awareness on the world’s second biggest search engine.
However, simply embedding YouTube videos on your site means you’re missing out on all of the superior tools and analytics that Wistia offers.
YouTube is more like a social network than a video hosting platform. As such, not all of your videos will necessarily make sense to a broader audience when they’re browsing on YouTube.com.
Therefore, YouTube should be used strategically, as part of a wider video marketing strategy, but not just as a repository where all videos are held and hosted.
Ready to create your next video? Download this free checklist to make it easier.