How to Choose the Right Video Hosting Platform?

The video hosting platform is pivotal for streaming any video content. With the rising popularity of streaming videos on apps, websites, and other platforms, streaming service providers are coming up with more advanced and compact video hosting solutions. While every other video hosting platform provider claims to have a comprehensive solution, there are certain factors that determine how effective your video hosting solution will be. As a video hosting platform has a lot to do with uploading, distributing, and managing your video content, a good one can bring considerable improvement in your streaming quality and end users’ experience. If you are wondering how to go for the right one, then read on.

Guide to Choose the Right Video Hosting Platform: All You Need to Know

In order to choose the right video hosting platform, you must ensure the following pointers-

• High Level of Customization

A sound video hosting platform offers high flexibility in terms of customization where you can not only customize the video but the video player itself. You should be easily able to customize the size, design, colour, buttons placement, CTA designs etc. as and when you want. Furthermore, it should have a flexible and customizable CDN (Content Delivery Network) that lets you-

• Integrate your own CDN easily
• Have multiple CDNs
• Scale up content delivery/ deliver content across the globe

• Good Video Content Management System (CMS)

Your video hosting platform must come with a quality video content management system that enables you to-

• Edit/delete/manage videos in batches
• Upload videos in bulk
• Easily build content library
• Manage online player
• Manage security, access, and revenue

etc.

While some of the above feature-rich solutions may seem to be optional, those are quite mandatory, especially if you are handling a lot of video content.

Checklist to Choose the Right Video Hosting Platform

• Robust Security

Whenever it comes to online content delivery, chances are that even the tiniest loophole can be the biggest threat to your content and platform. However, your video hosting platform has a lot to do in ensuring security. Not only every video content should have high level password-protection, it should also ensure-

• They are protected  from screen capture by dynamic watermarking
• No one can download or share the videos by plug in, downloader or any other tool during online streaming
• There is enterprise-level security including hotlinking protection, Secure Socket Layer (SSL), network control etc.
• There is studio approved DRM (Digital Rights Management) for a additional layer of security
• It’s PCI compliant with secure connection for accepting and transmitting online payments
• VPN detection to only let the authentic users stream from your platform

• High Bandwidth Limit

While this is one of the most important factors determining how fast and lag-free your videos will be, many often tend to overlook this while choosing a video hosting platform. 

Always ask the following questions-

• Is there a bandwidth limit?
• If yes, then what happens when that limit is crossed? Either you need to pay an extra amount or your videos will become slower or freeze. And you don’t want the later one!

However, there can be a pricing structure determining the bandwidth limit and you must ensure you have a clear idea from the beginning as you don’t want a poor streaming experience for your viewers.

Also Read: Top 5 Benefits of Migrating to a Cloud Hosting Platform

• Good Embedding Capabilities

A video hosting solution equipped with embedding capabilities lets you easily embed your videos on your blogs, articles, landing pages and others. Not only it helps you promote your content but gives you competitive benefits as by sharing those on various media you can reach even wider audiences at no extra cost!

• Encoding & Transcoding

A top-rated video hosting platform comes with in-buit encoding and transcoding so that you can easily upload and stream various video files via the website or mobile apps. It is recommended to go for the one that supports multiple file formats such as MP4, MPMKV, MOV, VOB, FLV, M4V, MPG etc. along with auto Bitrate Conversion to various resolutions based on the screen sizes like, 2K, 4K, 144p, 360p, 720p, 1080p etc. If you choose a video hosting platform like Muvi Flex, then all codecs including MPEG-2, H.264, Cinepak,  YV12, RGB24, VP8, MPEG-1, and Motion JPEG will be supported. Furthermore, always go for a platform that offers fast and scalable transcoding and ensures minimum latency so that the viewers can stream lag-free videos.

• Analytics & Insights

The best of the video hosting platforms give you the insights on all the important parameters such as, play loads, content views, number of unique users, viewer span of attention, and many more. And such analytical reports are what help you have a clearer vision regarding everything- updating your streaming content to improving the quality or focusing on the weaker points or loopholes if any. So, don’t forget to ensure that your video hosting platform gives you this solution!

Wrapping Up,

Choosing the right video hosting platform has a lot to do with how good the end-user experience will be on your streaming platform. And you must ensure every detail before you opt for the one so that you can have a hassle-free experience with your hosting platform and your users can have better experience in the long run. While there are plenty of video hosting platforms available in the market, your pick should be focused on the set of requirements you have in mind, be it for your OTT app, website, or other streaming platforms.

Muvi Flex is one of its kind of comprehensive video hosting solution that lets you upload, distribute, and manage your video content easily. It offers an extensive solution for unlimited content storage, social publishing, massive-scale transcoding, faster encoding, and many more to take your streaming business to the next level.

Take a 14-day free trial now to know more!