Ask HN: Where to host video for landing pages

#1

Post by sashthebash » Thu, Mar 31, 2011, 9:40 PM UTC

I am just in the process of creating a screencast/product intro for a landing page but don't know where to host it.

Should I host it myself or with a provider? Which provider is good? Are there any good tools to track the views of the video and maybe at what time people stopped watching?

I would think having a YouTube logo or something similar on the video looks unprofessional, but maybe it also increases conversions? Is there any data about this?

Re: Ask HN: Where to host video for landing pages

#2

Post by cafeguy87 » Thu, Mar 31, 2011, 11:47 PM UTC

Vimeo all the way! Simple to use, looks great, comes up well in natural search results.

http://vimeo.com/plus

Re: Ask HN: Where to host video for landing pages

#3

Post by wmboy » Thu, Mar 31, 2011, 11:54 PM UTC

Host the video file on Amazon S3 and then use something like JWPlayer to show the video on your website.

Re: Ask HN: Where to host video for landing pages

#4

Post by staunch » Fri, Apr 01, 2011, 1:12 AM UTC

S3 + Cloudfront. Many people use Vimeo as well, which has minimal branding and supports high quality.

I haven't actually used them myself, but Wistia does deep tracking of plays.

Re: Ask HN: Where to host video for landing pages

#5

Post by arn » Fri, Apr 01, 2011, 3:58 AM UTC

I have no data on this. But I don't find using YouTube unprofessional. Also, I'm not sure how embeddable your video will be, but as a blogger, I much prefer people using YouTube so those videos can be embedded easily, and playable on iOS devices.

Re: Ask HN: Where to host video for landing pages

#6

Post by robflynn » Fri, Apr 01, 2011, 5:13 AM UTC

I have always used Vimeo on the past for this sort of thing.

I definitely prefer it over youtube based on quality of video, bandwidth (a lot of youtube videos that I try suffer from playback issues), and branding.

Hosting on S3 or some other CDN is also an option if you don't mind paying a bit.

Re: Ask HN: Where to host video for landing pages

#7

Post by pokoleo » Fri, Apr 01, 2011, 5:39 AM UTC

I personally hate vimeo because of their horrible fallback & lack of some forms of IE support.

If you're using IE without flash installed (in my experience), it defaults to a black background with black text on top. great user experience.

Re: Ask HN: Where to host video for landing pages

#8

Post by ohashi » Fri, Apr 01, 2011, 1:57 PM UTC

Vimeo is a pretty good option.

Re: Ask HN: Where to host video for landing pages

#9

Post by psg » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 8:08 PM UTC

I've used YouTube for some video hosting on my website and don't believe it to be unprofessional. In fact, when requesting feedback on a landing page which showed the video, I never received a comment that would have implied YouTube hosting was anything other then acceptable.