Vimeo VS YouTube - What are the Differences?

Steven Wilson

Jun 12,2019 • Filed to: Download Vimeo Videos • Proven solutions

0

As regarding to video-sharing sites, you have many choices like YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Metacafe, Facebook and among many. But there are 2 leaders you can't ignore - YouTube and Vimeo. If you are now finding the most suitable video-sharing site yourself, you should know what's the key differences between YouTube and Vimeo? This article will make a simple comparison of Vimeo vs YouTube. Therefore, next time when you capture or make a video, you know where to upload.

YouTube: The Biggest Video-Sharing Site

YouTube is the third most visited website in the United States according to Alexa's data. Every minute, over 100 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube. That mean a large community with massive video clips. It's totally free to use YouTube. Every user can upload unlimited video to YouTube.

Pros: With over 800,000,000 visitors, your video may easily get thousands of views if you have lots of subscribers or your video ranks high in the YouTube.com. Besides, YouTube video tends to have a higher rank than Vimeo video in Google results because YouTube is owned by Google.

Cons: You have too many competitors to compete with. The challenge and the chance co-exists. Plus, you can only upload 15 minutes per video, which is sometime too short. Lastly, you cannot download YouTube video only if it's uploaded by you, though you can use third-party free YouTube downloader.

Vimeo: The Home for Creative Videos

Vimeo is a smaller video sharing website that focuses on artists, musicians and filmmakers. It's ranked top 100 most visited website in US from Alexa's data, far behind YouTube. However, Vimeo has lots of creative films compared to YouTube's entertaining clips.

Pros: Vimeo focuses on smaller audiences, like filmmakers and film enthusiasts. It has a clean and aesthetic appearance. It's a great place to find inspiring and creative videos. You can make settings to let others download your Vimeo video. See details about Vimeo download >>

Cons: Only about 60 million visitors per month visited Vimeo, compared to YouTube's 800 million. Plus, without a Plus or Pro account, you can't experience all Vimeo features.

iTube HD Video Downloader - YouTube and Vimeo Downloader

Download Now Download Now

• 3 easy wasy to download online videos. 1.Click the "Download" button right from your web browser. 2. Copy and paste YouTube or Vimeo video URL. 3. Drag and drop video URL to the program interface.
• It can download YouTube and Vimeo videos with 3X faster speed.
• Except YouTube and Vimeo video sites, it also supports other 10,000+ video sites including Facebook, Instagram, BBC, Spotify, etc.
• It can convert downloaded YouTube and Vimeo videos to any format you want.
• If you want to play downloaded YouTube and Vimeo on iPhone, iPad or Android phones, you can use this program to one click transfer videos to mobile devices.

Most of the world may agree that YouTube is vastly more popular than Vimeo, but the statistics of the matter beg to disagree. In the following article, we will review the different aspects of these two very similar, but very unique, online video streaming websites. The categories will review the quality, the content, their age, their popularity, users experience’s, and even how other social media websites have influenced them. While there may not be a clear winner in the end, it will become obvious that both are still strong contenders.

#1. The Differences and Similarities of Quality

When we look for a video online, we are not just looking for the content of the video itself, but the quality of the picture and the audio. While both YouTube and Vimeo allow users to upload videos themselves, there seems to be a bit of discrepancy in how each approach the quality of these videos. Granted, much of a videos quality depends upon how the user created it-a video taken with a phone will be significantly different than one taken with a video recorder device.

For YouTube, the quality of the video is very dependent upon how well the user has created the video. The editing tools found with YouTube video uploads are very limiting, and cannot typically fix things such as the volume, or the shakiness of the camera, or even zooming the picture in and out.

Vimeo, on the other hand, is actually best known for its level of quality that users will see throughout all of the videos, not just those made with fancy equipment. Because of this simple fact, along with its superior in video editing tools, Vimeo has taken the round for quality.

Winner: Vimeo

#2. Who Has Better Content?

ince both of these online video streaming websites allow content to be uploaded by their users and members, the content is as vast and unique as all of the individuals which visit them on a daily basis. Although we will later see that these numbers are not one and the same between YouTube and Vimeo, we can currently say that the two sites are tied in the area of content. Saying that, however, some will argue that YouTube is preferred for recent content, such as news and music videos.

Winner: Tied

#3. Does Age Really Matter?

Remembering that the Internet began to gain in popularity during the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, it is important to note that YouTube did not begin until 2005, a full year after Vimeo was first created. Despite this age difference, YouTube employed a friendlier user interface from the beginning, quickly gaining a following. So, despite being the elder in the match, Vimeo has unfortunately lost this category to YouTube.

Winner: YouTube

#4. Who Wins the Popularity Contest?

Coming from the age aspect, you would think that Vimeo would have a greater following than YouTube. However, Vimeo's following is only 10% that of YouTube's more than one billion visits per month. Additionally, YouTube is available in over sixty countries, not knowingly blocked in any company and Vimeo is available in an unknown number of countries while being blocked in India. Obviously, YouTube easily wins the popularity contest of the world.

Winner: YouTube

#5. User Experience

In the beginning, YouTube and Vimeo shared a very similar user interface. However, this has slowly changed over the years, with Vimeo listening to their users significantly more than YouTube. On Vimeo, you will experience fewer ads, easier navigation and a larger video player. Although YouTube now allows the "Skip Ad" option after the first few seconds as well as the ‘theater mode’ viewing screen (which is wider than traditional), its quality of user experience still seems a bit vague and dry at first. YouTube is definitely trying its hardest to please its one billion per month viewers, but this category is easily won by Vimeo.

Winner: Vimeo

#6. Social Media Interaction Worldwide

With nearly 323 million tweets in reference to them worldwide, YouTube is clearly more popular than the just over 7 million tweets referencing Vimeo. Obviously, those ads that are often quite annoying, actually pay off in getting YouTube seen by many around the world. Without a shadow of a doubt, this round is going to YouTube.

Winner: YouTube

The Verdict:

If you've been keeping a tally, we have YouTube at 3 and Vimeo at 2, with one category stuck at a tie. Based on this, you would assume that your best bet would be to continue using YouTube. However, considering that Vimeo won at two very important categories (quality and user experience), it is worth giving it a try for at least a few videos.