Nope, this isn’t another top 10 list where we “shockingly” put ourselves in the top 10 along with our competitors. There’s plenty of those articles already out there.
What we’re going to do here is tell you what to look for in private video hosting services, what it means to have private video hosting, and why we might be able to help.
Why Private Hosting
All types of customers have all types of reason as to why they want private video hosting.
In a nutshell, we believe private hosting means 3 things…
1) Visibility. Not just anyone can access the content. You have complete control over who accesses it.
2) Security. When your content is secure, it means you have control of your content and nobody else does. It also means your content can’t be easily pirated.
3) On-brand. When someone watches your videos, they don’t even know you use a video hosting company. Your videos are on-brand, show no ads or any other branding but your own.
As a course creator or subject matter expert, your video content is your property. Maintaining full ownership and having complete control over who sees what content is and should be a priority.
It often takes years to gather the knowledge and skills of your field, and putting all of that into video content that can easily be shared and pirated is frustrating.
Corporate clients might need to share confidential training videos, or videos that highlight corporate plans and results.
And marketing and sales customers might want their video to be seen by their client only, or to ensure competitors don’t get their hands on their exclusive content.
Let’s talk about what all of this means specifically and it’s relation to your goals.
Visibility – No Browsing Your Content
Let’s start with Visibility. You don’t just anyone to access your content.
Some providers, like Vimeo for example, have areas of their website where people can browse content produced by others. This sort of service is certainly valuable to many people. Youtube is built on this idea. Many customers who use these services are generally trying to attain a following and subscribers on those video sites, for example trying to build Youtube subscribers to their Youtube channel.
But if you’re a course creator, SME, or marketer then you may not want random people to be able to access and watch your content.
At Spotlightr, we understand that the focus should be on you, your content, and your own web properties. We don’t want you to build Spotlightr subscribers.
You want to build subscribers? Add our lead generation forms to your videos and build a subscriber list that you own.
You control how and where it’s published.
With Spotlightr there are no settings you need to worry about turning on or off to make sure other people can’t see your videos. Everything is private by default. Anything you upload to Spotlightr is added to your account and only you can see that content.
There are generally two different ways you can publish your content when it comes to video hosting services. You can use embed code to embed (add) your video to your own web pages. Or the service creates a page with your video on it so that you can just share a link to the video.
Here’s an embedded video:
And here is that same video but shared with a private URL. These easy and private sharing URLs are hosted by Spotlightr (a feature included with all Spotlightr accounts). This page is also completely customizable.
More on this private sharing link below.
Security
As just mentioned, when you use a video hosting service part of that service typically allows you to embed your videos on your website. This means when you upload a video you are given a short piece of code that you add to your web pages to display and play your video.
By default that piece of code can be added to any website. That means that anyone can just right-click on your web page to view the source of the page (the HTML code), copy your embed code, and place it on their own web page.
Whitelist Your Domains (Domain Restriction)
To stop that, you can whitelist only certain domains to execute your embed code and play your videos. That means that if anyone gets your embed code, it won’t work on their website.
Domain restriction is a very nice way to add an extra level of security and privacy to your embed codes and videos.
Private Sharing Link
Also mentioned earlier is that in addition to being able to embed your videos, you may be need to be able to just send a link to someone or supply a link to the video. This can be done via a private page created on the video hosting platform.
Only people who have this link can watch the video. We just showed you this example.
Private Sharing Link with Password
If you want even more privacy and security, just add a password to it. A password gate can be added to any part of the video, although most people just add it to the very beginning.
Here is a private sharing link to a video but this one is locked by a password. To open it use the password: 1234
Here’s that same video but embedded on this page. Remember, the password is 1234.
Add Another Level of Security with Links and Galleries That Expire
If a simple password isn’t enough, you can even configure links that have passwords that expire by date or by the number of times they are used.
This Gallery created with Spotlightr demonstrates how this can work. To open this Gallery use this code: K6cEDQMkjsuRHLdn
Click here to see the Gallery page hosted by Spotlightr.
In this sample Gallery we added 6 videos broken up into 2 sections. The colors, title, description, design, etc are all customizable.
Although this code is not set to expire at all, what we want to demonstrate here is how our access codes work. This code is configured to never expire.
YOu also have the option of embedding a player onto your own web page and the Gallery will launch in a modal.
Encrypt Videos to Prevent Unauthorized Downloading
Vimeo and Youtube videos are easily downloaded. There are tons of browser plugins and extensions that will do it.
These plugins and extensions can be stopped with encryption. When your videos are encrypted, they will only play via the intended video player and page where the video player is embedded. Encryption occurs during the uploading process.
Test it for yourself. If you already have one of these extensions installed, go here to try to download a Spotlightr video. Then try to download one from Vimeo.
On-Brand
Add your own branding colors or even your own logo to keep the video completely on-brand. And by adding your own custom domain to your account, you can even keep the URL on-brand.
The creates a very private experience for both you and your audience.
No ads, no related videos, no branding for the hosting company. Keep the video and content all about you and your brand.
Here’s an example of a video with colors on-brand with the logo included on the video as well:
Spotlightr has more customizations options for your video player than anyone else out there.
With themes you’ll be able to configure just about every aspect of your video player and video landing page. Just configure it once and every video that has that theme is automatically done.