HACKER Q&A
📣 evo_9

Vimeo for your app?


I'm working on a new app and it will require some short video clips; I'm semi-set on using Vimeo over YouTube/other options and wondering if others have run into any issues, or if this is generally not a good idea. The app itself is more/less a 'workout app' though highly specialized, and will only need to show very short video clips around 10-20 seconds in most cases. Long-term I could see offering students the ability to record/upload their own videos for feedback from staff members, etc.

From what I'm seeing the Vimeo api looks like a really easy, clean and inexpensive option.

Thank you

  👤 breakingcups Accepted Answer ✓
My experience with Vimeo is that, while a fine product, they hate when you use "too much" bandwidth and they aren't completely upfront about this when contacting them before making your architectural decision to use them.

A $70 subscription turned into a proposed 414,400 to $25,000 plan. Now, to be fair to them, they gave us a heads-up with plenty of time that our usage was too high after we were running for a few months and even after we worked through all the options with them they gave us enough time to migrate away. Also, to be fair to you and them, our use-case was almost the opposite of yours. Each video was at least 5GB and the content was very popular.

Still, this is an inherent limitation of anyone offering a "unlimited" plan and I wish they would just communicate those limits (because they are definitely known internally).

All in all, probably great if you stay under their limits but they are very enterprise-y otherwise.

We moved to BunnyCDN and our monthly costs have not increased above the $70 we budgeted for Vimeo.

👤 leesalminen
We migrated from Vimeo to Cloudflare Stream (https://www.cloudflare.com/products/cloudflare-stream/) a while back. Mostly due to our architecture of user-uploaded videos. Also because it's more white-label able. Partially because we just already used Cloudflare for lots of things and like the company. YMMV.
👤 TaqPolymerase
Nothing against Vimeo, but was Mux (https://mux.com - YCW16) also a consideration?
👤 btgeekboy
If your clips are only 10-20 seconds, do you really need a Vimeo/etc? What do you need that a basic file CDN can't get you?