Video hosting sites now replace television and allow users to watch videos for free without a need to download videos on a PC. But if you still need to download content on your computer, tools like 4K Video Downloader will help you with this. But that’s what makes video hosting sites appealing for regular users. For creators and brands, video hostings are useful for promotion, channel monetization and attraction of an audience.

Here are 8 video hosting websites that prove to be the best the world over, paid and free.

YouTube

YouTube opens our ranking. This platform is not only the most popular video hosting site worldwide but also a rather large search engine with over 6 billion hours of video watched every day. YouTube has a user-friendly interface and wide functionality. You can subscribe to interesting channels, create playlists, leave comments, like, and unlike many other popular social media channels and video hosting, dislike content you don’t find appealing.

The service supports importing videos from Google Photos and lets you have live streams and draw the audience's attention to videos using chat. And even monetise your channels this way! After registering on YouTube, you can upload videos in Full HD and 4K. 3D support has also been implemented.

Video hosting monitors copyright compliance. After three violations reports, the account and all content are blocked.

For creators, YouTube also offers communication with their audience in private messages, comments and discussions, polls, live streams, and monetisation functionality. YouTube algorithms also allow creators and their videos to get into the Trending tab and be recommended to viewers on the main page.

Creators also can track their performance with channel analytics, monetise their content with AdSense and partner programs. Among the disadvantages of YouTube are too many ads integrated into videos and inability to download video content for free right from the app or website.

But 4K Video Downloader has a solution: with this app, you can download videos, playlists , and entire channels on your PC or Mac just in a couple of clicks.

Dailymotion

Another trendy video hosting website that any of you know well. Videos are displayed as a convenient news feed just like in magazines or newspapers. Content is divided into several categories: Featured, News, Entertainment, Music and Sports but you can search for any other content that doesn’t fit in any of the above categories.

You can curate your feed by marking your interests in the settings. You can also upload your own videos on the platform and monetise your creativity. Following channels on Dailymotion is also possible.

Tip: Download Dailymotion videos with 4K Video Downloader.

Vzaar

If you’re looking for a website with educational content and lectures from experts from various fields and industries, Vzaar is what you’re looking for. It is a professional video platform similar to TEDx but on a larger scale.

Note that Vzaar is a paid service (from $21 per month). Tariffs differ in bandwidth, traffic and disk space.

Video hosting allows you to edit borders and colours, add subtitles and a watermark. A content creator can broadcast on specific domains and generate RSS feeds.

The platform stores lots of discussions and lectures on various topics and from professionals of different industries. Since this is a paid service, there’s no annoying advertisement but it has no monetisation.

Vimeo

Vimeo was one of the first video hosting platforms supporting HD format. Thanks to its well-designed interface and variety of content, Vimeo has multiple millions of viewers a month. The site has videos covering various topics, but most of all the site is known for music videos.

Among the advantages of Vimeo are quick registration process, ability to monetise your content, go live with streams, collaboration with your teammates, performance analytics, marketing tools and little advertisement.

But if you violate the copyright rules, your account will be deleted without a warning.

Tip: If you want to download Vimeo content for free , use the 4K Video Downloader app.

Metacafe

This video hosting is created for the quick exchange of gifs and videos and allows you to download content and communicate with other users in comments. Platform monthly visits count multiple millions of unique users per month.

Users commonly upload vines, humour and life hacks to the platform.

Metacafe has monetisation functionality which allows users to make money from the uploaded content but only providing your video gathered 20 thousand views. The service will pay you $5 for every thousand views.

Metacafe stores a variety of different content, has clear monetisation terms but has lots of ads.

Bitchute

A rather controversial video hosting, Bitchute is like YouTube without censorship. The platform stores many videos dedicated to politics, news, conspiracy theories, at times even extremist content and much other stuff.

Bitchute is known for its low content moderation policy and relative freedom of speech. This platform was created in 2017 as opposed to other video hosting sites and allows creators to avoid content moderation rules applied to other social media and video platforms.

Bitchute is decentralised and is financially supported by its audience. Creators can monetise their channels there, even with videos they could have never monetise on YouTube. Monetisation comes from donations from followers, not from ads integrity systems.

Bitchute is free to use but has Premium membership that helps the platform grow.

Wistia

Wistia is a video hosting platform made specifically for businesses. It doesn’t show your videos publicly, but it helps you to embed your videos on your site. All you need to do is copy and paste an embed code, and your video will play in a customised player with no ads.

Wistia is primarily focused on the business side of video marketing, analytics and business-specific functionality.

There are three different plans, including a free one for businesses that are just getting started. The free plan is very basic, with a three video limit and Wistia watermark across all videos.

The ‘Pro’ plan is $99/month and for that price, you can remove the Wistia branding from your videos and also add as many videos as you want (the first 10 are free and the rest are charged at $0.25 each per month).

To gain the ‘Advanced’ plan, you need to contact Wistia to discuss pricing.

Brightcove

Unlike other platforms, Brightcove plans are divided based uses rather than prices. There’s one for marketing, one for enterprise use, and one for monetisation.

Brightcove is very focused on helping users to increase the revenue of their videos, with options for ad integration and a subscription-based business model.

Brightcove also differentiates itself from other video hosting sites by claiming to have the best HTML5 player in the industry (70% faster than any other video player!), as well as robust live-stream functionality.

In addition, the platform integrates with an impressive number of MAPs (marketing automation platforms) and CRMs, including Hapyak, HubSpot, and Wirewax.