The digital world has touched almost every aspect of human lives, one of which is learning new things. There has been a shift towards online learning all over the world, with people consuming millions of hours on eLearning videos. In other words, offering online training or courses has become a popular business sector.
Another significant component of the global eLearning industry is an LMS or Learning Management System. Companies, universities, and even entrepreneurs trust various LMS to create and sell online courses, one of which is LearnDash. The structure of LearnDash courses is based on the principles followed in learning courses offered at Fortune 500 companies.
If you want to dive into the booming e-learning industry, given the current state of worldwide lockdowns arising due to COVID-19 disease, LearnDash can help you create online courses. However, video hosting is yet another aspect you need to think about.
Let’s talk about it in brief here.
Just like web-hosting in which your website’s data is stored on a 3rd-party server, video hosting is a service that allows users to upload and store their videos on a 3rd-party site. The targeted audience can access the videos by accessing the host website.
Think of it in terms of online course videos you would create using LearnDash.
Video hosting eliminates the bandwidth and storage cost that you have to incur with self-hosting. Neither you need to worry about advanced coding skills required to host online course videos nor about the data protection.
The next big question is – Which video hosting platform should you choose to offer LearnDash courses?
Along with making LearnDash courses that include course videos, picking the right video hosting platform is indeed a significant choice that you will make. Hence it is crucial to understand the differences as well as similarities between various video hosting platforms before selecting one of them.
Before moving on to the list of some of the best video hosting platforms for LearnDash courses, take a look at the platform features you should consider.
Compare the core features of any two video hosting platforms, and you will find that they are similar to each other in many ways. Yet, they are unique and distinct. However, there are certain primary features common in all that are most imperative to deliver video hosting services. These are as follows:
Video is a preferred choice of many online course creators to host their course videos. It is a popular video hosting platform used by thousands of LearnDash users. It is best suited to host videos that can be embedded or shared by others to keep your learner’s stick to your LearnDash courses. The recommended pricing plan for LearnDash courses is the Vimeo Pro plan which charges $20 per month and gives you unlimited bandwidth with Upload 20GB per week and advanced embeding options.
Vimeo has good integration with LearnDash plugin and you can easily embed videos with a simple link. It supports the automatic video progression feature in LearnDash and gives a smooth experience for users to watch online course videos. You can enhance the video experience using some free Vimeo integration plugins available.
You can turn off downloading for your videos in every single video manually or you can set up a “template” that doesn’t include the download link. In addition, you can restrict access to your domain (ie., only via your site) as follows.
Vimeo platform has a professional appeal and gives you the flexibility to customize the embedded player with preferred colors and remove buttons or Vimeo logo from embedded videos. You can even change the Vimeo logo with your brand’s logo.
Vimeo organizer has a user-friendly design, and even a layman can start using this platform quickly.
Vimeo provides detailed insights about who watched the videos, who finished watching it, who liked or commented on them, and much else. You can use these details to deliver the right content to your targeted audience.
Another striking feature of the Vimeo platform is that it gives you control over what will happen after a video end. This way, you can keep the learners engaged in the related videos from your channel only.
As a video hosting platform, Vimeo does not make money by pulling annoying ads at the front of your videos. This is a significant parameter to consider as you do not want the learners to get distracted by unnecessary ads in between the course videos.
Vimeo does have an API, but it is only available on pricey custom plans. As a result, you will not get API access with low-cost plans.
Though Vimeo is available in many countries, it is banned in some countries such as China, Indonesia, and some others. Please check the latest report on the list of countries it is banned and make user that your learners will not be from these countries.
Though it is not easy to download protected videos from Vimeo, people can still download them using some special tools. It is true for many other video hosts on this list. But it is not easy for an average learner to do so.
It asks for a reasonable fee to allow you to upload content online. You can also think of the reason behind not having to deal with ads on this platform. Many professional-grade features like subscription monetization and large-scale live streaming are only available at an associated price.
It is a cloud-based video hosting platform that is useful to offer LearnDash course content on your site. It stores the video files on the cloud and performs an automatic backup to ensure that your content never gets lost.
Publitio used used with LearnDash using the Gutenberg block from free Publitio WordPress plugin. Though it works well with LearnDash it does not support video progression feature. If you’re not interested in this feature then Publitio hosting would be the best for you. Since it is very affordable some LearnDash users use it for just video hosting but use VooPlayer to embed their video for Video progression. You can see it here.
Publitio is the only video hosting platform with a decent free plan that offers 10 GB storage space and 20 GB monthly bandwidth. If you learning site is small,it might be enough for you. Otherwise you can at least use the free pan to test it for your online courses.
It helps you manage the video content, publishes it to different media, and keeps a track of the analytics part as well.
Owing to URL-based transformations, it allows you to perform various video transformations and conversion between formats. It also provides you with a system to control the video files over the web.
You can upload one or more video files related to your online courses and apply the same settings for them all with the Publitio video storage cloud.
You can use the Watermark dashboard on this platform to create a watermark for your video files and protect them from theft. You can also apply the watermark while uploading the video file to the platform.
Amazon Simple Storage Service, also known as Amazon S3, is an object storage service that you can use for video hosting needs. It offers industry-leading scalability and data availability for a wide range of use cases.
Amazon S3 is only meant for video storage and it does not provide a video player. There is a free Html5 Video Player WordPress plugin that you can install to embed the videos in LearnDash. If you want a more protected video player for videos in Amazon S3 you can use the premium S3 Media Maestro plugin.
Its the most affordable video host and has a pay as you go pricing model charging you $0.023 per GB data storage. There is also a AWS Free Tier plan that comes with 5GB of Amazon S3 storage that you can try before buying the premium plans.
Amazon S3 is designed to help you scale the resources with 99.9% of data durability. It means no matter how many course videos you want to upload, you will get the storage scaled almost instantly.
Storing your LearnDash course videos using Amazon S3 means complete protection from unauthorized access. You can block the public access at the account or bucket level. You can configure S3 to restrict Videos by referrer
Using its services, you can store and protect your data with AWS Partner Network or APN – the largest community of cloud service providers.
Amazon S3 lets you create Disaster Recovery (DR) architectures to help you recover the data lost during outages like natural disasters or system failures.
It is an all-in-one video hosting platform that gives you advanced analytics and marketing tools. Think of it as a different version of YouTube that offers more control over your videos and tools to market them up. It is best suited to host LearnDash course videos, particularly when your goal does not align with that of YouTube to generate ad revenue.
VooPlayer is the most secured video host in this list because it comes with HLS Streaming. It works with LearnDash video progression and auto-play.
You can host your course videos on VooPlayer servers and get full control over the content and analytics. It can handle videos of up to 4K quality and maintains compatibility, regardless of the device used.
VooPlayer can help you add an extra dimension to your course videos in the form of inline and popup embeds, full-screen embeds, and video thumbnails.
It is possible to customize the video player to fulfill your specific needs. It can be done in the form of logo addition, changing its look and feel, adding custom thumbnails, or removing the video pause option.
With VooPlayer, you get the in-depth details of how your course videos are performing in terms of metrics like engagement graphs, video heat maps, data trends, and geographical reports.
It is a credible standalone video hosting platform but also works well when integrated with other platforms or apps. It works with Zapier, i.e. you can integrate course videos with other Zapier-compatible apps.
These the some of the best LearnDash video hosting platforms that we found. Has any of the hosting platform in this list met your expectations? What this the specific features that you are looking for in a video host?
Let us know in the comments section. Subscribe to our newsletter to get latest updates.
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