Vimeo adds professional video hosting plan

"For the last five years, Vimeo has been for personal video sharing and we have had a non-commercial policy - we did not allow videos that are intended to sell or promote a product or service," says Blake Whitman, Vimeo's Vice President of Creative Development in an interview ahead of this week's launch. "For years, people have been asking us when we would open our services to businesses, for commercial services. Finally, we've listened and Vimeo Pro is the answer."

Vimeo Pro is priced £123 ($199) per year and offers 50 GB of storage and 250,000 plays. Photographers and videographers that will need to more storage will be able to purchase capacity in 50GB increments for £123 ($199). Additional plays can also be purchased for the same price in increments of 100,000. "Vimeo Pro is an evolution," says Whitman. "Over the last several years, we've realised that video hosting for major businesses is not easy to understand. The way we always approach things is: ‘how can we create a simple, easy and affordable solution for anyone and in this case, now, for businesses?'"

Whitman says that Vimeo Pro is "one of the most affordable offers available for businesses - the businesses that do not have a ton of video needs, but need it in some capacity. There are huge disparities between the free services, which are not really customisable, and the huge enterprise solutions, which are very expensive."

"We're really targeting sole proprietors and small businesses that need video. Right now, we allow small businesses and professional photographers to use Vimeo to promote their work, but not to sell their work," says Whitman. "Anytime that these photographers need video to promote their businesses and their services, they will need to use Vimeo Pro, which has some specific features they will benefit from."

Vimeo Pro will offers no upload limits per week - with Vimeo Plus, users can only upload up to 5GB a week. "We also offer portfolios, which are thematic websites that you can build to show off your video content," says Whitman. "They are completely unbranded pages that you can link to a custom domain name. And soon, there will be a way for developers to create and sell their own templates if they want - similarly to what Tumblr does."

Vimeo Pro also allows users to add their logos to the video player, as well as create basic, unbranded review pages to send to their clients. "These pages are unlisted and they don't appear on Vimeo," says Whitman.

Vimeo currently has 7.5m members.

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