Vimeo
Also known as: Vimeo hosting, portfolio hosting
A video host built around presentation and private sharing rather than discovery, used for portfolios, client review and clean embeds.
Updated
What it means
Vimeo provides hosting rather than an audience. Nothing on it recommends a video to strangers, which makes it the wrong place to grow a following and the right place to show something to a specific person.
Its strengths are control and presentation. Password protection, a Watermarked preview for review, download permissions, a player without recommendations afterwards, and an embed that does not advertise other people videos.
That makes it the counterpart to a search platform rather than a competitor. One finds an audience; the other presents work to an audience that already exists or to a single client.
How it works in practice
It is the natural home for a reel. A Demo reel sent to a sponsor benefits from a clean player and no recommendations, which is exactly what this platform offers and what a public platform does not.
Review copies belong here. A private link with comments attached is how a client or a collaborator responds to a first cut, and the version numbering survives the conversation.
Compression is gentler than on social platforms. Platform recompression here is lighter, so a carefully graded piece survives rather better here than it would on a feed-driven service.
What to watch out for
Nothing finds a video on its own. Reach here comes entirely from links that somebody has sent, so publishing here and expecting an audience is a misunderstanding of what the platform is actually for.
The free tier is limited. Upload allowances and most features sit behind the paid tiers, which is a different arrangement from platforms that are funded by advertising instead.
An embed is only as reliable as the host. A piece embedded in a site depends on the account continuing to exist, where a Cloud backup of the actual file does not.
How RawClip handles it
A delivered file uploads here as easily as anywhere else, and the clean player suits a result meant for a specific person rather than a feed. Keeping the original export locally matters more here, since the host is the only copy there is otherwise.