Yes, completely helpful!
Hi folks. the latest re: VIMEO is that it would be fine to use if not charging. If youâre thinking of charging, please note that the costs to go up $15,000 a year. Perhaps David can post the latest.
Hi Everyone,
Yes, itâs true that Vimeo has decided against allowing the Premium plan for this kind of uses case. Here are the two relevant emails I received.
Hi David,
Iâm a Presales Specialist here at Vimeoâthank you for following up about this!
To clarify, [the previous rep] was specifically referring to the fact that Vimeo does not offer tools to sell live event access, which is why she had pointed you in the direction of Vimeo OTT, which does.
However, it sounds like you have this taken care of outside of Vimeo and are more so concerned with whether or not this is allowed. Iâm happy to report that you are more than welcome to sell content by your own means, but this does tie into our bandwidth usage policy.
While weâre happy to provide users with unlimited bandwidth for standard use of our embeddable video player for all accounts that are below the 99th percentile of bandwidth usage, please note that should your bandwidth usage reach the 99th percentile range, Vimeo reserves the right to charge when you monetize Vimeo-hosted videos using a third-party payment solution. This is in addition to charging for excessive use of bandwidth for plays occurring through third-party players and applications (when using the direct links to the video files hosted on Vimeo), as well as when you use our video player with a third-party advertising solution. Please refer to our terms of service for more information: https://vimeo.com/terms.
Should your bandwidth reach the 99th percentile of usage while you are selling content by your own means, someone from our sales team will reach out to you about setting up a custom plan to accommodate your bandwidth use before any additional fees are received.
Let me know if you have any more questions!
Sincerely,.
Pacific Coast US Lead
Followed 5 days later by:
Hi David,
Iâm writing to follow up on and clarify a previous point that my colleague [Pacific Coast US Lead] mentioned. Earlier on, [Pacific Coast US Lead] explained that it would be possible as a Premium member to sell content through a custom site, outside of Vimeoâs own Vimeo On Demand (VOD) offering. Iâm afraid to say that we inadvertently misled you on that point. In fact, the Enterprise representative you originally spoke with was correct: the only way to sell content as a Premium member on Vimeo is to do so through our VOD service, otherwise you must sign up for an Enterprise account to be able to gain the ability to sell content hosted on Vimeo elsewhere.
Shortly after your exchange with [Pacific Coast US Lead, we double checked on these policies with our Finance and Legal teams. They did confirm that when non-Enterprise Vimeo users embed our player on their websites, their use is subject to our API License Addendum. Under the API terms, users agree that they will not charge a fee to their end users without Vimeoâs prior written consent (Section 3.5). In most cases, the team reviewing these requests for written consent pass them along to our Sales team, since these members are often looking to use Vimeo in ways best suited for an Enterprise plan.
I understand this may be frustrating to learn, since you were originally given information indicating otherwise. However, we do know that youâre working with a number of clients and making recommendations to them, so we did not want to lead you astray or put you or your clients in a position where usage would be in violation of our policies.
On our end, we will be updating our internal documentation to make sure that our own team is clear on these policies and is empowered to share the most accurate, up-to-date information as possible. Thank you so much for your patience and understanding here. Please feel free to let us know if you have any further questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Vimeo Support Supervisor
So itâs very disappointing that this is the way that theyâve gone. Weâll be updating the documentation shortly, and work has already been done on updating to a new open source video player that could be used with self-hosted or CDN video sources. Weâll get something working for ticket sales, it just looks like Vimeo has decided it wonât be them.
I apologize for any potential confusion caused by this.
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So, since it seems Vimeo is not an option, has a similar conversation happened with YouTube? While Iâm aware we canât protect the videos as well, does YouTube permit us to sell access to videos on their site?
Also, Iâm a little disappointed that I read all of your online help information here: https://help.theatremanager.com/theatre-manager-online-help/live-web-content and didnât discover until the very last response to this forum posting that Vimeo wasnât an option. I was on the verge of presenting the Vimeo premium service to our board as a viable option for streaming content.
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I have a further update from Vimeo â Vimeo is now ok with this use case again, and you can use it according to their team.
Hi David,
Thank you for the candid feedback. I certainly understood your frustration with this policy, and accordingly I shared your comments with the rest of the team here.
After discussing this internally and additional consideration of the use case you described, our leadership team determined it will in fact honor your request. Vimeo grants permission for you to proceed with your original plan: to use Vimeo Premium for you and your clients to host videos and sell ticket access to them on a separate website. As mentioned earlier, we will continue to monitor bandwidth usage and Vimeo reserves the right to assess charges should bandwidth usage exceed our thresholds.
It is certainly not our intent to frustrate or turn away potential customers like you, and we do aim to make it as easy and affordable as possible for businesses and creators to get back on their feet amid these difficult times. In this light, I know that I speak on behalf of the entire team here when I say that I appreciate your direct and honest feedback about this situation and the way our policy impacts your use case. We will continue to assess this policy and do our best to ensure that it is as clear and reasonable for users as possible moving forward.
I do recognize how the changing of positions and conflicting messaging has become a confusing and frustrating experience for you. In that light, please do not hesitate to let me or any of my colleagues know if there are any outstanding questions or concerns here. Again, thank you for your patience, your understanding, and for considering Vimeo for your business solution.
Sincerely,
Noah
Vimeo Support Supervisor
I also apologize for the confusion about this.
Jeff, thanks for the post. It has been a rocky start, and weâre disappointed with the Vimeo part as well, but weâve also been hard at work to come up with lots of options in the face of vendor uncertainty. As of today youâre safe to pitch the idea of video streaming to the board, and we have some options for you that weâre going to support.
In the next version of Theatre Manager there will be two new video providers, in addition to Vimeo and YouTube:
Iâll go through all the providers here, and give a sense of where theyâre all at. To review, our current video providers are:
YouTube
YouTube is a great free video provider, but itâs not ideal for use with any kind of gate control. Itâs main use is for events that would be free, and are looking to solicit donations or to market your venue.
Vimeo
As of the recent email with Vimeo, our use case is now officially supported, and so youâre also able to sell tickets to a Vimeo hosted video. The downside with Vimeo, besides the corporate indecision on our use case, is that it requires a year long subscription and you may get a phone call from them one day saying that youâve exceeded the bandwidth requirements.
DaCast
DaCast is currently the safest bet as a way to stream video with some gate control. At DaCast we have a representative that you can call directly and discuss your live streaming or pre-recorded video needs, and they can help find the right pricing package for you. They also have some nice âper eventâ pricing, in case you donât want to jump in to a subscription or a long term commitment to streaming. DaCastâs online tooling is pretty easy to use and they support both live streaming via RTMP as well as pre-recorded video, just like Vimeo. However, DaCast is a little more expensive than Vimeo.
Open source video player
The open source video player will play a wide variety of formats from almost any web server for a much lower cost of operation. Using the open source video player requires a lot more knowledge about the technology behind video streaming, but it also enables you to host content on a server you own, and if you have a good enough internet connection you could also potentially self-host the video content. Self-hosting the video content would require at least a Gigabit upload (1 Gbps), which is well beyond most home/office internet connections. Research is still being conducted to find cloud hosting services that might make this a very cost-effective option in the future. The open source video player might also suit your needs if youâve found a video hosting service that can serve .mp4, .webm or .m3u8 files.
Summary
So thatâs where we stand today.
Vimeo and DaCast are your best turn-key options and the open source video player is likely to start cutting the operational costs in the future. YouTube can be used for free events where you want to raise recognition with the YouTube site, but also want an embedded video on your own site, for your own customers.
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