Vimeo’s Pivot
My Vimeo contact told me that all of my videos had been removed from Patreon because I’d exceeded Vimeo’s ‘bandwidth limit’ (image 1). Bear in mind, we haven’t uploaded a single Channel 5 video directly to Vimeo, we’ve only uploaded through Patreon’s built-in video feature, so I was confused. Not to mention, the Patreon-exclusive videos we release through only get a couple thousand views per video, which is nothing compared to our view counts on larger platforms like YouTube and Instagram.
Via Nick Heer:
They note they were already paying for Vimeo, at $250 per year. To be forced to switch from that predictable cost — or even the most expensive Vimeo plan that is $900 per year in the U.S. — to one costing thousands per year is damn near extortive, especially when little warning is given. It is the kind of bait-and-switch Google is becoming known for.
[…]
The criteria Vimeo is using sounds banal but is alarmingly elastic. If major creators begin leaving the platform, the cutoff for what constitutes the top 1% of users drops further. It means someone who was happily using Vimeo at $20 per month may be required to multiply that budget by ten with little warning.
Anjali Sud, Vimeo CEO:
Eight months ago, Vimeo spun-out of IAC as its 11th independent publicly-traded company and the first SaaS business born from its formidable portfolio.
[…]
2021 was also a year of great progress and validation, as our self-serve business gave rise to a new and fast-growing opportunity: reaching large companies through a sales force and empowering them with enterprise-grade video. We launched powerful new products and landed 7-figure deals as we scaled this nascent sales-assisted business to over $100 million in revenue growing over 70%, while continuing to grow our self-serve business nearly 30%.
[…]
Looking ahead we see a sizable monetization opportunity within our existing user base, as we continue to add value to our product and better educate users of that value. As of Q4, 89% of Fortune 500 companies have at least one account on Vimeo; yet most of these companies are paying us less than $100 a month. When we successfully upgrade these companies through our sales force, we do so at an average ARPU of over 250x our average Vimeo ARPU. We’re actively unlocking this opportunity through investments this year in product expansion, per-seat monetization, and scalable sales campaigns.
Previously:
Update (2022-03-23): Anjali Sud:
We historically have determined that users who are in the top 1% of bandwidth usage are subject to bandwidth charges. To improve clarity and transparency moving forward, we will be setting the monthly bandwidth threshold at 2TB (or 2,000 GB)— which would impact even fewer than 1% of our users. Users can access their bandwidth usage report directly on their Vimeo account to track usage (see here for how to access).
[…]
We will be rolling out an exemption policy moving forward where creative professionals would not be restricted by the 2TB bandwidth threshold, as long as they aren’t using Vimeo to monetize those videos elsewhere.
Vimeo is not billing based on actual bandwidth, which I think would make a lot of sense. Instead, these are still the expensive annual plans that users must pay for in a lump sum — I do not understand why Vimeo does not want to bill these on a monthly basis like all the rest of its plans — but the floor is a firm 2 TB instead of the vague “top 1% of users” criteria it used previously. Not great.
