Organizations today use video in various formats for all kinds of different purposes.
Videos take up bandwidth and storage space on their websites and so some of them opt to use other free third-party sites to host their videos. Google Drive is one of the options people use for uploading videos.
Uploading your videos to Google Drive may free up space on your website but there are limitations that come with using Google Drive to manage and host videos.
What are some of the reasons why you should avoid using Google Drive for this purpose?
Limitations of Google Drive to Manage your Video Hosting needs
You may be asking why you should be paying for video hosting when you have options of using a free video hosting website.
Using any free platform for video hosting like Google Drive comes with limitations. Free video hosting sites do not offer the many video enhancement tools and full array of features offered by a better enterprise video platforms.
While you may not need all of the features provided by a video hosting site, but there are competitive advantages of using a video hosting software solution.
Stating that you need to choose the best platform for you with the type of features that are important for your business.
This will depend on how often you upload videos, how you plan to use them, the viewing experience you want to offer, the analytics you need and your budget.
Using Google Drive has some benefits but if you want to host and manage many high-quality videos, you are likely to experience some of the following issues while using Google Drive to host your videos:
1. Large file upload issues
Google Drive is an online and offline file syncing service. It is not designed for hosting and managing videos and it is not uncommon to have file upload problems.
Dragging and dropping video files into Google Drive may be easy but it can take time to upload and process them. If Google Drive is down, all you can do when you’re trying to upload a video is to sit and wait.
Large video file uploads on Google Drive are notorious for technical difficulties.
2. Limits on file size and total storage space
Video storage on Google Drive has limits on file size, playback resolution, and total storage space.
Drive users who reach a 750 GB limit or upload a file of more than 750 GB cannot upload any additional files that day. You are automatically blocked from adding any more files until the next day.
3. Potential security risks
A major disadvantage of using Google Drive is potential security risks. There is no password protection feature to give an extra layer of security to files. If you share a link with someone and they decide to share a video with someone else, there is no way to stop them.
Once you have given out the Google Drive link, anyone with access can use it. Many businesses can’t afford to take security risks and need to restrict access to certain videos that are confidential.
4. No in-depth analytics
If you want to know how your videos are performing, you need access to video analytics.
Many platforms offer basic video analytics but you want to know more than just how many people viewed, liked, commented on and shared your videos.
Having access to more in-depth analytics, such as where people stopped watching a video (heatmaps) or which parts were watched again, can offer insight into how to improve quality of your videos.
5. Difficulty with finding video files
Google Drive does have some tools to treat certain files as high priority and make them easy to find and access but it doesn’t offer a comprehensive video file management system like video asset management.
When your videos aren’t separate from documents and other uploads, video and digital file management is much more difficult.
Google Drive’s Quick Access panel is designed to make it easy for you to pull up items you’ve accessed recently or that Google thinks you may need to access but many people don’t even use this feature at all and it tends to just be a distraction.
The proper way to host videos on your website
1. Host
As videos take up storage space and bandwidth, uploading them to your website can slow it down and give your viewers a negative experience.
If you have many high definition videos, the storage limit of your server may reach capacity quickly and your videos will load slowly or freeze.
The proper way to host videos on your website is to embed videos rather than upload videos on the website. This means you upload your videos to a third-party video hosting site and paste the embed code created by the video hosting platform on your website on any desired page.
An enterprise video hosting platform has many web servers worldwide. This means that when someone on your site wants to watch a video, the server nearest their location serves it so they have the best viewing experience.
2. Manage
Unless you can group, tag and sort videos, figuring out where they are can be a challenge.
Using an enterprise video platform enables you to organize your videos with digital asset management so that users can search and find them easily. You can quickly and easily upload, organize, group and share them.
When you organize them using video asset management, you’re more likely to use them and get a better return on your investment.
Some video hosting platforms allow you to batch edit or delete videos, upload in bulk, add custom thumbnails to videos or replace them without updating the embed codes. You may even find you can group your videos and create custom playlists.
You have complete control over your video content and using security features like watermarks, domain lock and password-protect, you can protect your video investment and restrict access to your target audience.
With video hosting platform you can give access to teams so they can collaborate, upload and publish a video. Different employees may need different levels of access, depending upon their roles, and it is possible to ensure this on a digital asset management platform.
A video hosting service does the hard work of compressing the video if required and automatically encoding it and making it viewable across all devices. An embedded video player serves viewers the correct file by automatically detecting what device they are using, the browser, and their internet speed.
3. Create and enhance
A video platform for business allows you to increase your productivity and improve communications by easily recording and sharing videos.
Being able to create videos within a video hosting platform saves you time and provides you with a choice of templates to use makes the process easier.
You have many different features when you use a video hosting platform that offers you extra functionality. Users may be able to include calls-to-action, pop-ups, forms, quizzes etc.
You can even integrate a lead capture form from a marketing automation platform directly into a video, prompting viewers to take action. Some video platforms allow you to insert personalized elements based on the viewer.
If you use a platform like YouTube, removing YouTube branding from your video is impossible but by using an enterprise video hosting platform means you can make changes to the video player. You can ‘white-label’ it to create more brand awareness, changing the color or defining how a video plays so that it’s consistent with your branding.
4. Publish
With enterprise video hosting, you can multi-upload files to a selected gallery and then easily edit the metadata, such as the title, description and tags.
Upload, edit, copy, backup or delete your videos by using a dashboard before you hit publish.
Instantly publish new videos while you’re on the go from your mobile device by using a mobile app. You can also record a video on your mobile phone or webcam to create personalized videos and then publish them.
You can publish and share videos from your account directly on your social networks. With the option to allow any user to share and embed video with your permissions to publish videos directly to social media channels.
By directly pushing hosted video content to your company’s social channels, you can boost engagement and extend your reach.
5. Analytics
Some video hosting platforms like YouTube are also social media networks and although they offer analytics like views, likes, comments and share, however, these analytics are not that useful to marketing or sales teams.
An enterprise video solution will give you access to useful, in-depth video analytics. You can see metrics that give you insight into how viewers interact with your videos.
When you know how your videos are performing in real-time, identifying user behavior patterns and trends become easy and adjustments can be made on the fly. For example, if people start watching your video halfway through, you can try to find out why and see if you can make changes to get them to watch more of the video.
How enterprise video hosting will protect and manage your video assets on one platform
Many companies choose enterprise video hosting to help them manage, organize, share and promote their video content with digital asset management (DAM).
Doing so empowers them with a number of video marketing tools that can help them with sales, marketing, production, education, publishing, monetization etc.
Easily find videos and use the right one at the right time with DAM
Digital asset management makes it easy for a user to group, tag and enhance videos. DAM helps in sorting and creating categories for videos belonging in the same group, resulting in enhanced efficiency for an organization with their video assets.
Sales personnel may record videos right from their browsers and can create video groups/categories based on topics so they know which video to use at what stage of the sales funnel.
An explainer video for a sales personnel, for example, can showcase what a product looks like and how to use it for consumers further down the sales funnel. An explainer video can also make viewers stay on a landing page longer, which offers more conversion opportunities and better search engine rankings.
A how-to video portal and personalized videos can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Native video and marketing integration with other solutions
Many video hosting platforms natively integrate with the sales and marketing automation platforms an organization is already using, allowing a business to build a more comprehensive marketing campaigns with videos.
For instance, a CRM may help a marketing team to score leads based on how people relate to certain videos. Integrating with email software like Active Campaign may mean a thumbnail and a link to a video is automatically generated.
With video hosting platforms integrating with other marketing automation and sales applications, you can push your videos to many different channels and even edit them after you’ve published them or even take them down if needed.
Live streaming
Many businesses make use of pre-recorded video content but live streaming is often an important part of a content plan.
Using a video enterprise platform makes it possible to record streaming content for the stream to be released later as a Video on Demand (VOD). This allows viewers to stream content for years to come. Viewers can select a video from a database of content and watch it instantly whenever they choose and use any device.
Security and privacy
You often spend a lot of time and effort creating video content and you want to make sure it’s protected.
An enterprise video hosting platform has advanced privacy and security features that protect videos while uploading them and keep them safe from those you don’t want to have access to.
Technical support
Businesses usually need to diagnose and solve problems quickly. With video platforms that offer 24/7 customer support, this is possible.
Conclusion
Moving your videos to Google Drive may reduce on-site storage needs and even increase access to people with permission who can view videos almost anywhere. However, there are some significant challenges that come with using Google Drive.
The more videos you have, the more important it is for you to avoid free video hosting platforms and choose a cost-competitive enterprise-grade video hosting solution.
Free services often lack the organizational features of paid services, and if it is difficult to find and sort your videos, you are less likely to use them efficiently. Using an enterprise video solution offers you comprehensive and efficient video asset management.
Originally published on September 3rd, 2023, updated on April 30th, 2024
