Vimeo has jerked its custom plan price so high that many creators are considering leaving the platform, which once prided itself as a YouTube alternative.
Recently, content creators on Vimeo, who struggled to pay hundreds of dollars for the service, are now being forced to either pay thousands or look elsewhere.
Van Baarle, a 13-year Vimeo veteran, now has to pay $3,500 (a massive leap from the $200 she was paying for years). Channel 5, a Vimeo account that posts man-on-the-street-style interview videos, revealed that the platform recently informed them that their custom plan would begin at $7,000 annually. Sunny Singh, another video creator on Vimeo, said that the platform charged him $3,000 for a custom plan, although he managed to negotiate it down to $2,500.
The problems with the outrageous pricing are many. For one, the company claims that it calculates the plan pricing through bandwidth usage – which includes video plays, resolution, loading the player and thumbnail image, downloading, and livestreaming.
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However, the creators mentioned above complained that the calculation seemed off. For example, Baarle said her videos get an average of 150 views on the platform, while Singh says his’ is about 700 views. This discrepancy allowed Singh to negotiate the price as he was able to calculate his bandwidth usage by himself using his data science experience.
Vimeo is not hiding its strategy. The company has moved on from its earlier model of targeting individual creators to corporate clients. “Today we are a technology platform, not a viewing destination. We are a B2B solution, not the indie version of YouTube,” it had said in a letter this February.
Yet, longtime users who helped shape the platform and grow its fame feel hurt. Baarle lamented, “Vimeo has become extremely irrelevant over time, and has no cultural impact on the level of YouTube. But I still chose Vimeo. And what do I get in return?”
According to The Verge, many of these creators will leave the platform after their billing cycle and seek alternatives, with several choosing YouTube by default.
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