Reducing Disk Space and Bandwidth — Offloading Video
Video is a powerful way to engage visitors and bring your website to life — but hosting it directly on your site can quickly consume disk space and bandwidth. Video files are large, and every view uses data. For websites on shared hosting, this can lead to slower performance and even exceed fair use limits. The best solution is to offload your videos to a dedicated video streaming service.
Video Streaming Services
Video streaming platforms are specifically designed and optimised to deliver video content quickly and efficiently — often for free. Two of the most popular and reliable options are YouTube and Vimeo. Both allow you to upload videos and then embed them directly into your website, so your visitors can watch without affecting your hosting resources.
Advantages of Using Video Streaming Services
- Fast playback — these platforms are built for video delivery, ensuring smooth streaming with minimal buffering.
- Reduced server load — the video file is stored on their servers, not yours, freeing up disk space and bandwidth.
- Better compatibility — automatic optimisation for all devices and connection speeds.
- SEO benefits — videos hosted on YouTube, for example, can appear in Google search results and increase your visibility.
YouTube vs Vimeo
YouTube is the most widely used video platform and completely free. It offers huge exposure and great discoverability. However, it includes adverts, and the player branding cannot be removed. YouTube is ideal for marketing, tutorials, and general audience engagement.
Vimeo, on the other hand, offers a cleaner, ad-free experience with greater control over privacy and customisation. It’s often preferred for professional or business websites where you want to maintain a more polished brand image. Vimeo’s free plan is limited in storage and weekly upload capacity, but paid plans remove these restrictions.
Video Embedding
Both YouTube and Vimeo make it easy to add videos to your website using an embed code. Once you upload your video, the platform provides a snippet of HTML code — usually found under “Share” → “Embed.” You can paste this code directly into your web page, and the video will appear as if it’s hosted on your site, but without using your hosting space or bandwidth.
Here’s a simple example of what an embed code looks like:
<iframe title="vimeo-player" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/451661553?h=c51c67de7e" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>This will display:
The Result
By offloading your videos to platforms like YouTube or Vimeo, you get:
- High-quality video playback that runs smoothly without buffering.
- No impact on your disk space or bandwidth allocation.
- Improved site performance — faster load times and better visitor experience.
In short, let the video experts handle the streaming — and keep your hosting fast, efficient, and reliable for everything else.
