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December 28, 2009

Wistia – Share and Track Videos Online

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Wistia is a web-based video marketing and sales application that gives companies of all sizes a better way to share videos with clients and prospective customers. Whether a business is posting a private training video for new employees or a public video to promote a new product, Wistia is a professional-level application with an infinite number of uses. What separates Wistia from other systems in the video-sharing market, however, is its unique heatmap tracking technology, which gives users a way to track which parts of each video their viewers are interested in the most.

Despite its advanced features and control settings, Wistia is an application that is actually quite simple to use. After signing up and selecting a pricing plan, get started uploading videos and sharing them with clients online. You can send links that will direct clients to your video on Wistia, or embed the video directly on your own website. Each time the video is viewed, the system’s video heatmaps will keep track of how your clients watched the video—logging information that tells you when a video was paused, rewound, or skipped ahead. With that information, Wistia can provide a visual graph that shows which parts of any video are the most engaging to viewers.

Because Wistia is an application intended for use by business professionals, your login pages and videos can all be customized and branded. In addition, for users with a wider array of needs, Wistia features the ability to upload PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, PDF files, and images alongside any uploaded video. If you are looking for a professional, secure way to upload and track videos online, Wistia is definitely an application that can fulfill those needs.

Practical Uses:

  • Post training videos that employees can watch from home
  • Distribute marketing videos and track how they are viewed
  • Privately share videos with select members of your organization
  • Embed a demonstration video on your website to show how a new product works

Insider Tips:

  • View heatmaps to see which parts of a video are the most engaging to viewers
  • Sign up to receive alerts and track the video’s activity in real-time
  • Upload PowerPoints, Word documents, PDFs, and images in addition to videos
  • Let viewers leave their feedback through threaded comment sections under any video

What we liked:

  • Wistia supports standard video types as well as HD
  • Multiple access controls make it easy to keep videos secure and private
  • Wistia features both video metrics and activity tracking to measure overall interest

What we didn’t like:

  • Because Wistia is aimed at businesses, it is too expensive and feature-heavy for most freelancers or individual users

Alternatives:

Company Info:

  • Launched: December 2008
  • Privately Held
  • Headquarters: Lexington, Massachusetts
  • Founded by: Christopher Savage and Brendan Schwartz
  • Web site: http://wistia.com

Costs:

  • Solo accounts are $39/month
  • Plus accounts are $79/month
  • Deluxe accounts are $179/month
  • Enterprise accounts can be customized

Comments

  1. Thanks for writing such a comprehensive review. We’ll be sure to point people here in the future.

    Happy holidays,
    chris

  2. Thanks for mentioning the alternatives to Wistia..Glad i bumped in this article..but looks like brightcove and Vbrick are much more expensive than Wistia. Small companies like mine cannot afford it.

  3. Ryana Byler

    Travel Invoice Approval Software – We try to bring new solutions to old business problems and deliver them in unique ways that are easy on our customers and all of their users.

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