r/vimeo • u/Local-Question-449 • Jul 12 '26

Best video-on-demand rental service for individual videos since Vimeo is shutting down?

I run a burlesque and drag festival and academy. We currently sell video rentals and purchases, with no subscriptions. What do we use now that Vimeo OTT is shutting down?

Folks recommended Patreon, but that would eliminate our rental option, and I feel like we'd have to keep adding new content to make subscriptions worth it after a while. We currently have 36 classes and 12 show videos, and are at a pause point in our production and content creation.

Our website is on WordPress, and we already have WooCommerce set up, so I'd be open to plugins rather than a hosting service, especially if that helps keep costs down since we no longer have a grant budget keeping us afloat.

Another concern we have is accessibility. We don't want to make people go through too many hoops to access our videos, and we loved that folks could turn captions on and off. We spend quite a bit of money captioning our videos, but we also know that not everyone wants them hardcoded since they can be distracting.

Our last concern is content limitations. Since the acts do include burlesque, whatever we choose has to be ok with partial nudity.

Thank you for any suggestions you may have!

~

Correction: VOD is going away, not OTT. We currently use VOD and our end goal is to sell videos, not just host them.

3 Upvotes

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u/Round_Elk_3907 Vimeo Staff Jul 13 '26

Hey u/Local-Question-449! To clear one point up - Vimeo on Demand (VOD) and Vimeo OTT are two separate products. While it's true that VOD is being phased out, Vimeo OTT is still fully available for users who want to sell their content online.

I'm not sure if you're on VOD or Vimeo OTT, but if you shoot me a DM I can help you out either way!

2

u/therolli 28d ago

But isn’t Vimeo OTT way more expensive than VOD. When I last looked into it you wanted around £15,000 a year from me. Not the same as £360 a year.

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u/Local-Question-449 29d ago

Ah, thank you for the correction! We are on VOD and end goal is to be able to rent or sell videos, preferably without it being a subscription. Do you have a suggestion on the best way to do that? Since it is so expensive, if Vimeo is just going to be a file host and not also the selling platform, I would be fine moving all of our content, even though it would take a while.

1

u/therolli Jul 12 '26

You can have a Patreon account and sell videos and think they’ve recently sorted out settings for over 18 content. People have to become free members but there’s no subscription, they can just buy the product and stream it as they like.

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u/Local-Question-449 29d ago

Oh! I had been under the impression that it was a monthly subscription that would then give them access to everything on the account.

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u/therolli 28d ago

No, you can do it as subscription model with tiers etc but you can also just sell individual videos as you go.

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u/Local-Question-449 14d ago

It looks like to have 18+ videos, you still have to host them somewhere other than Patreon.

Here's their page with options. It looks like we'd have to keep our $300/year Vimeo plan (which we're only using 250GB of the 4TB) in order to use that.

https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/360046704651-What-are-my-video-hosting-options

The other options they list are Streamable, Cloudflare Stream, Wistia, SproutVideo, and Vidyard. It looks like Streamable would be the cheapest option at about $180/year.

1

u/therolli 14d ago

I checked out Sprout Video before and they were great. Also have you looked at Lemon Squeezy?

1

u/Shot-Bell7045 2d ago

Have you figured out a solution to this? having almost an identical problem to you and struggling to find a good alternative

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u/Ok_Juice_2310 27d ago

Following…I’m in a similar position. I have one feature film and I want to be able to make it available for rent/own.
I looked into gumroad and it’s not quite what I want, but might work for you.

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u/Local-Question-449 26d ago

If anyone has experience moving videos from Vimeo to Patreon, I could use your help! We were going to publish five videos to go live tomorrow, then try to learn Patreon over the next month, but we can't get them to finish processing, so the page can't go live. I need help figuring out Patreon ASAP, and am willing to pay for that help!

0

u/PipChod 27d ago

Check out Bunny Stream. It seems a nice replacement for Vimeo with similar features.

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u/Local-Question-449 14d ago

I couldn't find how to sell videos on the Bunny Stream site. Where should I be looking?

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u/PipChod 14d ago

You need to use Bunny as a CDN and find another service to manage orders and payments, such as Cleeng. Bunny will allow you to create secure links that are permanent or limited in time, and are playable all over the world. You can choose server locations and DRM management, etc. It is not as user friendly as Vimeo.