We understand the importance of YouTube (it's the #2 search engine in the world!), and we believe that ALL businesses should have a presence there, but NO business should be embedding or sharing their videos from YouTube. The reasoning is simple: YOUTUBE ONLY WANTS TO BRING TRAFFIC TO YOUTUBE!
When you embed a YouTube video onto your website, you'll see "suggested video" thumbnails pop up at the end. If clicked on, the video thumbnails take viewers off of your website and out to YouTube, where they will be distracted by endless ads and videos that have nothing to do with you. YouTube used to allow you to turn these suggested video thumbnails off using a special code, but they started to phase out this option in September of 2018. Now, even if you do manage to manually recreate that special code, viewers will still see thumbnails, although those will be from other videos on your YouTube channel. But clicking on any of those thumbnails will still take the viewer off your website and out to YouTube.
Even worse, if you're using YouTube to share links to your videos in your marketing emails, YOU'RE SENDING YOUR PROSPECTS DIRECTLY TO YOUTUBE, instead of to your own website!
Below are four alternative websites where you can host your videos without the "popup thumbnail" distractions. (Please note that the features and pricing shown below for all of these hosting sites were correct as of the date we published this blog, but you are advised to refer to each site's home page for the latest info.)