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So you are good at creating videos? And you want the world to see them? Great!
While you could just stick them on YouTube, there’s a whole load of reasons why it might be better to showcase them on your very own website. For example, you can:
- Showcase them in a video gallery or portfolio website
- Create a paid online course
- Offer them as a download (free or paid)
- Rent them to your audience (streaming)
- Sell them as part of a subscription
- And: you could even do live video streaming
But if the idea of making your own website sounds daunting, don’t worry: there are specialist website builders that make it easy for anyone to create an impressive online video resource, without needing special skills.
In this guide, you’ll find a detailed breakdown of their features, pricing, and videography-specific pros and cons, so you can find the best site builder for your project.
What is the best way to share my videos?
If you want to get your videos in front of people’s eyes, you have three choices
- Upload them to third-party streaming sites (YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia etc.)
- Upload them to your own website
- Upload them to third-party streaming sites and embed them in your own website.
Video hosting can be expensive – we are talking about huge files that require a lot of web storage. As you’ll see later, when we go through the individual website builders, costs quickly add up if you are planning to upload a lot of videos. That’s why embedding your videos from free video sites like YouTube can be a good way to save money.
If you upload videos to YouTube, for example, you can share them on your website using the YouTube player. This way, you don’t need to upload the video files to your own website. The standard way is to use YouTube’s iFrame code and copy & paste it onto your website.
Today, pretty much all website builders, however, offer much simpler ways of doing this. Usually, all you need is the YouTube video URL, which you insert into a video player widget on your website.
Embedding a YouTube video on a Squarespace website
Pros and cons of using external video hosting services
Pros
- Using external video hosting services (YouTube, Wistia etc.) can be more cost-effective than hosting videos on your own website.
- Embedding videos from external services can drive additional traffic to your website. That’s also why we, at Tooltester, are using YouTube for our 400+ videos.
- External video hosting services often have better video players than website builders (e.g. closed captions/subtitles, analytics etc.).
Cons
- YouTube will show ads that you cannot control or monetize (unless you have a minimum of 1000 subscribers).
- Services like Wistia can also be very expensive if you have a large number of videos
- You are dependent on the platform and have to follow their terms and conditions (if not, you risk being shut down)
Keep in mind that no matter what website builder you are going to pick, you always have the option to embed videos from external services like YouTube (unlimited uploads but ad-supported), Vimeo (free for 25 videos) or Wistia (free for 10 videos). This can be a good way to reduce your monthly bill.
To embed a video from these platforms, simply grab the embed code and paste it into your website using the code editor or embed tools provided by your website builder.
But now, let’s continue with the best ways to create a video website. Most of the following website builders you’ll find below both allow you to embed videos and also upload them directly.
The 6 best website builders for videographers and filmmakers
- Wix – Most advanced video features
- Weebly – Cheap unlimited video hosting
- Squarespace – Interesting for vloggers
- Format – Good pick for photographers
- WordPress – For growing websites
- Hostinger Website Builder – Budget choice
Wix
There’s a personal anecdote I have related to Wix’s video capabilities. When we hired our first video producer for Tooltester, I noticed that a many freelance video editors had portfolio websites made with Wix. That’s no surprise because that’s exactly Wix’s target audience.
It’s a good choice for videographers and artists who want an easy-to-use platform with plenty of design options. There’s a permanently free plan that also lets you add Wix Video, which is a special website app to showcase videos and films. It can do a whole range of things for your video website:
- You can upload videos and host them on your Wix site (or import them from external channels like YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion)
- Create video galleries
- Sell and rent videos or offer subscriptions (0% commission)
- Live-streaming
- Create online video courses via the Wix Online Programs app
A selection of Wix video portfolio templates
You can see an example of a videographer website that uses Wix Video here: Home2Home Movie is using it to offer a paid download and streaming (side note: I even talked to Dennis, the owner of the website. He’s quite happy with Wix Video so far).
Some of the pro features of Wix Video
Demo of the Wix video player
Find a Wix video demo page here, where you can test the regular video player and Wix Video in action.
Wix pricing for video websites
- Free: Using the Wix Video app, you can upload up to 30 minutes of video (10 minutes maximum per video) and stream up to 10 minutes of live video.
- Light ($17/month): Remove all Wix ads and use a custom domain name. You can upload 30 minutes of video and up to 3 hours of video live streaming. Allow other websites to embed your video content.
- Core ($29): Adds ecommerce functionality and includes 5 video hours
- Business ($36): includes 10 video hours
- Business Elite ($159): Unlimited video hours
Please note: even though each Wix plan has its own specific storage limits, these are completely separate from the video hours you can use. All annual Wix plans include a free custom domain for 1 year.
As you see, if you are uploading a lot of videos, costs can add up. For that reason, you could also consider the aforementioned external video hosting services and embed the videos to your Wix site.
Wix Pros
- Strong video features through Wix Video and Video Maker (a video editing tool)
- User-friendly drag-and-drop editor (see our Wix tutorial)
- Wide variety of video-related website templates (see these examples)
- The overall best website builder according to our in-depth testing
- Strong SEO tools to increase your Google rankings
Wix Cons
- Loading speeds can be on the slower side (especially for media-heavy websites)
- More expensive than other website builders
- Video currently have no captions or different playback speeds
> Read our full Wix review
> Try out Wix for free
Weebly
Weebly is one of the OG site builders and used to be one of our top recommendations because it’s so easy to use. It’s still a beginner-friendly website builder, but their new owner Square is hardly adding any new templates or features.
Nevertheless, it can be a decent choice for videographers who want an easy-to-use platform at a budget-friendly price. While it’s not specifically geared towards videographers, it does come with an HD video and audio player on the Professional plan ($12/month) and higher. The upload limit is 1GB per video (which should be enough for about 10-15 minutes of HD footage). And the best thing: you can upload as many videos you like!
Now, I am not sure if they’d allow you to create another YouTube, but if your goal is to host lots of videos – Weebly is great for you! The supported formats are MOV, WMV, M4V, MPG, and MP4, and the videos can also be downloaded by your visitors (if you allow it).
Uploading videos to Weebly: not the most modern interface, but it works
Demo of Weebly’s video player
Find a demo page with Weebly’s video player here.
Weebly pricing for video websites
- Free plan
- Personal: $10 / month – get your own custom domain name
- Professional: $12 / month – adds unlimited video uploads
- Performance: $26 / month – adds ecommerce and membership features
Free domain for 1 year included in annual subscriptions
Weebly Pros
- Unlimited video hosting
- Easy to use editor (excellent drag and drop functionality)
- Affordable pricing
Weebly Cons
- Limited template selection for video-related websites
- Hardly any updates to the website builder (except for ecommerce features)
- The video player isn’t the most modern design-wise and only offer the most basic playback features (no captions, just one playback speed)
> Read our full Weebly review
> Try out Weebly for free
Squarespace
Squarespace is known for its beautiful templates and customizable design options, making it a popular choice for creatives like videographers. It’s a great website builder for creating a video portfolio website, but it can be more expensive than some other website builders and has a slightly steeper learning curve.
Squarespace pricing for video sites
- Personal: $16/month. For personal projects, portfolios and blogs. Includes password-protected pages. Unlimited storage.
- Business: $23/month. Adds marketing and basic ecommerce features.
- Basic Commerce: $28/month. Gives you extra ecommerce features, and 0% sales fees.
- Advanced Commerce: $52/month. Sell subscriptions and offer advanced shipping options.
All yearly plans include a free domain for 1 year.
You can upload up to 30 minutes of video in each of Squarespace’s plans, which isn’t much. If you need more, you have to add a Member Area (see pricing details here) to your site, which range from $9- $35 per month (and come on top of your regular subscription). The lowest plan, Starter, includes up to 5 hours, whereas Pro lets you upload up to 50 hours.
Surprisingly there are no video portfolio templates. But there’s a wide range of general portfolios
Squarespace Pros
- Beautiful templates that are great for portfolio websites
- Highly customizable design options
- Video player offers different playback speeds
- Includes a TikTok inspired video maker (Squarespace Video Studio)
- Great for SEO
Squarespace Cons
- More expensive than many other website builders
- Steeper learning curve
- Complicated pricing (if you want to upload more than 30 minutes of video)
> Read our full Squarespace review
> Try out Squarespace for free
WordPress.org (self-hosted)
WordPress is a powerful content management system that offers a high level of customization through the use of plugins and extensions. It’s a good choice for videographers who don’t want to make any compromises on control over their website’s design and functionality.
While WordPress.org itself is free, you are required to purchase your own hosting and a domain, which is more technical to set up and manage than the other options in this article. It’s also important to keep bandwidth and storage limits in mind, as video consumes a lot of data. Ideally go for a web host that has no cap on bandwidth as you might quickly hit the limits.
If you are planning to host a lot of videos or have very active viewers, it’s usually better to use an external video hosting service for your WordPress site (YouTube, Wistia etc.). This will solve many problems all at once (performance issues bandwidth and storage limitations, encoding issues) that you would otherwise have to take care of manually.
For just a few videos that don’t get thousands of views, it’s usually fine to host them yourself. There are numerous video player plugins for WordPress available.
The same is true for themes for videographers (both free and paid), which come with video-specific features.
Videography themes on Themeforest
WordPress pricing
We are showing the prices for Dreamhost here as we find they offer pretty good value.
Shared Starter: $6.99 a month (1 website) – no bandwidth or visitor limits. Permanence can suffer if you get too much traffic to your website.
Shared Unlimited: $12.99 a month (unlimited websites)
Note that they offer a free domain name and substantial reductions for your first term of the contract.
> Try WordPress on Dreamhost (money back guarantee)
WordPress Pros
- High level of customization through plugins and extensions
- Wide range of video-specific themes
- Allows you to scale your professional websites almost endlessly
- Choose your own web hosting
WordPress Cons
- More technical to set up than other website builders
- Much higher maintenance (regular WordPress and plugin updates)
- Self-hosting videos can be very complicated due to technical issues
> Read our full WordPress guide
> Find the best (affordable) WordPress hosting
Format
Format is apparently ranked #1 – but not by us, though 🙂
Format is a niche website builder that is geared towards photographers and creatives. It offers a range of templates and design options, including ones specifically designed for video portfolio websites.
While it offers a range of specialized features, we didn’t find it particularly intuitive to use. Although there are certain elements that you can drag and drop, overall, it feels pretty restrictive and templated.
Format’s website editor – clean but not the most intuitive
Format pricing
Portfolio Basic: $7 / month. Use your own domain name and add up to 15 pages.
Portfolio Pro: $15 / month. Adds 15 video minutes and lets you create unlimited pages.
Portfolio Plus: $25 / month. Upload 2 hours of video.
Format Pros
- Good selection of templates and design options, including ones specifically for video portfolios
- Good for photographers and creatives in addition to videographers (offers photo proofing features for clients and allows file transfers)
- Live chat support
Format Cons
- Not particularly fun to use. The editor feels very restrictive and doesn’t show the real look of your website while editing
- The contact form editor is limited as it doesn’t offer many different field types
- You can only upload 2 video hours as a maximum, which isn’t much
> Try out Format for free
Hostinger Website Builder (Zyro)
Finally, let’s check out Hostinger Website Builder (previously called Zyro). While it’s a modern website builder with stylish templates, it’s also the only one where you can’t upload videos directly. So why did we even pick it? The English would say: It’s cheap as chips. They offer huge discounts for the first term of the subscription, and even the renewal price is fair.
How do I host my videos then? Well, as described at the top of this post, you can use YouTube, Vimeo or Wistia for that. Wistia is particularly interesting because it’s ad-free. So if you only want to showcase a limited number of videos (up to 10), this could be just right for you.
Embed videos in the Hostinger editor
Hostinger Website Builder pricing
Website plan: $9.99/month, allows you to connect a custom domain name. Includes ecommerce functionality
A free custom domain name is included for the first year.
Hostinger Website Builder Pros
- Very affordable (in fact, the most affordable site builder we know of)
- Modern, responsive designs
- Features online booking tools for clients
Hostinger Website Builder Cons
- No specific videography templates or features
- Not possible to password protect pages
> Read our full Hostinger Website Builder review
> Try out Hostinger Website Builder for free
Choosing a website builder for your video site
When choosing a website builder, you should consider a few key things. Ease of use is important, especially if you have limited tech skills. Look for a website builder with a user-friendly drag-and-drop editor and intuitive interface – Wix and Weebly both fit this bill.
Features like video hosting, a blog, and portfolio pages can also be important for videographers. Make sure the website builder you choose has the features you need to properly showcase your work and connect with potential clients (e.g. contact forms, social media integration or even online appointment booking). Squarespace and Wix are the two site builders with the widest feature-set.
Pricing is another important factor, as hosting videos, films and movies is generally not cheap (despite YouTube offering it for free!). Be sure to do your research and compare pricing across different website builders to ensure you’re getting the best deal.
Finally, take a look at the templates offered by each website builder to see if they are suitable for your videography business. Look for mobile-friendly templates with a clean and professional design that will showcase your work effectively.
Conclusion: Website for videographers
The best website builder for videographers will depend on your specific needs. Our post has identified some strong contenders. To sum up our recommendations:
If you want to sell, rent or even stream your videos in an automated way: Wix
If you want to host a large number of videos cheaply: Weebly
If you want to build a membership website: Squarespace or Wix
If you want to scale your website and have a larger budget: WordPress
If you are a photographer too: Format or Wix
If you want the budget choice and don’t need integrated video hosting: Hostinger
Let us know if you have any questions! We’re happy to help.
FAQ
The best website builders for videographers in our view is Wix due to its great selection of templates and video-specific features (action cards, comments etc.). It’s definitely not the cheapest, but is worth its price if you are able to take advantage of its features.
Other good choices are Weebly, Squarespace, and WordPress.org. They offer a range of features that are suitable for videographers, including video hosting, portfolio pages, and customizable templates.
Most website builders offer ecommerce capabilities that allow you to sell or stream videos or other digital products directly from your website. Learn more about selling digital products here.
Yes, you can host them on Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, Format and WordPress. While Weebly offers unlimited video uploads in its relatively cheap Professional plan ($12 / month), you’ll find that the other companies charge much more for that.
Yes, all site builders offer some level of design customization. Squarespace and Wix, for example, offer a high level of customization by giving you access to most aspects of your web design.
If you want to be able to fully customize your videography website, you might also want to look at WordPress where you have a vast selection of professionally designed templates. WordPress also gives you full access to the website’s source code.
Yes, all website builders allow you to use your own domain name with your website. This can be helpful if you want to establish your brand and create a truly professional online presence. Usually you get a free domain name for the first year as part of their pricing plans. More information here: how much is a domain name?
Yes, you can get a custom email address for your domain name (rather than a generic email provider like gmail.com or hotmail.com). If you purchase it through a website builder, they’ll usually work with Google Workspace which starts at $6 per email address. A free alternative is Zoho Workplace where you get 5 email addresses at no cost. The downside is that it’s more difficult to set up.
Both Wix and Squarespace are solid choices for videographers, but they have their own unique strengths.
Wix is known for its easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor and a ton of templates and design options. There are also features specifically for videographers, like video streaming (which includes live streams), which are overall slightly more advanced than Squarespace’s.
Squarespace, on the other hand, is known for its sleek templates, great blogging tools and their ecommerce features. You can also host your videos there and combine it with membership areas.
The authors
Learn more about us
We keep our content up to date
08 Sep 2023 - Wix pricing updates
04 Feb 2023 - Zyro is now called Hostinger Website Builder
09 Jan 2023 - Added additional explanation about embedding videos
06 Jan 2023 - Article first published
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