Professional video hosting without ads, branding, or traffic leaks.
| Feature | host.video | YouTube |
|---|---|---|
| Price | From $20/mo | Free |
| Ads on embeds | Never | Yes, including competitor ads |
| Player branding | White-label, zero branding | YouTube logo, red play button always visible |
| Suggested/related videos | Never shown | Cannot be fully disabled since 2018 |
| Per-viewer analytics | Available on Custom plan | Aggregate only, no individual viewer data |
| Password protection | Included | Not available on unlisted videos |
| Custom domains | Included on Business plan | Not available — always youtube.com |
| Embed page weight | Lightweight iframe | 1.3-2.6 MB, 20+ HTTP requests |
YouTube places ads on embedded videos — including competitor ads — and keeps 100% of the revenue. Ad frequency on embeds increased in August 2024. YouTube Premium only removes ads for the individual subscriber, not for your website visitors.
YouTube shows suggested videos after playback and displays a "Watch on YouTube" button. The rel=0 parameter only limits suggestions to same-channel videos since 2018. Every embed is a potential exit from your site.
Many offices, hospitals, and government agencies block youtube.com at the firewall. Embedded YouTube videos show a broken gray box. host.video serves from your custom domain, bypassing these blocks entirely.
YouTube offers aggregate view counts only. No per-viewer tracking, no CRM integration, no engagement heatmaps. host.video provides completion rates, geographic breakdowns, device data, and referrer tracking. You can also password-protect videos or restrict by domain and IP.
YouTube is free with unlimited storage, bandwidth, and encoding. If cost is the only consideration and you can tolerate ads, branding, and traffic leaks, YouTube cannot be beaten on price.
YouTube is owned by Google and has favorable placement in search results. If your goal is public discovery and organic reach rather than private or branded hosting, YouTube offers a distribution channel that no paid host can replicate.
YouTube is free. host.video starts at $20/mo ($200/yr). The cost of YouTube is not dollars — it is ads on your content, competitor branding on your site, viewer leakage to suggested videos, and blocked embeds in corporate environments. A single YouTube embed adds 1.3-2.6 MB of page weight and up to 2 seconds of load time, hurting Core Web Vitals and SEO. For teams that treat video as a professional communication tool rather than a public distribution channel, the $20/mo investment eliminates these hidden costs.
YouTube is the right choice for public content marketing, SEO-driven video distribution, or any scenario where maximum free reach matters more than brand control. If your videos are meant to be discovered by the widest possible audience and you are comfortable with the tradeoffs, YouTube remains unmatched.
Choose host.video if you embed videos on your website, product, or client portals and need them to look professional — no ads, no YouTube branding, no suggested videos pulling viewers away. If your viewers include corporate employees behind firewalls that block YouTube, host.video on a custom domain solves that problem. You also get real analytics, password protection, and a player that loads in a fraction of the time.