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Has Vimeo Pro ever billed you for excessive bandwidth?

A while ago, a VimeoPro rep told me that you get unlimited bandwidth when using their Vimeo player but if bandwidth reaches a certain level outside the player, i.e. Roku, that additional bandwidth fees are calculated and charged on a case by case basis. He couldn't give me an example, nor tell me the rate, nor tell me the bandwidth cap outside the player.
Has this happened to anyone?
One of my channels currently streams about 6TB of data per month and was considering switching to VimeoPro. Does anyone use Vimeo that transmits this much data and if so, did they charge you anything extra?
From Vimeo Pro FAQ: You’ll never encounter surprise charges for overages, so long as you’re using our gorgeous player.
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19 REPLIES 19
rremde
Binge Watcher

Re: Has Vimeo Pro ever billed you for excessive bandwidth?

Well, we just got an email from Vimeo to "discuss a long term arrangement" - obviously they want to talk bandwidth charges, so I'll update here.
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bettendomain
Visitor

Re: Has Vimeo Pro ever billed you for excessive bandwidth?

Will you please update us? I have been looking for an answer to this question the past 2 days, nobody could give me a clear one. I could benefit from your experience. So how did the arrangement with vimeo go?
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rovidx_media
Roku Guru

Re: Has Vimeo Pro ever billed you for excessive bandwidth?

How much traffic are you pushing?    I did 1.6 million views one month and never got so much as an email from Vimeo.   I've never heard of such a thing, and I didn't see anything in their TOS relating to overage charges.  I'm very curious as well if this is an issue.
Use Wordpress to power your Roku Direct Publisher (& other platforms) -> https://rovidx.com
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rremde
Binge Watcher

Re: Has Vimeo Pro ever billed you for excessive bandwidth?

Sorry for the delay - we just got this sorted with Vimeo.  

First of all, they have been absolute peaches to work with.  They are great, and not unreasonable at all.  Our use was VERY high - we're running feature films, and have a library of approximately 2000 films, and running 5 channels.  The cost per GB was reasonable (flat fee based on average use per month) - cheaper than S3 and a lot of other players out there, but more expensive than we could source elsewhere. Since our content is ad supported, we're pushing pennies across the table, and small differences are important, so we'll be hosting elsewhere.  We came up with a plan to transition off of Vimeo in an agreed upon timeframe to transition our traffic off of their system.  We're still going to keep the Pro membership as a backup, should our new CDN experience a server failure/outage, and Vimeo was fine with that.  I want to stress that they've been VERY reasonable to work with.  They stated on several occasions that they're not interested in shutting us off suddenly, or holding our feet to the fire - and they were good to their word.

"attilascreative" wrote:
...
One of my channels currently streams about 6TB of data per month and was considering switching to VimeoPro. Does anyone use Vimeo that transmits this much data and if so, did they charge you anything extra?
From Vimeo Pro FAQ: You’ll never encounter surprise charges for overages, so long as you’re using our gorgeous player.

Yep - you'll get an email.  But, depending on your CDN, it may be a decent deal, particularly given the convenience of the Dropbox API, and their automatic transcoding, and the ease of using their playlists. They also limit the number of API calls per hour, so using them will depend upon how much activity you have. I'd rather not post specifics publicly, as I don't know what their costs are, or what cost range they're offering users.  If you have more detailed questions, feel free to PM me.
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Re: Has Vimeo Pro ever billed you for excessive bandwidth?

"rremde" wrote:
Sorry for the delay - we just got this sorted with Vimeo.  

Thanks so much for sharing your experience. That helps a lot.
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rovidx_media
Roku Guru

Re: Has Vimeo Pro ever billed you for excessive bandwidth?

"rremde" wrote:
 They are great, and not unreasonable at all.  Our use was VERY high - we're running feature films, and have a library of approximately 2000 films, and running 5 channels.  The cost per GB was reasonable (flat fee based on average use per month) - cheaper than S3 and a lot of other players out there, but more expensive than we could source elsewhere. 

I'm glad they were reasonable with you.    I just got my email this morning, and they want $1000/month.   We only served 115k views in the last 30 days (which is a fraction of when we opened, as we were getting over a million views per month).
So for us, it would be cheaper to host on S3 w/ CloudFront. 
Use Wordpress to power your Roku Direct Publisher (& other platforms) -> https://rovidx.com
rremde
Binge Watcher

Re: Has Vimeo Pro ever billed you for excessive bandwidth?

"rovidx_media" wrote:


I'm glad they were reasonable with you.    I just got my email this morning, and they want $1000/month.   We only served 115k views in the last 30 days (which is a fraction of when we opened, as we were getting over a million views per month).
So for us, it would be cheaper to host on S3 w/ CloudFront. 

The key is bandwidth. First, go look at the info on the films you're hosting on Vimeo, and take a look at the file sizes - if you're using their recommended bitrates, your filesizes are HUGE.  (We stream at about 10-20% of their recommended bitrate, and the results look fine).  Next, get them on the phone and talk with them, and ask how many TB you're streaming per month.  They don't have that metric available in their dashboard, but they're happy to provide that info to you if you ask.
If you don't need their CMS, or their system to generate XML for you, there are folks like Universal CDN and Highwinds that can offer much lower streaming prices.
Keep in mind that Vimeo and others like them don't own their own servers - so they're at the mercy of their CDN when it comes to price, and if they're being honest with me (and I have no reason to believe otherwise - I've worked with them since they started, and have a good relationship with many of the folks in the organization), they haven't negotiated hard enough with their CDN.
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StevenEsq2
Visitor

Re: Has Vimeo Pro ever billed you for excessive bandwidth?

We just got our email.  They have been very decent to work with.  Our usage outside the player is over 6T per month.  S3 is about 9 cents per GB last time we checked.  Vimeo is charging less.  (PM me for the quote they gave us.)
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dyanmicj9
Visitor

Re: Has Vimeo Pro ever billed you for excessive bandwidth?

@StevenEsq2[/url:imswd4ko][/color] How much did Vimeo quote you?

Also, Do you know the volume of the Free Bandwidth included in your plan?
And Did they tell you how much you exceeded?
Like fore example Base Plan 10TB, Exceeded 20 TB so 20TB is $1000
Can you see a bandwidth usage report?
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