Making and sharing short online videos is a popular and effective tactic for creating engaging web content.  But, serving videos off your website is still ab bit more complicated than publishing plain old HTML.  The files are big.  There are fancy multimedia players to consider.  And what happens if one of your videos "goes viral" and gets thousands of viewers?  

Fortunately, there are excellent free (and low-cost) video hosting services that can take all of the pain and hassle out of the bargain.  These providers let you upload your video in a few mouse clicks, handle various kinds of encoding and format conversion, and give you back simple javascript "embed" codes that let you slip your videos into your web pages, no matter how you're building your main website.  These services also track viewing statistics, let you string together videos into podcast channels, and more! The free options should offer enough options and flexibility for most nonprofits.

Recommended Video Hosting Providers

Free (i.e. best for nonprofits)

YouTube - The obvious choice for many, YouTube is the most popular video posting site on the net.

Blip.tv - Blip.tv is currently the best of the free video hosting providers, and is all most small to midsized nonprofits will need.  It provides a user-friendly interface, a polished multimedia player, and lots of options for creating "channels" of ongoing information.  You can see a typical Blip.tv video here, and check out Blip.tv's online learning center for information about how to get started producing and sharing online videos.

Vimeo - Vimeo also offers reliable video hosting, and is a better option if you have HD-quality video to post. A good alternative to YouTube if you would rather not see their branding.

Fee-based (if you need a wee bit more power)

If you're streaming thousands of videos per month, or are making online video a centerpiece of your online publishing work, you may need to move up the ladder to a fee-for-service video hosting provider.  Among the choices that our national-scale colleagues recommend:

http://www.playstream.com

http://onstreammedia.com

Both offer pricing plans starting at under $100/month and have a good reputation for quality and customer service.

Amazon S3

Amazon S3 - Not a video hosting service per-se, but a very inexpensive way to purchase lots of server space and bandwidth