Private video hosting, in every sense of the word
"Private" means five different things depending on who is asking. Most hosts deliver the first one and call it done. Here is each meaning, the control that answers it, and — so you can calibrate — what that control does not do.
Short version: unlisted stops discovery, member gating stops strangers, domain whitelisting stops re-embedding, DRM stops copying, and a watermark makes what is left traceable. All five are on every plan.
Meaning 1
Private means: not findable
No search engine, no YouTube sidebar, no public listing.
Unlisted by default
Every video here is unreachable unless you embed it or share its link. There is no public channel page, no recommendations, no ads, and nothing is submitted to search engines. This is the baseline, and it is the only meaning of 'private' that most free hosts actually deliver.
Meaning 2
Private means: only these people
Paying students, a team, a client — and nobody they forward it to.
Member accounts and self-signup
Gate a project behind member logins. Members sign up or are invited, and playback checks their entitlement on every request, so a forwarded link opens a login screen rather than the video. Works standalone or beside your existing course platform.
Meaning 3
Private means: only on my site
The embed should work on your domain and refuse everywhere else.
Domain whitelisting and signed URLs
The player only starts on domains you list, and every playback URL is signed and expires within minutes. Lift the embed code onto another site and it refuses; copy a URL out of the network tab and it stops working before it is useful.
Meaning 4
Private means: cannot be copied
No download extensions, no stream rippers, no re-uploads.
Studio DRM — Widevine, PlayReady, FairPlay
The video is encrypted and the key is issued per device, per session, to a secure decoder rather than to the page. There is no unencrypted file for a tool to grab. Switched on per project, so a free preview and a paid course can share a library.
Meaning 5
Private means: traceable if it leaks
If a copy appears, you want to know whose account it came from.
Viewer-identifying watermark
The viewer's own identifier moves across the frame during playback. It does not prevent a recording; it changes the incentive, because a leaked recording carries the name of the account that made it.
Private for the host, too
No ads, no recommendations, no branding on the player, and nothing about your library is used for anything but serving it. Source files stay exportable as the originals you uploaded, and deleting a video removes every copy. The trust page lists where things are stored and served.
Questions
What is private video hosting?
Hosting where your videos are not public by default and you decide who can watch, where the player works, and whether copies can be made. The phrase gets used for four different things — unlisted links, viewer logins, domain restrictions, and DRM — and a host that offers only the first is private in name only. Ask which of the four a platform actually does before comparing prices.
Is an unlisted YouTube or Vimeo link private?
Only in the weakest sense: it is not searchable. Anyone holding the link can watch and forward it, the player can be embedded anywhere, and on YouTube the video can surface in recommendations to people who watched it once. For a family video that is fine. For anything people pay for, it is not private at all.
Can I host videos privately for a course or membership?
Yes, and this is the case the platform is built for. Put the course in a project, gate it behind member accounts or your existing LMS, whitelist the domain the course lives on, and switch DRM on for that project. Students watch normally on any device; download tools get nothing; screen recorders get a black frame on iOS, Safari, Edge and most Android. From $12 a month with 1,000 protected plays included.
Do I need DRM for private hosting, or is a password enough?
A password controls who gets in. It does nothing once they are in — a paying viewer can still run a downloader against the stream and re-upload the file. If the videos are the thing you sell, use DRM; if they are free to watch and you simply do not want them public or re-hosted, member logins plus domain whitelisting may be enough.
Where are private videos stored, and can I get them back?
Source files and streaming copies are stored on US/EU infrastructure with encryption at rest, and playback is served from a global edge network with 300+ locations; the trust page says exactly where. Every video can be exported as its original file at any time, and deleting a video removes the source and every rendition. There is no lock-in by design.
How much does private video hosting cost?
Starter is $12 a month, or $9.6 billed yearly, with 250 GB of storage, 1 TB of delivery a month, unlisted-by-default hosting, member gating, domain whitelisting, signed URLs, the identity watermark and studio DRM with 1,000 protected plays. There is a 7-day trial with no card, and DRM works during the trial.