For many years, most WordPress plugins supported two video options: YouTube and Vimeo.
YouTube was the free option that displayed ads over your videos. Vimeo was the paid option that didn’t show any ads on your videos.
But in 2026, it’s increasingly difficult to recommend Vimeo as a video platform.
The reason is that Vimeo was purchased by Bending Spoons, the company that is infamous for acquiring companies, firing the staff, and increasing prices for customers.
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What is Bending Spoons doing at Vimeo?
They are retiring every legacy plan. Most accounts haven’t been moved yet. If your account is still on an old plan, that isn’t a reprieve. They’re just taking their time.
Yes, they did increase the storage for each plan. However, this good news comes with problems.
The first problem: embed storage
Vimeo now splits storage into public videos and “managed” videos, which means anything private, unlisted or embedded. If you’re using Vimeo for a website, these manged videos are probably your entire library.
| Old Plan | New Equivalent Plan | Managed Storage (Old) | Managed Storage (New) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plus or Starter | Creator (~$10/mo) | 2 TB | 50 GB |
| Pro or Standard | Core (~$33/mo) | 4 TB | 300 GB |
The table above shows a 97.5% cut to managed video storage on the cheapest plans. A few years of client videos on a $12 plan doesn’t fit in 50GB. At renewal you’ll be choosing between deleting them and paying more. If you want to match your current plan, then you’ll need the “new” Professional plan with 7TB of unrestricted storage for an unconfirmed $70 to $90 per month.
The second asterisk: the plan usage policy
Vimeo might not let you have any of those plans. Its Plan Usage Policy lets it decide an account is a business and move it to Studio, at $400 per month, or a custom quote. We’ve spoken to people quoted $20k per year for what used to be a $75 per month plan. There are several signals it looks for, and one of them is having your own email domain, which is a thing that most people with their own website tend to have.
Three things to check on your Vimeo account
If you use Vimeo, we recommend that you check three things on your account. These will help you prepare for Vimeo’s price changes.
Plus, if your account is on a company domain, read the usage policy now, while you still have options. If you run client sites, do this for theirs too. When a player goes blank on a client’s homepage, the client doesn’t ring Vimeo.
The bit where we mention we’re a video host
We worked at a company called StreamYard.
Bending Spoons, the company that bought Vimeo, bought StreamYard in 2024. So we know how this goes. We built Livid because we wanted to do things differently. We wanted to do thing better. We wanted to treat customers right.
Livid is $10 a month for 2TB. There’s no public/private split, no ads, no policy that decides you’re a business and quadruples your bill. Our WordPress plugin scans a site for Vimeo embeds and swaps them for Livid ones in bulk, with backups, so a migration is an afternoon rather than a rebuild. Free trial, no card.
Still paid up on Vimeo until next year? That doesn’t matter. If you move now, we’ll give you credit for the time left on your Vimeo account. You don’t have to wait for the Vimeo price increase to hit you.
Vimeo’s full plan-by-plan breakdown, with sources, is here.
MetaSlider now supports Livid video
MetaSlider supports Livid in both the MetaSlider Slideshow and MetaSlider Gallery plugins. You can insert videos from Livid as easily as you could insert videos from YouTube or Vimeo.
