What's the difference between SmartVideo and Vimeo?

SmartVideo plays your videos on your own website, in a player that carries your brand instead of Vimeo’s. It takes over your existing Vimeo embeds without re-uploading, and you can upload new videos straight to your SmartVideo Library.

Why sites switch from Vimeo to SmartVideo

• A lighter page. In our October 2026 Lighthouse benchmark, a page with a SmartVideo player was at least 15% lighter than the same page with a Vimeo embed, and made fewer requests.
• Your brand, not Vimeo’s. The SmartVideo player shows no third-party branding, related videos, or “Watch on Vimeo” links that send viewers off your site, and it loads no third-party ad code by default. You can match its colors to your brand on every plan.
• Clear of Vimeo’s ownership changes. Bending Spoons’ acquisition of Vimeo closed on November 24, 2025, taking Vimeo off Nasdaq. In January 2026, Vimeo laid off most of its staff, with a former employee describing the video team as among those let go.
• No re-uploading. With auto-conversion enabled, your existing Vimeo embeds move to SmartVideo as their pages are opened.

See SmartVideo as a Vimeo alternative for the full side-by-side comparison.

How SmartVideo plays on your site

SmartVideo requires the swarmcdn.js snippet in your site’s <head> (the WordPress plugin adds it for you) plus a video element on the page: a <smartvideo> tag, a WordPress block or shortcode, or an existing Vimeo embed with auto-conversion enabled.

What happens to existing Vimeo embeds

With Vimeo auto-conversion enabled, opening a page with an eligible Vimeo embed queues that video for import and conversion. Each page containing an embed needs to be opened once, including pages behind a login — open those yourself while logged in. After conversion, SmartVideo serves the video from its own delivery network in the SmartVideo player on your site. Until a video has converted, it keeps playing from Vimeo.

Keep your Vimeo account and source videos available until conversion has finished. A video usually takes about as long as it runs to convert, and longer when our encoders are busy. Auto-converted videos do not appear in the SmartVideo dashboard Library; check playback on the pages where they are embedded.

What stays on Vimeo

SmartVideo leaves your Vimeo library and share links in place and changes how videos play on your own site. While you keep using Vimeo, manage your source videos and their privacy settings there. Once you’ve confirmed every embedded video has finished converting (see How do I know SmartVideo is working?), you can keep Vimeo or cancel it. If you later remove SmartVideo, your original Vimeo embeds play again only while your Vimeo account and videos remain available.

Before importing, check these two separate Vimeo settings:

• Who can watch: Choose Anyone. Only me and password protection block import. Do not switch an already-embedded video to Unlisted: the added h= hash changes its URL, so existing embeds stop matching.
• Where can this be embedded: Choose Specific domains with your website’s domain listed. This is the setting we recommend: it keeps the video private to your own site while SmartVideo serves it. Anywhere also allows import.

What doesn’t carry over

• Chapters: SmartVideo does not support Vimeo chapter markers.
• Analytics: SmartVideo tracks views and integrates with Google Analytics for video events (play, pause, progress milestones), but does not replicate Vimeo’s heatmap-style engagement analytics. Install the Google tag (gtag.js) on the page; a Google Tag Manager (GTM) container alone doesn’t create window.gtag, so SmartVideo has nothing to send events to. On WordPress, the SmartVideo plugin’s Legacy player (the default in plugin 2.4) sends events only to the retired Universal Analytics, so GA4 receives none. See Track SmartVideo events in GA4 and Google Tag Manager.
• Captions: SmartVideo imports your Vimeo video’s captions when it first processes the video. Turn on caption import so the player shows the English track. See Adding subtitles and captions.

Good to know

• Editing: SmartVideo is not a video editor. If you edit in Vimeo, keep doing that there.
• Embed code: SmartVideo does not provide iframe embed code or a standalone video URL to share. If a tool accepts iframe HTML or a webpage URL, you can host a SmartVideo player page on your own site and use that. If a platform only accepts approved video-provider URLs or blocks scripts in the page head, you cannot install SmartVideo directly there.

SmartVideo plan limits

SmartVideo plans include monthly views and storage:

See current pricing for plan details.

Ready to migrate?

Follow Migrating from Vimeo to SmartVideo for auto-conversion and direct SmartVideo tag instructions, or start with the Vimeo migration overview.