Vimeo is sorry, and here’s how it’s changing

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Vimeo is making some changes to its bandwidth policy after creators spoke out about how the company pulled the rug out from under them by demanding large sums of money if they wanted to keep hosting their videos on the platform. The new policies will give creators time to prepare for changes.

The new cap for monthly bandwidth use is a flat 2 terabytes, according to a post by Vimeo. Vimeo admits that it could have been more transparent if the policy had been applied to users who were in the top 1% of bandwidth usage. The company says that it will alert users when they go over the limit, so you have time to figure out how to cut back on data use, or at least prepare for your bill to go up.

The creators of Vimeo will have a minimum of 30 days to reply to Vimeo and work out a deal if they are over the cap. One creator told The Verge that he was given nine days to upgrade his account, decrease his usage, or have access to his videos disrupted under the old rules. It would take over a week to come up with the money for his costs to go from $900 a year to $3,000 a year.

Several creators say they received messages from the platform saying they were using too much bandwidth, and that they were at risk of having to leave the platform. Many of the creators were paying hundreds of dollars a year to use Vimeo to host their videos, and were shocked at how few views their content received. There is a lot of data that needs to be transferred if 10 people watch an hour-long concert in 4K.

They were surprised that Vimeo demanded thousands of dollars more a year if they wanted to keep using the service the way they had been. One creator didn't realize they were uploading to Vimeo when they uploaded their videos to Patreon.

The post written by the CEO of Vimeo is very apologetic and opens with an image of a bouquet of flowers. It is possible that creators would still have to pay more under the new guidelines.

Hopefully, the new policy will make it so creators don't have to scramble to lower their bandwidth use or find a new way to host their videos in a few days. Vimeo will give users time to move their videos off its platform if they find it no longer works for them.

The company is working on a policy that will exempt some users from the cap if they don't use Vimeo to monetize their videos elsewhere.