Sharing videos with family members when you’re away from home can be quite a strenuous task. However, if you have access to the right service, this can be an extremely easy thing to do. Right now, you will find plenty of services that help you seamlessly share videos with your family or friends. However, there are some services that we use and know already that can also allow us to share videos privately and without posting them publicly.
With this in mind, we’re going to have a look at some of the best ways to help you share videos with friends or family. While most of these services are free to use, some monetize their offering by offering additional storage space and a few other perks. So without waiting any further, let’s have a look at some of these services.
Best Ways to Share Videos with Family
1. Dropbox
Dropbox has been around for a long time, and it has built a reputation as one of the best cloud storage offerings. Users can choose to add their favorite videos onto a Dropbox folder and make it visible to a few people they choose or anyone with the link. Further, you get extensive options with regards to folder arrangement thanks to the PC like the layout. This makes it easy to navigate to your favorite videos, while also allowing you to share entire folders with families instead of one specific file.
Dropbox offers its service for free as long as you’re okay with 2GB of storage to share with your family. The company offers more storage with its Plus and Professional plans which offers 2TB and 3TB of storage space respectively. This plan will set you back by $11.99 per month and $19.99 per month, while customers stand to save a lot more if they subscribe to Dropbox’s annual plans.
If you’re looking for something with unlimited storage, you will need to sign up for a Dropbox Business subscription. The top tier subscription here costs $20 per month, per person in a group of 3, taking its price to $60 per month. There are several other perks here like the ability to manage admins and provide tiered access to your folders. But if you’re just looking to have enough storage for precious family moments, the free 2GB of storage should do just fine.
Dropbox also has a wide range of apps ranging from mobile to desktop, allowing practically anybody with a mobile device or a computer to access your shared videos or folders. Most importantly, all of Dropbox’s mobile apps are free to download, so it shouldn’t take long to get started.
Download it now: here
2. YouTube
This is perhaps one of the easiest ways to share your personal videos with your family, although the process does seem intimidating at first. However, in reality, it’s a simple drag and drop option. If you prefer to keep your videos private or just for your family, you will simply have to select from a varying range of privacy options.
This is where things can get somewhat confusing. Well, with YouTube, there are two types of video uploads. First is private, which allows only those with an email invitation to access the video shared. This means that even if a user has the link, he/she cannot view the video without getting added to the email list first. This method only allows up to 50 people.
Users can also choose to upload an unlisted video. While this doesn’t have the privacy features that we discussed above, it is the best option out there if you want more than 50 people to view your video. This video won’t appear on search results but can be accessed by anyone with a link to it. YouTube offers extensive privacy options for the customers which gives it a distinct edge over other streaming platforms. Most important of all, all your videos will be saved on your profile with the ability to change privacy and sharing settings at any given time.
YouTube doesn’t charge for video uploads, so you can upload videos of any duration. As of recently, the maximum video upload size is 128GB while the video duration maxes out at 12 hours, which is a significant amount of content for one video.
Download it now: here
3. Google Photos
Google Photos is yet another excellent method to share videos and photos with your family and friends. Videos shared on Google Photos will open on YouTube, so there’s a familiar interface overall. For those unaware, Google Photos is provided by default on Android smartphones and tablets, while it’s also available on the web and iOS. This means videos shared on this platform can be accessed by practically anybody in the world with an internet connection.
To start off, Google Photos offers unlimited photo storage to its customers which means you can upload as many videos or photos as you like to Photos. Once uploaded, you get extensive options with regards to sharing the video or even creating a shared album involving your family. With this method, each member of the album will get automatically notified when a new image or video is added to the album.
What’s cool about Google Photos is that it can cleverly utilize face recognition technology and automatically add photos of you or your family members whenever a new photo is added to your phone gallery. This feature is opt-in, however, so you can always disable it from the settings. So what’s the catch here? Well, there’s none. If you’re looking for original quality photo storage, you might want to consider getting a Google One subscription. But for basic photos and videos to share with the family, Google Photos is an excellent option.
Download it now: here
4. Vimeo
Vimeo is a video streaming platform much like YouTube, although it hasn’t gained as much popularity as Google’s offering. However, at its core, Vimeo is a solid service and can even allow you to share videos privately with your loved ones. Vimeo is used mostly by professional video creators, so if you want to share some well-made videos, this service has all the tools you require.
This streaming service also comes with extensive privacy and security options for your videos. Users get to choose from multiple metrics like “Anyone can see this video”, “Only people with a password can see this video”, and so on. You can also choose to hide the video entirely or make it available via a private link, but these features require you to upgrade to a paying subscription.
Speaking of which, Vimeo can be used by free by any user, albeit with some severe restrictions. Free users will only be able to upload 500MB of videos per week and a total of 5GB per account, which is fairly limited and can run out quickly. Understandably, Vimeo also forbids monetizing off a free account. If you’re looking for more flexibility with video uploads, Vimeo’s basic plans start at $7 per month while the top tier subscription plan will set you back by $75 per month.
Download it now: here
5. WeTransfer
What if you don’t want to go through the lengthy process of creating an account in order to share videos? Well, WeTransfer is an excellent option to let you get started on file-sharing immediately. This is an email-like service and lets you add up to three contacts that can see the video. Also pretty decent is the fact that the company allows up to 2GB of uploads. However, since this is the free tier, there are some obvious limitations here.
Firstly, videos uploaded on WeTransfer are only available for 7 days and will vanish after. Also, you cannot share videos with more than three email addresses here, which somewhat defeats the purpose of family sharing. However, the company’s WeTransfer Plus subscription plan solves this problem and offers video uploads of up to 20GB and no restrictions on email addresses you can add. This offers a total of 1TB of storage space, though, so it’s not truly unlimited storage with WeTranfer.
However, for families with a large video collection, this can be an excellent subscription service to consider. The company offers its monthly plan at $12.99 while the yearly plan will cost you $120 with the latter being the cheapest option.
Download it now: here
6. Facebook
Facebook is not getting good press for a wide range of reasons. However, if you’re looking to share family photos and videos with your loved ones far away, this is still one of the best platforms you can use. While there are a variety of privacy options to choose from that lets you control who can see your pictures or videos, Facebook also offers an excellent avenue for existing Facebook users to create groups using the Messenger app and share photos/videos that way.
This is also known as Facebook Groups, which basically lets you control the group and add or remove members. Every photo or video you add can only be viewed by the members of the group. Best of all, Facebook is a free service and doesn’t charge users for storing their videos or photos on the cloud. If you and your family are already on Facebook, this is perhaps one of the easiest methods to share photos with each other.