Origits Video Hosting Lifetime Deal

What happens if you go out of business?

Thanks for asking, and I really appreciate the people who carefully read through our entire website. You're currently looking at software we've put all our skills and experience into. This isn't another attempt to build an MVP fast and see if it works – no.

People need video hosting. YouTube shouldn't be a monopoly (I understand why they do everything to become one, but understanding doesn't mean accepting it). People need choices.

We built everything to keep our software independent: encoding engine (no, we don't buy any encoding API from anywhere), player (no, it's not a fork or outsourced product), management panel, video pages – almost everything was built by us. As a result, we control our costs independently of big tech. And we're just getting started.

This project isn't made by a single person – we're a team of seven people, including incredible and highly skilled DevOps engineers. That's quite a big team already.

This project has already taken more than 5 years of our lives, most of it full-time. We have no investors (except our loved friends and family), we run on managed hardware boxes (we're old enough to manage and scale it). We started building websites in 2002 and have built dozens of different projects – some successful, some really not. With Origits, we finally built what really matters to us.

So we'll state here that we're going to follow Basecamp's philosophy of "Until the End of the Internet" (big fans of their approach).

But anyway, the most stable thing in life is that it always changes. So if anything changes so dramatically that we're forced to accept changes we can't handle, we'll at least help every single client keep their data and will open-source the whole project. But I'm very sure it won't happen – so many things and ideas to build inside this product, and most importantly, it really helps people.

Is there really no monthly limit right now?

Yes, that's right. We only limit file uploads to 8GB (which is big enough), but there are no other feature gates inside your LTD account. Since our hybrid minute-based billing isn't ready and will take some time to finish, we decided to remove any limits for LTD users.

We believe our LTD users are going to be our most loyal clients, and we're counting on win-win situations here. Despite the product being ready and having some customers, we need power users who help make it even better. So we trust our users and apply a simple fair use policy which includes 1TB of storage for all video assets and 1TB of bandwidth monthly.That's already huge and bigger than competitors' limits.

Once hybrid billing is ready, we'll put LTD users on the "Grow" plan which includes 300,000 minutes monthly. That's all – simple as that.

How is this different from Vimeo/Wistia

First, we don't create confusing pricing tiers or use dark patterns to acquire users. Maybe we're wrong here, but that's how we feel about doing business right.

From a technical standpoint, we have the same core features as any video hosting platform. However, we know that people need outcomes, not just features.

We look at our project as a different way to use video on websites. In the early stages, we called our project "video hosting for websites," but we want people to keep their hard-working brand on their own territory.

YouTube's goal is to acquire your users. Their "related videos" and suggestions pull viewers away from your site to watch other content.

Our goal is to help you increase your financial outcomes (read: conversions) with the help of video. We're not just hosting your videos – we're helping you turn viewers into customers while keeping them on your website, under your brand.

Do I get all future features?

Absolutely. No hidden gems, paywalls, or whatever. We're not planning any in the future either.

To be honest, minute-based pricing solves the scaling issue quite well – we've checked. When our clients adopt our software more, their audience watches more, and as a result, they purchase more. So we don't need to prove that our solution works for our clients – they see the results directly in their pockets.

So what's the reason for us to force you to adopt any new feature and ask you to pay more for it? None – it's quite easier this way. If you adopt a new feature, you'll see the results almost instantly, and you'll be ready to switch your minute-based plan tier naturally.

What about support?

We currently don't provide chat-based support – we prefer asynchronous communication by email. Don't hesitate to write to [email protected]. We monitor it 24/7 and try to answer within one working day.

If something is really urgent and needs synchronous work, we'll provide access to our Slack, phone, or whatever you need to get it resolved quickly.

We're also setting up a community forum. We know it's a very good way to support users with benefits for everyone. When problems or questions are solved publicly, it helps others find answers to similar issues.