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Church videos are more important to modern ministry than ever before. In fact, over 75% of churches post videos for people to watch later.
Consider how people interact with churches today. Most people will connect with your church online before ever visiting in person, and your sermon videos help them understand your church’s message, mission, and culture, while also helping them feel more connected.
Also, technology has advanced so far that churches only need equipment as basic as a smartphone in order to post church videos online. Because they’re available anytime and anywhere, people can easily listen to a past sermon series or quickly catch up on your current messages.
The question now becomes this: Where is the best place for posting our church videos? When ranking various video platforms, we considered the following tools and features essential for managing your church video libraries:
Storage & organization: It’s critical to find sufficient storage space to accommodate a growing collection of church videos. Additionally, being able to organize videos in a structured and easily searchable manner becomes increasingly important as your library expands.
Metadata & tagging: The best church video platforms offer tools for properly tagging and categorizing your online sermons for efficient search and discoverability.
Video quality & streaming: Delivering high-quality video content that buffers smoothly and streams without interruptions is essential for an engaging user experience.
Religious freedom: There have been innumerable occasions where some video platforms have removed, blocked, or muted church content due to subjective “community standards.” It’s important to use a platform that respects your church’s right to religious freedom.
User engagement: Encourage congregants and online viewers to interact with church videos, your leaders, and each other. Building an active and engaged community around your video content may require strategies to promote participation and foster meaningful interactions.
With these features in mind, let’s take a look at the best platforms available to help you reach and engage more people by sharing your church’s videos.
Since creating the very first church app back in 2009, Subsplash has been a church-focused tech leader offering mobile and TV apps, websites, group messaging, online giving, and much more on one connected platform.
Today, Subsplash’s digital media management is the industry standard for sharing church videos to tens of millions of users in over 150 countries around the world, with over 9 billion views of gospel-centered content through their platform.
Their exclusive tools save media teams dozens of hours every month and provide an amazing viewing experience for their users. For example, a typical workflow for publishing a video recording of a live stream requires (at least) the following seven steps:
Imagine having to do that process every week! Video files are very large, so each upload, download, import, and export can take up to several hours depending on the quality and size of the recording.
Subsplash comes with an end-to-end media workflow, allowing you to trim and archive your live streams into your media library and avoid long uploads, downloads, and re-uploads. Once your video is ready, with one click you can publish your media to your church’s app, website, and social media.
Here are more features that separate Subsplash Media from other church video sharing platforms:
Lastly, unlike social media companies that remove church videos for violating their subjective “community standards,” Subsplash is dedicated to supporting your church’s religious freedom by giving you full control over your church’s content.
If you’re ready to save time, streamline your church video workflows, and delight your users, [.blog-contact-cta]connect with one of our Ministry Consultants today! [.blog-contact-cta]
Vimeo is a popular video platform known for its high-quality video playback and professional features. It offers churches the ability to upload, host, and share their videos with their video player. They also offer live streaming and web embeds that can be added to a church’s website.
Vimeo provides extra privacy settings, allowing churches to control who can access their content. With advanced analytics and viewer engagement insights, churches can gain valuable data about their audience.
Pros: Vimeo's main benefits for churches include ad-free video and live streaming embeds, customization options, privacy controls, and detailed analytics.
Cons: A main challenge can be the amount of time involved in weekly workflows using Vimeo’s platform for uploading, downloading, and re-uploading large video files. Their platform contains and promotes content that many churches might find objectionable for their audience. Also, their lack of native integrations with a church website or mobile app creates a reliance on web embeds, requiring more processes and maintenance.
Facebook is a versatile social media platform that allows churches to connect with their congregation and broader community with their church video content. They also allow ministries to easily livestream services and events directly on Facebook using its built-in live streaming feature.
The platform offers a large audience reach, engagement tools like chat, comments, and reactions, and the ability to share videos across profiles and groups.
Pros: The upside for using Facebook includes a wide user base, interactive features, social sharing capabilities, and easy live streaming.
Cons: One of the main drawbacks to using Facebook for sharing church videos is the overwhelming amount of distractions that come from notifications, posts, and messages that appear when the app is open. Anyone on Facebook who objects to your church’s content can file a complaint, and this can lead to your church videos being muted, blocked, or removed from their platform. Other challenges may arise in terms of limited video customization options as well as interruptions due to copyright infringement despite having the correct permissions in place.
YouTube is the largest video platform globally offering a potentially huge audience reach and more discoverability. Churches can upload and share videos, create playlists, and engage with viewers through comments and subscriptions. YouTube also provides content creators with video analytics, live captioning, and live streaming features.
Pros: YouTube is attractive to churches because of its promise of global exposure, powerful search capabilities, and live streaming capabilities. Many website and mobile app platforms accept YouTube embeds for both on-demand and live streaming services.
Cons: YouTube’s vastness can make it challenging for new channels to gain visibility, as well as very distracting for users with an endless amount of non-church content. Similar to Facebook, anyone can register complaints that can potentially block or remove videos. Many churches have also experienced copyright infringement claims against music on their church videos, which can cause content to be blocked until the dispute is settled.
While better known as a photo-sharing platform, Instagram also supports video content through its Stories, Reels, and Live features. Longer-form videos are limited to 60 minutes, while Reels are short-lived, vertical videos that can engage followers in a more immediate and informal way. Instagram offers creative editing tools, hashtags for discoverability, and a visually-focused interface.
Pros: Instagram can be helpful as an extra channel to share church videos for visual storytelling, direct engagement with followers, and the potential to reach a younger demographic.
Cons: Most Instagram users prefer shorter videos, and the platform's video length limitations and the need for a mobile-centric approach can pose challenges for churches with longer sermons or specific target demographics. Instagram and Facebook are both owned by the same Big Tech company, Meta, which means church content can be taken down if anyone finds it objectionable. Their platform also lacks a versatile church video library option for websites and church apps.
Christian World Media is a specialized video platform designed for churches and religious organizations. It offers live streaming, video archiving, and on-demand playback services tailored to the needs of churches.
Churches can broadcast their services, online sermons, and events while integrating donations, Bible verses, and sermon notes into the video player. The platform provides options for embedding videos on church websites and offers customization features to maintain a consistent brand identity.
Pros: Christian World Media offers a few church-focused features, integrated donation capabilities, customizable video player, and seamless website integration.
Cons: Their platform lacks features such as live chat for building community, editing tools, storage is limited to 1TB, and their interface feels outdated. One potential challenge could be limited audience reach compared to larger mainstream platforms.
TikTok is a rapidly growing platform focused on short-form, engaging video content. With its extensive collection of filters, effects, and music options, TikTok provides churches with a creative outlet to share inspiring and entertaining videos.
Churches can leverage trending challenges and hashtags to increase visibility and engage with a younger audience.
Pros: The main benefits of adding church videos on TikTok include virality potential, trend participation, and reaching a younger demographic.
Cons: TikTok will not help churches looking to share their entire sermon videos. The fast-paced nature of the platform and content limitations in terms of video length may require adapting content strategies to make a meaningful impact.
There are many video platforms your church can use to reach their people, but only Subsplash saves you dozens of hours of work every month, provides a beautiful video library with speaker and scripture tags, and offers one-click publishing to your church’s website, social media, and mobile app.
[.blog-contact-cta] Schedule your free demo today [.blog-contact-cta]to see how your church can benefit from a world-class video experience with less work than other platforms.
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