Q: Just thought I'd circle back after using Swarmify for several years now.
(I can't leave a regular review since I left one earlier.) This has been a FANTASTIC product. I recommend it all the time to people needing a solid video platform (and I've tried many of them). Even at their regular pricing, which is quite reasonable, I would honestly sign up and pay to subscribe to Swarmify. It has been that good for me.
Q: Update for 1/29/2020
We sincerely appreciate all the support from the AppSumo community.
Many of you have asked great questions and all comments are valued... praise, criticism, or otherwise. We simply want to push SmartVideo forward.
We've received so many great feature requests that we are looking forward to add to the product. We've already been able to deliver on several of the most popular requests:
- Play button shapes: We've now expanded the options to change the play button and updated this capability in our WordPress plugin. No longer are you locked into the default hexagonal shape.
- Domain protected video sources. For Sumo-lings that had their videos locked to certain domains on Vimeo, Publitio, and others, we now support using them with SmartVideo.
- Improved watermark functionality.
- Improved thumbnail extraction from Vimeo & YouTube.
- Added 24 (!) articles/tutorials to our Help Center to help Sumo-lings get up and running even faster.
- Spoken with 300+ Sumo-lings through our live support, helping with on-boarding and learning more about how everyone is using video to grow their businesses! This is our favorite part as we love seeing what people are building.
-And for our many new Australian and Kiwi customers, we have been able to make video streaming awesome! It's a continuing eye-opener to hear just how terrible video streaming in the Oceania region is with most providers.
Glad to hear these changes. I had a query regarding the latest update "Domain protected video sources. For Sumo-lings that had their videos locked to certain domains on Vimeo, Publitio, and others, we now support using them with SmartVideo"
Service like Vimeo allows us to lock the domains where these videos can be played. Essentially it is a destination and not a video source. So is it the source or destination that would be domain locked?
And how does this work? To have a video playback domain locked, I would need to pay a certain amount to Vimeo every month (as per the plan I choose). So does swarmify auto picks those settings from Vimeo and adds the same to swarmify videos. Or do we need to specify the same in Swarmify Settings. The query arises from the fact that in first case, I would be paying Vimeo as well as Swarmify. In second case if the settings are possible in Swarmify, I can just stop using Vimeo and work only with Swarmify (and stack more codes :) )
We appreciate the question. Domain locking at Vimeo only means someone cannot take your video and play/embed it on their own or another website. Since SmartVideo isn’t a "sharing" video platform like Vimeo or YouTube, but instead geared towards business video played back on the owners own site, we do not provide embed codes or other mechanisms for people to take our player and embed them on their own site.
This somewhat answers the protection aspect. But the problem with most streaming platforms is that you can go to network tab in dev tools in a desktop browser and all the files links are available like this one - https://video-node.swarmcdn.com/e6acb147-8e81-482c-acd7-15312db3a845/0a391aeb77a1616553b876779d852bd9d77078261519078c5cf3e0033bd2f846.mp4
Now I won't deny that Swarmify is stupendously fast. You don't feel any sort of lag while playing videos. But unlike Vimeo videos which take some effort to download, and Wistia (although super expensive) doesn't allow to download audio+video even with popular browser extensions, Swarmify Videos are pretty much in open.
Now can as quick protection, since all streaming videos come from your CDN, can the direct MP4's disallowed playback without swarmify player? Then it becomes a superfast media player with pretty decent protection.
Hey Phillip I am interested in this deal but a little confused how it will actually work on my membership platform - 10xpro.io (From your video and comments it seems Swarmify is primarily a solution for public videos on a WordPress site ??)
Currently I load my course videos into my 10xpro.io course platform using Vimeo embed code.
Can I embed the same way with Swarmify - and keep my videos private ?
Will my custom thumbnails loaded into Vimeo for each video also be transferred automatically via Swarmify into my membership platform 10xpro.io ?
Are you offering a storage solution or will I still have to pay extra storage in Dropbox to host my videos (instead of Vimeo)
You can install Swarmify on any CMS that allows you to paste a JavaScript snippet above the </HEAD> tag similar to Google Analytics. Here's the tutorial on that. https://bit.ly/38IhA3K
Swarmify will automatically pick up and convert your Vimeo embed codes on your site automatically and will even pull your custom thumbnail saving you lots of time. To post new videos, you can simply use our SmartVideo tag like this. https://bit.ly/2uadP8j
In terms of storage, we've found a large majority of video publishers already keep their original files stored in some type of online location. So Swarmify was designed to help them by simply pointing us to those locations to fetch a copy instead of having to re-upload everything to us since moving video platforms can be a pain...especially if someone has a lot of videos on their website. Hence, why we also do YouTube and Vimeo conversions and try to automate as much of this as we can on our customers behalf.
I am going a bit crazy for the last 5 days trying to get basic startup support from Swarmify. These are my ticket numbers: 6969, 6958 and 6964 (they are all the same, trying to get my issue sorted)
So I am grabbing url's from google drive and embedding that inside of clickfunnels. Firstly, the smartvideo tag mentioned in your help articles is wrong and it took 3 days for the support to give me the correct one.
Now, that this part is sorted, I am having issues with videos not playing in the mobile version and also looking strange in terms of size. I am clueless about how to fix it. I find myself sitting and waiting for that information to show up. Do you guys have a LIVE chat support at all?
Also, I had asked about how to change the player options - volume, colors, logo, cover image etc so that i can learn how to make this look visually good.
Sharing the link with you again for a quick look (there are 5 videos right on top), hoping for a real quick input: https://www.acceleratorlab.business/organic-accelerator-bootcamp
Thanks Himani
Q: Will there be a new APPSUMO Event for swarmify ???!!!
None of the advanced or basic options work with the WP plugin or when using autoreplace.
How do I remove the signal icon when using autoreplace for youtube videos?
Q: Hi Philip,
I stacked 5 codes in the hope of getting rid of my expensive and slow Vimeo account.
Here are 3 points, why this is not the case. I don't want to leave a bad review because I think the core technology (streaming) is good. So I formulate my points as questions:
1. Like many others here, I also want an "Upload" button in the dashboard. Hosting means for me that I have the control of my files (add/manage/delete) within the hosting app. Having to upload it to a 3rd party app first (like Dropbox, Google Drive, YouTube or Vimeo) doesn't make my life easier, on the contrary: It complicates my life by having to deal with different platforms with many unnecessary clicks. Q1: Is a direct upload function something you consider?
2. Delete videos: Sometimes it is important to delete a video due to legal reasons or because it's outdated and I don't want it circulating on the internet any more. The search for "delete video" in the help center didn't bring up a relevant article. Q2: How do I delete uploaded videos from the Swarmify CDN?
3. To be a real substitue for YouTube or Vimeo, direct Links are important. Embedding a video in my website or WordPress is only one of many usecases I use Vimeo for. Another one is to use direct video links in the format like https://vimeo.com/366987382 (or similar with YouTube) and send it via email, messenger or similiar. It should be played directly in the player in the hosting platform without having to embed it in any website first. Q3: Is a URL like https://smart.video/123456789 possible or planned or is embedding videos in a website the only usecase I can use Swarmify for?
As there was no answer here I now refunded 4 of my 5 codes due to the limited functionality, espescially not having a direct upload (Q1) and the lack of a standalone player (see Q3 above). This makes it more a video replication and streaming service but not a video hosting platform like Vimeo.
Assuming you purchased one code for a 3 site license and go over the limit, we'll send you a friendly email asking that you place a credit card on file. From there, we bill at the rate of $1 per thousand video views. This simple rate is all inclusive and there are never any charges for encoding, storage, and bandwidth.
Not yet. We've been collecting all feature requests and wish list items. From there we'll put together a list of priorities to help inform what items to work on based on demand.
As mentioned to others, Swarmify works a little differently than most video hosts. We believe you should be in possession of your original files at all times and we pull a copy from a variety of original source locations of your choice. Most customers keep their original files in some type of online location/bucket anyway.
So when you publish a video to your website, you merely point Swarmify to where that original files lives. Then the platform fetches a copy of that file one time, processes 5-10 encodings of each for all desktop and mobile devices, stores those various encodes on a global delivery network, and accelerates playback in our clean, lightweight player to your end-users.
Here's a list of those source locations we are compatible with (including publishing tutorials) in addition to automatic YouTube and Vimeo conversions.
Q: Hi again,
I would really like to buy 5 codes BUT, while Swarmify does have a big plus (almost instant video ...
play) - it also has two huge minuses.
1. Counting views system is clearly flawed and the only answer until now is that video creator clicked more than he realised and after a day or two, view counts will become "real". Your "counting clicks" system is not only un-realistic but potentially misleading even the video owner (eg a viral that's not really viral). Somebody mentioned the bots issue. Bots can be used anyway on anything, but in your case, it's the easiest bot doing just an F5 - compared to other solutions where bandwidth or minutes played are counted. 100k "views" can easily become 100 in reality. With your system, youtube would go bust in a day :)
2. Swarmify link on my videos I probably wouldn't mind to advertise Swarmify (on *some* videos) but as a client I *should* have the option to keep my viewers on my page. From this point of view, smartvideo is absolutely no better than youtube - just more subtle.
Thank you very much for this, it sounds encouraging - to know that it's possible. (as of now)
But rather than a css workaround I think a proper "completely unbranded" option from Swarmify, mentioned for a paid appsumo deal would be more appropriate.
Q: I'Ve stacked 5 codes but am a little concerned about the following:
1) There is no indication of the ...
limitations &/or features of my account. It is visibly no different to when I just had 1 code. 2) There is no indication of how many view my videos have had & so no indication of whether I'm reaching my account limits 3) There is nothing to indicate which sites / domains the videos are being viewed on. This means I cannot see which of my clients/site are using more than their fair share. Also, I have no idea if someone if using my CDN key without my permission 4) There is no api keys and just 1 CDN key. This means that if my key is stolen (from my self or a client site) I have no way of knowing. 5) As with issue 4, if a client stops being a client, I have no way of disabling swarmify on their website. If they lock me out of their website for example, they can continue top use my account forever, for free. 6) The configuration wizard on the dashboard has options that are supposedly for those with 5 appsumo codes. What happens if users dont have 5 codes will their videos still have these "pro" features anyway (watermark, ads)?
Overall I'm really concerned about the fact that I feel like I've bought 5 codes but would get the same features and limits if I'd just bought 1 code. It just doesn't feel like these feature limitations are actually being enforced. If they are, how do I know I'm not about to overrun my limitations and end up needing to pay to upgrade?
Finally, I am really really concerned about the lack of the ability to see which sites are using my account and then not being able to remove sites from my "authorised list" of domains. We're completely powerless against anyone who hacks a client site and steals the CDN key. Likewsie, for old clients who once paid us to support them and provide the swarmify smart video features but has since decided to not pay for our service. They shouldn't be able to keep using the CDN key (essentially and a master api key).
P.s. I wanted to raise these issues as question to give you a fair opportunity to explain your plans &/or counter my points, rather than leaving a bad review. I hope the above are all issues that you'll take seriously and have a genuine near term plan to resolve.
P.p.s I had some issues setting up my account, and support was reasonable quick in getting things fixed. So I'm happy to point out the positive experience I had there.
Thanks for the question. Swarmify is largely for publishing video on website you control or own. When it comes to 3rd party platforms, you can install it so long as the platform lets you insert a JavaScript snippet above the </HEAD> tag of the page like so:
Q: I apologize if this has been answered; I tried to search!
Can I pick and choose which videos on my site I don't want Swarmify to "host"? e.g. I have several banner videos on my site that are just there for visual aesthetics and I wouldn't want them counting toward my total views per month since I also have them overridden by a static image for people visiting my site on slow connections. I only want Swarmify for courses and entertainment videos on our site. Is it possible to exclude specific videos?
I reached out via support as well, but since this deal is ending soon, I thought I'd try here as well! :)
The videoplayer that I currently use have a lot of options that I am really happy with, such as watermark/logo, into/outro added to videos etc. Having now tested the Swarmify player it seems rather limited (although the watermark option is available) in this particular regard. I therefore have some questions I would be very grateful if you could take the time to answer :)
1. Do you have a roadmap somewhere public? 2. Do you have any intentions of adding more features to the player itself (such as intro and outro-content)? 3. Is it possible to use your hosting but a different player?
We don't have a public roadmap as we have been collecting lots of information and feedback from Sumo'ings and will start working on the priorities based on demand for various features.
Our plan is to make player improvements over the course of times. We've made several in the recent past like ability to change button shapes, playback speed selector, etc.
As for using 3rd party player with Swarmify, we've optimized the SmartVideo player to load 12x faster than many bloated off-the-shelf options out there. 64 millisecond load times to be exact. This makes our player a key, tightly integrated component, and part of our overall solution. As a result, SmartVideo is not compatible with external players.
- I admit I am not a pro. web developer, so it's easy to confuse me...but... Your copy says that this provides unbranded video hosting. This led me to believe that you host the videos, but that's not what this is. I still have to find somewhere to host the videos. Swarmify is acting as some sort of an intermediary 'afterburner' to increase the speed and buffering of the videos.
I also don't understand what it means when you say that this deal includes "Access unlimited video bandwidth, encoding, and storage." How can there be any bandwidth and storage, when we are not storing the videos through you?
Thanks for the question. We are indeed a video host, but as mentioned to others, Swarmify works a little differently than most video hosts. We believe you should be in possession of your *original* files at all times and we pull a copy from a variety of original source locations of your choice. Most customers keep their original files in some type of online location/bucket anyway.
So when you publish a video you merely point Swarmify to where that original files lives, then the platform fetches a copy of that file one time, processes 5-10 encodings of each for all desktop and mobile devices, *stores* those various encodes on a global delivery network, and accelerates playback in our clean, lightweight player to your end-users.
We list many source locations we are compatible with (including publishing tutorials) at https://support.swarmify.com.
Here's also a little more about how Swarmify works: https://support.swarmify.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043225634-How-SmartVideo-works
The allotted amount of video views is per account. If you stack 5 codes then you will get 500K monthly views across your entire account.
If you exceed that in a given month, we'll send you a friendly email asking that you place a credit card on file. From there, we bill at the rate of $1 per thousand video views. This simple rate is all inclusive and there are never any charges for encoding, storage, and bandwidth.
As mentioned to another Sumo-ling who asked a similar question recently, the answer is as follows:
Swarmify launched in 2013 and we served Enterprise/media companies for many years. Around 2017 we realized that small-medium sized businesses didn't have the same budget to get higher quality playback experiences on their site like the big guys did, but deserved it nonetheless. We turned our attention to this group at that time and created a compelling offering. As a result, we have onboarded thousands of customers from business owners with 3 videos on their site, all the way up to an NBC affiliate with over 5000 videos on their site.
AppSumo approached us about an LTD offering to their audience and we are always interested in getting Swarmify in many more hands, so we launched an LTD at the beginning of this year.
We had a great business before AppSumo and we will continue to have a great business after AppSumo because we focus on delivering the best possible playback experience to you end-users. When YouTube, Vimeo, and others have poor quality playback (25% stall-out rates), your viewers are not angry at them, they get angry with you, and leave immediately! The big guys know this and that is what they focus on, because at the end of the day, that is the only thing that matters to your customers.
I hope that covers how we view being around for the long term.
Q: I just have a few questions for clarification:
1.
It looks like your service blurs the lines between caching / CDN and "storage". Your service is dependent on 3rd party storage solutions, such as Google Drive, YouTube, Pcloud, S3, etc. This is why you don't have the ability to give users a method to upload files directly to you. Is this correct? If so, blurring these concept lines and marketing it as "re-imagined video hosting" is a really poor attempt in my opinion. Also, saying your company is "really, ***really*** good at video" and that's why you can offer this for $69 is just another layer of marketing meant to disguise what your service really is. Most sumolings want to move away from costly 3rd party hosting and storage providers, not use a service that depends on them even more. This understanding was a large part of why VooPlayer was successful on Appsumo. 2. CDNs have costs, so restricting views makes sense. However, restricting domains does not make sense, because whether I use your service for 1 or 1000 sites / domains, your costs never increase. Are you going to remove the site / domain restriction? Stating that if I am not a reseller I don't have to worry about it and also stating that you don't disclose how you "police" this, and "this is an added benefit to sumolings" doesn't make sense and again is a poor attempt to disguise what sounds like a very poorly thought-out restriction. Maybe you're waiting for a comment like this so you can then remove this artificial restriction and then say your company "listens to sumolings"? 3. Are you launching on Appsumo to fund a real storage solution? If so, saying that upfront would probably gain you more revenue from your launch here.
Lastly, no, I don't want to reach out to you via live chat. I say this because anytime a sumoling comes close to these topics you attempt to move the conversation to a non-public discussion. I understand, from your responses (I read every one of them) that you are attempting to do an awesome job of deflecting negativity and re-positioning it as features, advantages and benefits, but if you're launching to sumolings, you have to know by now that a large percentage of them are marketers themselves.
Correct, instant starting and stall prevention is the top thing end-viewers care about so we started the company there and work our was back from that point.
As mentioned to others, video protection is tricky. Unless a file is protected with expensive and complicated DRM, then a determined user can find ways to get a copy of a video for themselves no matter the platform via all sorts of methods. Swarmify, as well as other providers, all have similar protections to one another that don't make it simple for *casual* users to download files. In our case, we don't offer download buttons in the player or embed codes to play on other sites.
Q: Just thought I'd circle back after using Swarmify for several years now.
(I can't leave a regular review since I left one earlier.) This has been a FANTASTIC product. I recommend it all the time to people needing a solid video platform (and I've tried many of them). Even at their regular pricing, which is quite reasonable, I would honestly sign up and pay to subscribe to Swarmify. It has been that good for me.
Share Swarmify SmartVideo
Q: Hey Guys Don't know if you'll see this or not but posting anyway.
Are you coming back to AppSumo at all?
Cheers
Rog
Share Swarmify SmartVideo
Wondering (and hoping) the same!
Same here. Hoping they respond.
Cheers
Q: Update for 1/29/2020 We sincerely appreciate all the support from the AppSumo community.
Many of you have asked great questions and all comments are valued... praise, criticism, or otherwise. We simply want to push SmartVideo forward.
We've received so many great feature requests that we are looking forward to add to the product. We've already been able to deliver on several of the most popular requests:
- Play button shapes: We've now expanded the options to change the play button and updated this capability in our WordPress plugin. No longer are you locked into the default hexagonal shape.
- Domain protected video sources. For Sumo-lings that had their videos locked to certain domains on Vimeo, Publitio, and others, we now support using them with SmartVideo.
- Improved watermark functionality.
- Improved thumbnail extraction from Vimeo & YouTube.
- Added 24 (!) articles/tutorials to our Help Center to help Sumo-lings get up and running even faster.
- Spoken with 300+ Sumo-lings through our live support, helping with on-boarding and learning more about how everyone is using video to grow their businesses! This is our favorite part as we love seeing what people are building.
-And for our many new Australian and Kiwi customers, we have been able to make video streaming awesome! It's a continuing eye-opener to hear just how terrible video streaming in the Oceania region is with most providers.
Share Swarmify SmartVideo
Verified purchaser
Hey Philip,
Glad to hear these changes. I had a query regarding the latest update
"Domain protected video sources. For Sumo-lings that had their videos locked to certain domains on Vimeo, Publitio, and others, we now support using them with SmartVideo"
Service like Vimeo allows us to lock the domains where these videos can be played. Essentially it is a destination and not a video source. So is it the source or destination that would be domain locked?
And how does this work? To have a video playback domain locked, I would need to pay a certain amount to Vimeo every month (as per the plan I choose). So does swarmify auto picks those settings from Vimeo and adds the same to swarmify videos. Or do we need to specify the same in Swarmify Settings.
The query arises from the fact that in first case, I would be paying Vimeo as well as Swarmify. In second case if the settings are possible in Swarmify, I can just stop using Vimeo and work only with Swarmify (and stack more codes :) )
Hello,
We appreciate the question. Domain locking at Vimeo only means someone cannot take your video and play/embed it on their own or another website. Since SmartVideo isn’t a "sharing" video platform like Vimeo or YouTube, but instead geared towards business video played back on the owners own site, we do not provide embed codes or other mechanisms for people to take our player and embed them on their own site.
Verified purchaser
Hey Philip,
This somewhat answers the protection aspect. But the problem with most streaming platforms is that you can go to network tab in dev tools in a desktop browser and all the files links are available like this one - https://video-node.swarmcdn.com/e6acb147-8e81-482c-acd7-15312db3a845/0a391aeb77a1616553b876779d852bd9d77078261519078c5cf3e0033bd2f846.mp4
Now I won't deny that Swarmify is stupendously fast. You don't feel any sort of lag while playing videos. But unlike Vimeo videos which take some effort to download, and Wistia (although super expensive) doesn't allow to download audio+video even with popular browser extensions, Swarmify Videos are pretty much in open.
Now can as quick protection, since all streaming videos come from your CDN, can the direct MP4's disallowed playback without swarmify player? Then it becomes a superfast media player with pretty decent protection.
Hey Phillip
I am interested in this deal but a little confused how it will actually work on my membership platform - 10xpro.io
(From your video and comments it seems Swarmify is primarily a solution for public videos on a WordPress site ??)
Currently I load my course videos into my 10xpro.io course platform using Vimeo embed code.
Can I embed the same way with Swarmify - and keep my videos private ?
Will my custom thumbnails loaded into Vimeo for each video also be transferred automatically via Swarmify into my membership platform 10xpro.io ?
Are you offering a storage solution or will I still have to pay extra storage in Dropbox to host my videos (instead of Vimeo)
Thanks
Hi dahlas.
You can install Swarmify on any CMS that allows you to paste a JavaScript snippet above the </HEAD> tag similar to Google Analytics. Here's the tutorial on that. https://bit.ly/38IhA3K
Swarmify will automatically pick up and convert your Vimeo embed codes on your site automatically and will even pull your custom thumbnail saving you lots of time. To post new videos, you can simply use our SmartVideo tag like this. https://bit.ly/2uadP8j
In terms of storage, we've found a large majority of video publishers already keep their original files stored in some type of online location. So Swarmify was designed to help them by simply pointing us to those locations to fetch a copy instead of having to re-upload everything to us since moving video platforms can be a pain...especially if someone has a lot of videos on their website. Hence, why we also do YouTube and Vimeo conversions and try to automate as much of this as we can on our customers behalf.
Thanks for your prompt response Phillip sounds great.
I am just double checking with 10xpro.io that it is all doable !!!
Verified purchaser
Hi Philip
I am going a bit crazy for the last 5 days trying to get basic startup support from Swarmify. These are my ticket numbers: 6969, 6958 and 6964 (they are all the same, trying to get my issue sorted)
So I am grabbing url's from google drive and embedding that inside of clickfunnels.
Firstly, the smartvideo tag mentioned in your help articles is wrong and it took 3 days for the support to give me the correct one.
Now, that this part is sorted, I am having issues with videos not playing in the mobile version and also looking strange in terms of size. I am clueless about how to fix it. I find myself sitting and waiting for that information to show up. Do you guys have a LIVE chat support at all?
Also, I had asked about how to change the player options - volume, colors, logo, cover image etc so that i can learn how to make this look visually good.
Sharing the link with you again for a quick look (there are 5 videos right on top), hoping for a real quick input:
https://www.acceleratorlab.business/organic-accelerator-bootcamp
Thanks
Himani
Q: Will there be a new APPSUMO Event for swarmify ???!!!
Share Swarmify SmartVideo
Q: In my use case, i would love to remove the Speed, Volume, Video Accelerator & Full screen options from the ...
player bar (Screenshot: https://imgur.com/QeNxvQO)
Can you please provide me the CSS snippet to get it done?
Also the snippet " .vjs-swarmify-signal-icon { display: none !important; } " was working earlier but not anymore, maybe after the update.
Philip_Swarmify
May 15, 2024A: Hi Aditya,
So we provide information about manipulating controls in our basic and advanced SmartVideo Tag options:
Basic: https://support.swarmify.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043738673-Basic-SmartVideo-tag-options
Advanced: https://support.swarmify.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043229934-Advanced-SmartVideo-tag-options
As for CSS, fellow Sumo-ling "weavermedia" provided more advanced CSS stylings here: https://swarmlm.carrd.co/
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Verified purchaser
None of the advanced or basic options work with the WP plugin or when using autoreplace.
How do I remove the signal icon when using autoreplace for youtube videos?
Q: Hi Philip, I stacked 5 codes in the hope of getting rid of my expensive and slow Vimeo account.
Here are 3 points, why this is not the case. I don't want to leave a bad review because I think the core technology (streaming) is good. So I formulate my points as questions:
1. Like many others here, I also want an "Upload" button in the dashboard. Hosting means for me that I have the control of my files (add/manage/delete) within the hosting app. Having to upload it to a 3rd party app first (like Dropbox, Google Drive, YouTube or Vimeo) doesn't make my life easier, on the contrary: It complicates my life by having to deal with different platforms with many unnecessary clicks.
Q1: Is a direct upload function something you consider?
2. Delete videos: Sometimes it is important to delete a video due to legal reasons or because it's outdated and I don't want it circulating on the internet any more. The search for "delete video" in the help center didn't bring up a relevant article.
Q2: How do I delete uploaded videos from the Swarmify CDN?
3. To be a real substitue for YouTube or Vimeo, direct Links are important. Embedding a video in my website or WordPress is only one of many usecases I use Vimeo for. Another one is to use direct video links in the format like https://vimeo.com/366987382 (or similar with YouTube) and send it via email, messenger or similiar. It should be played directly in the player in the hosting platform without having to embed it in any website first.
Q3: Is a URL like https://smart.video/123456789 possible or planned or is embedding videos in a website the only usecase I can use Swarmify for?
Thanks
Berthold
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Verified purchaser
As there was no answer here I now refunded 4 of my 5 codes due to the limited functionality, espescially not having a direct upload (Q1) and the lack of a standalone player (see Q3 above). This makes it more a video replication and streaming service but not a video hosting platform like Vimeo.
Q: What happens after 100k monthly views
Philip_Swarmify
May 14, 2024A: Hello,
Assuming you purchased one code for a 3 site license and go over the limit, we'll send you a friendly email asking that you place a credit card on file. From there, we bill at the rate of $1 per thousand video views. This simple rate is all inclusive and there are never any charges for encoding, storage, and bandwidth.
Share Swarmify SmartVideo
Thanks. And will i abe able to change my domain(s) later?
Sure.
Q: Do you have a publicly accessible roadmap page for swarmify?
Philip_Swarmify
May 15, 2024A: Hello,
Not yet. We've been collecting all feature requests and wish list items. From there we'll put together a list of priorities to help inform what items to work on based on demand.
Share Swarmify SmartVideo
Q: it's not clear to me this "SmartVideo supports external platforms like Google Cloud, Amazon S3, and Dropbox for the source file location."
does it mean it can extract videos stored on Dropbox or Google Cloud and migrate them to Swarmify's CDN ? ?
Philip_Swarmify
May 15, 2024A: Hello,
Thanks for the question.
We appreciate the question.
As mentioned to others, Swarmify works a little differently than most video hosts. We believe you should be in possession of your original files at all times and we pull a copy from a variety of original source locations of your choice. Most customers keep their original files in some type of online location/bucket anyway.
So when you publish a video to your website, you merely point Swarmify to where that original files lives. Then the platform fetches a copy of that file one time, processes 5-10 encodings of each for all desktop and mobile devices, stores those various encodes on a global delivery network, and accelerates playback in our clean, lightweight player to your end-users.
Here's a list of those source locations we are compatible with (including publishing tutorials) in addition to automatic YouTube and Vimeo conversions.
https://support.swarmify.com/hc/en-us/categories/360003156574-File-sourcing
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Q: Hi again, I would really like to buy 5 codes BUT, while Swarmify does have a big plus (almost instant video ...
play) - it also has two huge minuses.
1. Counting views system is clearly flawed and the only answer until now is that video creator clicked more than he realised and after a day or two, view counts will become "real".
Your "counting clicks" system is not only un-realistic but potentially misleading even the video owner (eg a viral that's not really viral). Somebody mentioned the bots issue. Bots can be used anyway on anything, but in your case, it's the easiest bot doing just an F5 - compared to other solutions where bandwidth or minutes played are counted.
100k "views" can easily become 100 in reality.
With your system, youtube would go bust in a day :)
2. Swarmify link on my videos
I probably wouldn't mind to advertise Swarmify (on *some* videos) but as a client I *should* have the option to keep my viewers on my page.
From this point of view, smartvideo is absolutely no better than youtube - just more subtle.
Any chance these points are clarified?
Philip_Swarmify
May 15, 2024A: James_Swarmify has just published some information about the inflated view counts and the teams findings
https://appsumo.com/swarmify/#q337617
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Verified purchaser
You can hide the acceleration button using this custom CSS on your page:
.vjs-swarmify-signal-icon { display: none !important; }
Hopefully full player customization is coming soon. If not full visual styling, at least the ability to show/hide the various elements.
Thank you very much for this, it sounds encouraging - to know that it's possible. (as of now)
But rather than a css workaround I think a proper "completely unbranded" option from Swarmify, mentioned for a paid appsumo deal would be more appropriate.
The "views counting" issue still stays. :)
Verified purchaser
🙌 thank you so much
Q: I'Ve stacked 5 codes but am a little concerned about the following: 1) There is no indication of the ...
limitations &/or features of my account. It is visibly no different to when I just had 1 code.
2) There is no indication of how many view my videos have had & so no indication of whether I'm reaching my account limits
3) There is nothing to indicate which sites / domains the videos are being viewed on. This means I cannot see which of my clients/site are using more than their fair share. Also, I have no idea if someone if using my CDN key without my permission
4) There is no api keys and just 1 CDN key. This means that if my key is stolen (from my self or a client site) I have no way of knowing.
5) As with issue 4, if a client stops being a client, I have no way of disabling swarmify on their website. If they lock me out of their website for example, they can continue top use my account forever, for free.
6) The configuration wizard on the dashboard has options that are supposedly for those with 5 appsumo codes. What happens if users dont have 5 codes will their videos still have these "pro" features anyway (watermark, ads)?
Overall I'm really concerned about the fact that I feel like I've bought 5 codes but would get the same features and limits if I'd just bought 1 code. It just doesn't feel like these feature limitations are actually being enforced. If they are, how do I know I'm not about to overrun my limitations and end up needing to pay to upgrade?
Finally, I am really really concerned about the lack of the ability to see which sites are using my account and then not being able to remove sites from my "authorised list" of domains. We're completely powerless against anyone who hacks a client site and steals the CDN key. Likewsie, for old clients who once paid us to support them and provide the swarmify smart video features but has since decided to not pay for our service. They shouldn't be able to keep using the CDN key (essentially and a master api key).
P.s. I wanted to raise these issues as question to give you a fair opportunity to explain your plans &/or counter my points, rather than leaving a bad review. I hope the above are all issues that you'll take seriously and have a genuine near term plan to resolve.
P.p.s I had some issues setting up my account, and support was reasonable quick in getting things fixed. So I'm happy to point out the positive experience I had there.
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Q: I would like to submit my swarmify videos to my patreon.
com channel, is this possible?
Philip_Swarmify
May 15, 2024A: Hi davidjosue,
Thanks for the question. Swarmify is largely for publishing video on website you control or own. When it comes to 3rd party platforms, you can install it so long as the platform lets you insert a JavaScript snippet above the </HEAD> tag of the page like so:
https://support.swarmify.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043736333-Install-SmartVideo-on-other-CMS-templates
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Q: I apologize if this has been answered; I tried to search!
Can I pick and choose which videos on my site I don't want Swarmify to "host"? e.g. I have several banner videos on my site that are just there for visual aesthetics and I wouldn't want them counting toward my total views per month since I also have them overridden by a static image for people visiting my site on slow connections. I only want Swarmify for courses and entertainment videos on our site. Is it possible to exclude specific videos?
I reached out via support as well, but since this deal is ending soon, I thought I'd try here as well! :)
Thanks!
Philip_Swarmify
May 15, 2024A: Hi!
We received your ticket and just responded there. The answer is yes, you can exclude certain videos.
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Q: Hi there!
The videoplayer that I currently use have a lot of options that I am really happy with, such as watermark/logo, into/outro added to videos etc. Having now tested the Swarmify player it seems rather limited (although the watermark option is available) in this particular regard. I therefore have some questions I would be very grateful if you could take the time to answer :)
1. Do you have a roadmap somewhere public?
2. Do you have any intentions of adding more features to the player itself (such as intro and outro-content)?
3. Is it possible to use your hosting but a different player?
Thank you and have a great day!
Philip_Swarmify
May 15, 2024A: Hi MT,
Thanks for the question.
We don't have a public roadmap as we have been collecting lots of information and feedback from Sumo'ings and will start working on the priorities based on demand for various features.
Our plan is to make player improvements over the course of times. We've made several in the recent past like ability to change button shapes, playback speed selector, etc.
As for using 3rd party player with Swarmify, we've optimized the SmartVideo player to load 12x faster than many bloated off-the-shelf options out there. 64 millisecond load times to be exact. This makes our player a key, tightly integrated component, and part of our overall solution. As a result, SmartVideo is not compatible with external players.
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Q: I am quite confused by this deal!
- I admit I am not a pro. web developer, so it's easy to confuse me...but...
Your copy says that this provides unbranded video hosting. This led me to believe that you host the videos, but that's not what this is. I still have to find somewhere to host the videos. Swarmify is acting as some sort of an intermediary 'afterburner' to increase the speed and buffering of the videos.
I also don't understand what it means when you say that this deal includes "Access unlimited video bandwidth, encoding, and storage." How can there be any bandwidth and storage, when we are not storing the videos through you?
Please clarify, thanks!
Philip_Swarmify
May 15, 2024A: Hi,
Thanks for the question. We are indeed a video host, but as mentioned to others, Swarmify works a little differently than most video hosts. We believe you should be in possession of your *original* files at all times and we pull a copy from a variety of original source locations of your choice. Most customers keep their original files in some type of online location/bucket anyway.
So when you publish a video you merely point Swarmify to where that original files lives, then the platform fetches a copy of that file one time, processes 5-10 encodings of each for all desktop and mobile devices, *stores* those various encodes on a global delivery network, and accelerates playback in our clean, lightweight player to your end-users.
We list many source locations we are compatible with (including publishing tutorials) at https://support.swarmify.com.
Here's also a little more about how Swarmify works: https://support.swarmify.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043225634-How-SmartVideo-works
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Q: Is the monthly video quota per video or per account?
What happens if you want to scale past the 5 codes?
Philip_Swarmify
May 15, 2024A: Hello,
The allotted amount of video views is per account. If you stack 5 codes then you will get 500K monthly views across your entire account.
If you exceed that in a given month, we'll send you a friendly email asking that you place a credit card on file. From there, we bill at the rate of $1 per thousand video views. This simple rate is all inclusive and there are never any charges for encoding, storage, and bandwidth.
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Q: What keeps Swarmify in business?
Are you guys venture backed? If we'd rely an entire network of videos on it and stack 5+ codes, how do we make sure we don't get all our videos down?
Philip_Swarmify
May 15, 2024A: Hello,
As mentioned to another Sumo-ling who asked a similar question recently, the answer is as follows:
Swarmify launched in 2013 and we served Enterprise/media companies for many years. Around 2017 we realized that small-medium sized businesses didn't have the same budget to get higher quality playback experiences on their site like the big guys did, but deserved it nonetheless. We turned our attention to this group at that time and created a compelling offering. As a result, we have onboarded thousands of customers from business owners with 3 videos on their site, all the way up to an NBC affiliate with over 5000 videos on their site.
AppSumo approached us about an LTD offering to their audience and we are always interested in getting Swarmify in many more hands, so we launched an LTD at the beginning of this year.
We had a great business before AppSumo and we will continue to have a great business after AppSumo because we focus on delivering the best possible playback experience to you end-users. When YouTube, Vimeo, and others have poor quality playback (25% stall-out rates), your viewers are not angry at them, they get angry with you, and leave immediately! The big guys know this and that is what they focus on, because at the end of the day, that is the only thing that matters to your customers.
I hope that covers how we view being around for the long term.
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Q: I just have a few questions for clarification: 1.
It looks like your service blurs the lines between caching / CDN and "storage". Your service is dependent on 3rd party storage solutions, such as Google Drive, YouTube, Pcloud, S3, etc. This is why you don't have the ability to give users a method to upload files directly to you. Is this correct? If so, blurring these concept lines and marketing it as "re-imagined video hosting" is a really poor attempt in my opinion. Also, saying your company is "really, ***really*** good at video" and that's why you can offer this for $69 is just another layer of marketing meant to disguise what your service really is. Most sumolings want to move away from costly 3rd party hosting and storage providers, not use a service that depends on them even more. This understanding was a large part of why VooPlayer was successful on Appsumo.
2. CDNs have costs, so restricting views makes sense. However, restricting domains does not make sense, because whether I use your service for 1 or 1000 sites / domains, your costs never increase. Are you going to remove the site / domain restriction? Stating that if I am not a reseller I don't have to worry about it and also stating that you don't disclose how you "police" this, and "this is an added benefit to sumolings" doesn't make sense and again is a poor attempt to disguise what sounds like a very poorly thought-out restriction. Maybe you're waiting for a comment like this so you can then remove this artificial restriction and then say your company "listens to sumolings"?
3. Are you launching on Appsumo to fund a real storage solution? If so, saying that upfront would probably gain you more revenue from your launch here.
Lastly, no, I don't want to reach out to you via live chat. I say this because anytime a sumoling comes close to these topics you attempt to move the conversation to a non-public discussion. I understand, from your responses (I read every one of them) that you are attempting to do an awesome job of deflecting negativity and re-positioning it as features, advantages and benefits, but if you're launching to sumolings, you have to know by now that a large percentage of them are marketers themselves.
Transparency goes a long way here. Good luck.
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Wow, no response here either? Def something to hide...
Dude, thank you for this write up. I'm sure you saved me and a lot of others from buying this.
Q: I know speed is probably the main point of this program, but I still want to ask.
Are your videos encrypted or secured in any way so users can't download it easily? Thanks.
Philip_Swarmify
May 15, 2024A: Hello,
Correct, instant starting and stall prevention is the top thing end-viewers care about so we started the company there and work our was back from that point.
As mentioned to others, video protection is tricky. Unless a file is protected with expensive and complicated DRM, then a determined user can find ways to get a copy of a video for themselves no matter the platform via all sorts of methods. Swarmify, as well as other providers, all have similar protections to one another that don't make it simple for *casual* users to download files. In our case, we don't offer download buttons in the player or embed codes to play on other sites.
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Q: When uploading from YouTube, do views on Swarmify add to the YouTube views when it is viewed via Swarmify?
Philip_Swarmify
May 15, 2024A: Views will no longer count at YouTube because after conversion, delivery and playback takes place from Swarmify.
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