Leaving Vimeo

So, here's the situation with Vimeo.

I got an email last week about how, in response to them losing money (despite headlines about how they have proven the non-advertising business model as recently as last summer), Vimeo is changing their TOS so that those in the top 1% of bandwidth are required to upgrade to one of their "Enterprise" plans. I wasn't sure what that was, since it's not mentioned on the subscription area (I pay Vimeo $240 annually already). I thought, okay, must be a new plan, and it won't matter to me, I've lost half my bandwidth with them thanks to moving Star Trek elsewhere. 

Whelp, I am apparently still in Vimeo's top 1%, despite having roughly 67,000 views per month. For comparison, my YouTube channel averages about 45,000 views per month on months when I don't upload anything! My Vimeo bandwidth is fifty percent above what my YouTube is when it's coasting! 

Still, I thought, all right, how much is this going to be? $360 per year? $500 per year?

Nope. $26,000.

Every year.

In other words, what I pay them every year, now paid twice a week.

Needless to say, that is impossible. What's more, it's impractical. There are either two situations here. First is that Vimeo is losing so much money that they need to increase my fee by two orders of magnitude. If that's the case, well, that is not a sustainable business model for a service others provide for near or at nothing - indeed, I could likely go back to JDrive at that price and get everything Vimeo offered PLUS integrated advertising. A company that strapped for cash is circling the drain, so the $26K might wind up evaporating along with their website.

However, I think there's something else going on, that is the other reason this is impractical. I've been observing that Vimeo is doing a pivot, they have been presenting themselves as a YouTube alternative for making corporate videos, complete with a suite of tools and all of that. They no longer want content creators in the traditional sense, and so they're pricing me off of their server. Either I pay a ridiculous fee to them, or I stop wasting their resources with my jokes - win-win for them.

So, looks like, after I thought we had reached the mopping up portion of the move, we're now moving into the bonus round.

So, I'm afraid things may start to slide once again around here.

*sigh*

And just when I thought things had turned a corner.