Ensemble Video is an online video platform that simplifies video management and delivers content any time, over a variety of networks.
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Wistia
Score 8.9 out of 10
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Wistia specializes in Brand Affinity Marketing for small and medium-sized businesses. Wistia's video marketing software is designed to enable companies to create captivating viewing experiences on their sites and gives them the tools to find, engage and grow a community of brand advocates. Founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the vendor boasts presently more than half a million businesses across 50 countries depend on Wistia's products to build their brands and their businesses,…
I'm not sure where Ensemble Video would be less appropriate. We've found it to be very effective for our campus-specific use cases. However, the product is very customizable in how a campus could structure their Ensemble instance to match their organization, and how users may be managed.
For companies that want to integrate their videos into actionable steps like behavioral follow up through a CRM, Wistia is the best tool to use. You can automate your systems to track when a video is viewed, engaged with or how long a person has been watching along with heatmaps to show where people were most interested and least interested so you can adjust your videos to optimize their performance.
Adapting to user needs. Ensemble Video seems to always be listening to their clients needs and suggestions by implementing effective features in every system update. Communication seems to always indicate that these features are driven by requests that their customers have made to improve the service.
Client Support - I have an IT/support background and have had to deal with many vendors and external support. Ensemble is easily the most responsive and effective vendor when it comes to support. When needing certain solutions, they have sent code that was in development and not officially released so I could achieve my goals with project videos. Support is always personal, prompt and effective.
Customization. New templates, video players, account management, and embed options have allowed us to use Ensemble Video in a much more personalized way. Early versions of the service had an "Ensemble feel" but color schemes and logos are now able to be changed for a better organization feel.
User management. Some features are unique to the entire deployment (like authentication sources). It would be great if multiple authentication options could be used across different Ensemble institutions.
Upgrade processes. Though new versions of Ensemble Video are always better, the installation process is very manual and Ensemble Video must be involved directly. Not a weakness, but it would be nice to be able to perform our own upgrades/patches when needed.
Obtaining embed codes for a significantly large number of videos can be very time consuming as there is no way to automatically pull a report.
Within a project, there is no way to set the list to show a specific number of videos and you may only have a certain number of videos shown unless you click to expand the list and continue to do so.
Once the list is expanded and you click in to a video, when clicking back, the list reloads and you must expand the entire list again which can become very time consuming.
Wistia is super easy to use and very reliable, anytime a video needs to be updated, the existing media can be replaced, but the url remains the same so anywhere this media is shared or embedded, it is immediately updated. Their support is extremely helpful, and there is very rarely any issues with this product.
Great, simple, usable product. Would have given it higher marks, but sometimes the folders and permissions aren't the most intuitive. Interface for uploading, tagging, describing videos is simple. Sharing is also relatively intuitive. Overall, a clean and simple interface and most of our marketing team had no issues using it. I think it was easier than using Vimeo.
I have never had any technical issues with Wistia. The service is fast and reliable. video play back begins as soon as a few seconds of video have buffered. The stats are accurate and available within a few hours of current use. I have integrated it with Marketo and found that the integration is clean and is easily incorporated into the campaign logic flow. (ex. If the user played more than 50% of the video, do Action-A, otherwise do Action-B.
We have only had to reach out to Wistia support a handful of times in the 4 years we have been using Wistia. They have always been quick to respond and help us solve the problem. The system is self-service so there should be very little to no need to reach out to support on a regular basis.
Ensemble Video has succeeded for us where other solutions have failed. It came along exactly when we needed it, for our organization. At the time, we were caught between the push and pull of several different solutions, uploading our videos with the expectation that users would take the time to download and play them, using popular public video streaming services with few settings and options, and forgoing videos altogether. Ensemble Video has taken our myriad needs and provided a platform that addresses all of them.
Wistia is for business. Period. Vimeo has none of the benefits for a business that Wistia offers. The SEO value and SUPER FAST playback speed are essential. Wistia has it all. Personally, I can rarely get thought a video if hosted on Vimeo because of the glitchy playback and slow rendering.
Ease of user contributed content. The videos that users upload to the system can either be automatically published or they can be reviewed by staff before being added to websites and courses. Instead of all these videos living on different sites (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) we now have a centralized location that we have control over.
LMS Integration - A year ago YouTube changed their policy to not allow direct recording from webcams. This essentially broke the Blackboard Video Everywhere tool that allowed our instructors to post quick comments in class discussions and content areas. While they need to be pre-recorded, the Ensemble Building Block allows our instructors and students to once again upload and post videos, all from directly within the Blackboard content editor.
Flexibility - With the ease of creating user accounts and video libraries, Ensemble Video has become the go to option for Erikson courses, professional development content and project videos. Different departments can have their own account and have control over their libraries without the worry of them viewing or editing other institute content.
Doubled lead capture from lead magnet on website from one year to the next.
Increased email interaction on newsletters when embedding Wistia video thumbnail into email campaigns (10-15% links clicked bumped to 30-40% links clicked).
Can save us about 50+ hours of one-on-one client meeting time per year for pointing clients to video content rather than presenting the same info in a live setting.
