Which free plans cover your plays
Type this month's plays, the length of the sales video and how much of it people watch. You get the free plans that still cover that traffic, and the ones that run out.
You already know roughly how many people will press play, and the sales video is long. Free video hosting for sales pages still fails in two different ways: some hosts count plays, and some count the gigabytes those plays stream. A busy month can stay under one limit and blow past the other.
The allowances further down are copied from each vendor's pricing or help page. That matches how we rate tools: vendor pages, plus what long-term users report. When a free plan falls short, the VSL hosting cost calculator prices what the paid plans would charge.
Estimated gigabytes equal plays, times minutes, times the share watched, times 1.5, divided by 1,024. The 1.5 stands for megabytes per minute of video actually watched, a conservative rate for standard-definition streaming. Call that figure an estimate. It is a way to compare ceilings, and it is not an invoice. Play-metered hosts are checked against their play allowance. Bandwidth-metered hosts are checked against the gigabyte estimate. Vidalytics has to clear both, because its plan table sets a play ceiling and its help article sets a bandwidth ceiling.
See which free plans cover your month
Free VSL hosting only helps when the allowance survives the traffic you already expect. The form runs in the browser. The worked example under it uses the same formula, so the answer is on the page even if the script does not run.
Results appear here. The worked example below uses the same formula on one set of inputs.
The free allowances the checker uses
Each line shows the free tier that host still offers. The host name opens our review. The linked phrase opens the vendor page the number comes from.
| Host | Free allowance |
|---|---|
| TrackPlay | 3,000 plays a month, every feature, no card. Playback pauses at that limit, and the plan does not sell extra plays. |
| Vidalytics | 1,000 plays a month, up to 3 uploads, and branding removal on the player. Bandwidth is capped at 50 GB, and you cannot buy more while you stay on Free. |
| Wistia | 200 GB of bandwidth a month, 25 GB of storage, and Wistia branding on the player. |
| Vimeo | 1 GB of storage. The player page lists ad-free customizable playback on the free tier. No monthly bandwidth number is published, so this checker does not pass or fail Vimeo on gigabytes. |
| Voomly Light | 5 GB of bandwidth a month, 5 videos, 250 GB of storage, and Voomly branding. Custom branding starts on Plus. |
| Gumlet | 100 GB of streaming bandwidth a month, 60 storage minutes, an ad-free player, and Gumlet branding until Creator. |
Free video hosting with no branding
The checkbox is that filter. Tick it and Wistia, Voomly Light and Gumlet drop out, because each of those rows keeps the host's mark. Vidalytics stays eligible, because branding removal is already included on Free. Vimeo is excluded when that box is ticked. The free tier does not say whether the logo can come off an embed. TrackPlay stays eligible too. Its pricing page does not list a player mark, and the checker does not add one. Paid hosts that publish a clean player are in the cheap video hosting with no branding roundup. Wistia vs Vimeo is the comparison once you are choosing a paid plan.
Worked example: 4,000 plays
Take 4,000 plays of an 18-minute sales video, with people watching 45% of it. Plays times 18 times 0.45 times 1.5 MB, divided by 1,024, comes to 47.5 GB. That is the estimate, not a log from a live account.
Next to those allowances, both TrackPlay and Vidalytics are over their play caps. Vidalytics still fails on the play cap, even though 47.5 GB is under its bandwidth cap. Wistia and Gumlet still have room on bandwidth. Voomly Light does not. Tick the logo box and Wistia and Gumlet drop out as well. Vimeo is judged only on storage. Bandwidth is left unscored.
Hosts kept out of the pass list
Cloudflare Stream on the Free Cloudflare plan includes no minutes stored and none delivered. Once Stream is on, storage is $5 per thousand minutes and delivery is $1 per thousand minutes. The Cloudflare Stream review covers the paid meter.
Bunny Stream has no hosting tier that stays free. The page is pay as you go, with a $1 monthly minimum after a 14-day trial. See the Bunny Stream review when delivery price is the question.
Panda Video lists paid plans that open with a trial. The pricing page does not document a hosting tier that remains free. The Panda Video review is the place for those paid tiers.
Vidyard Free allows 5 recordings a month, up to 30 minutes each, and marks video hosting as not included. The Vidyard review treats it as a recorder for a named prospect, which is a different job from hosting the video on a sales page.
SproutVideo and Spotlightr are not scored. This checker only includes a host whose pricing page documents an allowance that stays free.
When TrackPlay appears in the results
TrackPlay is a VSL player and analytics platform for paid-traffic funnels. It ties each play to the sale and can post that conversion back to the ad platforms. On this page it is not a ranked winner. It appears when the play count fits the allowance in the table.
It is narrow by design. The product is built for a direct-response sale on paid traffic, so a content library, a channel setup or a webinar is a poor fit. It has none of the channels, SEO pages or webinar tooling Wistia sells for that work. Play billing and the free allowance still apply when the video is there to make the sale.
Outside reviews are still thin, which is what you would expect of a platform this new, and that thin public record is a real limit if you want third-party proof before the traffic goes live. The longer write-up is the TrackPlay review. Vidalytics is the closest player in the table, so TrackPlay vs Vidalytics is the comparison when you are down to those two.
My take. I would type the play count from the ad account first, and I would tick the logo box only when the sales page cannot carry a host mark. A long video that people finish will exhaust a small gigabyte allowance while a play ceiling still has room. If the job is a library or a webinar, I would open the Wistia or Vimeo review even when TrackPlay's plays fit.
What the host does at the cap
On TrackPlay, playback pauses, and there is no paid overage to switch on.
On Vidalytics, you cannot buy extra bandwidth and stay on Free. The help article says account access can be disabled until the monthly period resets, or until you upgrade.
On Wistia, going over the bandwidth allowance leads to a short grace period. The usage article says embedded media then stops playing until the bandwidth resets.
Voomly Light and Gumlet publish the ceiling on their pricing pages and do not describe a grace period there.
Frequently asked questions
Does a free player mean the host logo is gone?
Why is Vidalytics judged twice?
Is Cloudflare Stream a free host?
How is this different from the VSL hosting cost calculator?
Where the allowances come from
Related reading
- VSL hosting cost calculator, for the bill once a free plan is too small
- Cheap video hosting with no branding
- Wistia vs Vimeo
- All head-to-heads
- TrackPlay review
- Vidalytics review
- Voomly review
- Gumlet review
Written by
Dominic Reyes
Lead reviewer
Dominic Reyes is the lead reviewer at Play That Sells. He covers VSL players, video hosting and the attribution stack behind paid-traffic funnels, reading vendor documentation, pricing pages and years of user threads before he writes a verdict. He pays most attention to retention, conversion tracking and page-load speed. When a vendor's claims go further than what buyers report, he says so.
dominic.reyes@playthatsells.com
Last checked 2026-10-31
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