Leaving Vimeo after a price rise: move your library and rebuild your links

A copy of your library that answers to you, then a calm rebuild of the handful of links people actually use. The backup commits you to nothing.

If a renewal quote sent you looking, resist the urge to pick a destination first. Get a copy of your library that answers to you, then decide where the work should live. A backup is reversible. A rushed migration is not.

Back up first, decide second

HoldFast can connect to your Vimeo account and pull the whole library into a project, folder structure and metadata intact, then keep checking for anything new. That is a backup, not a commitment: nothing is removed from Vimeo, and you can run both for as long as you like. See Back up your Vimeo library.

Some videos will not come across that way, usually private, hidden, or password-protected ones. The free desktop importer handles those, because it reads your library through your own Vimeo sign-in on your own Mac, and HoldFast never sees your password. See What the Vimeo Importer is and Move your Vimeo library to HoldFast. Anything that fails sorts itself by cause in Fix Vimeo backup failures.

Then rebuild the links people actually use

The library is rarely the hard part. The addresses you have handed out are. Three surfaces cover almost everything:

1. Showcase pages become reels. A portfolio, a curated set for a prospect, a page you link from your site: build it as a reel, put your logo and colours on it, publish it at its own address. See How to make a showreel.
2. Review pages become review links. Anywhere you were sending a video for notes, send a review link instead: timecoded comments, drawing on the frame, per-version approvals, and no account for the person reviewing. See How to send a video for review.
3. A single video you keep sending can go out as one public link without building a whole page. See Share a single video with a public link.

Work through them in traffic order. The three or four addresses in your email signature and on your website matter. The link you sent one producer in 2019 does not.

What changed at Vimeo

Some context, stated plainly because people ask. Bending Spoons completed its acquisition of Vimeo on November 24, 2025. Many small teams have reported steep increases at renewal since then. Separately, Vimeo's plan usage policy requires accounts it classifies as business use to move onto its business-category plans, which catches production companies and agencies that had been running on a personal footing for years.

None of that means you have to leave. It does mean you should not be caught out, and it is a good reason to hold your own copy either way.

A reasonable order to work in

1. Connect the backup and let the library come across in the background.
2. While it runs, list every place a Vimeo address is published: your site, your signature, decks, proposals, old emails you still get replies to.
3. Rebuild the busiest of those as reels or review links.
4. Repoint the published addresses at the new pages, one at a time, and check each one.
5. Keep Vimeo running until the traffic has moved, then decide.

Nothing forces that last step. Plenty of teams keep a Vimeo account for a few embeds and run everything else here.