Create your own VOD platform in 5 steps

With Videas Channels, creating a VOD platform does not take weeks: if your videos are ready, your video on demand site can be created and live on your own domain within the day, hosted in the EU and GDPR-compliant. The method comes down to 5 steps: create your channel, import and sort your catalogue, compose the storefront, decide who sees what, then set your prices. None of them is technical: they are settings in a single interface, not code.

That is the whole difference with a custom-built site or one handed to an agency, where the brief, the mock-ups, the development and the testing add up to weeks before the first sale. Here there is nothing to build: the platform already exists, you fill it and set it up.

The only wait that depends on you is the catalogue. A day is enough for a few dozen videos to sort; two hundred files dumped in a heap, with no categories, no subtitles and no prices, push the opening back accordingly. Hence the order below: the channel first, because it takes minutes, then the catalogue, which is the real work.

Step 1. Create your channel and brand it

At Videas, a VOD platform is called a channel, and you create it before you own a single video on it. Give it a name, a logo, your colours and a light or dark theme, and you get a complete website, delivered on a Videas address you will later swap for your own domain in step 3.

The player carries the same identity, down to its controls and its end screens, so a video embedded elsewhere still looks like yours. Starting here pays off immediately: everything you publish afterwards lands in the right setting, instead of being dressed up video by video.

Step 2. Import your videos and sort the catalogue

This is the step everyone puts off, and the only one that decides whether your viewers find something to watch.

Your videos land in your Mediasbox media library, by direct upload or by taking over an existing catalogue: migration from YouTube or Vimeo is handled free of charge, titles and descriptions included. You then organise them into categories and subcategories, into series with an episode order, into curated playlists and tags. Every category carries its own banner and featured items, and the built-in search looks inside titles, descriptions and subtitles alike.

Which is why subtitling belongs here, before launch rather than after: Videas Scribe generates subtitles in over a hundred languages, you review them before publishing, and viewers switch track inside the player. Add chapters on long videos, then give each item its publication date: the video goes live on its own on the day, and your release calendar runs with nobody at the keyboard.

Step 3. Compose the storefront and publish on your own domain

The catalogue is sorted. Now it needs a home page people want to walk into. Allow an hour or two, not a site redesign.

The page builder assembles your pages from blocks you drag with the mouse: hero banner, carousels, featured playlists, call-to-action buttons. You compose the storefront as you see fit, with no imposed template and without a line of code. The channel then publishes on your own domain or subdomain, with an SSL certificate issued and renewed automatically: no server setup on your side.

Playback needs no setting either. Each video is encoded at several qualities and the player continuously picks the one the connection can carry, which is what adaptive streaming means. Desktop, phone, tablet, connected TV: it all runs in the browser, with no app for your viewers to install.

Step 4. Decide who sees what

This is what separates a VOD platform from a public channel, and it goes down to the individual video.

Every item and every category carries its own access level: public, private, unlisted or password-protected. You can close the whole channel behind a login, create viewer groups so each one only opens the part of the catalogue that concerns them, and hand out admin, manager and viewer roles. In a company, your staff sign in with the account they already use, with no new password to remember: that is how Crédit Agricole runs its channel for 10,000 employees.

This is also where, and not at the payment step, a VOD platform stops having to be paid for at all: the same settings serve an open Web TV, an internal portal or a customer academy. And locked content keeps one door open, the trailer: attach one to any paid video or category, it plays freely and does the converting for you.

Step 5. Set your prices and connect Stripe

Three models live side by side on the same channel, and you do not have to commit to one.

Purchase gives lifetime access to a video or a bundle (TVOD): the reflex of the documentary, the recorded show, the training module sold on its own. Rental opens the same content for a window you set, usually a few days. Subscription (SVOD) charges recurring access to a category or to the whole catalogue, and it is the one that turns a video library into predictable revenue.

The choice follows your publishing rhythm, not the model that pays best in theory. A catalogue that grows every week feeds a subscription; a finished body of work sells better one piece at a time. You can run both: GussDX sells and rents his investigations on his own site, while the Art of Living foundation keeps its talks for subscribers across 150 countries. On a smaller scale, a creator opening a membership club follows the same reasoning: two tiers, early access reserved for members, files to download under the video.

Payment itself runs through Stripe, in a branded checkout. You set a price per video, per category or per subscription plan, you build bundles if you sell a course, and your viewers pay by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay without leaving your site. Revenue lands in your dashboard next to the analytics: views, retention, watch time and engagement, at four levels (channel, category, video, viewer), exportable as CSV for training records or audience analysis. The commercial terms, commission included, are on the pricing page; the rest of the selling mechanics is described in the distribution and monetization solution.

Open with a small but complete catalogue, a dozen videos sorted, subtitled and priced, rather than a hundred files in a heap. You will adjust the prices after the first sales, never before.

What a VOD platform will not do for you

Three things, better known before you start than after.

It will not bring you an audience. A channel does not rank on its own: your first viewers come from your list, your social accounts and your website, not from the launch itself.

It will not make your videos uncopyable. Access levels and domain-restricted embedding stop your content from playing anywhere but your own site, but there is no DRM encryption: anyone entitled to watch can film their screen.

It has no native app yet. The channel opens in the browser of a phone, a tablet or a connected TV; mobile apps are in development. If your project depends on one, tell us before you start.

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