This article is for customers lapsing from Starter, Standard, or Advanced plans. If you are lapsing from Plus, Pro, Business, or Premium, read this instead.
Unsure which Vimeo plan type you have? Check “Membership” in the upper left corner of your account settings.
If you turn off auto-renewal for your Starter, Standard, or Advanced plan on Vimeo, your account will downgrade to the Free plan once the current plan expires. Read on to learn what will change in your account when you downgrade to Free.
In this article:
- What features do I lose when I lapse to Free?
- What happens to my team members if I lapse to Free?
- What happens to my videos when my paid plan lapses to Free?
- What happens to videos that team members uploaded to my account?
- Do I get everything back if I restore to a paid plan?
- How are privacy and embed settings impacted when my account lapses?
- What happens to my collections when my account lapses?
- Do I lose access to developer tools and the API if my account lapses?
What features do I lose when I lapse to Free?
You may not be able to add more videos to your account when you lapse to Free, depending on how much you uploaded while on a paid plan. Read more at How much video content can I store on my Vimeo account? In addition, the features you lose access to depend on which plan you were on before lapsing:
- If you lapse from the Advanced plan: You will lose all features related to streaming virtual events, including broadcast tools, webinar hosting and registration, event analytics, live Q&A, polls, and audience chat, stream health monitoring, and marketing integrations (Constant Contact, Mailchimp, Hubspot, Campaign Monitor, Heap). Note that all videos that are archives of live events will move into our archive storage.
- If you lapse from the Standard plan: You will lose access to stock media for video creation and editing, video and player branding options, custom call-to-actions & end cards, lead capture with custom forms, and Vimeo On Demand. Any VOD titles you have for sale or rental will no longer be available.
- If you lapse from the Starter plan: You will lose access to player customization options, automatic closed captions and transcript editing, version history & video replacement, video chaptering & SEO, shared team workspaces, video review tools, password protection and unlisted link sharing, and advanced video analytics.
What happens to my team members if I lapse to Free?
When added to a team on your account, team members are provided their own free Vimeo account.
If your account lapses to Free, team members will not have access to the team account. However, they will retain their own free personal accounts.
If you move back to a paid plan with multiple seats for team members, your team will regain access to the team account with data and access grants preserved.
What happens to my videos when my paid plan lapses to Free?
When lapsing to the Free plan, the video storage allowed on your account is reduced to 1 GB. If your paid account currently stores more than this, some older videos may become inaccessible and move into our archive storage for one year.
If you upgrade to a paid plan within a year of lapsing, your archived videos will be restored.
You can always check your account’s video usage or storage allowance in the tracker in the lower left-hand corner of your library or the upper right-hand corner of your account settings.
What happens to videos that team members uploaded to my account?
Videos your team members add are tied to the account, not the person who uploaded them. When the account lapses to the Free plan, those videos will remain with the owner’s account, either actively available or in archive storage as described above. They do not transition to the team member’s personal account.
Do I get everything back if I restore to a paid plan?
If you upgrade to a paid plan within a year of lapsing, any of your videos moved to our archive storage will be restored (please note that it may take some time for the videos to be moved from our archive storage back into your account).
How are privacy and embed settings impacted when my account lapses?
- Videos set to the “Unlisted” and “Hide from Vimeo” privacy settings will be switched to “Private” instead.
- If your account is in Private Mode and you lapse, all your videos will be set to the "Private" setting.
- Videos with a password will keep the password until you change your settings, but passwords cannot be added to videos once you're on a Free account.
- Any videos with player customizations will revert to the default player appearance options for Free accounts.
- If you have domain-level privacy set on your video, your embed privacy setting will be changed to “Nowhere.” You must change the setting to “Anywhere” to keep it embedded.
- Your advanced settings will automatically be restored if you renew your paid membership. Any videos you haven’t modified since lapsing will return to how they were before your account lapsed to Free.
What happens to my collections when my account lapses?
- You will keep and be able to edit the groups, channels, and showcases you created as a paid member, but you will not be able to create new ones beyond the Free limits.
Do I lose access to developer tools and the API if my account lapses?
- Access to the Vimeo API, your account’s API apps, and authentication tokens will remain valid even if your membership status lapses or expires.
- That said, you will no longer be able to use the API to access specific account features, such as retrieving direct file links or setting domain-level embed privacy.