What happens when I lapse to the Free plan?

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.

Not sure which plan type you have? Check “Membership” in the upper left corner of your account settings.

If you choose to turn off auto-renew for your Starter, Standard, or Advanced plan on Vimeo, your account will downgrade to the Free plan once it expires. Read on to learn what will change in your account when you downgrade to Free.

Skip ahead:

• 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?
• If my account lapses, do I lose access to developer tools and the API?

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 when you were on a paid plan. Learn more about how to check your video upload limits. In addition, the features you lose access to depend on which plan you were on prior to 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 stock media to use in video creation and editing, video and player branding options, custom call-to-actions & end cards, and lead capture with custom forms.
• 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?

If your account lapses to Free, all team members will be removed from your account. Those team members would then have their own Free accounts on Vimeo.

If you move back to a paid plan with multiple seats, you will need to manually re-add team members to your account. 

What happens to my videos when my paid plan lapses to Free?

When you lapse to the Free plan, the amount of videos you can have on your account is limited based on when you first created your Vimeo account. You can check your sign-up date in the upper left-hand corner of your account settings.

You can 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.

If your account has more than the above limits, 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. 

What happens to videos that team members uploaded to my account?

Videos that your team members added 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 that were 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.” That means you will need to change the setting to “Anywhere” in order to keep it embedded.
• If you renew your paid membership, your advanced settings will automatically be restored. Any videos you haven’t modified since lapsing will go back 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.

If my account lapses, do I lose access to developer tools and the API?

• 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 for accessing specific account features, such as retrieving direct file links or setting domain-level embed privacy.