Please who knows what platforms VODs like Irokotv us for their video contents?
From what I gather, you are looking for an off-the-shelf solution. I am no expert but from what I gather, a VOD platform is a CMS with a paywall. Iroko started with YouTube bearing all the infrastructure cost of delivering video even via their own websites too. But I guess Iroko got greedy and wanted a bigger chunk of the Ad Revenues or as their PR will suggest, they changed their Buisness Model to be an “exciting startup”, got loads of cash so that they can own some assets in case they go bust and then decided to replace the underlying infrastructure with something that’s being mashed up internally. As you can guess it’s more intresting to sell that story than selling WordPress + YouTube
So if you are in it for the short run - Register a company in Hong Kong, Singapore, Argentina or Russia. Get WordPress installed with a Paywall Plugin on a dedicated server, upload your videos to YouTube, Vimeo, Cloudinary, PornHost or any of all the other one million video hosting platforms out there. Or better still, you can steal the videos off YouTube, Iroko or AMGo. Then you are in business. You will have a 6 months head start before the FBI starts looking for you. Take your earnings, move to your village and then become a senator.
If you are in it for the long run, you will have to deal with scams like video analytics, encoding, CDNs, DRM and acquiring content. It will be hard to get this off-the-shelf from a single provider and it will also be hard for you to have a differentiating factor. So unfortunately, you will have to get your hands dirty and build something from scratch. However, you may want to check out https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-Video-on-demand-platforms but I will advise you take all those companies with a pinch of salt as there is no single solution out there.
HTH. All the best.
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I’ve spent some time doing the exact same research you have asked for, I was also directed to the exact same Quora link in Tola’s reply. However, I will give you the response that nobody ever gave me (and I have spent about 2yrs learning the hard way).
The major players in the online video platform (OVP) space are: YouTube, Vimeo, Ooyala, and Brightcove. There are lots more. I have a long list that grows literally everyday, but Ill focus on these. Ill take them one by one
YouTube
YouTube is very powerful, and free. However the problem is that YouTube’s sole purpose is to drive traffic to YouTube (despite what they make you think). If you were to upload your videos to YouTube, then embed those videos on a Wordpress site, then these are the things you would have just inherited:
- Before I watch any of your videos, I could see ads. Ads which you have no control over, but nonetheless YouTube probably will pay you for. This is not great for instance, if these are ads for your competitors.
- There is always going to be a nice little YouTube logo at the bottom of your videos whenever they play, which gets people out of your site and right back to YouTube.
- At the end of the video, YouTube will present me with options to watch several other videos. So in essence I could be on your website, but now I am watching an IrokoTV video.
- You cannot make custom apps using YouTube as your OVP (I suppose this is one of the REAL reasons Iroko moved away). Yes Afrinolly found a way to make it happen, but literally ALL YouTube videos must play in the YouTube app. So if you want a unified solution, you are SOL here.
Summary: YouTube is cheap and powerful. If you don’t care about all the YouTube branding and all the things you cannot control, then it is a really good option.
Vimeo
Vimeo Pro was designed for VoD. You can see it in use here on sparrow. You upload your videos to Vimeo and set up different options like price per video etc. I have not assessed Vimeo Pro extensively but one limitation is that you specify prices against videos or collections of videos. You don’t have the flexibility to specify one subscription fee for instance which grants access to all videos in your collection. Its a good and simple solution, but might be too simple for many advanced use cases.
Ooyala
When IrokoTV moved away from YouTube, they made a custom web application with Ooyala as their OVP. Videos are uploaded to Ooyala, these videos then get transcoded, then with the Ooyala APIs the videos are nicely queried and displayed on the IrokoTV web application. Ooyala also provides a handy video player. Ooyala is a really advanced OVP with rich features like analytics, paid subscriptions, pay per view, DRM, CDN etc. However, Ooyala comes at a VERY hefty price. Not good at all for entry level offerings - unless you are already very heavily funded and you have enough runway to afford this service off the bat.
IrokoTV has since moved on from Ooyala and are now running off Brightcove. Not really sure why but my guess would be price.
Brightcove
Brightcove is another advanced OVP. In many circles where you hear Ooyala, you will almost always hear Brightcove as well. They are close competitors. Brightcove has many of the same advanced features but I gather they are not quite as pricey as Ooyala.
I should mention that Brighcove and Ooyala together power a lot of the most advanced online video applications on the internet today.
JWPlayer and Flowplayer Drive are also options that provide video storage and transcoding for you, then offer embeddable players. Its a smaller bite than what Ooyala and Brightcove offer but you can be very successful with these as well. I believe dobox and Viddsee run on jwplayer.
Unfortunately the OVP world is fairly complicated. What you need depends hugely on what you are trying to build. Do you want something quick and dirty? NdaniTV has been running off a Wordpress theme with embedded YouTube videos. Tacky, but works. Or do you want something on the same scale as IrokoTV? The solution that is right for you depends a lot on what you are building.
I have been in this OVP space for a very long time now. I am myself building yet another online video platform called Vindie.
That was a lot of information, but I hope that helped somewhat
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Yea, Brightcove is great
You’re welcome! Im interested to hear more on what you’re trying to build. I can a better recommendation if I have more details. Feel free to message me or something 
Hey johne, thanks for ye comprehensive update. i will love to talk to u personnally if u dont mind. ogunwandetobi09@gmail.com is my email address. imbox me ur no. its very imp. hp to hear frm u soon.
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Great post @johne. Thank you for the information and Well done.
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