Ship a Production Video Hosting API Without Touching S3, Lambda, or CloudFront

Reelhost gives your product upload endpoints, HLS transcoding, adaptive bitrate delivery, per-viewer analytics, and a white-label player — ready to integrate in one sprint.

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Most developers building video features face the same fork: use a consumer platform with API limitations and foreign branding embedded in your product, or wire together S3, Lambda transcoding, CloudFront distributions, a custom HLS player, and an analytics layer yourself. The consumer platforms — Vimeo, YouTube, Loom — are built for creators posting to their own audiences, not for developers who need a video hosting API that sits invisibly inside another product. Raw AWS infrastructure gives you control, but it requires an engineer who knows FFmpeg, adaptive bitrate encoding, and CloudFront cache invalidation just to get to a working proof of concept.

Cloudflare Stream and Bunny.net get closer to a developer-first API, but both stop short of what a production video feature requires. Cloudflare Stream has no webhooks, no per-viewer analytics, no chapter markers, and no way to configure the player beyond basic controls. Bunny.net adds a CDN layer but still hands the transcoding, player, and analytics problems back to you. The gap these platforms leave is real: you need a video hosting API where one authenticated call handles upload, transcoding, delivery, and player configuration — and fires a webhook to your backend when processing finishes.

Reelhost is the video infrastructure layer that product teams were previously assembling from three to five separate services. One API key covers upload, playback, and analytics.

Why "Embed Video Without Vimeo Branding" Is the Wrong Fix for a Product-Facing Video Feature

Vimeo's paid API plan and Wistia's marketing suite both solve the logo problem. They cannot solve the webhook problem, the viewer-analytics problem, or the transcoding-event problem. Both are built for marketers, not developer integrations. Vimeo's API rate limits rule it out for any product where users upload their own content. Wistia's pricing scales with contacts in their marketing funnel, not with the number of videos your product hosts. Neither gives you webhooks tied to transcoding events, per-viewer completion data accessible via API, or chapter markers configurable from your backend.

The consequence of choosing a consumer platform for a product-facing video feature is that your architecture is built around a service whose roadmap prioritizes creators, not developer integrations. When Vimeo changes their embed policy or Wistia reprices their tiers, your product absorbs the change. A video hosting API built for product teams does not carry that dependency.

Introducing Reelhost

Upload a video file, get back a video ID, embed the player with one script tag, and receive a webhook when HLS transcoding finishes. Reelhost handles the transcoding pipeline, CDN delivery, adaptive bitrate switching, and player rendering so your team builds the product layer, not the infrastructure layer. Built for developers shipping video inside their own applications.

What You Get — Starting at $49/month

Upload Endpoint — A single authenticated POST endpoint accepts video files up to 50 GB and returns a video ID immediately. Transcoding begins in the background without a second API call.

HLS Transcoding Pipeline — Incoming video is processed automatically into 360p, 720p, and 1080p H.264 plus an HLS manifest. No encoding profiles to configure, no FFmpeg commands to write.

Adaptive Bitrate Delivery — Videos are served via HLS with automatic quality switching. The player selects the highest resolution the viewer's connection can sustain without buffering.

White-Label Player — The embeddable JavaScript player accepts your brand color, logo URL, and control layout via HTML attributes. Reelhost branding does not appear at any breakpoint.

Webhook Notifications — Configure one or more endpoint URLs per workspace. Signed POST requests fire on upload received, transcoding complete, and playback error so your backend stays in sync without polling.

Per-Viewer Analytics API — Query play start, percentage watched, completion flag, and session timestamp per viewer ID. Pass a viewer identifier in the embed configuration; the analytics endpoint returns structured JSON.

Chapter Markers — Pass a JSON array of timestamps and labels when creating or updating a video. The player renders a chapter navigation bar with scrubbing support, included at Builder tier.

In-Video CTAs — Configure time-triggered overlays via API: label, destination URL, display duration. Click-through rates appear in the analytics response alongside completion data.

Why $49/month

The engineering time to stand up a working video upload-transcode-delivery pipeline on raw AWS runs 40 to 80 hours before your team ships a single user-facing feature. At a mid-market developer rate, that is $6,000 to $12,000 in one-time build cost, plus ongoing AWS infrastructure averaging $200 to $800 per month depending on storage and delivery volume. Reelhost at $49/month covers the same capability set for teams under 500 GB storage. The Builder tier at $149/month adds chapter markers, in-video CTAs, and a 4-hour support SLA, with overage billing so growth spikes do not require a plan conversation.

Who This Is For

You are shipping a video feature inside your own SaaS product and need an upload-to-playback pipeline that does not leak another brand into your UI.

You tried Cloudflare Stream and hit the wall where webhooks, per-viewer analytics, and chapter markers simply do not exist in their API.

You evaluated raw AWS and concluded the infrastructure time is not the best use of your current sprint.

You are building an e-learning platform, video feedback tool, portfolio builder, or internal knowledge base where videos are part of the product experience, not a link to YouTube.

You need completion tracking per viewer so your application knows which users have watched which content.

The 14-Day Full-Access Guarantee

If Reelhost does not integrate with your existing backend within 14 days of your first API call, contact support and we will give you a full refund and help you migrate your videos out. No questions asked, no data held.

In One Sprint, You'll Have:

• A working upload endpoint integrated with your product's file handling
• HLS-transcoded video delivering adaptive bitrate playback to your users
• A white-label player rendering in your brand colors on your domain
• Webhook events firing to your backend on every transcoding completion
• Per-viewer analytics data accessible via API query, not a third-party dashboard
• Chapter markers and in-video CTAs configurable from your backend
• Zero S3 buckets, CloudFront distributions, or Lambda functions to manage

Frequently Asked Questions

How does Reelhost compare to Cloudflare Stream as a video hosting API for developers?
Cloudflare Stream handles delivery well but stops there. It has no webhooks, no per-viewer analytics API, no chapter markers, no in-video CTAs, and limited player customization. Reelhost is built for teams that need the full video infrastructure layer, not just a CDN endpoint. If your product needs to know when a user finishes watching a video and trigger a backend event, Cloudflare Stream requires you to build that layer yourself.

Can I white label the player so viewers never see Reelhost?
Yes. The player renders with no Reelhost branding at any breakpoint. You pass your brand color, logo URL, and control configuration as HTML attributes on the embed script tag. Your domain, your player, your product.

How much does Reelhost cost if my video library grows quickly?
Starter covers 100 GB storage and 500 GB monthly delivery at $49/month. Builder covers 500 GB and 2 TB at $149/month, with overage at $0.02/GB stored and $0.01/GB delivered. Both tiers include all core API features with no per-feature add-on pricing.

What happens to my videos if I cancel?
You get a 30-day export window after cancellation. During that window, all videos remain accessible via the API and you can download original files or HLS manifests. After 30 days, files are deleted from Reelhost's storage.

What it is: A video hosting API for developers: upload, transcode, deliver, and track video inside your own product.
What you get: Upload endpoint, HLS transcoding, adaptive delivery, white-label player, webhooks, per-viewer analytics, chapter markers, and in-video CTAs.
Price: From $49/month
Catch: Storage and delivery are metered — heavy usage scales with your plan.
Guarantee: Full refund within 14 days if it does not integrate with your backend.
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