YouTube

One thing that's important to keep in mind about YouTube: it's a social media platform as much as it is a video host.

That is not to say that there isn't a lot of quality educational content on YouTube; there is. But it is all content intended to be seen by as many people as possible.

YouTube has limited controls for adjusting who can see your video. A video can be Private, Unlisted, or Public.

Private videos are only visible by people you specifically invite. They will also need a Google account. This is not a practical solution for sharing videos with large groups like classes of students.

Unlisted videos are not as easy to search for, but they are still viewable by anyone who has the link. They are still effectively public.

Public videos are publicly available and can be found in YouTube's search.

So ask yourself: who is your audience? If your answer is "everyone," then YouTube is a fine choice. Your video will be publicly available and easy to discover. But similarly, there be little stopping a viewer from using a video elsewhere or downloading it for themself.

YouTube will auto-generate captions for your video, but they are poorly formatted and difficult to read. It does give you tools to correct those captions, but given their initial state, that would be more time-consuming than other platforms.

You can add externally generated captions to YouTube videos if your order them from another service.