How to Share a Video Privately With a Client

To share a video privately with a client, upload the file to SnapHost and send the link of the page it becomes. That page is a player that only the people you name can open, each after confirming their email, with nothing for them to install and no account to create. The one thing to know before you start is the size: a file can weigh up to 50 MB, which is about three minutes of 720p video, so this is for the short walkthrough, the demo clip and the recorded update, not the hour-long webinar.

The rest of this post covers what the page does, which video formats play, where the size limit bites and what to do about it, how to decide who can watch, and the cases where a video is the wrong thing to send at all.

Why share a video privately with a client at all

You recorded a two-minute walkthrough of the dashboard you built, or a screen recording of the prototype, or a short update you would rather say than type. Now it has to reach one person, and the ways to do that each lose something.

• An email attachment bounces above a size most mail servers set well under a minute of video, and when it does arrive it is a file in a downloads folder, not something that plays.
• An unlisted YouTube link plays for anyone who has it, by definition. Forward the email and the recording of your client's unreleased product is one paste away from a group chat.
• A file-transfer link is a download, usually a zip, often with a countdown on it. The client has to save it, find it and open it in whatever their machine offers, and you learn nothing about whether they did.
• A Drive share works if the client has the right Google account signed in on the device they happen to be holding. Many do not.

What you want is a link that plays in the browser, on a phone, that opens for your client and for nobody else, and that you can take back. That is a page, not a file.

What the page is

Upload a single video file and SnapHost gives it a player page of its own. The file is served so that seeking works, so the client can scrub to the part you told them about rather than waiting for the whole thing to load. The download is there too: a video file is its page, and a reader can always save it. If you would rather the client could watch but not keep a copy, a video is not the format that gives you that, and it is better to know now than after you send it.

Format matters more for video than for anything else you might publish. MP4 encoded as H.264 plays in every browser. A .mov straight out of QuickTime or an iPhone is often HEVC, which the browsers on Windows and Android lack, and .webm depends on the viewer's browser as well. When a browser cannot play the file, the page offers the download instead. Export as MP4 (H.264) before you upload and the question goes away.

SnapHost takes .mp4, .m4v, .webm, .mov and .ogv. An .avi, .mkv, .wmv, .mpg, .flv or .3gp is refused on upload, with the same advice: convert it to MP4 (H.264). The full list of what you can publish, video included, is in what you can publish.

The size limit, honestly

A file can be up to 50 MB, page and files together, on any plan. On Free, a video or audio file can weigh up to 10 MB. Pro takes the full 50 MB. In minutes rather than megabytes, 720p H.264 keeps about half a minute under 10 MB and about three minutes under 50 MB. A 1080p export from a screen recorder is bigger again, and a file has to leave a few kilobytes of room for its own page, so a 50.0 MB file is refused where a 49.9 MB one is not.

The cap is per file wherever the file travels. A page your AI built that embeds a clip is held to the same number for that clip, so the Free cap applies inside a bundle, not only to a video published on its own.

Three things make a video fit:

1. Cut it. A walkthrough that makes its point in ninety seconds is better than one that takes six minutes.
2. Export at 720p. For a screen recording, text stays readable at 720p and the file roughly halves against 1080p.
3. Split it. Two short pages, each with its own link, beat one file that does not upload.

If none of those work, because the thing really is a forty-minute recording, SnapHost is the wrong place for the video itself. Put the recording on a video host and publish the page around it instead: the summary, the timestamps, the decisions, with the link to the recording in it. The page can still be private even when the recording is not.

Choosing who can watch

A page has one link and a setting that decides who gets past it. Restricted means only the people you name can open it, and each of them confirms their email before any content loads. Anyone with the link means exactly that, with no sign in.

On a restricted page you add people by email, or a whole company at once by its domain, like acme.com, and everyone in your own workspace can be let in with one line. For a client, that is usually two or three addresses: the person you are working with and whoever they will show it to. If someone you did not think of opens the link, they can ask for access from the page, and approving the request adds them.

Two more controls are worth knowing for client work. A one-time link lets one person open a restricted page once, with no sign in, if it is used within seven days, and it is spent after a single sitting of about an hour. That suits the stakeholder who will watch the video once and not come back. A view password is the other one, and it behaves differently from how most people expect: on a restricted page it is a second way in, not a second check, so anyone holding it can open the page without being on the list. Pick the list or the password, not both.

What each plan gives you here: on Free you can have up to three pages at a time, each private to up to three people or public, and a new page starts out public, so name your readers before you copy the link. On Pro a new page is restricted from the start, there is no cap on pages or readers, and you can add a password or an end date to any page. The details are in sharing and access control.

Knowing whether they watched it

Every open of a restricted page is recorded with the time and the reader's email, since they confirmed it on the way in. Requests from people who were turned away are recorded too. So the question an attachment cannot answer, did they even look at it, has an answer: the log shows that jane@acme.com opened the page on Tuesday afternoon.

Be clear about what that is. It records the open, not the watching. It does not tell you how far into the video they got or whether they played it twice, and an open made with a view password alone is not logged at all. If you need to know that a client reached the end, ask them.

Replacing the video after you have sent the link

You will re-record. A step was wrong, the client asked for the mobile view, the audio dropped out at the end. With an attachment, each new cut is another email and another copy in circulation, and the client has to work out which one is current. With a page, you upload the new file and the link stays the same, so the next time your client opens it they see the new version. That works on Free.

On Pro, each update is also saved as a version, the ten most recent are kept, and you can go back to an earlier one in one step while keeping the same link. The rollback is saved as a version too. Versions and rollback has the details, and it is the safety net for the day you upload the wrong file.

If you want the page set up before anyone sees it, keep it as a draft. Nothing is reachable until you publish.

When the video is the wrong thing to send

A video of the thing you built is one step removed from the thing you built. If you recorded a walkthrough of a dashboard, a prototype or a report because you did not know how else to show it, publish the dashboard. Your client can click through it themselves, on their own phone, and you skip the recording, the export and the size limit entirely. Share an AI prototype for user testing covers exactly that path, and what to send a client instead of a zip file covers the deliverable case more broadly.

A video earns its place when the point is you: your voice over the numbers, the two-minute explanation that saves a meeting, the demo that only makes sense in motion.

Setting it up

1. Export the video as MP4 (H.264), at 720p for a screen recording, and check the file is under 10 MB on Free or 50 MB on Pro.
2. Drag the file into SnapHost, or ask ChatGPT or Claude to send it over once your assistant is connected.
3. If you are on Free, open Share and add your client's email before you copy the link, because a new page there starts out public. On Pro the page is restricted from the start, so add the names and send.
4. Play the page yourself once, on your phone, before the client does.
5. After they have opened it, look at the access log if it matters who did.

Free pages live at sites.snaphost.ai with a small SnapHost mark in the corner. Pro is 19 euros a month per member who can publish, the people who watch cost nothing, and it is where the larger file size, passwords, end dates and version history live. Pricing has the current plans.