Our verdict
vidIQ is a powerful YouTube marketing platform. It provides a number of tools for conducting keyword research, competitor research, channel monitoring, trends alerts and tedious channel management tasks.
Want to get more video views and subscribers and make money on YouTube?
vidIQ, a Chrome extension can help. It includes audience growth, YouTube SEO, competitive research, channel management and other tools. As a YouTube creator, you can increase the organic reach of your videos, save time, and get more out of your channel.
In this article, I will review vidIQ and take you through its main features. I’ll compare its capabilities to TubeBuddy, another great YouTube growth tool. You can check out some of the additional YouTube tools that will help you develop your channel.
Note: Just to let you know, this article contains authorized links. This means that Elite Content Marketers receive a commission if you sign up for any additional cost discounts through us. I only recommend products that I personally value and enjoy. I appreciate your support.
The WIDIQ Team Elite Content Marketing generously offers readers a 30-day free trial for all their paid plans. Use the “EliteContentMarketer” code at checkout to use it. You can sign up for a plan here and access free trials on paid plans.
✅Frequently Asked Questions about VidIQ
Before we break down the user experience and look for specific vidIQ features, let’s answer a few basic questions about the tool.
✔ What is VidIQ?
vidIQ is a SaaS product that helps YouTube creators analyze their channels, research keywords and competitors, save time on tedious channel management tasks, and grow their YouTube brand.
✔ VidIQ secure?
Top brand badges such as BuzzFeed, AOL and many more creators believe in VDIQ. The product does not violate the YouTube Terms. They also recognize YouTube according to the tag next to the logo on their website.
✔ How much does VidIQ cost?
The Basic Plan is available for free with limited features. The Pro plan starts at .$7 per month and the best plan with more channel features starts at $39 per month. Its Boost + plan (which comes with personalized coaching) starts at $415 per month.
✔ VidIQ good?
The suite of VidIQ tools can analyze the effectiveness of your YouTube channel/videos, improve their organic visibility and Sub, uncover insights about your competitors and save you time. Overall it is a powerful product and effective for creators committed to developing their YouTube channels.
✔ Is TubeBody better than vidiQ?
Both tools provide the best Excel vidiQ in a set of key premium features with little difference in your user experience, providing you with real-time statistics and focusing on video speeds, which shows you what is trending “now”. TubeBuddy relies on A/B video testing and invaluable member plans. Try both tools to find your personal preference.
vidIQ Pricing
In addition to vidIQ’s free “Basic” plan provides three levels. Here they are:
- The Pro Plan costs $9 per month with an introductory line of premium features,
- The best plan costs $49 per month, including a dedicated suite of premium features per month (per channel).
- The Boost + plan costs $499 per month (for five channels) and comes with one monthly virtual coaching call and personalized support for your channel.
An enterprise plan is also available for brands that want to manage more than 5 YouTube channels. Remember that all of the above values are valuable when you receive a monthly bill. If you opt for annual billing (like me), you get two or more months free.
Most YouTube creators will find premium features like keyword research and historical analysis in their premium plans to enhance unlocking. Get a free one month trial for all these paid plans by signing up.
✅ vidIQ Help Center and Customer Support
The company has an extensive support center with articles covering all the features of the product including screenshots. Explanations for proprietary features like Views Per Per Hour (VPH), VDIQ score and the like are also well-documented.
Their YouTube channel is a gold mine of resourceful videos on YouTube growth content. And they often show virtually their features. Here is a video where they take you through their 100 tools!
Starting with their pro plan, they also offer free vidIQ Academy courses. I’m not sure if this has been considered customer support, but Sahitya Sahib is primarily helpful in organizing their video marketing efforts and streamlining their YouTube travels.
In addition to the help center, email support is available for their free plans and live chat on their paid plans. You can’t rely on chat as instant customer service. While writing the review I asked a number of questions that were not answered for 13 hours.
So you can expect email replies and some support on basic payment plans, but it won’t be real-time. In their high-level plan, vidIQ provides personalized coaching to enhance your channel. And you can also expect premium and priority support.
✅ vidIQ key features
Now let’s take a look at some of the best vidIQ features that can strengthen your YouTube channel. Get a bird’s eye view in a YouTube video via vidiQ scorecard
Once you have the vidIQ extension installed, you will get a scorecard in addition to each YouTube video that has four tabs. Let’s get started by looking at the overview tab of this led Zeppelin composition.
Note: I am avoiding SEO scores and related categories from this feature because I will cover them in detail later in their article. The first section shows the VPH, total views and duration of the video.
For your channel, the average viewing time percentage, your top device, top country, and device metrics are also displayed from VDIQ data from YouTube. An overall vidIQ score is displayed.
✅ Compare views with competitors (or yourself)
Hands down, one of the best capabilities of vidiQ is that it allows you to compare the “viewing speed” of your video with any other YouTube video or channel. You can compare your performance against your competitors or even benchmark your newly published video content with the average video views of your youtube channel.
(As you can see, some of the comparison options are only available after advanced planning. Exporting comparison metrics to an excel sheet is also limited to higher-level plans.)
Comparison statistics are invaluable because your initial video velocity gives you real-time listener feedback on what works for them. And by improving your video’s initial performance after release (say the first 24 hours), you can make it even more viral to make room for its target keywords.
✅ Work on the SEO of your YouTube channel
YouTube is a Nifty search engine with millions of users logging in to learn recipes, search for information and much more. And YouTube SEO people are looking for keywords (or topics) and creating high-quality videos on them.
You can use the YouTube Search Tips feature to find some keyword ideas. As you plug in some keywords, searches are automatically filled with related phrases related to what people typed on YouTube:
vidIQ, with its set of YouTube SEO tools, can take your research to the next level. First, when you type a phrase into YouTube, vidIQ displays a lot of information about its “keyword universe” in the bar on the right. You’ll get an idea of the volume, the competition, and the overall score of the keyword (which is determined by its demand versus supply growth).
There are a few more panels to tell you about top channels, opportunities for related keywords, trending videos for the search term, and more. This information is extremely useful in determining whether a keyword is appropriate to target for your channel or whether you should give it more niche.
You can plug a keyword into “Keyword Inspector” and get an idea of its competition, volume, and an overall score, along with a bunch of related keywords.
If you enable “Inline Keywords”, you will get a list of tags that you are currently using in ranking alongside each result. This is useful for creating content ideas for use in your future videos and mentioning a few of them.
Once you’ve created a video, how can you be sure that its metadata is optimized for its target phrase and ready to encourage it for viewers and customers?
The VidIQ Video Optimization checklist may be effective for this. If you have used controversial keywords anywhere in your title, tag, or description, this will indicate it. For a video I’m uploading, vidIQ shows that I’ve used the “very short” tag in its other searches. So I can go back to adding more suggested tags to the video by vidIQ.
Encourage popular trends for your benefit through “Trend Alerts”
Your competitor’s videos may not be popular right now with lots of views. So are they worth targeting for your channel?
VidIQ uses its unique “Every Hour Show” (VPH) metric to find current trending topics and trending videos from your competitor’s channel on YouTube. To set up email alerts for trending videos, go to “Trend Alerts” from the vidIQ dropdown (visible in the screenshot below).
You will need:
- Enter a name for your alert,
- Choose the keyword you want to track and its category,
- Enter a VPH threshold (which tells you which trends are going viral),
- Set the frequency with which you want to receive email alerts,
- And choose the language of the videos you want to watch. If you track competitors via VDIQ, it will show you the option to track any one of them in the “Categories” field.
Note that viral is a term associated with the industry you are making the video with and therefore “VPH Threshold” will also vary. If you are targeting B2B software vendors it is probably more effective to track your competitors directly and VPH may be less than 100. If you create mobile reviews then 5k can serve as a valid threshold such as keywords like “Apple” While tracking”
✅ Monitor your overall performance through channel monitoring
Another simple feature, known as vidIQ your “personal youtube consultant”, is channel auditing. You can access it from the VDIQ menu – this is the fourth item in the dropdown.
It gives you an overall insight into the effectiveness of your channel in terms of monthly views, subscribers, and viewing over time compared to last month.
A “Content Double Down” section shows which videos have now found the right VPH for your channel and are working to get subscribers running for you.
You’ll also find details on videos that contribute the most viewing time and the longest views (which is crucial to the development of your channel). Videos with top holding percentage, most viewed driven playlists, and non-proprietary videos that drive you traffic are also part of the break.
This section also provides the top search terms for searching videos in your channel, your last screen click rate and card click rate.
Then there is the section “Content that can be used in comments” videos with minimal ideas and as a result a bad performance leads you to lose the customer.
Note: A video from my YouTube channel came under both the “Double Down in Content” and “Content That Can Work” sections. I count it because the video is a sensitive subject. So people see it and dislike it. Then lower it sharply. Making more videos like this is a judgment call. A tool can only tell you, right?
The Channel Monitoring tool has a few more sections that tell you “Average metrics for the last 30 days” and “Items to improve.” The recommendations here are based on your metadata (length of title, description, and tags), your average SEO score, and the like. From here, you can search for videos that have tags, end screens, cards, and the like.
Note: Insights will not be available in these two categories unless you uploaded a video last month or so (like mine). By uploading “at least one new video each week” VDIQ can suggest adjusting your post schedule.
✅ Other vidIQ tools
I would like to quickly touch on a few other tools provided by VDIQ and talk about their utilities in your YouTube workflow.
⭐ The best time to upload your videos
Based on your customers’ viewing habits, vidIQ graphs the ideal time to upload your next video.
For smaller channels, you need to manually promote your channel outside of YouTube. So I didn’t find the tool particularly effective. Better to use your judgment on when your audience will be online, even in the early stages of your YouTube journey.
✔ Competitors
You can add your competing channels directly to VDIQ and discover their most viewed videos, subscriber growth, top keywords and the like. This kind of competitive research can help refresh your content strategy.
✔ Ump thumbnail generator
Most YouTube viewers won’t see any videos with bad thumbnails as a first impression on your channel. vidIQ provides a thumbnail generator where you can design stills from your videos (in your preferred frame). However, dedicated graphic design tools such as stencils and canvas are much better for creating clickable qualifiers.
Now, vidIQ even gives you the option to compare your thumbnails to other videos ranked in YouTube search for your target keywords. This may take effect before you close your final thumbnail.
✔ Productivity equipment
VidIQ makes bulk copying/editing possible if you want to replace all end screens and bulk ad cards of customers driving videos for your channel. You can create comment templates and make sure you don’t get any replies to your video comments. It is even possible to download and backup all your metadata to a CSV file.
✔ Real-time statistics bar
It puts tabs on your channel’s top-level stats, including watch time and subscribers. This provides a great real-time update if you want to monetize your channel. It’s bald next to the vidIQ menu button.
And there’s an “acquisition” tool that keeps you updated on the milestones of each subscriber, view, and other major channels you’ve cracked. You can share these with your friends through your social media.
✔ Mobile applications
vidIQ launched the app for iOS and Android platforms a few months ago. But their customer support representative, in Medina’s words, said, “It’s more of a research and statistics widget on your account and progress.” It’s like testing it while developing applications. And these are all VDIQ tools and features that I wanted to introduce to you. Then let’s see how the tool stacks up against its top competitor.
✅ The final penalty (and a special offer…
VidIQ is a YouTube tool that you can rely on to access actionable insights about your videos, your competitors, and your channel. I’ve shown you around the original set of its features and encouraged you to give it a shot.
vidIQ is a powerful YouTube marketing platform. It provides tools available for keyword research, competitor research, channel monitoring, trend alerts, tedious channel management tasks and much more. While its free Chrome extension may be enough for early YouTube developers, paid versions of it can change the growth rate of your channel.
