Why Modo
Why I'm building Modo.
I'm Peter Van Dijck. Video hosting got expensive and complicated, and I wanted something simple that I could run from Claude.
The problem
I needed to host a few videos: product demos, a walkthrough or two, a video for a landing page. Not thousands of viewers. Just videos that load fast, play cleanly and can be private when they should be.
The options were awkward. YouTube adds ads and suggestions, and an unlisted link is not access control. The marketing-grade hosts come with seats, lead forms and heatmaps I did not need, at prices to match. Some cheaper plans come with a bandwidth ceiling and an Enterprise call if you go past it. And the raw infrastructure is cheap, but it means writing upload flows, an embed and signed-URL code first.
What Modo is
Modo is the small, finished product in the middle. It sits on top of Cloudflare Stream, which does the encoding, storage, global delivery and the player. Modo adds an account, a library, embed codes and share links, private signed links, plain usage numbers, and billing you can read in one sentence.
And it is built to be driven from your AI agent. I use Claude every day. I would rather say "here's a video on my machine, upload it and give me the embed" than open another dashboard. So Modo has an MCP server, and the web app does the same things for when you want to click.
Why you might use it
- You have a modest amount of video and modest traffic, and want it hosted well.
- You want a clean embed without YouTube branding or suggested videos.
- You want private videos with signed links that expire.
- You want a published price: minutes stored, minutes streamed, and $2 per 1,000 extra minutes streamed. No per-seat pricing.
- You already work with an AI agent and want video to be one more thing it can do.
Why you might not
Modo is not the cheapest option. Vimeo's entry plans cost less on sticker price, YouTube is free, and a developer who is happy to use Cloudflare Stream directly will pay roughly a third of Modo's price for the same allowance. Modo has no free plan. It also has little marketing tooling: no lead forms, heatmaps or webinars. Wistia and others do that well, and Wistia has an MCP server too.
If that is you, use them. The comparison pages are honest about where each tool fits.
Who is behind it
Modo is built by me, Peter Van Dijck, at Helpful Intelligence, in Madrid, Spain. If you have a question or a feature you need, write to hello@modo.helpfulintelligence.co. It goes to me.