How to cancel Vimeo
without losing your videos.

Write down the old Vimeo URL, new URL, original backup location and each page that embeds it. Mark playback, permissions and final downloads as checked. A successful file transfer does not mean every website link has changed.

Download the printable migration checklist. Save the old embed code before replacing it so you can restore it during the overlap period if the new playback fails.

Cancel only after the pilot and the full cutover pass. UC cannot redirect Vimeo's domain or update links already sent to someone else. Keep a short subscription overlap if a client still needs an old review link.

Two things decide how much work this is: the plan you are on, which fixes whether originals can be pulled for you or must be downloaded one at a time, and how many places embed your work, because the swap is the one step that does not scale with a click.

Downgrading and deleting are different actions; do the first and postpone the second. A lapse, as the help center describes it, keeps the account and, inside the cap, the URLs. Vimeo’s deleted-videos page says what a lapse can do: “If you canceled your Account, downgraded, or lapsed to another plan, you may have lost access to some of your video storage, and therefore, your videos got deleted.”

On Standard, Advanced or the other plans Vimeo’s API page names, Pro, Business, Premium and Enterprise, the API exposes a download field with expiring links, and among the qualities it can list is source, the video’s own source file. That is the door the importer uses. It selects a usable source first; if none is available, it labels and imports the largest usable fallback. It adds no re-encode. The walk-through is at moving Vimeo videos without re-uploading.

On Starter that door is closed, so the original comes out by hand: open the film’s page, Share, then Download, pick the version. Vimeo says “there is no option to download multiple videos in bulk from your library,” so it is one film at a time, logged in, dropped into your library here as it lands. On Free, the download page says the feature “requires a paid plan” and the API exposes nothing either, so there is no download route at all; the master on your drive is the file to upload. Plan by plan, the detail is at downloading original files from Vimeo.

Whichever door you use, what comes back is the file Vimeo stored; if the finishing export on your drive is newer, or Vimeo never kept the source, the drive wins.

Work through the inventory from the most visited page down. Each imported film has its own page and embed here, so a swap is a paste, and the review room takes over the client-feedback part of Vimeo, with comments timecoded and tied to a version. When the list is empty, the paid plan has nothing left to protect.

Then the stub. If years of press and festival listings point at Vimeo URLs, the free account can stay up so those links keep resolving, as the migration guide also says. Be exact about what it can carry, because Vimeo’s lapse page is exact. It serves what fits inside 1 GB, so trim the library on Vimeo to the films the press actually links, and since the most recent uploads are restricted first, leave nothing else. Password, Unlisted and Embed only videos are switched to Private on lapse, so set the stub films to Public first and put the new link in each description. If nothing outside your own site points at Vimeo, skip the stub.

Size the destination before the import: the pricing page carries the rate card and a calculator, and the hot versus cold guide explains which films stay hot and which rushes can go cold.