Private sharing requires that any invited users log in to Wistia. If this isn't what you’re looking for, check out our Require Password feature. All your viewers need to do is enter a password to watch the video — no login needed.

Private sharing in Wistia allows you to add users with varying permission levels to your individual folders and Channels, and give them specific access to your content. Wistia media in your account aren’t crawled by search engines, so until you share them (via direct URLs or embedded on your website), they will remain private.

If you'd like to share your content with a few people (but not the whole world), you can share a direct link. Keep in mind that anyone with an unlocked link can watch, so recipients can forward it. To limit viewing to specific people, lock the folder or Channel and invite those people as users.

Private sharing may be right for you if you want to:

You will only need to privately share if you want to further restrict access to your content, invite users to add or update content in your folders and channels, or share and monitor internal content.

Wistia private sharing is structured around allowing access to Wistia folders and Channels and granting permissions to users or groups of users.

When it comes to adding users to access your account and view content, there are a few different options, including Managers, Standard Users, Limited Users, and Viewers. Managers can access all content in an account, while other user types have more restrictions.

Users you add from a folder's Share modal are added as Limited Users by default. Users you add from the Manage Team page are added as Standard Users. Account Owners and Managers can change a user's role at any time from Manage Team. Viewers are view-only. Whatever permission a Viewer is given on a folder or Channel, including through a group, they can only watch content.

For a detailed overview of user roles, check out this page.

The Manage Team page is where you can see all users in your account, update their permissions, make changes in bulk, remove users, and more. You can access it by clicking into your account dropdown menu and selecting "Manage Team."

To learn about managing your team from the Manage Team page, head on over to this article for a full walkthrough.

Account Owners, Managers, and any user with "Can manage" permissions for a folder can add existing and new users to it and choose their permission level from the share modal.

Use the padlock icon above the folder title, or the Share modal, to lock or unlock a folder.

In the Invite collaborators modal, set Anyone in my Wistia account to Can view or Can manage to give every user on your account access at once. Changing this setting doesn't email each user. Users who get access this way see a "via account" tag next to the folder. You can also invite a group by typing its name.

When a video is set to Invited users, you manage who can see it from the folder it's stored in, not from the video's own Share menu. To give someone access, add them to that folder.

To set up users in a folder, click the "Share" button, then "Invite Collaborators" to access sharing options.

From within the modal, you can add, remove, and manage user permissions in that folder.

Check out the page on folder permissions for a full breakdown.

You can give users access to a Channel by opening up the Share dropdown menu and then clicking "Invite collaborators."

In the Invite collaborators modal, you can add new and existing users, manage their permissions, and remove them.

Channels can be set to Unlocked (anyone with the link), Password (only people with the password), or Invited users (only invited team members who are logged in). Custom permissions (Edit, Upload, Download, Analytics, Share) are not available for Channels.

For a full breakdown on Channel permissions, head on over here.

Account Owners and Managers have full access to every webinar in the account. Standard and Limited Users can be added to a webinar with Can manage. That lets them customize, edit, host, invite others, and delete the event, the same access as the person who created it. Viewers can't be added to webinars.

To share a webinar with a new user, click "Share" from the webinar's Overview page. Then, click "Invite collaborators."

From here, type in the email address or username of the user you'd like to add. You can add an existing user to the webinar, or add a new user from this modal as well. You can also remove users.

For a full walkthrough, head on over to the Webinar Participant Types page.

Account Owners can set an account-wide default for new share link (/s/ link) visibility from their Account Settings. This only applies to links created after you set it; existing links are untouched, and you can still override any individual link. Learn more about this setting here.

You can view activity from logged-in users in your Team Activity dashboard. Head to the settings section of your account and click "Team Activity" from the side panel.

The Team Activity dashboard can be filtered by team member, content type, and action. You can also choose a date range for the activity you'd like to view.

Check out this article for a full breakdown.

When logged-in users on your account watch privately shared content, Account Owners and Managers can see their activity in Private User Sessions and the Team Activity dashboard. Viewers outside your account aren't identified. To capture their emails (for example, on a Channel), add a Wistia Form to your videos.

Being added to the account isn't the same as being given access to content—a user still needs explicit folder/Channel permission to see or edit anything. Custom permissions (Edit, Upload, Download, Analytics, Share) are available on Premium accounts and paid accounts created before April 9, 2025, and aren't available for Channels.

Users can only see content that's been shared with them, whether they were added directly, through a group, or through an "Anyone in my Wistia account" setting.

If you are looking to password-protect your media rather than share privately with users on your account, check out our require password feature. All your viewers need to do is enter the video's password at the password gate rather than sign in to the account.

If someone lands on a locked Wistia account page (i.e., a locked folder page) or visits a Manage URL, they'll be prompted to log in. If the visitor is a Wistia user with access who was logged out, they'll be taken to the appropriate folder. If the person does not have access, they'll see a message letting them know.

At this point, no. If you’d like more analytics on your viewers' experience but still want to limit viewers, we recommend embedding your video behind a paywall or a login on a third-party site. This will give you access to all of Wistia’s core analytics features and keep your content private.

To maintain account security, we cannot add users to Wistia accounts. You should contact whoever originally invited you to the Wistia account to request more access. Account Owners and Managers can add users to an account. Standard and Limited Users can add users to the folders, Channels, and webinars they've created or have "Can manage" permissions for.

Yes! We have IP Filtering functionality for that.