How to Make a Video Link Expire After the Client Has Seen It
Every review round leaves a link behind that still plays next year. How I make each video link end after the client has watched, using plan lifetimes, instant revoking and a fresh password link per round.
Take a fairly ordinary month for a small editing agency, 14 videos going out to clients with three review rounds on each and a fresh share link for every round, and that works out to 42 links a month, or 504 links a year. Unless you know how to make a video link expire, right, every one of those 504 links still plays next December from inboxes, Slack channels and the WhatsApp group the client made for a launch and then forgot about.
Most of those cuts are harmless on their own, I know that, but somewhere in that pile there's an MV2 with last quarter's price on the end card, and a rough cut sent to a marketing manager who has since left the company and, I'm pretty sure, still has the email. None of that is a disaster on a normal Tuesday, and any of it can turn into one when the wrong person clicks an old link at the wrong moment.
So this one is for the editor or producer who wants old client links to stop working once the project is done. I'll walk through how a link actually ends in practice, from the lifetime your plan sets to the revoke you do by hand, and then how I match that to a delivery schedule so each link closes after it has done its job and not a day before.
Why video links should not live forever
The job of a review link is really really narrow, right, the client opens it, watches the cut, leaves notes on the frames that feel off and then approves or asks for another round. Once that has happened the link has nothing left to do, which basically makes it access you forgot you gave out.
In my agency the thing that made me care was temp music, because a lot of our rough cuts go out against a temp track and the licensed track only goes in near the end of the post-production stage. So every early link carries music we have no rights to publish, which is fine inside a review and a real problem the day someone pulls the cut from a link still open eight months later and posts it as a teaser.
Then people move on, right, the brand manager who approved the campaign goes to a competitor, a freelancer on the client's side rolls off the account and so on. None of them lose access to anything you sent, because a share link has no idea who is holding it. The risk that shows up least and costs the most is anything unannounced, a price change or a product reveal, where one old link in the wrong inbox does more damage than the rest of the pile put together.
These days I write the link policy into the statement of work right next to the number of revision rounds, and to be very honest it's the least argued line in the whole document, because clients don't push back on their own footage being handled carefully.
A review link has one job, getting the client from watching to notes, and once that job is done the link is just access you forgot you gave out.
How expiring links work on common sharing tools
Most tools that offer an expiring video link fall into a handful of models, and knowing which one you're on tells you what's going to go wrong later.
The most common is a timer you set per link, where you pick a video link expiration date when you create the share and the link stops playing after that. It works nicely when you know the end date in advance, and the catch here is that it gets fragile the moment the client's legal team turns a one week round into three, because now the link dies in the middle of their review.
If your tool has that kind of timer, my rule is to set it to the day the round should close plus two working days of buffer. When the round slips, I send a fresh link for the extra days instead of quietly pushing the date out on the old one, because the old URL may already have travelled further than you think.
File transfer tools like WeTransfer work on a window the service decides for you, so the transfer disappears when that window ends whether or not the client downloaded anything. That's fine for a one-off hand-off of finished files and painful for review. Then there's the link that lives until somebody switches it off, which is how most cloud drive sharing works in practice, and nobody ever switches it off, because it isn't anyone's job.
Why a view once link is the wrong fit for client review
Some tools offer a link that dies after a single view, which sounds exactly like a link that expires after the client has seen it, but for review it's the wrong tool, right. A real client watches the cut through, scrubs back to 00:42 to check the logo, forwards it to the founder and then watches again while typing notes, so a view once link locks them out halfway through the round. What you want is a time limited video link that ends when the round is finished.
every round's cut keeps playing in old email threads long after the project has closed
each link covers one round, closes once the notes are in, and the next round gets a fresh one
Expiring share links by plan: 30 days, 90 days or never
In PlayPause the outer limit of a share link comes from your plan, and I think of the three lifetimes as tools for different kinds of work rather than a ladder.
On Creator, at $9 a month, share links run for 30 days and the pricing table marks Creator files as expiring on that same window, so it really suits fast turnaround work. Agency at $19 a month stretches that to 90 days, which is the lifetime I'd want for corporate and brand work where an approval has to crawl through three departments. Enterprise at $27 a month is the odd one out, because share links there never expire at all. That's exactly what you want for a final delivery link, with the catch that closing old review links becomes your job instead of the calendar's.
Everything else that matters for ending a link is on every plan, right, password-protected links and instant link revoking come with Creator exactly as they come with Enterprise. The plan only decides how long a link lives if you do nothing, and the expiring share links page lays those lifetimes out side by side.
The piece that makes "after the client has seen it" possible is who-watched analytics, which comes with every plan from Creator up and shows who opened a link, when, and from which city. That's how you know the client actually watched MV2 before you close it, and it's also the record I lean on when a client later says they never saw a cut, which is a big part of how agencies prove a client approved.
Revoking a link manually when the project ends early
Most rounds finish long before 30 or 90 days are up, so the day a round closes I revoke that round's link by hand, the next round gets a fresh link on the same card, and the plan lifetime is really just the safety net for the links I forget about.
Then there are the moments no lifetime can handle, for instance a project that gets cancelled halfway, a client contact who leaves mid-round, or MV3 going to the wrong client because two brands share a folder name. The answer every time is to revoke the link right now, and since revoking is instant on every plan, you never sit waiting for a timer to catch up.
Here's how one round runs for us on Creator. MV2 goes up on the existing card on a Monday and I send a password-protected share link, who-watched shows the client opened it on Tuesday and again on Wednesday, and the frame comments stop arriving by Thursday morning. I answer the last thread and that afternoon I revoke the MV2 link, which would otherwise have kept playing for another 27 days on its 30 day lifetime.
So the link that expires right after the client has seen it comes from pairing the view record with your own revoke, rather than from a timer somebody guessed at weeks earlier. The forwarding side of this is in how to restrict video link sharing, because a link that ends on time can still leak before then.
Pairing link expiry with a password for sensitive cuts
An expiring link without a password still plays for anyone who finds it before it ends, and a password without an end date still works for anyone who knew it last spring, so on sensitive cuts I always use both, right.
My habit for NDA work is a fresh password-protected link for every round, so MV2 gets a new link with a new password and the MV1 link is revoked the moment MV2 goes out. I send the link by email and the password on a different channel, so a forwarded email on its own only lands someone on a password box. Trust me on any level, that split is the cheapest habit in this whole post, and the sharing and security overview lists what each plan includes around it.
Closing a link doesn't throw the version away, since every MV stays stacked on the card, so if the client needs MV1 again I issue a fresh link for it and close it when they're done. For cuts with a hard date attached, the posts on setting an embargo date on a trailer review link and on how investor relations teams set hard expiration dates go further into timing.
Matching link lifetime to your delivery schedule
The rule I use is simple, right, pick the plan whose link lifetime is longer than your longest normal round trip, not your longest project, and let revoking handle everything that ends early. I put each link's close date on the schedule like any other milestone in basic project management, and here's how that plays out on three schedules with illustrative dates.
A freelance editor on a two week turnaround
Say you cut short-form content for a creator, MV1 goes out on 2 June, notes come back on 4 June, and MV2 goes out on 6 June and gets approved on 9 June. Your longest round trip is under a week, so Creator's 30 days is plenty, and even the MV1 link you forgot to revoke dies on its own around 2 July. Just tell the client to download the final inside that window, and the flow for uploading a video and getting a shareable link covers the setup.
An agency with legal in the approval chain
Now say it's a product explainer where marketing, legal and a regional head all sign off. MV1 goes out on 3 March, legal sits on it for five weeks and sends notes on 7 April, and MV2 goes out on 14 April. On a 30 day lifetime the MV1 link would have lapsed around 2 April, right in the middle of legal's review, so this is where Agency's 90 days earns its money. I wrote the revoke step into our client feedback SOP for video agencies so it never depends on somebody remembering.
A studio whose clients come back for finals
The third case is a studio whose clients pull finished films again months later, for an anniversary recut or a course refresh, and a link that never expires on Enterprise is the right tool for that final delivery. The price is discipline, because nothing closes by itself anymore. Every review link gets revoked when its round ends and the review side gets locked once the client signs off, which is the case I make in locking video after client sign-off. Enterprise also adds a custom share domain like review.yourbrand.com plus white-label, so the one link that stays open for years carries your brand.
- Know the date this round has to close
- Know every person who needs to watch it
- Add a password if the cut is under NDA
- Set a reminder to revoke the link on the close date
- Send finals on a link that outlives the download
You see what I mean here, right, the plan only sets the ceiling on how long a link can live, and what you do on the day a round closes decides when it actually ends. When a project wraps I list every link I closed in the video project completion report, because at the end of the day no link should outlive the job it was sent out to do.
Frequently asked questions
How do I give a video link an exact expiration date?
The way I do it in PlayPause, the plan sets the outer limit, 30 days on Creator, 90 days on Agency and never on Enterprise. When a link needs to end on a specific day inside that window, I put a reminder on the calendar and revoke it that morning, and since revoking is instant on every plan, it's honestly more precise than a timer somebody set weeks earlier.
Should a video link expire after one view?
For client review, no, because nobody reviews a cut in a single play. They watch it through, scrub back to check a moment, share it with a colleague and watch again while leaving notes, so a link that dies after one view cuts them off mid-round. What works better is confirming in who-watched analytics that the client played it, checking their notes are in, and then revoking the link yourself.
Do expiring share links work for final delivery?
They do, as long as the lifetime is longer than the time your client needs to download the file. On Creator that means telling the client to grab the final within 30 days, on Agency you get 90 days, and on Enterprise links never expire. For finals I keep one delivery link open and close every review link that came before it.
Which PlayPause plan has the right link lifetime for me?
Match it to your longest normal round trip rather than your longest project. If your rounds close within a few weeks, Creator at $9 a month with 30 day links is enough. If legal or a crowd of stakeholders slows things down, Agency at $19 a month gives you 90 days, and if clients return for files a year later, Enterprise at $27 a month has links that never expire.
If old links are quietly piling up in your client threads, the fix is a simple habit of giving every link an end date. Compare the link lifetimes on the PlayPause pricing page and run your next round on the 7-day free trial, with one link per round and a revoke on the day it closes.
So yeah. That's my way of saying it.
Saumyajit co-founded PlayPause after years watching review and approval quietly eat creative teams' deadlines. He writes about the workflow side of video, feedback, versioning, and getting to a clean sign-off.
Related resources
Keep reading
Bring your team into one review space
Centralize feedback, lock approvals, and deliver faster, start free today.
Sign Up for Free