9 Best WordPress Video Plugins to Upload, Host, & Play Videos

Videos are a fantastic way to communicate with your visitors and boost engagement, and they’re becoming increasingly common on websites. In fact, Social Media Week reported that videos will soon make up 82 percent of worldwide internet traffic.

Many people decide to use a plugin to add videos to their site, but a quick search of the plugin repository will reveal a huge array of options.

To help you choose the best way to display videos on your website, we’ve examined the best plugins and compared them based on their features, pros and cons, ease of use, and pricing. 

The best WordPress video plugins

1. Jetpack VideoPress

Jetpack VideoPress is a powerful WordPress video plugin that empowers you to showcase what matters most: your awesome content. VideoPress was built specifically for WordPress by Automattic, the team behind WordPress.com. This means that you can expect it to work seamlessly with all major themes and plugins. 

VideoPress takes the stress out of using videos on your WordPress website. It’s fully responsive, and your visitors get an intuitive, lightning-fast experience no matter what device they’re using. 

Its hosting capabilities are where it really shines. VideoPress stores and serves video files off-site, so they don’t weigh down your website. You get the advantages of hosting on a third-party platform like YouTube, but with full control over your visitor experience — no ads, no unrelated suggestions, just the content you want displayed. 

VideoPress allows you to show off your beautiful videos in full 1080p or 4K HD, and you get a generous 1TB of storage — enough for pretty much any WordPress website. 

Want to change the look and feel of your video player? Use the options provided to change the colors to match your brand. You can also offer your visitors ultimate control over their experience, allowing them to select the format and resolution they’d like to watch in, change the playback speed, enable subtitles, and use the picture-in-picture feature to ‘pop out’ the video for easier viewing. 

Key features of Jetpack VideoPress:

• Private video hosting with a powerful CDN, which keeps your site loading quickly
• The ability to drag and drop your videos into any page or post 
• Full 4K HD support
• Picture-in-picture support
• Subtitle support
• Variable playback speeds
• Unlimited logins for your team members
• Integration with the WordPress media library, so you can manage videos from the dashboard
• 1TB of storage with a maximum video upload size of 5GB
• Full-width video backgrounds
• The ability to restrict videos to logged-in users
• An ad-free experience
• A brandable player that’s customizable to fit your brand and site

Pros of Jetpack VideoPress:

• Videos are hosted off-site, keeping your website lightweight and fast.
• It’s built and maintained by the team behind WordPress.com, for seamless integration.
• The video player is fully responsive, providing a great mobile, tablet, and desktop experience.
• You can display your content at its best with support for 4K, 1080p, and fast-motion videos. 
• You can restrict videos to logged-in users, meaning they could be part of a membership or subscription.
• You can easily customize the video player to match your brand with no VideoPress branding.
• There are many additional features like picture-in-picture support, private videos, playback speed controls, subtitles, and custom video thumbnails.

Cons of Jetpack VideoPress:  

• While the plugin offers excellent value, there’s no free plan. 
• There are no built-in lead generation tools.
• While basic stats are available, they’re less detailed than with some competitors.

Ease of use:

VideoPress was built specifically to work with WordPress sites, so you can incorporate videos into your website as you would any other piece of content. You can use the built-in WordPress Block Editor, making the learning curve pretty much nonexistent. 

VideoPress also provides comprehensive and easy-to-read documentation, and they have a team of Happiness Engineers to help you if you do run into any issues.

Pricing:

• VideoPress is available as a standalone plugin for $10 per month (annual term plan).
• You can get VideoPress as part of the Jetpack Complete plan, which also includes a wealth of security, speed, and growth tools, for $50 per month (annual term plan).

2. Easy Video Player

Easy Video Player is a WordPress video plugin that lets you add content to your site from many popular video-sharing services. You can also use this tool to display content you’ve added to the Media Library. The plugin comes with a set of shortcodes to add videos anywhere on your site, control the video player size, or set videos to loop or autoplay.

Key features of Easy Video Player:

• Shortcodes that let you control and embed videos
• A simple interface
• Support for self-hosted and third-party videos
• The ability to use CSS to customize the video player

Pros of Easy Video Player:

• The interface is simple and quick to learn.
• The plugin is completely free, with no premium options.

Cons of Easy Video Player:

• You have to host your content on your website or use a video service (such as YouTube or Vimeo).
• Easy Video Player does not include blocks for the WordPress editor, so you have to rely on shortcodes to add your content.
• It can be tricky to match the player’s appearance to your brand if you’re not comfortable editing CSS.
• The player doesn’t provide many features beyond simple video playback.

Ease of use:

Easy Video Player is relatively easy to use when embedding a video. However, the plugin works via shortcodes, which can be slightly more difficult to use than adding blocks in the WordPress Editor. In addition, if you want to edit the look and feel of the video play, you’ll need to use CSS. There’s limited documentation available, but the developer regularly responds to support issues in the WordPress repository.

Pricing:

Free

3. Feeds for YouTube

This plugin lets you add YouTube channel feeds to your WordPress website through a customizable gallery, which users can then search and filter. You can also add custom actions when a visitor presses pause or reaches the end of the video.

Key features of Feeds for YouTube:

• The ability to add an entire YouTube channel or playlist to your website
• Customizable galleries with search and filter
• Fully responsive feeds and galleries
• The ability to add CTAs and other features to videos
• Designed for speed with caching and minification 
• Infinite loading capabilities

Pros of Feeds for YouTube:

• You can share content you’ve already uploaded to YouTube on your website, making this plugin great if you have an active YouTube channel.
• You can customize your video feed to match your brand.
• You can choose to share likes, reactions, and comments from YouTube alongside the videos.

Cons of Feeds for YouTube:

• Your content has to be on a public YouTube channel to display it on your website.
• No other video sharing sites are supported, and you can’t use it with videos you’ve uploaded to your Media Library.
• While a free version of the plugin exists, it has very limited functionality.

Ease of use:

There’s only basic documentation available, making it best for people who have some experience creating WordPress websites.

Pricing:

• A free version is available with limited features. 
• The Personal plan includes all features for one website at $49 per year for the first year. It renews at $98 per year.
• The Business plan includes all features for five websites at $99 per year for the first year. It renews at $198 per year.
• The Developer plan includes all features for 25 websites at $149 per year for the first year. It renews at $298 per year.
• The All-Access bundle includes all of Smash Balloon’s other tools for unlimited websites. It’s $299 per year for the first year and renews at $598 per year.

4. Presto Player

Presto Player is a video plugin for WordPress that lets you add videos from many different sources. It offers a range of features for embedded videos, including advanced customization and the ability to make videos private. Presto Player also gives you the option to enhance your videos in various ways, including splitting them up into chapters, making them sticky, and adding calls to action.

Key features of Presto Player:

• The ability to display calls to action at various points in your video 
• The ability to split videos into chapters
• Sticky video support
• Subtitle support
• HTML5, YouTube, and Vimeo support
• The ability to stream the same video from multiple sources
• The ability to create private videos  
• Video analytics
• A responsive video player

Pros of Presto Player:

• You can modify your embedded videos in a variety of ways, including adding CTAs and splitting them into chapters.
• Presto will work with videos hosted on any publicly-accessible service. 

Cons of Presto Player:

• You have to host videos on either external video services, such as YouTube or Vimeo, or on your website.

Ease of use:

The number of options within the plugin can make it more challenging to use. This complexity may get in the way if you just want to add a video without any call to action or additional features.

Price:

• A free plan is available, but with very limited features.
• The Starter plan includes all features for one site for $69 per year (regularly $99 per year).
• The Pro plan includes all features for 25 sites for $99 per year (regularly $149 per year). 

5. Envira Gallery

Envira Gallery is a gallery plugin that supports both images and videos through a drag-and-drop builder. This allows you to create video galleries using premade templates that you can customize to match your site’s branding. The plugin will accept any video uploaded to your website or to YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia, DailyMotion, Twitch, or VideoPress. Envira Gallery also offers social sharing buttons and the option to watermark your videos.

Key features of Envira Gallery:

• Video slideshows
• Customizable galleries
• Searchable and filterable galleries
• Social media integrations
• The ability to use videos hosted on your website or on popular external services
• Video watermarking
• A fully responsive design
• Video password protection

Pros of Envira Gallery:

• Powerful gallery features allow you to create collections of searchable and filterable videos. 
• You can encourage visitors to share your content through inbuilt social media integrations.

Cons of Envira Gallery:

• The plugin does not provide any video hosting. This means you have to host your videos on your website or use external services such as YouTube.
• While you can customize video galleries, the video player has limited customizability.
• Videos are only supported on Pro plans and above. The free and cheaper paid plans are not suitable for videos.

Ease of use: 

The plugin’s drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to use for creating video galleries. However, using the plugin to show individual videos is more challenging, as is advanced customization. 

Pricing:

Video is supported with the following plans:

• The Pro plan supports five sites and includes features like eCommerce integration, deep linking, and Elementor integration for $89 per year (normally $99 per year).
• The Lifetime plan supports unlimited sites and includes premium support and multisite support for $269 one time (normally $299 one time). 

6. All-in-One Video Gallery

All-in-One Video Gallery is a plugin for WordPress that enables you to display videos in searchable and filterable galleries. You can group videos by different categories and create responsive thumbnail galleries. This plugin will work with videos uploaded to your WordPress Media Library and videos hosted on certain video-sharing websites.

Key features of All-in-One Video Gallery:

• The ability to embed videos from your website and from popular video hosting platforms including YouTube, Vimeo, and Facebook
• Support for social media sharing
• Support for pop-up videos and ads
• Subtitle support
• Playback speed control
• The ability to automatically import videos from a YouTube channel or playlist
• The ability to display live streams from YouTube or Facebook

Pros of All-in-One Video Gallery:

• You can fully customize the player and gallery appearance with brand colors and logos.
• You can display videos by themselves or in galleries.

Cons of All-in-One Video Gallery:

• Videos have to be hosted on your website or on a third-party video hosting platform.

Ease of use: 

The plugin has a wide range of options, which can make it a bit overwhelming for beginners.

Pricing:

• The Free plan offers the majority of video functionality at no cost.
• The Pro plan adds features like custom branding capabilities, all gallery templates, and support for uncommon video formats for $4.99 per month. 
• The Business plan adds features like monetization options and upgraded support for $9.99 per month.

Note that there are additional pricing options depending on how frequently you’d like to pay and the number of sites you own.

7. FV Flowplayer Video Player

FV Flowplayer Video Player allows you to embed videos on your site from a wide range of sources, including CDNs like Amazon AWS, video sharing platforms, and your WordPress Media Library. You can easily customize the default video skin and display a call to action pop-up or message at the end of your video. 

Key features of FV Flowplayer Video Player:

• A wealth of customization options
• The ability to embed videos from YouTube and other video-sharing platforms or from your own website
• The ability to add videos via blocks or shortcodes
• A video playlist option
• Playback speed settings
• Subtitle and transcript support
• Pre and post-roll screens
• Sticky videos
• Google Analytics support
• A fully responsive design
• Support for commercial CDNs such as Amazon AWS

Pros of FV Flowplayer Video Player:

• It’s simple to customize the colors and appearance of the video player through its settings pages.
• It supports many commercial CDNs, making it a good fit if you’re already using one of these tools.
• You can add videos through shortcodes and blocks.

Cons of FV Flowplayer Video Player:

• The plugin’s branding appears on the player if you’re using a free plan.
• You have to host your own videos or use a third-party video hosting service or CDN.
• There’s a lack of advanced features such as picture-in-picture support.

Ease of use:

Customization and settings are all controlled via the plugin settings page. There’s extensive documentation available on the plugin author’s website, along with an active support forum. Premium support is available with the Pro version.

Pricing:

• The free version displays the plugin’s branding, but includes most features at no cost.
• The Pro version for a single site adds premium support, removes branding, and includes CDN integration for a one-time fee of $75.

8. HTML5 Video Player

HTML5 Video Player gives you the ability to embed and play videos in a range of file formats across your WordPress website. It includes five different video player templates and a fully responsive design. The plugin also allows you to create playlists of your videos, just like you see on popular video websites.

Key features of HTML5 Video Player:

• Responsive design
• The ability to add videos from your own website or third-party video sharing sites
• The ability to automatically hide controllers when playing video
• The ability to set video thumbnails and initial images
• Advanced sound controls 
• Subtitle support
• Support for full-screen video playback

Pros of HTML5 Video Player:

• The video player is lightweight and loads quickly.

Cons of HTML5 Video Player:

• You have to host videos on your own website or, if you are using the Pro version, with a third-party provider.
• You have limited options to change the video player’s appearance unless you’re comfortable using CSS. 

Ease of use:

If you don’t want to fully customize the appearance of the video player, the plugin is straightforward. However, the more advanced features could confuse those who are not experienced in developing WordPress websites. Limited documentation is available, but the plugin author is active on the support forum.

Pricing:

• A limited free version is available, though it includes ads. 
• The Pro version adds player options and removes ads for a one-time cost of $30.

9. Vimeo

The Vimeo plugin for WordPress and WooCommerce gives you the power to leverage Vimeo’s AI editor to create brand new product videos from within your WordPress dashboard. If you’re a WooCommerce store owner, you can easily create amazing product videos using existing images. You can also upload videos directly to Vimeo from within your dashboard and embed them onto your website. This means that the videos don’t take up valuable space on your server or slow things down for visitors.

Key features of Vimeo for WordPress and WooCommerce:

• The ability to embed videos stored on Vimeo’s powerful servers
• The ability to create videos with your own branding and product images to increase engagement and conversions
• A customizable video player
• Video tracking and reporting
• The ability to reuse your videos across social media and email

Pros of Vimeo for WordPress and WooCommerce:

• Videos are hosted by Vimeo, speeding up your site. 
• This tool can automatically create product videos, streamlining the entire process.

Cons of Vimeo for WordPress and WooCommerce:

• A Vimeo membership is required to take advantage of many features of the plugin, including product video creation.
• The storage provided for videos on the Plus plan is more limited than other similarly-priced options.

Ease of use: 

The plugin is relatively simple to use, although some familiarity with Vimeo helps flatten the learning curve.

Pricing:

• The Basic plan includes a 500MB weekly upload limit, 5GB total storage, and limited features at no cost.
• The Plus plan includes a 5GB weekly upload limit, 250GB yearly storage, and additional features like full video creation for $7 per month.
• The Pro plan includes a 20GB weekly upload limit, 1TB yearly storage, and additional features like an approval process for $20 per month.
• The Business plan has no upload limits, 5TB of total storage, and additional features like lead generation tools for $50 per month.
• The Premium plan has no upload limits, 7TB of total storage, and additional features like webinar registration and livestreaming for $75 per month.

Comparison of the best WordPress video plugins

	Video Storage Location	Block or Shortcode?	Third-Party Platform Support	Media Library Support	Storage Amount	Customizable without Code?	Ad Inclusion	Price
Jetpack VideoPress	Off-Site	Block	Yes	Yes	1TB	Yes	No	$10/mo
Easy Video Player	On-Site or with Third Parties	Shortcode	Yes	Yes	N/A	No	No	Free
Feeds for YouTube	With Third Parties	Shortcode	Yes	No	N/A	Yes	No	Free – $299 per year
Presto Player	On-Site or with Third Parties	Block	Yes	Yes	N/A	Yes	No	Free – $99 per year
Envira Gallery	On-Site or with Third Parties	Block	Yes	Yes	N/A	Limited	No	$89 per year or $269 one time
All-in-One Video Gallery	On-Site or with Third Parties	Both	Yes	Yes	N/A	Yes	No	Free – $9.99 per month
FV Flowplayer Video Player	On-Site or with Third Parties	Both	Yes	Yes	N/A	Yes	No	Free – $75 one time
HTML5 Video Player	On-Site or with Third Parties	Both	Yes	Yes	N/A	Limited	No	Free – $30 one time
Vimeo	Off-Site	Block	No	No	5GB – 7TB	Yes	No	Free – $75 per month

How to choose the best video plugin for your needs

There are a plethora of different video plugins available for WordPress, each offering its own features. It can be difficult to figure out which one is the best for you. So, here are our top seven things to consider when choosing a WordPress video plugin:

1. Where are your videos hosted?

It’s important to consider where you plan to host your videos, as this can have a significant impact on the plugin you choose. For example, if your videos are already hosted on sites such as YouTube or Vimeo, then you need to ensure that your plugin supports that service. This is a good option for reaching new audiences, but means that your viewers may end up seeing ads and other videos from your competitors or you’ll have to pay ongoing fees.

To maintain full control over your videos, hosting them on your own site is best. There are no ads or fees from third-party video services. However, they can potentially impact your website’s speed. Videos are very server-intensive, which means that they can slow things down and lead to a poor experience for your site visitors. 

A plugin that uses a content delivery network (CDN), like Jetpack VideoPress, gives you the best of both worlds. It offers full control over self-hosted videos, but without slowing down your site. 

2. How much does the plugin cost?

Price is obviously an important consideration when choosing the best WordPress video plugin. Plugins are available at a range of price points, from totally free to over $150 a year. You’ll want to make sure that your chosen plugin has all the features you need while being within your budget.

You should also be mindful of hidden costs. For example, if you’re going to host the videos on your own site, the extra bandwidth needed may require you to upgrade to a more expensive hosting plan. 

3. Does the plugin support responsive design?

Your visitors access your site from a wide range of devices, so it’s important that your WordPress video plugin is fully responsive. This means that visitors are automatically served a properly-sized video at the correct resolution — so it looks great no matter how they view it.

4. What support and documentation is available?

No matter how experienced you are at developing WordPress websites, each plugin has its own features, settings, and quirks that can take some time to get used to. Make sure that the plugin you choose has detailed documentation and think about what happens if something goes wrong. Is there a support team on hand for you to reach out to?

5. Is the plugin regularly updated?

You can see when a plugin was last updated on its page in the WordPress repository. Regular updates to plugins are important to keep them secure and ensure that everything functions correctly. The consistency and regularity of updates are also a good way to gauge the plugin developer’s level of active involvement and their ability to provide support.

6. Does the plugin show ads or third-party branding?

Consider whether your WordPress video plugin displays ads — for either their tool or from third parties. There’s a trade-off here because, while plugins with ads usually cost less, they’re more distracting for visitors. If your goal is to maximize conversions, it’s probably worth paying more for an option that doesn’t have ads.

7. What customization options are available?

If design is important to you, you’ll want a video plugin that matches the style and brand of your website. While most video plugins offer some level of customization, this varies. For example, some allow you to customize pretty much any aspect of how visitors interact with your video, others restrict you to changing colors only. If you’re not familiar with CSS, you’ll also want to make sure that you can customize the design of your videos without knowing code.

What is the best video plugin for WordPress?

Considering all the plugins above, Jetpack VideoPress is the clear choice for the majority of WordPress sites. It takes the weight out of hosting videos by storing them on a powerful CDN. There are no ads to distract visitors, and it’s packed full of features that let you customize the viewing experience.

VideoPress is also made by Automattic, so it integrates perfectly with WordPress and you have access to Happiness Engineers for amazing, friendly support. 

But, there are a few situations where a different plugin may be more suitable. For example, if you have an active YouTube channel and just want to share those videos on your WordPress website, Presto Video Player is a good choice. It provides a lot of options for embedding YouTube videos and channels. Just remember that a lot of your visitors’ experience — including suggestions for other video content — will be out of your control. 

Have a WooCommerce store and want help creating videos to show off your products? Give Vimeo a go — its AI-powered technology can be really helpful for those who’ve never created a video in the past.

But, if you’re like most WordPress site owners, Jetpack VideoPress will provide everything you need, and comes at a low price that makes the investment more than worthwhile. 

WordPress video plugin FAQs

Why use a WordPress plugin for my videos? 

Using a WordPress video plugin is an efficient way to achieve your goals for using video on your site. Each plugin has different features and tools, but a video plugin may help by:

• Making it easier to add and manage videos
• Storing your videos off-site so they won’t slow your website down
• Including special blocks that make it easy to embed videos in your pages and posts without needing to use shortcodes
• Allowing you to avoid the ads that are shown on videos with some third-party platforms
• Helping with responsive display, so your videos look perfect on every device
• Providing additional features like picture-in-picture, CTAs, gallery views, and video backgrounds 

Will a WordPress video plugin slow down my site?

Using a video plugin certainly can slow down your website. Videos are large files and take up a lot of server resources. This means they can take a while to load on your page, and your website could even crash if you get lots of people watching the video at the same time.

However, the great news is that some WordPress plugins, such as Jetpack VideoPress, help you combat this by storing your videos on their servers. They then use their super-fast content delivery network (CDN) to show your videos to site visitors. This takes the burden off of your site, but lets you keep the benefits of videos. 

Can I add and host videos on WordPress by default?

Yes, WordPress allows you to you add videos to your website in two main ways: 

1. You can use the Video block in the WordPress Editor to upload a video to your website and embed it on your page. This will host the video directly on your website, which can lead to issues with speed.
2. You can also embed videos from many video-sharing sites, including YouTube, Vimeo, and DailyMotion, by simply pasting your video link into the WordPress Editor. The video will then be embedded automatically. This does mean that ads may display on your videos.

With both options, you get minimal ability to change how the video appears.

Can I customize the appearance of my WordPress video player?

If you’re using the default video block or embedding videos using the auto-embed function, then you’ll have little control over the appearance of your WordPress video player. However, many WordPress video plugins allow you to change the appearance of your player to match your brand. Some require you to use CSS while others, such as Jetpack VideoPress, have built-in settings that make this process easy. 

What is the maximum upload size for WordPress videos?

The maximum size for videos uploaded to WordPress depends on your hosting provider. You can view your current maximum upload size by navigating to Media → Add New in your WordPress dashboard. You’ll see the maximum upload size towards the bottom of the page. 

You can sometimes work with your host to increase this limit, or edit your WordPress .htaccess file. If you want to avoid this hassle, you can use a plugin like VideoPress, which has generous file size limits that most websites won’t exceed. 

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