Having embedded videos, pictures, and audio, on your website provides a more inclusive and immersive experience for your audience. Using the wrong video player can cause streaming issues, disable your site, or worse. We’ve all gone to those websites before and we know how frustrating it can be.
That’s why we compiled a list of the perfect video player plugins for your WordPress website.
Free Options
FV Flowplayer Video Player is a free and easy-to-use plugin that can play self-hosted videos and playlists, as well as Vimeo and YouTube videos. It’s a complete MP4 and FLV video embedding package and can also support advertisements and analytics. It’s completely responsive and customizable and supports every browser. It also offers 98% coverage across all devices, including mobile.
Spider Video Player is also just as easy to use as the FV Flowplayer. You can play videos on any screen. The free version doesn’t provide support and has a watermark on the videos, but Spider has three tiers above free. It is very user-friendly and allows you to create playlists. Each playlist can also have its own thumbnail.
Easy Video Player is another free option that’s easy-to-use. You can use direct links to embed both self-hosted videos or externally hosted videos (like YouTube or Vimeo) on your website. You can customize the video player and use three different skin options.
Professional and Paid Options
Spider Video Player’s three pay tiers are all exceptional. The developer package offers support for unlimited domains. This is a great product for keeping your videos organized and offering playback options for your audience. Upgrading from the free edition is easy. They have specials running often, so check out their website for more details.
HTML 5 Video Gallery and Player is a simple player that lets you create a gallery of videos on a page using one shortcode. The Video Gallery and Player has 19 designs for for you to pick and choose from. The videos are responsive to all device sizes and the player offers several options not available with other plugins. You can drag and drop video order, but there are no playlist options like Spider. You can purchase the plugin as a one-time payment or an annually renewable license.
Elite Video Player is a favorite WordPress plugin. It lets you import playlists, play YouTube and Vimeo videos, as well as self-hosted ones. The plugin even supports Google Drive videos. Like FV Flowplayer, it makes a note of supporting advertising. Elite offers two user tiers: one is for you or a client at no charge, while the other tier carries a charge. Pay attention to the licensing options when you purchase. They support advertising and analytics and even offer a sticky mode so that a video can play in the bottom corner of the screen.
Stellar Video Player is another WordPress plugin that can support Google Drive Videos, but it extends its support to Dropbox, local videos, Amazon S3, LiveStreaming, HLS m3u8 videos, self-hosted HTML5 videos, Vimeo, YouTube, and whatever else you need an HTML5 player for. It requires no technical skills to set up and operate. They also offer a lifetime of support upon purchase. They also support advertising and offer custom “skip ad” options that let you set a different skip time for each video.
Only some of these plugins offer streaming options, but all of them allow you to embed YouTube and Vimeo videos on your site. Self-hosting options are limited, but the support for all of these plugins lasts at least six months (in the paid tiers). Choose the video player that meets your needs and you won’t regret it in the future.
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