10 Most Popular WordPress Video Plugins for Your Website

According to Wistia data, which refers explicitly to videos uploaded to their platform alone, video uploads have increased by 263.4% in the last five years. This is because videos are more convenient for internet users to consume information than other methods. 

Aside from the fact that videos are entertaining and informative, 78% of video marketers believe they have positively impacted sales. Consider this, how many words would a video be worth if a picture is worth a thousand words? 

Videos are an excellent way to attract visitors and keep them engaged with your WordPress website. Videos are easy to consume and educate visitors about your brand, whether it’s an ad for your product, a client testimonial, or a light-hearted promotional campaign. 

Video has become the foundation of whole business concepts. Take the Travel & Hospitality industry, for example; while galleries and slideshows are great for bringing the scene to life, nothing beats video. 

Whether it’s a resort in Spain, a winery in southern France, or a motel in the middle of Washington, video content can help bring your location to life, enticing website visitors to book with you rather than the hotel or business down the street. 

Thanks to the rise of video content, you now have a powerful medium for capturing visitors’ attention through your WordPress-based business.

MORE: Read our Movavi video editor review to learn why it’s one of the most popular video editors for small businesses.

Utilizing Video in Your Business Strategy

In some cases, videos are a must-have for your advertising strategy. If your business involves making or selling videos, such as in the case of course development, then videos themselves may be your primary product.

Whatever industry you are in, videos play an essential role in any marketing strategy. The good news is that WordPress is a video-friendly platform.

However, you will need a player to play videos on your website. Whether you use videos for marketing or as the primary offering on your website, you need a dependable solution to ensure that users can view the embedded videos without difficulty.

This article will discuss ten of the best WordPress video plugins for your website. However, before we go any further, let’s take a quick look at why you need a WordPress player plugin for your business.

Why Do You Need a WordPress Video Player Plugin?

As a marketer, you need to use videos to impress and capture the interest of your website’s target audience so that they would explore more pages of your website. You can also use video to gather information about visitors and present them with relevant offers. This is where WordPress video players come into play.

With a WordPress video plugin, you have more customization options and various ways to display your videos on pages. You can also insert advertisements and make your video player more consistent with your company’s branding.

Using WordPress Video Plugin Has Some of the Following Benefits;

You Can Use Videos for Marketing

Video player plugins do more than just playback videos. They add to video analytics by allowing email collection via video and providing calls to action. You can also utilize these plugins to create a milestone in the user journey and then use those same plugins to lead visitors to the next stage of your funnel.

Improved Video Experience

Even a minor glitch in the video can completely disrupt the viewing experience and render the tool useless, which is precisely what you want to avoid in the first place.

Plugins for video players give you more control over how viewers interact with a video. You can display or hide the playback controls and add timestamps, all of which will help viewers get to the spot of their choice as quickly as possible.

Page Builder Support

WordPress video plugins are compatible with all of the available website page builders. This means that whatever website builder you use, these plugins will blend in with the overall design of your website and will not cause any issues.

Use Multiple Hosts

The video player plugins for WordPress can retrieve videos from any popular source, ranging from the local server to S3 and Google Drive. This gives you more flexibility in selecting the best video hosting platform for your business. 

Are you looking for a suitable video player plugin for your WordPress website? Then let’s look at the best ten most popular video plugins available.

10 Popular WordPress Video Plugins

PrestoPlayer

PrestoPlayer, a relatively new video player solution, is already used on over 60,000 websites. It works with any WordPress site that includes video content and has over 50 features that are the best in their respective industries. Users with no coding experience can upload, customize, and embed videos on their WordPress sites thanks to the user interface’s simplicity and intuitiveness.

PrestoPlayer’s Key Features Include;

• Muted autoplay preview.
• Ability to create video chapters to facilitate easy video navigation.
• Sticky player option.
• Support for subtitles.
• HTML5, YouTube, and Vimeo are all supported.
• The ability to stream the same video from multiple sources simultaneously.
• The ability to create personal videos on one’s own.
• Integrating data from Google Analytics.

Pros

• The premium versions are loaded with valuable features designed to work with any WordPress website.
• The plugin integrates with numerous popular page builders, including Divi and Elementor.
• Allows the addition of video chapters, CTPs, and a user-defined logo.

Cons

• The free version has a very limited set of options.
• You must host videos on your website or an external video hosting service such as YouTube or Vimeo.

Easy Video Player

Although it’s free to use, Easy Video Player provides many premium plugin features. The plugin has a shortcode that you can modify to display videos exactly as preferred.

You can also modify the player’s size and appearance to blend in with the website’s design. Easy Video Player is a straightforward and lightweight solution for embedding single custom videos and YouTube and Vimeo videos.

You can also use the embed code to add an autoplay option, resize the module, and make the video loop.

If you’re new to shortcodes, Easy Video Player provides support documentation to get you started. It demonstrates how to create the initial shortcode and customize its functionality and appearance to your preferences.

Easy Video Player’s Key Features Include:

• A shortcode controls the embedding and displaying of videos with many parameters.
• Add an MP4 video embed code to your website.
• Include a responsive video to improve the user experience when viewed on a mobile device.
• The player can play MP4 videos from any source.
• Video embed with autoplay.
• Looping video embedding feature.
• Playback of 16:9 videos is possible without any additional configuration.
• The interface is simple and does not obstruct the page design.

Pros

• You can further customize the player by using a custom player template.
• You can use a simple “ratio” shortcode parameter to change the player aspect ratio.
• It is entirely free to download and use.
• Shortcodes are highly adaptable and offer numerous modification options.
• Personal upload files, as well as third-party video hosting sites, are supported.
• Features autoplay and video looping.

Cons

• Limited plugin configuration options.
• Customization is only available via shortcode.
• To use, you must have a thorough understanding of shortcodes.

Ultimate Video Player

Ultimate Video Player WordPress Plugin is a responsive video player that can play streaming videos from your server or YouTube videos on your WordPress website. It only requires the mp4 format and will function on mobile and desktop devices regardless of the browser used.

Ultimate Video Player WordPress Plugin supports endless playlists, each of which can contain unlimited videos.

Ultimate Video Player is one of the most impressive video player plugins available, with features like a shortcode generator, multiple playlists, optional deeplinking, embed & share, Facebook share, and so on.

Key Features Include:

• Responsive layout.
• Resume and recall feature.
• Optional fullscreen mode when playing.
• Optional share and embed window.
• Password-protected private video.
• Utilization of the identical Ultimate Video Player WordPress Plugin.
• Personalized skin even for YouTube videos.

Pros

• Includes over ten skins for customizing.
• The plugin provides a “private video” feature.
• Conformant to Google Analytics.
• The plugin offers social media sharing functionality.

Cons

• A few style-related problems are mentioned with specific WordPress themes.
• It could require additional time for installation.

All-in-One Video Gallery

All-in-One Video Gallery is a WordPress plugin that supports all video formats and services for video storage. You can submit your videos or use a Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, or Dailymotion feed.

Employing a different video hosting service? No issue. All-in-One Video Gallery is compatible with videos uploaded to your WordPress Media Library and certain video-sharing sites.

Additional benefits include:

• A dynamic thumbnail gallery.
• The ability to search for videos using keywords.
• The option to group content into multiple categories.

In addition, it includes Gutenberg blocks, shortcodes, widgets, and additional forms.

Key Features;

• Ads and pop-up videos are supported.
• Controlling the speed of playback.
• Import videos from a YouTube channel or playlist automatically.
• The ability to display live YouTube or Facebook streams.
• The plugin employs a responsive HTML5.
• You can enable or disable social media sharing and subtitles.

Pros

• You can fully personalize the player’s appearance using brand colors and logos.
• Automatically optimizes your videos for search engines.
• The premium version supports live video streaming.
• Google Ad Manager with Google Adsense compatibility.
• You can embed videos from any of the most popular video hosting platforms on your website.

Cons

• The premium version supports streaming live video.
• You can host videos on all popular hosting platforms and embed them on your website.

Video Gallery Plugin

The Video Gallery plugin is one of the most popular plugins used for video galleries. It works seamlessly with multi-channel galleries, the YouTube API, deep linking, and MPEG-Dash to provide high-quality playback.

This movie gallery plugin also features drag-and-drop functionality, support for subtitles, and simple social network sharing buttons for each movie. It also allows you to track the performance of your films using an internal analytics engine.

The Video Gallery plugin enables you to build several galleries with stunning effects on your website with less effort. One of the amazing features is the ability to display YouTube videos directly. The option to submit a video to YouTube and embed it on your website is one element that contributes to the appealing video display and link-building of your website.

Key Features Include;

• Video Gallery supports a wide range of video playback sources.
• Manage multiple galleries from a single panel.
• Shortcode generation capability.
• Support for subtitles.

Pros

• A responsive design that will work on the majority of devices and browsers.
• Provides various sources for generating video playlists.
• The play-from option allows you to choose where you want a video to begin.
• Six months of customer support.

Cons

• Some difficulties have been noted with DZS video galleries.
• Autoplay is disabled by default in mobile browsers.
• Designed for advanced WordPress users.

FV Player

If you’re looking for a WordPress video player plugin that works with a classic editor and page builders like Elementor, FV Player is worth a look.

The plugin is compatible with all major video hosting services, including YouTube. Like other popular video player plugins, FV Player allows you to upload videos in MP4 and WebM formats.

FV Player is incredibly smooth and allows you to change the players to match the look of your website. You can also customize the video player’s dimensions. The availability of pre- and post-roll screens is the most important feature of FV Player. These panels can push additional information about the video and your offers.

Key Features Includes; 

• You can select from 40+ shortcode options to specify how the videos will show on the website.
• In addition to single videos, you can embed playlists as well.
• You can allow viewers to control the playback speed.
• Create sticky videos for your website.
• You can display DRM warnings via the player.

Pros

• Customize the player with HTML and CSS to match the design of your website.
• FV Player works with Google Analytics to provide detailed video analytics.

Cons

• The premium version is required for CDN integration.
• Some users may need clarification on the options.

HTML5 Video Player

HTML5 Video Player is a high-quality WordPress plugin for video playback. The plugin allows you to easily place your favorite videos in the HTML5 framework in various locations on your site and pages among different content.

This plugin also provides high-quality video in all major browsers. HTML5 Video Player also fully supports custom titles and video descriptions for improved SEO performance.

HTML5 plugin includes three different types of players: right side, bottom playlist, and simple versions. The plugin also contains five pre-designed templates from which you can design your pages.

Key Features Includes; 

• Support for multiple players on the same page using the same or a completely different format
• HTML and CSS code support
• Support for full-screen mode
• Advanced audio controls
• Support for subtitles

Pros

• The video player is light and quick to load.

Cons

• You must host videos with a third-party provider if you have the Pro version.
• Unless you’re familiar with CSS, you have few options for changing the appearance of the video player.

Envira Gallery

Envira Gallery is a plugin with a drag-and-drop builder that supports images and videos. This enables you to create video galleries using prebuilt templates that you can customize to match the branding of your website.

You can even add watermarks to your videos to increase the privacy of your content and prevent competitors from stealing it. You can categorize your content into albums and sort it by tags. You can also select cover photos with the video plugin, so you know exactly what each video is showing.

The plugin also lets you add passwords to your videos to restrict who can view them. This allows you to create gated marketing campaigns in which users must fill out a form before accessing your video gallery. You can collect valuable contact information in exchange for marketing content this way.

Envira Gallery’s Key Features;

• Filterable and searchable galleries
• Integrations with social media
• Watermarking on video
• Password protection for videos

Pros

• The ability to use videos hosted on your website or well-known third-party services.
• Mobile-friendly, responsive design
• Videos can be shown as slideshow.
• WooCommerce compliant

Cons

• Limited features and functionality on the free version.
• Advanced WordPress users may feel restricted.
• To have access to all of the add-ons, you must have a Pro-Plan.

Videopack

Videopack is an excellent video player plugin that also functions as an editor for the videos you watch on WordPress. Videopack’s main feature is the thumbnail generator. Once the video is in your Media Library, you can create your thumbnail or let the plugin choose one for you randomly.

The plugin also has the amazing feature of automatically determining the resolution based on the player’s size. Users can also choose a video resolution manually if one is available. This plugin can also display videos as pop-up windows.

Key Features Include;

• Watermark customization.
• Popup video gallery
• Multiple resolutions support.
• Advertisements addition on the premium version

Pros

• Very useful and quick.
• Great thumbnail generator.
• Resolution can be altered automatically or manually.
• Extremely responsive.

Cons

• Your Instagram account must be active and public.
• Customer service is average.
• Paying for extra add-ons is necessary for monetization.

Youtube Embed

This WordPress plugin is exclusively designed for YouTube videos. It allows you to create your own video playlists and select how they will be displayed on your website. For instance, you can generate playlists based on search text.

This plugin is notable for its ability to extract video metadata directly from YouTube, significantly improving your website’s search engine rankings.

Other features include an iframe resizer, dynamic video sizing, and the ability to create multiple video profiles. Having multiple profiles allows you to customize the appearance of different videos so that they stand out on your website.

The player includes a simple shortcode that you can utilize to add extra video data. Thus, you will have peace of mind with displaying videos through an optimized, fully customizable, responsive player.

Key Features;

• Lazy loading for videos.
• High-definition, 4K, and 60 FPS video playback.
• Users’ ability to download videos from the website.
• Multiple profiles for different videos so that each is uniquely styled.
• Video resizing according to the size of the player, theme restrictions, or responsive websites.

Pros

• You can play videos with a high frame rate. 
• The plugin is best suited for YouTube videos.
• Free Installation.
• Allows you to disable tracking cookies.
• User-friendly for inexperienced WordPress users.
• SEO-friendly.

Cons

• Videos are restricted to YouTube only.
• Insufficient support documentation

In Conclusion

At first glance, self-hosting movies on the same server as your website may appear to make sense. After all, it costs almost nothing to operate, and you can post videos with the same account you use to upload website content.

However, self-hosting videos can have a significant impact on website performance. This becomes increasingly more challenging as visitors to your site increase.

As more people watch your videos, your web server must allocate resources to these requests, which it lacks. This, in turn, reduces website load time and can have a negative impact on user experience, potentially leading to an increase in bounce rate on your website.

Hosting your videos on a dedicated WordPress video player plugin, which can then be embedded and played back on the website, is an excellent option.

This solution addresses the drawbacks of self-hosting. You host your videos and website on separate servers and in return, visitors can watch videos as often as they want without negatively impacting website performance.