Are you in the market for a WordPress video plugin?
If you run a WordPress website, videos are an excellent way to draw people to your site and keep them engaged with your pages. Whether it's an ad for your product, a customer testimonial, or a light-hearted marketing message, videos are easy to consume and educate visitors about your brand.
In this post, we’ll discuss why a video plugin is worth the investment. Then, we’ll review some of the best WordPress video plugins for your website. We'll list their main features — including price — then list some pros and cons for each one.
Why use a WordPress video plugin?
Let's see a show of hands: Who would rather see the movie instead of reading the book?
While I usually opt for a good movie, a recent study found that 34% of respondents prefer the book version of a story over the movie, while only 27% said they would rather watch the movie than read the book.
As a marketer, I was stunned. Video is such a powerful marketing channel when it comes to engaging customers, and one of the best investments you can make in your marketing efforts. In fact, viewers typically retain about 95% of a message when they watch a video.
Plus, we’re watching more videos online than ever — the amount of online video that people watch has doubled since 2018, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Aside from the marketing benefits, videos improve the user experience on your website too. Once visitors land on your website for the first time, many of them will want to know more about what your business offers. Instead of sending a wall of text, you can include a video to engage them. Again, people prefer the movie version to the book.
So, why download another WordPress plugin for your videos? The truth is that WordPress offers pretty limited support for video content out of the box. The Gutenberg editor offers a video block for embedding videos on your pages and posts with some options you can toggle, but that’s pretty much it.
With a video plugin, you get more customization options, different ways to display your videos on pages, insert ads, and ways to make your video player align more closely with your company’s branding.
Without further ado, let’s take a look at the best video plugins for WordPress on the market today.
Best WordPress Video Plugins
- Video Gallery
- Smash Balloon
- Envira Gallery
- Video Gallery WordPress Plugin
- YouTube Embed
- YourChannel
- All-in-One Video Gallery
- Easy Video Player
- Ultimate Video Player
- Elite Video Player
1. Video Gallery
Price: Free, with paid plans available
While YouTube is by far the most popular video-hosting platform, that doesn't make it the only place where people can upload videos. In fact, websites like Vimeo are also popular channels that you can leverage to promote content.
But, you might find that a majority of WordPress video plugins only support YouTube videos. That's not the case with Video Gallery.
With this plugin, you can create YouTube galleries, Vimeo galleries, and mixed galleries that contain videos from both platforms. Once created, there are plenty of design options to choose from, so you can create a video gallery that matches the look and feel of your website.
Pros:
- Compatible with both YouTube and Vimeo videos
- Comes with a content and video slider feature
- Comes with a lightbox-video gallery option
- Provides a view counter for each video
Cons:
- Can't change the sort field or order of videos
- Some compatibility issues reported with certain WordPress themes
- Limited support documentation
For more details about this top-rated video plugin (and other video gallery plugins too), check out this video from Elegant Themes:
2. Smash Balloon
Price: Free, with paid plans available
Smash Balloon aims to be a simple, easy-to-install, and superfast WordPress video plugin. It's built "with performance in mind" so that it doesn't slow down your pages or negatively impact search rankings.
How you might ask? Unlike other video plugins for WordPress that automatically load the video player on the webpage, Smash Balloon only loads it if the visitor starts to engage with the video feed. This improves your page speed and helps you rank higher on search engines.
Additional features include custom video pause and end actions, responsive designs and styling customizations, and an option to convert videos into WordPress posts.
Pros:
- Post caching feature that improves load times
- Can create a feed from any public YouTube playlist
- Users can filter videos in your feed using keywords
- No coding experience required for customization
Cons:
- Free version has limited features and functionality
- Geared towards more advanced WordPress users
- Limited support documentation
- Limited customization options for shortcodes
3. Envira Gallery
Price: Free, with paid plans available
Envira Gallery is a video gallery plugin that comes with a drag-and-drop page builder. Using one of its premade templates, you can easily create video galleries in no time and customize their appearance. You can even add watermarks to your videos to strengthen the privacy of your content and make sure competitors can't copy it as their own.
Keeping track of your videos is fairly easy with Envira. You can organize your content into albums and sort it with unique tags. You can even select cover photos so you know exactly what each video is showing.
You can also add passwords to your videos and limit who can see your content. This lets you create gated marketing campaigns where users have to fill out a form before they receive access to your video gallery. That way, you can collect valuable contact information in exchange for marketing content.
Pros:
- Compatible with WooCommerce
- Provides a social media integration
- Has a responsive, mobile-friendly design
- Can present videos as a slideshow
Cons:
- Free version has limited features and functionality
- Requires a Pro-Plan to gain access to all of the add-ons
- Advanced WordPress users may feel limited
4. Video Gallery WordPress Plugin
Price: $25
This WordPress video plugin lets you add advertisements to your content at different points of the video. You can show an ad at the start of the video, in the middle, or at the end. That way, you can time up your marketing messaging and display an ad that's relevant to the content being shown in the video.
Ads can be iframes, images, or videos. And, Video Gallery's ads are undetectable by ad blocking, so they'll appear even if the viewer has an ad-blocking software installed.
Additional features include image gallery modules, streaming options, and a skin generator so your video modules will match the look and feel of the rest of your site.
Pros:
- Responsive design that will display properly on most devices and browsers
- Provides multiple feeds for creating video playlists
- Play-from feature: you can decide from what point you want a video to start from
- Comes with 6 months of customer support
Cons:
- Geared towards a more advanced WordPress user
- Some issues reported with DZS video galleries
- Autoplay is muted by default on mobile browsers
5. YouTube Embed
Price: Free
This WordPress video plugin is geared specifically towards YouTube videos. It lets you build your own video playlists and you can choose how you want to play them back on your website. For example, you can generate playlists based on username or search text.
One notable feature of this plugin is that it adds Google-compatible metadata to your videos using the YouTube API. This is great for SEO and helps you rank higher on search engines like Google.
Additional features include an iframe resizer, dynamic video sizing, and the option to create multiple profiles for your videos. Having multiple profiles allows you to customize the style of different videos so you can make each one look unique and stand out on your website.
Pros:
- No cost to install
- Lightweight code that's SEO-friendly
- Provides an option to turn off tracking cookies
- User-friendly for less-experienced WordPress users
Cons:
- Videos are limited to YouTube videos
- Limited support documentation
- Not as many styling options as other plugins on this list
6. YourChannel
Price: Free, with paid plans available
Looking for something clean and simple? YourChannel might be the right video plugin for you.
It creates a YouTube feed on your website that displays your profile picture, channel name, total videos and views, and all of your YouTube videos and playlists. If you'd prefer to hide some of this information, you can do so using its free customization features.
The Pro Version comes with seven video thumbnail styles, autoplay options, and RTL support. It also provides a caching system that improves load times whenever a user returns to a video or web page that they've visited in the past. Not only does this help with SEO, but it creates a better user experience when visitors want to rewatch their favorite videos.
Pros:
- Easy to install and use
- Translation-ready
- Responsive customer support team
- Provides an autoplay option
Cons:
- Free version has limited features and functionality
- Videos are limited to YouTube Videos
- Advanced WordPress users may find this plugin limited
7. All-in-One Video Gallery
Price: Free, with paid plans available
All-in-One Video gallery is exactly what it sounds like. It's a WordPress video plugin that supports all types of videos and video-hosting services. You can upload videos from your own files or use a feed from YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, or Facebook.
Using another host for your videos? No problem. All-in-One Video Gallery has an option to embed an iframe from a third-party service.
Additional features include a responsive thumbnail gallery, the ability to search videos by keywords, and an option to group content by different categories. It also comes with Gutenberg blocks, shortcodes, widgets, forms, and more.
Pros:
- Automatically optimizes your videos for search engines
- Compatible with Google Ad Manager and Google Adsense
- Provides GDPR consent options
- Premium version supports live videos
Cons:
- Free version has limited features and functionality
- Support team doesn't actively monitor WordPress support threads
8. Easy Video Player
Price: Free
If you're familiar with using shortcodes, Easy Video Player is a user-friendly video player for WordPress. Once installed, all you need to do is customize the video shortcode so that it includes your video or file URL.
From there, all of the customization options are available via shortcode. You can add an autoplay option, resize the module, and set the video to loop all from the embed code.
If you're not as familiar with shortcodes, Easy Video Player offers support documentation that can help you get started. It shows you how to set up the initial shortcode and how to personalize its functionality and appearance to your liking.
Pros:
- Free to install and use
- Shortcodes are very flexible and come with a variety of customization options
- Supports both personal upload files and third-party video hosting sites
- Provides autoplay and video loop features
Cons:
- Requires in-depth understanding of shortcodes to use
- Can only customize via the shortcode
- Limited features and functionality
- Not as responsive as other plugins on this list
9. Ultimate Video Player
Price: $69
This plugin uses VAST templates which is short for "video ad serving template." The purpose of these templates is to create a video feed that maximizes your ad revenue.
To do this, Ultimate Video Player is compatible with Google Adsense, so you can add pop-up messages to the bottom of your videos. There's also an option to show an ad when a video is paused. This can save you from losing visitors who've lost interest in your content and are thinking of navigating elsewhere.
Additional features include a "100% responsive design," compatibility with WooCommerce integrations, and encrypted video paths for added site security. There's also a variety of playlist formats for you to choose from, so you can source videos from your personal files, third-party hosts, HTML markup, and more.
Pros:
- Over 10 skins included for customization
- Provides a "private video" feature
- Compatible with Google Analytics
- Provides a social media sharing option
Cons:
- Some styling issues reported with certain WordPress themes
- May require additional time to set up
10. Elite Video Player
Price: $49
Elite Video Player is easy to install and comes with some unique features that aren't offered by other plugins on this list. One example is its compatibility with YouTube 360 VR videos. With these videos, you can turn your phone in any direction to see different views shot by an omnidirectional camera. This makes the viewer feel like they're actually in the video while they're watching it.
Another unique feature for this plugin is that it supports Google Drive videos as well as Dropbox videos. You can upload videos to Google Drive then embed them on your website using the Elite Video Player plugin.
Additional features include custom advertising, subtitles, and live video thumbnails that appear in the progress bar. That way, if you want to jump ahead or go back to rewatch something you missed, you can see exactly where you're jumping to using the thumbnail.
Pros:
- Supports "mixed" video playlists
- Compatible with Google Analytics
- Provides a lightbox mode, responsive mode, and fullscreen mode
Cons:
- Limited customer support options
- May require additional time to set up
Choose the best video plugin for your WordPress site.
While more people may prefer a good book over a movie adaptation, there's no doubt that video marketing is an effective way to engage and nurture customers. Videos are easy to consume and present plenty of opportunities to promote your brand.
Choose one of the plugins above and get started with adding compelling video content to your WordPress website.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in January 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
