5 Best WordPress Video Plugins to Add to Your Website

I’m attached to online videos. Reading chunks of plain text on a website just seems like a chore to me. 

I sometimes allow my mind to wander while I read something on the internet and I’ll end up losing entire paragraphs.

So, when there’s a video on the page, I really want to thank and maybe even hug the website owner. “Thank you, you’re so sweet and considerate.” That’s what I would say to them.

I know I’m not the only one. In fact, more than 72% of internet users prefer videos to text to learn about something.

The reason why most of us love online video is quite simple: videos are so much easier to digest. They do a great, even perfect job at breaking down complex topics. And that’s what makes them an ideal addition to a website.

Today, not only news websites have videos. Every professional brand website always has an introduction or short product demo video on its homepage. In the food and beverage industry, restaurant video marketing can help owners get more reach and visibility online.

Not only do they aim to give a visitor a quick, engaging insight into their brand– but also want to give them a solid user experience. 

If you want to add videos to your WordPress website to engage visitors with a short attention span like me, then you need to use video plugins. 

We’ve listed some of the best WordPress video plugins for you.

 

List of WordPress Video Plugins

There’s no such a thing as a one-size-fits-all WordPress video plugin. The best one is always the one that can fulfill your needs and meet your preferences.

But, these plugins below are great options for adding your video to your website.

#1. Envira Gallery

With Envira Gallery, you don’t have to hire a developer to create a WordPress video gallery. 

This plugin is easy to use and lets you create a custom video gallery in minutes. The best thing about this video plugin is it works great with the top page builders out there.

You can use it to create a gallery of any size, and your videos will look great on any device.

Here are other key features that can make you fall in love with this plugin:

• Mobile-friendly,
• Drag and drop builder,
• Social media integrations, image proofing, and WooCommerce store integration,
• Guttenberg blocks for WordPress 5.0,
• Watermark,
• Social sharing for Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Pricing: starts at $29/year.

 

#2. YouTube Showcase

YouTube Showcase is a popular WordPress video plugin that lets you add videos from YouTube to your website. 

It’s easy to use and has a user-friendly interface. You can add videos by entering the video URL. Since it’s designed for simplicity, it’s a great option for you if you want to add videos to your website without any hassle.

This plugin also allows you to customize the player, so you can match it with your website’s design. And, you can control what appears on the video screen by hiding the player controls, info bar, and title.

This video plugin also comes with some great features like:

• Widget support,
• Custom CSS,
• Ability to hide player controls,
• Continuous play option,
• Autoplay and loop options,
• Shortcode support,
• Video thumbnail quality option.

Pricing: starts at $99.99/year. There is also a free version available.

 

#3. Modula

Modula is another great WordPress video plugin that allows you to create beautiful custom, unique, and responsive video galleries. 

With this plugin, you can easily add videos from YouTube, Vimeo, or self-hosted videos. You can also control the layout and design of your video gallery. You can basically add any video to your WordPress page without needing coding skills.

This video plugin is mobile-friendly and responsive, so your videos will look great on any device. 

Let’s take a look at its key features:

• Responsive and mobile-friendly,
• Video extension,
• Self-hosted video support,
• Huge library of free add-ons,
• Watermark,
• Password protection.

Pricing: starts at $39/year.

 

#4. YourChannel

YourChannel provides a quick way to create or curate YouTube videos. With this video plugin, you can show your YouTube videos and even playlists on your own website. 

You can use this plugin to create a video gallery or even add a single video to your post or page. This plugin is perfect if you want to embed YouTube videos in WordPress without having to copy and paste the embed code.

This video plugin has an intuitive interface that makes it easy to use. Plus, it comes with some great features like:

• YouTube Live stream support,
• RTL support,
• Translation,
• Autoplay option,
• Easy shortcode instructions in the post editor,
• Cache system for fast loading.

Pricing: starts $29/year. Free version included.

 

#5. Videopack

Formerly known as Video Embed & Thumbnail Generator, Videopack is a popular WordPress video plugin that allows you to embed videos from YouTube, Vimeo, and other video sites. 

This plugin can also generate thumbnails for your videos so you don’t have to worry about creating them yourself. It’s easy to use and lets you customize the look of your video gallery. Not to mention you can use the plugin to create a popup video gallery. 

Videopack also allows you to:

• Add videos to your post or page,
• Customize the look of your video gallery,
• Create a popup video gallery,
• Automatically select the one closest to the size of the player or a resolution of your choice,
• Shortcodes,
• Add advertisements to your videos.

Now, if you’re using the Block Editor, you should be aware that Videopack is not compatible with it.

Pricing: starts at $5.99/year.

 

How to Work With Modula to Create WordPress Video Galleries

Modula might be one of the most popular WordPress gallery plugins out there. So, we’re going to show you how to use it to create a video gallery in WordPress. 

First, you need to install and activate the Modula plugin.

Once you’ve installed and activated the plugin, you need to click on the Add New Gallery button on the Galleries page.

This will bring you to the Gallery Settings screen where you need to enter the details of your video gallery. You can start adding your videos by either selecting “Upload a File” or “Select from Library”. You can even drag an drop your files.

And here are some other settings:

In the General tab, you need to provide a name for your gallery and select the type of gallery you want to create.  

Meanwhile, in the Videos tab, you need to enter the URL of the video you want to add and select a thumbnail. You can also choose to hide the player controls, info bar, and title.

Once you’ve finished configuring the settings, click on the Save Gallery button to save your changes. 

You can now add your gallery to any post or page on your WordPress site using the shortcode that is displayed on the right side of the screen.

Here’s a video tutorial as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxrTXQNExh4

 

How to Choose the Right WordPress Video Plugins

Again, not all plugins are a good fit for everyone. Remember that the best WordPress video plugin for you might not be the best one for someone else.

So, before you start choosing one of them, it’s always best to consider these points:

• Your needs and preferences,
• The features offered by the plugin,
• Ease of use,
• Customer support,
• Product reviews,
• Is there some documentation offered?
• When was the plugin last updated?
• Does the plugin work with the Default WordPress Editor (aka Block Editor aka Gutenberg Editor)?,
• Price.

 

Now, the thing is that with WordPress you might end up using tons of plugins. Each one of them will end up slowing down your website. And that’s not a good thing. Page speed s crucial for a site. In a world that is fast, with short attention spans, page loading speed can make or break your site.

This is why I would recommend using page builders. They have tons of features that can easily substitute lots of the plugins out there. Let’s look at an example.

 

How to Manage Videos inside Kubio WordPress Builder

I’m going to show you how you can use videos on your site using Kubio. Kubio is a block-based builder. It works on top of the latest WordPress experience, aka Gutenberg. Kubio is compatible with any WordPress theme out there, but it works best with block based themes.

At the end of the day, if you start a site from scratch, with Kubio, the theme almost becomes irrelevant. This happens because Kubio gives you so much design freedom!

Before jumping into working with videos in Kubio you should first understand how the new experience in WordPress works.

Everything in WordPress is now a block: paragraphs, images, videos, tables, and more.

When you are inside a page in WordPress you should look for “+” signs.

When you click on such a sign, you will open up a block inserter. You can start typing the name of a block and then select it to insert it. The black ones are the default WordPress blocks, while the blue-green ones are the ones from Kubio.

 

How you can use video blocks in WordPress and Kubio

Now, the moment you add a block you will notice a toolbar on top of it with several options that can vary from block to block. They mostly refer to moving the block, copying it, or removing it.  In the case of the video block you can only add a video and that is all. No other styling options are available. And this is why you would need a plugin for some more advanced designs.

 

But let’s see what happens when you add the Kubio video block:

It will place a default video on the page, which you can replace from the block editing panel on the right.

Now, the block editing panel allows you to do tons of customizations. It has three layers: Content, Style, and Advanced.

At the Content level you can:

• Select your video type (self hosted, Youtube, Vimeo);
• Decide the starting and ending times for the video;
• Decide whether you want to have your video to be auto played, muted, or looped;
• Decide whether to show or not the video controls.

At the Style level you can set up:

• The video’s aspect ratio;
• The video’s box shadow;

Here are the available advanced video block edits:

• Background. Here you can make adjustments to background color and type.
• Border and shadows. Here you can add borders with a different color, radius and thickness to your video Gutenberg block. Also, you can add box shadows. You have full control over the position, blur, spread and color of the box shadow.
• Responsive. Here you can decide whether the video block will hide or not on desktop, tablet or mobile.
• Miscellaneous.At this level you can set up the z-index of your block (vertically order the elements that overlap), set up if the element overflows or not (displaying the content of the block flowing out of its container into the surrounding area), add HTML anchors and CSS classes.

Here you can find more info about video block editing in Kubio.

Now, let’s go a bit more in-depth.

How to add a video background with Kubio

Let’s say you want to add a video background to a section, a row, or a column.

Every block, section, column, or row can be editing inside the block editing panel on the right.

Backgrounds can be edited under Style or Advanced.

Now, let’s change the background image this column here (on the left hand side) with a video.

Let’s go to Style -> Background -> Background type and change from Image to Video.

Let’s upload a self hosted video, or paste a link. Use the External option to paste a link from Youtube.

Next you can add a video poster.

And here’s our video background:

Video source

Pretty neat, right?

 

Creating video galleries with Kubio

We can do this in 3 ways:

1. Adding video blocks to columns

In Kubio you can easily add blank sections if you go at the bottom of a page and select “Add blank section”.

Now, you are asked to choose how many columns you need. Let’s go with three.

We’ll get this:

Let’s click on each “+” sign and add the Kubio video block.

 

We can add box shadows using the video block Style option, or add a section background, from the section Style option.

 

Now, I’m going to replace the default videos and set them up to autoplay and loop. You can easily add video posters as well. Everything happens under the Style option in the block editing panel.

Let’s hit “Preview” in the upper-right and take a look at the result:

Next you can make the section full width, change the dimensions of the videos, the spacing between them…All this magic will be managed in the block editing panel on the right hand side.

 

Adding videos to sliders using Kubio

Now, let’s say we want something more dynamic. Maybe we want a slider with videos, and maybe some text on top. How can we do this?

Well, let’s use the Kubio slider block.

I’m going to add a new section with a single column at the bottom of the page and add the slider block from the “+” sign.

Now, the default slider has several slides with different designs.

 

I like the first slide design.

From the block editing panel on the right, inside Content, we can add or remove slides. Let’s delete the slides from 2 to 4 using by clicking on the “x” sign.

Now, I’m going to change the first slide background from image to a video. This means we need to select the slide. We’ll do this by clicking on it straight in the canvas. Notice how the block editing panel changed from “Slider” to “Slide”?

 

This means that both the slider and the slides can be customized separately in the block editing panel.

Now, from the Style level, let’s change the background to video and upload a video or paste an external link.

Now, you notice that we have a heading, a paragraph and a button. Each element is in fact a block. When you click on them you will be able to customize them from the block editing panel on the right, but also delete them. You can use the “Delete” key from the keyboard for this, or the “Remove block” option from the toolbar we mentioned a bit earlier.

Now, the text is not visible on this background, let’s add an overlay to fix this. This means that we need to head over to “Style” in the slide’s block editing panel and to toggle on “Background overlay”.

From the settings icon we can adjust the overlay’s opacity, its color, and more.

 

Next, we can customize the dots or arrows of the slider in order to improve the navigation between the slider’s slides. The dots and the arrows are also blocks that you can customize the way you see fit.

Now, when the design is clear, we can easily duplicate our slide and add the content we want to it. Just go ahead and change the text and videos.

This is how we get a nice video slider with overlays and text on top. Nice, right?

Now, you can apply the same logic when using the Kubio carousel block. But I’ll let you play with it. You can start by installing Kubio and enjoying it for free.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many great WordPress video plugins available. Each one has its own unique features and benefits. Choose the plugin that best suits your needs and start adding videos to your WordPress site today.

Now, if you liked this article, and you want to learn more about how to design a WordPress website, make sure to subscribe to our Youtube channel and follow us on Twitter and Facebook!

 

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