I was looking to add videos to my website — should I upload the .mp4 directly into WordPress or look into hosted solution such as Vimeo or YouTube?
Here are some considerations:
- Are you on shared hosting? Shared hosting has small resources for video and any spike in traffic may crash the site.
- Videos uploaded directly into WordPress do slow down the page loading time.
- You could be missing out on traffic from YouTube, which is the 2nd used search engine on the web.
- If anyone else can embed your video from your website, they will be using your bandwidth.
- Using plugins to manage and share videos isn’t ideal on shared hosting.
You might want to consider YouTube if:
- You want to share the video
- You’re on shared hosting
- You’re planning to increase traffic
- The video can go public.
Explaindio video suggested not using YouTube to post videos on your website because that is advertising for YouTube and takes people away from your site (often has suggested videos when yours is over).
Try using a hosted platform for videos on your site, and then use YouTube as a marketing plan bringing traffic to your site.
Thanks for sharing this information. When I’m embedding YouTube videos, I like the plugin Hide YouTube Related Videos, which eliminates the suggested videos at the end of the YouTube videos included in your post.
Great plugin! Thanks for posting, Sal!