Let’s face it, images, audio, and video make the web have a wealth of experience. And I’m all for adding videos to your website. Not only does adding videos to your website or blog increase the value to your content, but it can also increase the chances that your audiences would react very well to it. And adding video to your site definitely has some SEO benefits as well.

But I will save that for another post regarding SEO and videos. Now you have probably noticed that most people that are using WordPress are using a third-party video sharing service like YouTube or Vimeo to upload their videos too. Now, the question is, can you upload videos on your WordPress site? The answer is yes, but I don’t recommend that you do it. In this post, I am going to tell you why you should never upload a video to WordPress.

Pin Image To Pinterest

Why You Should Never Upload A Video To WordPress

Upload vs. Embed (What’s the difference?)

Before I go into why you should never upload or host videos directly in WordPress, I want to make sure you understand that there is a difference between upload vs. embed.

I want to go over with you what Uploading or Hosting a video means. Uploading or Hosting a video means that you are going to upload videos on your website or blog like you would upload images on your WordPress site. And I highly recommend that you do not upload your videos this way.

Now, I want to go over embedding a video and what it means. Embedding a video means that you are going to upload your video via a third party site like YouTube or Vimeo. Once you get your video uploaded to a third party site of your choosing you can then easily embed the video in your blog posts. This is what I highly recommend you do. Now, I understand that there are going to be some scenarios where you might need to upload a video directly into WordPress but try to avoid it as much as you can.

Easy Sharing

Embedding your video in WordPress is a lot easier than you might think. What I love about this is not only is it easy but you can share your video uploaded to YouTube or Vimeo or any other video sharing sites just by pasting the URL directly into your blog posts. I must say, it is way easier to manage a channel on YouTube or Vimeo than it is via WordPress to create a video section that is completely separate from your images and any other uploads you have on your site. You can easily take your video that you upload to YouTube and share it with your social media accounts allowing you to reach a way bigger audience than just uploading your video to your WordPress site. Another advantage of uploading your video to a third party video site is that you’re going to be making it so much easier for your viewers to share your video. And we all know getting more exposure, and video shares are important.

Bandwidth

I want to go over bandwidth now. This is another reason that I do not recommend that you upload your video directly to WordPress. When you upload videos to your website or blog, it’s going to cost you bandwidth. The higher quality the video, the more bandwidth it’s going to take. Even worse, if you allow your users to embed the video on their own websites, that bandwidth now is going to get multiplied every time your video is embedded anywhere else. Not good right? Another bad thing about uploading your videos in WordPress is that more than likely your probably going to have to add more plugins to manage and show your videos to your visitors. The extra plugins that you install are going to increase your server load time which slows down your site. And let’s face it. Nobody likes a slow site. And here’s a really good reason to not upload your video in WordPress. If you are on shared web hosting, then more than likely your hosting provider is going to suspend your website and take it down temporarily. Yikes! This could cost you sales and lost revenue. Are you convinced yet?

Visibility and Traffic

Now I want to go over visibility and traffic. According to Alexa rankings, YouTube as of right now is the world’s second most used search engine and the third most visited website. Because of this many website owners upload their videos to YouTube. It’s more exposure. And why doesn’t want more exposure? If you upload your video to YouTube, you are going to get a lot more views than uploading it straight to your WordPress site. Another cool thing about YouTube or other third party sharing websites is that the social networking features can very well make your video go viral and gain popularity. And who doesn’t want their video to go viral?

Video Quality Optimization

Lastly, I want to go over video quality optimization. One of the many advantages of uploading your videos to third-party video sites like YouTube or Vimeo is that they process videos for a better web experience. They give your viewers options like watching the video in HD or on lower resolutions. Another good thing about these third-party video sites is that they will automatically try to detect the user’s internet connection and the device they are on so that they can play the video in the best quality for that viewer. If you upload your video directly to WordPress, you are missing out on all of the optimization opportunities and your video will display just as it is when you uploaded it. This is costing you more bandwidth and damaging your user experience.

Final Thoughts

We hope this article helped you and showed you why you should never upload a video to WordPress.

Let us know in the comments below if this was helpful and your thoughts? We would love to hear from you.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.