The Difference between Embedding and Uploading a Video in WordPress

WordPress makes it very easy to work with videos of all types, however – what are the differences between embedding a video on a WordPress page versus Uploading a video to WordPress? You can do either, however I think that embedding a WordPress video might be better.

Embedding vs Uploading?

When you upload a video to WordPress, you are taking the video file itself and uploading it to your own web hosting account. Then, you can use WordPress to display the player for the video and play the video on your website.

When you embed a video, you are hosting the video at another location and simply linking to it. The way you link to it, you can see the video player on your WordPress-powered website. It does not matter that the video is hosted somewhere else, like YouTube.

Embedded Video

So which method is best for you?

Benefits of Embedding Videos

There are several reasons why you should embed videos into your WordPress site from another hosting service rather than trying to host the videos yourself. Services like YouTube will do a better job at making the video well-optimized for online viewing. From within a service like YouTube, you have the option to downgrade the video quality on the user’s side – where you might not have that option handling the video hosting yourself.

When you first upload your video to a video publishing platform, like YouTube, you are also making your video easier to share and be found. YouTube handles all the link shortening and quick links to all the popular social networks. Also, with your video on YouTube – it can be found by regular YouTube viewers that might not be seeing your content on your website. This, in turn, will make them want to visit your website to learn more about your business, hobby, etc.

The video will also play faster and in a better quality being hosted elsewhere. This will benefit your overall search engine optimization. There are many more positives to hosting your videos on an external website or service.

There are your main differences between embedding a video on your blog versus trying to host the video file yourself. If you upload your video to WordPress, you are missing out on tons of potential viewers and optimizations that video hosting services can provide.

12 thoughts on “The Difference between Embedding and Uploading a Video in WordPress”

    1. Hello Mel,

      While I am not a lawyer, a video can only be shared if the creator enables it. Embedding a video is essentially “sharing” a video where the original video creator is getting the views, credit and advertising revenue. So I doubt this would be a problem. You may want to check with a lawyer to be 100% certain.

  1. Hello
    If I post an embed a video into my posts, hom much space will it take as I have a 2gb storage space of my website. Suppose I embed lots of video into my single posts. How much space does that post cover due to video embed?

  2. However, if I embed a YOUTUBE video on my website, when they’re finished watching it, it often rolls into some other random video on youtube right? That’s the only negative I can think of… unless there’s a way to stop it from doing that??

  3. Hi,
    Thank you for the article.
    I am facing a weird issue on my site. It works fine on IE, but in chrome, as the page loads, because of the embedded video, the page gets redirected to the site where video is actually hosted. Thus, my page doesnt get completely loaded and redirects to the video site.
    I tried with browser cache clearning and cookies deletion, but it didnt work.
    Any idea how to tackle this?

  4. What if the video that you embedded was deleted from the video’s host source? Will your post with the embedded video have a blank, empty placeholder now? For example , (if I am fully understanding what an embedded video is) , you see a video on YouTube that you want to embed in a post on your blog. You copy the code and embed the video. For whatever reason, a few months later, the person who originally posted the video on YouTube decides to delete it or remove it from YouTube. What will now become of your post on your blog containing the embedded video? Will it show an error placeholder? That would be a pretty significant drawback I would think.

  5. Thank you Kaumil for the Insight, I have a YouTube channel and website. I add a videos to my website via copying the link with WordPress or Visual Composer. Now the question is, will I get all the views and watch time when clicked from the website?

    1. Hey Shawn,

      The short answer here is yes, the views you receive from embedded content will count as views on YouTube. That being said, it can get a little muddled based on settings. For example, if your embed is set to “auto-play” then YouTube will not count that as a view. Things like that, but overall the view should count.

    1. If you embed a video from YouTube then the weight of the video file is not weiighing down your server and slowing your site down. If you upload videos directly to your site, this cause cause page load time issues over time.

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