What to use to host videos in Webflow?

Community resources General
1

Hey :slight_smile:

How do you guys handle videos in Webflow?

2

Hey Gal

As always… it depends :wink:

Background video element (hosted on Webflow)
For background videos or videos where I don’t want the user to see any control-elements (like play/pause/volume etc.) I use the background video element.
The downside of background videos is that

  1. you have a file size limit of 30MB
  2. the compression of Webflow for the background is not as good as the compression of youtube
  3. you cannot use background videos in CMS

Youtube video element
For the most cases I use the youtube element.

  1. Youtube videos have better compression than the background videos that are compressed by Webflow
  2. You don’t have a file size limit.
  3. You can disable Youtube cookies with a single checkbox which is very useful for companies inside the EU.
  4. And in comparison to Vimeo or other streaming services, keep in mind that Youtube is FREE.
  5. A con for the youtube element is that you cannot use it in CMS.

Video element
The video element works with youtube and other services like vimeo etc. So if you hosted your videos on vimeo or another platform, you want to use the video element.
If you need videos in your CMS you are bound to the video element, so thats another case where I use the normal video element.

Hope this helps :v:

1 Like
3

Thanks Martin, I appreciate your reply! It’s definitely helpful to get an oversight from other community members. I was asking because I don’t know if you came along it yet, but we just built vidzflow.com which is supposed to be a better alternative to YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia and Webflow’s native solution (and it’s free too) :+1:

I think a lot of Webflowers actually struggle with existing solutions because they are all very limiting and need workarounds, plus Webflow compresses them.