Is Video King For 2025 When It Comes to Online Marketing?
Discover the ultimate Presto Player review for 2025! See features, pros, cons, and why it’s a top choice for video hosting.
In this comprehensive review, we dive deep into Presto Player’s features and enhancements for 2025. Discover how this innovative video player transforms content creators’ engagement with their audience. We’ll cover its user interface, customizable options, and integration capabilities with various platforms. Whether you’re a seasoned creator or just starting, this video will help you understand if Presto Player is your choice.
This Week’s Sponsors
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Convesio: Convesio
Omnisend: Omnisend
Best Alternatives in 2025
YouTube (not recommended)
Price Free
Vimeo
Prices: Free 1GB storage | Starter $20 100GB storage | Standard $41 2TB storage | Advanced $125 7TB storage per month
Wistia
Prices Pro $89 | Advanced $399 per month
VideoPress
Prices $10, 1TB of storage
Spotlightr
Prices Light $15 25 videos 200 GB bandwidth/50 GB storage | Plus $25 600 GB bandwidth/200 GB storage | Premium $65 2000 GB bandwidth/600 GB storage
Cloudflare Stream
https://www.cloudflare.com/developer-platform/products/cloudflare-stream/
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:01.440] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 119. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about a great WordPress plugin. It’s called Presto Player. It helps you display and use video on your membership website. If you’re using WordPress, we have extensive experience with this. We will be doing a detailed review and also looking at some of the competitor services so you can understand what’s out there. I’ve got my great co-host of the podcast with me, Kurt. Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to new listeners and viewers quickly?
[00:01:06.880] – Kurt von Ahnen
I can do, Jonathan. My name is Kurt von Annen. I own an agency called Manana Nomas. We focus primarily on membership and learning websites and work directly with the great folks at WP Tonic.
[00:01:18.210] – Jonathan Denwood
And he’s a troupe. He broke one of his toes before he got onto the show, haven’t you?
[00:01:24.930] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, it’s not the most comfortable thing in the world. It’s like, Hey, it’s just a toe. And then it’s like, No, you used a toe more than you think.
[00:01:33.210] – Jonathan Denwood
He’s taken a lot of painkillers. He has to take a few before coming to the show anyway, but there we go. So, as I said, we will be doing an extensive review of the Presto player. When it comes to a membership website, apart from a couple of other plugins, it’s one of the most impressive plugins in our arsenal. So it should be a great show. But before we go into the meat and potatoes, we’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I want to point out we’ve got a fabulous, inexpensive resource. We offer it at half price. And that’s an extensive course that shows you how to build a membership community website on WordPress, utilizing the up-to-date technology. You can get this course at a special price of 50% off and a load of other resources and special offers from our sponsors by going over to wp-tonic. Com/deals, wp-tonic. Com/deals, you’ll find all the goodies there, plus the massive discount for this course. So let’s go straight into it, Kirk.
[00:03:00.740] – Jonathan Denwood
So let’s do an intro about Presto players. So if you were trying to explain to somebody who booked a consultancy hour with you and explained all the fabulous technology they should be using for WordPress, then you attempted to describe what the Presto player was. How would you do it, Kirk?
[00:03:29.940] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s a throwback for me, Jonathan. I can remember working with Dreamweaver a long time ago. You would need a video player. You need something that would frame the videos and stuff like that. And I don’t think people in today’s marketplace remember that stuff. And so when I talk about Presto player to a new client now, it’s just, sure, you can embed video any way that you like. But if you want the view of the video to be consistent and you want some extra features that you can aggregate as a creator, then you will want to use Presto Player as a shell around your videos.
[00:04:15.650] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it’s a lot more than that because it puts your options when utilizing it with a subscription, membership offering, when you’re going to use a lot of video. How would you explain how it works with Bunny.net? Because that’s when it gets even more exciting.
[00:04:44.110] – Kurt von Ahnen
The Bunny. Net excitement to me comes, and I’m just going to say strictly to me from a budgetary standpoint. I have networked with a lot of creators in the space that have used other branded video hosting It seems like a deal when you sign up. But what’s conspicuously missing from some of these pricing details is the bandwidth. It’ll say how much storage or how many videos, but it doesn’t say bandwidth. And there are certain providers where when you grow in popularity and your viewers view more video than that provider is willing to give you for your price, they hit you with a surprise billing and say, Oh, you’ve used so much over your bandwidth. That’s where Bunny. Net really shines. It really helps you manage It is super affordable, and from my perspective, performs really well on top of that.
[00:05:37.960] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, because all the pricing, when we look at the alternatives, they give storage limits which seem quite high, but they don’t publicize on their public-facing pricing pages the bandwidth limitations, and these cut in quite rapidly. You can use bunny. Net without Presto player. It will give you an iframe code, and you can paste straight into most modern WordPress pages straight away. But combining it with Presto player, the biggest advantage is that it will show up in the media library, your videos, and it’s just so much easier if you got all the videos showing up in your media library. And it’s built to use bunny. Net, and you can just utilize the API code, and the whole thing’s pretty slick, isn’t it? Would you agree with that?
[00:06:53.050] – Kurt von Ahnen
You caught me on a crossroads there, Jonathan. We have the experience in it working with WP and putting some packages together. And yeah, when it’s all set up, it is really slick. But I do run into a consistent issue onboarding new clients, especially with the bunny. Net. And that is the first thing they see is the pricing, and they’re completely confused. Because it talks about two-tenths of a penny for this many terabytes and this and that. And it’s almost for some people, it’s like shopping for hosting. A lot of people say, well, why would I pay $30 a month for hosting? I can get this other deal for $10 a month for hosting. And it’s like you’re not reading the details. You have to know what those numbers are, what the bandwidth is, what the size of a video is in your LMS, those kinds of things. But when you really dig down as you were communicating, Bunny. Net does seem to be the bargain on the market.
[00:07:48.480] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it can be one-fifth to one-fifth cheaper. Well, one-fifth or one-third the cost of any of the leading other options out there, apart from another one that is similar. It hasn’t got all that Bunny. Net has, but it’s coming up. But it still works really great with Presto Player, and it’s just a great combination. Now, I’ve just said, if you use Presto Player, the big thing is your videos are going to show up in the media library. But there’s a number of other key features and benefits that you get by utilizing Presto Player, because in this first half of the show, folks, we’re going to concentrate on Presto Player, and in the second half of the show, we’re going to be looking at the alternatives. So what would… I’ve listed some of the main features, and number one is playlists, video chapters, easy navigation, and Netflix experience. How would you explain that to the listeners and viewers, Kurt?
[00:09:15.470] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, similar to… So let’s talk about the gorilla in the space, right? People say, well, why am I going to worry about Presto player or bunny. Net or whatever when I could just put stuff on YouTube? Because YouTube will let you do and time-stamping and all of these things. So for people that work within this space or within these features, they might think, well, that’s not a big deal. But remember, YouTube isn’t private. And if you try to do an unlisted video in YouTube, but sell that video through your platform, that’s a breach of terms and conditions with YouTube, and you can lose your account. So understanding what’s at play and why it’s important is, I think, number one. Number two is Jonathan’s absolutely right. Presto Player allows you a lot of freedom in your videos and how you show the content to people. It’s got a focus mode where you have to have the tab open and the video visible in order for the video to play. It does the chapters or the time-stamping that people are used to so that you can fast forward to certain parts of the video. That works out really good in e-learning situations.
[00:10:27.150] – Kurt von Ahnen
It just does a lot of really cool things. It can do email capture. That’s one of my favorite ones. That’s where if you’re doing a lead magnet situation, it has an overlay that says, if you want to play this video, input your email address. And you can customize the messaging or the button or whatever, but that then becomes your interactive lead magnet.
[00:10:49.040] – Jonathan Denwood
Does that integrate with something like our most favorite email and marketing optimization service, which is Fluent CRM? Does it integrate with Fluent CRM? Do you know?
[00:11:03.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
What’s interesting is it actually integrates directly with Lifter LMS. In one of our standard builds, that integration with Lifter LMS and Lifter LMS integrates with Fluent CRM, that whole thing just glues itself together. So a student in Lifter LMS through the lead magnet becomes a contact or a user in Fluent CRM. But the people that make Presto player also make Sure Triggers and Sure Cart and things like that. And so most of the integrations or interactions with other tools that you’ll see, it’ll list using Sure Triggers as the tool to make automations happen. But of course, it interacts with other platforms as well, like Uncanny Automator and things like that.
[00:11:50.190] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. On to the next one. The other thing is with what you said about YouTube, people say, Well, you can have a private You can make the video private. I just think YouTube is fantastic. I’ve put a lot of effort in trying to grow the WP Tonic YouTube channel, and it has grown over the last six to seven months, considerably. And I’ve made a lot of videos, so I’m a real believer, YouTube, but I am not a believer in having paid your paid video course material on YouTube. I’m not a believer in that because I think it really clouds and diminishes the value proposition. Would you agree with that?
[00:12:46.630] – Kurt von Ahnen
I agree 100 %. I use YouTube extensively as well. I’ve got hundreds of videos on YouTube. So it’s not a bash against YouTube to say that we want to use PrestoPlayer and Bunny. Net. It is a use case situation. Each use case online is completely independent of another, and different tools fit different circumstances.
[00:13:09.470] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, the right tool for the right time. Let’s go on to another great feature focus mode, pause his videos, and when they are not actively watched. But focus mode, maybe start with focus mode. Try and explain that to the people.
[00:13:30.260] – Kurt von Ahnen
From an eLearning perspective, it is a really valuable tool. My background with a lot of my background with a lot of my eLearning or curriculum development is from a mechanical standpoint. So how to take apart an engine or how to diagnose a vehicle, something like that. And what would happen most cases is technicians get assigned courses while they’re working, right? They don’t get paid for training. They get paid for the work that they get done. And so they’d have a laptop in their workstation and the laptop’s playing videos, but they’re not watching the videos. They’re off, wrenching on something. They’re working on something. And then when the video ends, they just click next. And then they’re hoping that they’ll pass the test at the end because they work in the field. They make a lot of assumptions that they already know stuff. That’s not what you want. When you’re someone that’s creating an e-learning platform, especially with required viewing, you want to make sure that people are actually seeing the content. And so focus mode will pause the video if they open up another tab, if the video is not displayed on the screen, like if they page down or page up and the video goes off screen, it just pauses the video.
[00:14:38.840] – Kurt von Ahnen
So it forces the student to have to be at least on the right tab with the video displayed in order for it to play.
[00:14:47.500] – Jonathan Denwood
Fantastic. Next one is the action bar. What does that do? What do you think of that?
[00:14:54.600] – Kurt von Ahnen
I don’t use the action bar too much. Sometimes I think things can be a little overkill, especially in a video player, especially if the video is smaller. But that action bar is an extra thing. So you know we have the progress bar, like usually have play, and then you see the progress go across the screen. It’s right beneath that, and you can add elements to that action bar, like click this to go to this page after the video, or it takes an action with the user. So it adds more interactivity to just playing a video, but it’s very rare cases that I actually use feature.
[00:15:30.880] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. Obviously, we’ve touched on this NMS and membership integration. We talk about other plugins, and if you’re not that all the way with the language of WordPress, just think these plugins as Lego bricks. And you can just click various Lego bricks to build something out bigger. And so use that. Obviously, that’s a very simplistic term that I’ve just used, but that’s how I and explain it to people. So it works with, like you just mentioned, Lifter LMS. So it works because Lifter has its own video add-on, but this, PresoPlay, works quite well. I think it works with the other leading two that we recommend, learnDash and two to LMS. I think all the main three that we recommend, it works really quite well. Would you agree with that?
[00:16:29.300] – Kurt von Ahnen
More I can agree. But again, this is one of those people on the inside seem to know people that are new would never figure it out things. Lifter LMS has a tool called advanced video, and in their own documentation, they say that advanced video will only work with YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia. And what’s interesting about Presto Player is that that integration to use advanced videos actually comes from the Presto player side of the pond. So if you have Presto player When you’re in bunny. Net, you basically lie to Lifter LMS and say you’re using Vimeo, and then you get the advanced video features, which forces people to have to watch a video in its entirety before it unlocks the mark Complete button. That has to do with student tracking and getting your certificates and things like that.
[00:17:20.070] – Jonathan Denwood
Do you know if they’re looking at adding bunny. Net to the native video player add on to Lifter LMS, by the way?
[00:17:28.190] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s really not for me to speak for We’re Lifter, but I don’t think it would be… I don’t think that’s a thing. I don’t think that’s high on the list. They’ve got some work coming in the future on some really cool things and some things that have been around for a little while that need to refresh and things are getting refreshed, which is exciting. But I don’t think advanced videos is one of them.
[00:17:46.740] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s another reason to get Preso player, folks. Viewer tracking. What does Preso play off? I think this is a really important element that a number of our larger clients like, don’t they?
[00:18:05.410] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, it again comes down to use case. If I was on Lifter LMS with advanced videos, my reporting would show my student progress. It would say, my students done these lessons, they’ve seen these videos, blah, blah, blah. It’s all right there. But Presto player itself has an analytics feature where you can go in and it’ll tell you specifically who has watched the video within a certain span of time, whether that be today, last week, last month, last fiscal quarter, you can see exactly who’s seen which videos, how much of the video they’ve watched. And it actually gives you a little bar graph thing, like YouTube does with your analytics in YouTube. So you can see, if this is a 10-minute video and most people watch 3 minutes and 41 seconds of it, it’s giving you that required feedback you need to adjust your content.
[00:19:01.010] – Jonathan Denwood
We’ve touched on a bit about getting it to work with bunny. Net. Obviously, it’s in the eye of the beholder. If you’re totally new to WordPress, totally new to online set-ups, everything’s going to be a bit strange. But how difficult is it to get Presto player to work with bunny. Net?
[00:19:24.780] – Kurt von Ahnen
This doesn’t exactly sound like a commercial for Presto player, but in the Last couple of times I’ve tried to make the connection between Bunny. Net and Presto Player, there’s a field where you put in the license keys, and I put in the license keys, and then the screen would just repeat itself. And people listening might go, oh, that’s it. I’m not going to use that. But here’s where Presto player shined through. I simply just sent a quick help request and almost instantly it was fixed. Bada boom, bada bing, we were connected. The advantage of connecting Presto player and bunny. Net is really pretty amazing how it works. For me, it’s no big deal, but for my clients, it’s a huge deal. So my clients don’t have to go to Bunny. Net and upload things to Bunny. Net and then get embed codes and put them in the Presto player. If you think about the way WordPress would usually work, there would be multiple steps to something. If you’re using Presto player on your website, you’re connected to Bunny. Net, you literally just go through the back end of your own website, upload the video, put it where you want to put it using Presto Player, and Presto player does all the heavy lifting and all the integration with Bunny.
[00:20:38.680] – Kurt von Ahnen
Net and Bunny. Net servers off-site, so you don’t have to worry about it.
[00:20:44.690] – Jonathan Denwood
We got some people joining us. Well, we got one person. Thanks to that. He said hello to us. And pricing, I think it’s really good, great value for what it offers because the starter plan is 99, and then the pro… Is the pro… Do you get any… Is it just the number of websites you can use on it? Is that the only difference, or is there any, in functionality terms, any difference between the starter and the pro?
[00:21:19.090] – Kurt von Ahnen
I really think it’s just the number of websites. I can’t think of any other features that I get or don’t get.
[00:21:25.050] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s what I thought, but I thought… Because Kirk’s been working with it a bit more than I have lately. So just to finish off, on the list of features, I just took the ones that I thought, but there’s more features. Is there anything that you want to point out before we go for our break?
[00:21:49.400] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I feel like I need to correct myself on that because I just had… It was like, as soon as you said that, I was like, wait a minute, I just had a waterfall of information. With the Pro version, the Pro version is what… Well, no, so it’s any paid plan. So any paid plan gives you the Bunny. Net integration, the sticky video player, and all those tools. So I think the only difference is the number of sites. So now I’m back to my original thought.
[00:22:22.110] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. So any feature that I didn’t mention that you think we should add to the first half the show then, Kurt?
[00:22:32.340] – Kurt von Ahnen
There’s a cool thing that it does, and it’s silly, but when you are, let’s say you’re corporately employed, you work in a cubicle and you’re surfing the web when you’re supposed to be working, and then you click on something and then instantly, you know what happens? Some video starts to play at full volume, and now you’re busted. You’re in the middle of this cubicle farm, and this video is at full volume and you feel like an idiot. Creators have the option to do a muted autoplay on their video embeds. And so then it becomes like when you’re scrolling on X or scrolling on Facebook and the videos are silent until you click the volume. It has that feature, which I think is something a lot of people play with and use.
[00:23:19.540] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. I think we’ve got a good spot to have our middle break. We’ve got a couple of other messages from sponsors. We will be back in a few moments folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. We’ve had a feast, a feast about PrestoPlayer and Bunny. Net and how it’s fantastic and how it can save you a ton of money. It’s all great stuff, folks. But before we go into the second half, where we look at some of the leading alternatives and competitors in this area, I just want to point out we’ve got a fantastic free resource for you, and that’s the Membership Machine Show Facebook group. It’s totally free to join. I try and post some content almost every day. I can’t guarantee that I do it every day, but I get close to it. And also we’ve got a nice group of people that are WordPress experts and people like yourself. And it’s totally free. So go to Facebook. Got any questions about anything in the show? That’s the best place to put your questions. And so go over and join us on the Membership Machine Show Facebook group. So let’s look at the alternatives.
[00:24:44.210] – Jonathan Denwood
The alternatives. I say that you can use these with Presto player as well, can’t you? I think you can use most of the ones that we’re mentioning, not all of them, but most of them. If you want your videos to show up in WordPress Media Library, which is really useful, we just concentrated on bunny. Net because it’s not free bunny. Net, but it’s like you can start off with one, five, one dollar, five dollars, and you really got to burn through a lot of bandwidth to get anywhere. Normally, like I say, it’s one-third to one-fifth the cost of some of the alternatives we’re going to discuss here. We’re starting off with YouTube, and I think it’s best just to recap what we said about it in the first half. It’s a big attraction. It’s free. I think as a way of marketing your membership website and marketing yourself as an expert in the particular niche that you should be trying to build your business in, it’s fabulous. But like I say, using it for video that you’re going to be utilizing for a paid course I don’t think that’s a great idea. So just recap your thoughts, Kurt.
[00:26:22.160] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, YouTube has a couple of reasons why I use it and a couple of reasons why I definitely don’t. And it depends on your It’s a type of client and use case in other situations, too. You have to remember, YouTube is directly connected to Google and subject to all of Google’s fancies. So if you’re talking about a topic they don’t like, your account can disappear. Your account can be demonetized. There’s all these things that can happen. And so to Jonathan’s point, if you are in a mainstream topic and you’re using them for SEO and for visibility and for marketing, it’s a wonderful tool for that because it is like the second arm of Google. So that part’s fantastic. But if you’re trying to leverage hidden or unlisted or private videos as paid content somewhere else, you’re going to get yourself in Google’s cross hair sooner or later. And then if you’re using any content that is that’s something that you would second guess sharing on Google, then you definitely don’t want be in YouTube space.
[00:27:32.250] – Jonathan Denwood
On to one of the main suppliers of video hosting that created the market in a way with these marketing tools where you can, in the middle of the video, have a pop-up asking for their email address, which doesn’t really apply if you’re using it for a subscription. But if you’re If you’re using it on a general website, it’s really useful, and it provided some marketing tools. It’s Wistia. Am I pronouncing it? Pardon?
[00:28:11.840] – Kurt von Ahnen
Wistia.
[00:28:12.960] – Jonathan Denwood
I always struggle with this for you. It starts… What’s your thoughts about them? If somebody was asking your opinion about using them, what would you say?
[00:28:29.630] – Kurt von Ahnen
It It sounds harsh. I don’t mean it to sound harsh, but there are most of the clients that I have in the creator space, it really does come down to budgets and return on investment, like what they get for their money. And so between Wistia and Vimeo, most will go to Vimeo because on the surface, it does appear to be more affordable. The clients that I do have on Wistia, I will say, have never had an issue, a problem. The user interface seems to be direct. They don’t seem to get confused or lost. From those perspectives, I think Wistia is a really superior top-schelf product.
[00:29:13.810] – Jonathan Denwood
I think if you do any online research, that they are seen as a five-star platform. I haven’t done a full review of what’s been about them. But when the last time I did it, which was probably over 18 months ago, folks, they got a lot of five-star reviews, and they seemed legit, and they’ve always prided themselves on their… And I don’t think they’ve sold out. I think it’s the original founders are still part of the business, I think. They used to offer a really good at free product, but they got that. And it starts at $89, and then the advance is $399. I’m trying to struggle for the… I don’t think they provide, and they might have done. No, I don’t think they provide any storage and that. But I think it gets expensive quite quickly. But it’s a quality product. And I started the wrong way. I must have confused because Vimeo was before, but I jumped. The next one, which is… A lot of people look at this one, they look at YouTube, and then they look at this one, and it’s Vimeo. It’s a Dutch I think. It’s based in Holland. They start a plan that starts at $20, and you get about 100 buy it of storage, but it’s the bandwidth.
[00:31:17.790] – Jonathan Denwood
You rapidly, by my research, end up in the standard or the advance quite quickly. If you got any traffic or or any growth in your subscriptions, you rapidly end up in the standard and advance. What’s your views on Vimeo?
[00:31:43.880] – Kurt von Ahnen
I have two things with Vimeo. One is with this pricing example, and maybe they’ve changed things in the last few months, but as of just a few months ago, I’ve had clients get surprise billing. It’s not like Hey, here’s your warning. If this continues for 45 days, your price is going to go up. It’s like, Here’s your invoice. You’ve already spent this hundreds of dollars. And it usually comes as a surprise to the creator. They’re not aware that they’ve come up against some video limit or something. So the way that they do the billing, I have issue with because my creators feel like they’ve been knocked around from it. I get it because we do hosting and stuff like that. We understand what it’s like to talk about bandwidth and usage, but it’s the way you communicate it to the client. And I think a lot of people get surprised. The other ding I have with Vimeo is there is something about their user experience that confuses the wheels off of new users. More times than not, because the client, really, in my situation, is usually responsible for getting their video hosted somewhere, giving us access to it, so then we can embed it into whatever the website is we’re building.
[00:33:02.040] – Kurt von Ahnen
And more times than not, they’ve done something in the security settings where the video won’t play on the website, and you got to go in and make changes and alterations and modifications to the way the creator set up their Vimeo account. So there’s something in that user experience.
[00:33:18.690] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, definitely. You’re spot on, but I haven’t used their service for a while. Well, on another website, I But I haven’t logged in to the account for a while.
[00:33:33.380] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, well, you can white label certain URLs and things like that, which for some reason the creator takes as, oh, I can secure my videos and they’ll only play on the website I embed to. But what they don’t realize is that if they don’t white label that URL, even though it’s their URL, that video is still not going to play. So it’s just confusing.
[00:33:53.640] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s not using Google storage, isn’t it? Compared to Dropbox. You share a document and then it says you have to ask permission to see it? Yeah, it’s just a mess, isn’t it? Compared to Dropbox. That’s why I still keep my Dropbox account. I’ve got grandfathered one that costs me about $100 a year. I think they’ve improved Google, but on the other hand, I don’t really want to depend on Google that much anyway because you don’t get any customer support from any Google product. So good luck They’re trying to get any real support from those people. They’re so desperate for the money, aren’t they? The sarcasism comes out, doesn’t it? On to something, I think it’s a jet pack, something that comes from Automatic. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to explain Automatic to people anymore. So it’s linked to WordPress, folks. Automatic is owned by one of the founders of WordPress, but it really is a private company entity. Where he is, not… And they have a product called Video Press. I don’t know much about their offering. It was another one of these automatic side products that was there, but it was really, to me, it was aimed really at the corporate market to some degree.
[00:35:42.590] – Jonathan Denwood
I don’t know much about it. They seem to be pitching it more at the Vimeo. It’s $10 starts off with, but I don’t know what the bandwidth. It’s the bandwidth that matters, folks, and none of them, you have to do a bit of a dive in their help documents, and then it’s really buried. But 10 gigabytes for $10, but I don’t know what the bandwidth, and I’ve got no experience with them. Do you know anything through what people have said and what you’ve observed, really, Kurt? Oh, it’s that bad.
[00:36:30.660] – Kurt von Ahnen
I had a client that tried to use them, got frustrated, bailed, and went to a product called Adillo, which isn’t one of the ones that we’re talking about. The strangest thing about Video Press was I went there and I looked and I was looking at the website, and I was trying to familiarize myself for the show, and I thought to myself, wow, what a horrible website. It’s like the title’s over half the video, the white space. I was like, this is a really poor… This is not a good marketing website. And then I got down to the bottom and it said, made for WordPress, an automatic premiere. I thought, oh, my goodness, the people in charge of WordPress have an atrocious marketing website. And No, they are. It all just came full circle to me and I was like, well, I guess I’m glad I’m not using it. I know that sounds harsh. It sounds harsh, but it’s like…
[00:37:29.020] – Jonathan Denwood
How should it be? You’re much more different.
[00:37:32.100] – Kurt von Ahnen
If you go to the site and you actually page all the way through the site and you try and go through it, you’re like, I couldn’t make this website and deliver it to a client. You know what I mean? If that’s their effort to get our business, I don’t even know how the product would work. I sound mean, but that’s just my take.
[00:37:57.730] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it’s a lot of… It’s an automatic I think in some ways in the WordPress platform. They’ve got a similar disease as what Google have got with their secondary products. It’s always a little bit half started. It’s a bit like their learning… I forgot the name of it, their own learning management system. What’s it called?
[00:38:24.520] – Kurt von Ahnen
Is that Learn Press?
[00:38:25.960] – Jonathan Denwood
No.
[00:38:27.200] – Kurt von Ahnen
No?
[00:38:28.890] – Jonathan Denwood
I forgot the name of it.
[00:38:32.650] – Kurt von Ahnen
Wp…
[00:38:35.250] – Jonathan Denwood
No, it begins with S. Sani, Suswani or something. Sensei. Sensei. They were really pushing that for a while, weren’t they? And then it’s died down again, isn’t it? It’s not pushed at all, is it? And that’s a lot of their products, isn’t it? On to another one called Spotlight. Spotlight? Spotlier?
[00:39:06.070] – Kurt von Ahnen
Spotlighter.
[00:39:07.350] – Jonathan Denwood
It used to be called Voodoo Player when it first hit the market. And I bought a lifetime deal with them for my own website. I do use it on the WP Tonic website for some of the videos. And they were offering lifetime deals, and they also are offering a white label product. And then just before I was going to pull the gun and maybe use it as part of the offering for WP Tonic, they had a bust up, the founders, and they got in a bit of financial trouble, and they got a bit too happy with lifetime deals, and it got renamed, and it got rid of the white label products. And it works really well. But the light, you can only… The light starts with $15 a month, but only 25 videos. The next one up is, I think-Plus. Plus 25. They’ve got a lot of different plans, put it that way. But I’ve been happy with it. I’ve got one of their legacy plans. I think they’ve struggled because of the debacle and the renaming, but they kept in it. I think if you’re not looking at Presto player with Bunny, it probably is one of the more legitimate competitors to Vimeo, really, out there.
[00:40:52.450] – Jonathan Denwood
But I don’t know, what’s your attitude and what have you heard?
[00:40:57.180] – Kurt von Ahnen
Like yourself, I was a user of a while ago. The Voodoo. The Voodoo. To be honest, the Spotlighter, and this is going to make me sound very surface-like. I don’t know if you go deep enough sometimes, but their website’s nice. It’s modern. Their player is nice and modern. When you look at the samples that they have for like, Hey, this is what you can do with the player, it seems modern, like the look, the interface, the user experience. And you’ve got other options to change things. If you want to increase the radius, or if you want to fade the edges, or if you want to change the colors of the controls or the icon styles of the controls, you have a real control over the look and appearance of what Spotlighter offers. And from that standpoint, as a creator, as someone that works in the WordPress space where everybody’s hooked on customization and modification. I really like the product from that standpoint.
[00:42:05.590] – Jonathan Denwood
What about the back-end? Have you looked into it any time recently? Is it a better back-end experience than Vimeo?
[00:42:13.450] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think it’s better than Vimeo. I don’t think people use it and walk away confused not knowing what they did. And I’m going to be… I know that we’re really gung ho on the Presto player thing at the beginning of the show, but I do need to say a lot the features to Presto player, they seem hidden beneath the layer by WordPress. You have to go to where the player defaults are, and then there’s this little button at the bottom that says, add new default or something like that, or add new condition. And then when you do that, it opens up a whole new window with all the features. So I think in that regard, I think Spotlighters can seem a little more direct in its usage. But I think Presto player has better, more actionable options for the creator.
[00:43:05.030] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. I got to say, when they were having a bit of a breakup, the founders, and they were re… They honored their lifetime deal. I thought there was… Because there’s been other people that have offered lifetime deals, and then they’ve ditched their commitment, and they’ve canceled it. But no, they’ve honored their lifetime deal with me. So I’ll give them credos that. I think it is one of the more credible alternatives that you should really look at if you’re committed not to use WordPress. Well, I want to go one step further, and that is when you host your videos on these platforms, you put the video up, and then there always seems to be that encoding, trans coding. Quick with them, isn’t it?
[00:44:02.450] – Kurt von Ahnen
Getting ready. Yeah. And when you work with Spotlighter, it seems to happen pretty quickly. Bunny. Net can take some time on that one. And the one that I mentioned that I use Adillo, forget it. I might as well go make a pot of coffee and take my Cud for a walk. It takes forever for the process to happen.
[00:44:25.110] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s snappy with them.
[00:44:26.150] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. And so in those regards, I think it performs really well. For the value they asked for, I hate to say it’s the bargain, but it works really well.
[00:44:38.790] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think, yeah. Last one is Cloudflare. They got this stream. We love Cloudflare. I’m not saying they’re saints. They’re not a perfect company. But when it comes to buying, it’s not got the easiest interface, and their documentation in their public-facing websites of subpages, they are not aimed at the general user. The language they use, it’s totally aimed at the web professional. Even then, I have to put some of their sentences into AI to get AI to explain what they’re trying to explain to me. Yeah, they’re not great marketers, put it that way, but they’re aiming their stuff at the web professional. But they’re free products. I love their registration of domains. You’re not nickeled and dined like Namecheap or Big Daddy, GoDaddy, where they nickel and dime you. It’s just a fair price. They’re domain hosting, they’re free security product. And they’re offering this Cloudflare stream. And I know there’s a few… I don’t think in any way it still can compete with what bunny. Net is. But I keep looking at it because they don’t And unlike Google, they normally don’t give up on the product and they slowly improve it, don’t they?
[00:46:22.640] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I’ll agree with you to that extent, but I’m also going to back you up on what you said the first round, and that was getting lost in cloud flair. I get lost in cloud flair. And I’m supposed to be the consummate professional that leads people, too. And if I have a hard time figuring that out, it’s really hard for me to explain it to clients. And so it hasn’t won me over yet. When the button to get more information says, read the product brief, that me right there just says, I’m in over my head. You know, A year ago, you and I reviewed video webinar hosting things, and we came up with Whereby and Jitsy and all those things. And I thought Whereby is a great product, but it’s the same thing as Cloudflare. You get in there and you think, Oh, it’s awesome. It’s a great deal. And then you get in, and then if you’re like me, you go, I don’t know what the heck I’m doing in here.
[00:47:20.390] – Jonathan Denwood
Are you lying? You were gone home for them.
[00:47:23.530] – Kurt von Ahnen
I still use Whereby. I mean, I like… I use it from a very basic perspective, but you can It’s made for developers. They have a whole they have a whole sidebar on their website that’s just like API this code that do this automation, integrate with this the other thing, take this code and put it here and do amazing things. And it’s I can’t wrap my head around what an amazing thing is. So it’s like, no. And that’s the way I’m with this cloudflare thing. It’s like, read the product brief and I go, well, that’s already too deep for me. And then I got to try and figure it out. The cloudflare stuff that I use usually comes packaged on some hosting or something. And in those regards, I think the products are great. But it’s like using one of these AI for the product.
[00:48:12.920] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s not using the Hosting like Cloudways. I would never recommend Cloudways for an average user. It’s just not designed. It still isn’t, even though it got bought up by DigitalOcean, it’s aimed at a web Quasar professional. I would never recommend them. And then you also got the… Obviously, I did a review, and the problem I’ve always had with Cloudways is that their headquarters, I know it’s probably changed a lot, but I think they still have a large team, and they’re based in Pakistan, and he’s got a furry friend joining us. Our I always got his little toy. I wasn’t talking about Kirk there, actually. So I was talking about his dog. What’s the name of the dog?
[00:49:09.670] – Kurt von Ahnen
Remi.
[00:49:10.350] – Jonathan Denwood
Remi. I was talking about Remi, my beloved. You have to watch the video, folks, if you look, just listening to the podcast. So I went on a bit of a rant there about cloudways, God knows. God knows why I went down there. But it’s definitely not aimed at the mere mortal. So to recap, I would say if you’re looking at WordPress to build your membership, your community website, and you’re committed to building a real business, I think investing in Presto player and then looking at bunny. Net is well worth the investment and effort. I think Especially when there’s a certain web boutique provider that provides Presto player and it will configure bunny. Net for you. Who would that be? I would not know. But if you’re not got that particular hosting provider. I still think it’s worth the investment. Now, if you’re not building on WordPress or you’re not going to be a real heavy user, I think of the two, I think it’s either Vimeo or it’s Spotlighter. I would go Spotlighter, really, for the smaller course or the occasional user of video that don’t want those videos to be available on YouTube. I think it offers good value and it’s got a good interface.
[00:50:54.170] – Jonathan Denwood
What’s your own thoughts?
[00:50:59.260] – Kurt von Ahnen
I am a sucker for a lifetime deal, so I need to give that full disclosure. So my video hosting choice personally is different than this list because I signed up for a lifetime deal. That said-Who’s that with him? I’m with Adillo. And like I said, waiting for a video to process on that takes some time. But that’s what I signed up with at the time, and I stuck with it. If I was new to the game, getting involved, the Presto player with bunny. Net to me, and I talk about it on more than this show. I’ve talked about it with Look Your LMS Lives. I’ve talked about it with… I think it’s a winning combination. I really do.
[00:51:40.940] – Jonathan Denwood
And we’re not being sponsored by him.
[00:51:43.410] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, no. Hey, Adam, watch this episode and throw us a check. It’s a good setup. Jonathan, I keep thinking it’s not for us when we do these shows. It’s not for me. It’s not for you. It’s like we have to communicate to users, creators, and people who want to focus on what they know, but do not necessarily want to be web developers for their life. They want to run their business. And so from that perspective, Bunny. Net and Presto Player are a winning combination. If I didn’t want to go that path for some reason, it would be Spotlighter out of that list.
[00:52:22.570] – Jonathan Denwood
I think it’s a clear leader. If you won’t use Presto Player or Bunny, it’s the next one. And for the right person, it’s probably the first one to look at. And don’t get me in, most of the ones we’ve talked about here are okay, fun enough. The one that I would probably not recommend on this list is VideoFresh. I wouldn’t recommend them. I probably wouldn’t recommend it for now, but that’s more to do with the setup and the documentation than the service.
[00:53:06.680] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think the best service we’ve mentioned today is probably Wistia. To be honest and transparent, it’s the best. So if you’re one of these people where budget’s not the thing and you’re like, I want the best, well then get Wistia and you’ll probably never have a complaint. You’ll be happy. It’s just it is top shelf. And I’ve never had a client have a problem with Wistia. I’ve never had a problem with Wistia. It seems very reliable, but it’s the most expensive one we’ve discussed today.
[00:53:37.340] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, the thing is, if you’re going to use them, I would give you a little tip here. If you use them, I’ll use them with Kajabi, the basic plan for $150, because all your videos will be hosted. I don’t think they have much bigger bandwidth limits with Kajabi. They’re the people who provide white-labeled service for Kajabi. Kajabi doesn’t host it. It’s them that are hosting the videos for Kajabi. I think you get bigger bandwidth usage with Kajabi. I thought I’d give you a tip there, folks. The problem with Kajabi is that their lowest plan is quite restricted. So you have to go to the basic plan, their Kickstarter plan. So you’re looking at the basic plan, which is about 149. But if you look at with it starts at $90. So what’s the best way for people to find out more about you, your thoughts on what you’re up to? Our website is Manana Nomas, and that’s everything: business, blog posts, and information.
[00:55:07.010] – Kurt von Ahnen
Everything’s on Manana Nomas. But if you want to reach out personally, connect on LinkedIn. I’m still on LinkedIn almost every day, Jonathan, and I’m the only current one on there, which means if you found me, you got me.
[00:55:20.180] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s great. If you want to support the show, why don’t you subscribe to the WP Tonic YouTube channel? You can watch all your If you’re listening to this for the podcast, the reason why you should sign up there is that I produce a ton of content every week, every month, about building a successful membership subscription website on that YouTube channel. I must publish about 30 to 40 with videos per month on that channel, and it’s all available for free. So it’s a fantastic resource. If you subscribe, that shows you support for this podcast and the value we provide. We will return next week with another, hopefully insightful and helpful video, enabling you to build a great membership community. We’ll see you soon. Bye.
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