The Bottom Line
Flowplayer is a solid video player for designers and developers who are comfortable manipulating code and plug-ins. It's open source, so you can develop your own features, or install any of the many available on the product site.
But for beginners, Flowplayer is overly complex. There's no easy set-up program, and users pay extra for support. Other video players are easier to customize and better suited for Flash newbies.
Pros
- Free version offers all the features available in other versions
- Open source, so you can develop the player for your needs
- Supports a variety of media formats
Cons
- Requires coding knowledge to adjust and customize the video player
- Free version only comes branded with Flowplayer
Description
- Flowplayer is an open source player for embedding media on your website. The site contains many plug-ins, or design your own.
- Flowplayer comes in a free version, which is full-featured but contains Flowplayer branding.
- Commercial versions of Flowplayer range from $95 to $1450. The features are the same, but you pay more to host on more sites.
Guide Review - Flowplayer Is Not Built for Beginners
Flowplayer is an open-source video player you can use to embed video streams on your website. Flowplayer is very adaptable - with a variety of customizations and special plug-ins available in even the free version. Unfortunately, to take advantage of all that Flowplayer has to offer, you'll need to feel comfortable with web programming language.
Flowplayer comes in four flavors: free, commercial, multidomain and unlimited, with prices ranging from free to $1450. The free version includes Flowplayer branding but can be used on unlimited sites and comes with all the features of the other versions. If you want to include your own branding you'll have to upgrade to the commercial version, which costs $95 and can be used on only one domain.
Flowplayer is feature-rich, offering plug-ins to control analytics, captions and more. And there's an extensive demo section that offers the HTML, CSS and javascript coding you'll need to adjust the look and behavior of your video player.
This is helpful - if you're comfortable with coding. If you're not comfortable with coding, try the JW player. It has a helpful setup wizard that lets you select the features you want and then gives you the proper code to put on your site.
