FV Player 8

66 Quality Score

Active Installs

14/30

With only 1,000 active installs it is a niche tool, well behind competitors like Presto Player at 100,000 installs, so the community is small.

Update Freshness

25/25

Last updated 2026-06-18 and tested against WordPress 7.0, the maintenance signals are excellent and show the developer is actively shipping.

User Rating

5/15

Only two ratings producing a score of 80/100 is too thin a sample to draw strong conclusions, which drags confidence down.

Support Health

8/15

Zero public support threads means there is no track record to judge, neither reassuring nor alarming, but it limits the score to a middling value.

WP Compatibility

15/15

Requires PHP 5.6 and WordPress 5.7, so it runs on very old stacks, and the compatibility score of 100 reflects clean modern testing as well.

Scores higher than 16% of indexed plugins

About

WordPress's most reliable, easy to use and feature-rich video player. Supports playlists, ads, stats and user video position saving.

Active Installs 1k+

Rating ★★★★ 4/5

Last Updated 2026-08-21 11:20am GMT

Requires WordPress 5.7+

Tested Up To 7.1

Requires PHP 5.6+

✓ No known vulnerabilities

What It Does

FV Player 8 is a self-hosted HTML5 video player for WordPress that lets you embed MP4, HLS, and Vimeo videos with custom branding, playlists, and ad insertion. It saves each visitor's playback position so they can resume where they left off, and includes built-in analytics to track plays and engagement. The plugin ships a shortcode builder and works with both classic editor blocks and Gutenberg.

Who It's For

This plugin fits small publishers, course creators, churches, and agencies who want to host their own MP4 files or stream HLS content without depending on YouTube. It is a good match for sites that need playlists, resume-on-return functionality, and ad serving in a single package without paying for a SaaS video platform. The Vimeo tag also makes it useful for creators who mix self-hosted clips with Vimeo embeds.

Who Should Skip It

If you only need to drop the occasional YouTube or Vimeo link into a post, the built-in oEmbed or a lightweight block plugin will do the job without FV Player's footprint. Sites running on managed hosts with strict PHP execution limits may also struggle with its analytics and ad modules, and anyone needing a full LMS should look at dedicated platforms instead.

The Bottom Line

FV Player 8 is a well maintained, feature-rich self-hosted player with playlists, ads, resume, and stats, but its 1,000 installs and two ratings make it a risky pick compared to Presto Player. It earns a 65.73/100 quality score, dragged down mainly by its tiny adoption base. Worth trying if the specific feature set matches your needs, but expect a smaller community when troubleshooting.

Related Plugins

Presto Player 84/100

Pick Presto Player if you want a far larger install base, modern block editor integration, and integrations with LearnDash and TutorLMS out of the box.

iframe 82/100

Choose the iframe plugin if all you really need is to embed external video URLs with minimal overhead and no player skin.

All-in-One Video Gallery 81/100

Go with All-in-One Video Gallery if you want a front-end gallery and category pages for YouTube and Vimeo content rather than a custom player UI.

HTML5 Video Player 81/100

Use HTML5 Video Player by bPlugins if you want a simpler, cheaper MP4 player without FV Player's ad, stats, and resume-position machinery.

FV Flowplayer Video Player 80/100

Consider the older FV Flowplayer plugin if you need a battle-tested legacy option with a much larger user base than this FV Player 8 release.