Video player plans for Fluent Community
A while ago, I remember you mentioned that you were considering building your own video player for Fluent Community. Has there been any update on this plan?
If not, and since Presto Player doesn’t seem to integrate well with Fluent Community, what solutions are other community members currently using to host and protect their course videos inside Fluent Community?
I don't think it's a matter of Presto Player not integrating well. There are some threads here where people described how they made it work. Jewel mentioned that he didn't want to rely on a 3rd party for something this important to FluentCommunity.
I like your question and would love to know if they're coming out with a well-integrated player.
I am using Vimeo and it works well
You can also upload a video on your sidebar. Check mpaddi.com there's a plugin for that if it interest you
WiLson Eberechi very interesting
Ramsis Kasis I'm glad you found it interesting, you can also upload slide images by the sidebar, there's a plugin for that check mpaddi.com
Many of our clients used to rely on Vimeo (as did Gee Adriaansz and many others in the industry), but here’s a word of caution: hardly anyone reads the Terms and Conditions of Vimeo, and limiting bandwidth there comes with a hidden price tag.
Several of our clients have faced this situation firsthand - with unexpected additional invoices to their subscriptions of $18k, $20k, even $30k. A successful launch can quickly turn into a nightmare, or even result in your Vimeo account being shut down if you refuse to pay the extra charges.
Just a friendly lawyer reminder: read all the terms you accept 🙈.
That’s why I'd recommend Bunny (referral).
Unlike subscription-based platforms, Bunny is fully pay-as-you-go, which often means literally just a few dollars per year -compared to $200+/year with Vimeo, Wistia, and others. (I like those platforms too, but as explained, they can become risky and expensive.)
Bunny also includes integrated Digital Rights Management (DRM). Which is actually the current "security" system of many stream platforms and international congresses that use bunny (reaching millions of users and attendees.)
This protects your videos from unauthorized access, copying, and redistribution through encryption, expiring links, and support for standards like Widevine, FairPlay, and PlayReady. In practice, DRM ensures your videos are only viewable by authorized users, on approved devices, safeguarding both your intellectual property and licensing agreements. You can even choose different authentication methods.
For high-security needs, Bunny also offers advanced DRM options that prevent screen recording - though in most cases, that’s more protection than you’ll ever need.
As always, nothing is 100% unbeatable. But I am sure you will love them.
And about a possible new product: I’ll let Shahjahan Jewel confirm.
All I can say is the WPMN team is consistently delivering blazing-fast tools… and, as some users have noticed, you might already catch a glimpse of it on FluentCart’s landing page (among others). Just check the dev console ;)
Finally, a quick note: using DMCA tools and registering your Intellectual Property is highly recommended if security and protection truly matter to you.
I’d strongly recommend that - at least, for serious projects.
You won’t be the first (and definitely not the last) course / content creator to lose millions of dollars due to missing IP clauses, lack of proper registration, or simply a poorly drafted JV partnership. Once the technical side is covered, make sure to at least monitor with DMCA tools and secure registration for major course projects.
Jorge de los Reyes Thanks a lot for your detailed reply 🙏.
I’ve actually been using Bunny.net for the past 3 years and I’m very happy with it. I also use Presto Player to display my videos.
Now I’m preparing to move my community to Fluent Community, and I’m currently researching the best way to handle video delivery there. At the moment, the only option available seems to be embedding directly from Bunny.net — which works, but it’s not the most practical or elegant solution.
I remember Jewel once mentioned the possibility of a native video player for Fluent Community, and I’d love to know if this is something that’s being worked on. It would be amazing if that becomes available.
Thanks again for the guidance!
Ramsis Kasis awesome! I am among those who embedded bunny too 😄
Which aspects are you missing from their player?
We also use presto on some sites, and sincerely, we do not use much its features. 🙂↕️ it also adds precious time to create the media inside presto using bunny too.
It’s also missing important updates (for years), specially regarding auto-translation (something bunny allows directly); which capabilities are you exactly missing on bunny player?
Would like to know 😄
Jorge de los Reyes I totally agree with you — Presto Player hasn’t really been adding much value lately, except that it made video delivery easier when I was still using LearnDash.
But now I’m moving away from LearnDash, since FluentCommunity’s course system already gives me everything I need.
That’s why I was expecting FluentCommunity to eventually have its own built-in video player, one that also handles video privacy seamlessly inside the platform.
Ramsis Kasis If you were already using Presto + Bunny, I’d definitely go for embedding bunny (we had +500 videos on presto + bunny. And now using just bunny. And, it goes faster than with presto, with same features). The bunny player has improved a lot this last years.
In the end, Presto is not adding much “security” but the token authorization of bunny + brandingz
This, appears to be also de approach of the “fluent player” I mentioned: like with Presto, you can expect marketing features. But not additional security ones.
The only difference, atm, is you are not able to add extra watermarks on bunny player. But, I am sure it’s a matter of time.
If you don’t care to wait, I’m sure the team could be launching their player. But with the fluent cart launch coming, I do not think that could come before the year ends… not sure though😅
Jorge de los Reyes Oh my goodness, I had no idea there were other options. Vimeo increased their prices, reduced their limits and removed some of the features for the first tier pricing and I was pretty upset about that since my community is still growing. It's really expensive to store and embed my videos and it's pretty minimally used as of right now. I would love for the Fluent team to release their own way to host and embed videos <3 That would be another step to making their platform truly all in one <3 Shahjahan Jewel 🙏
Parm Saggu You should definitely check out Bunny (referral).
I’ve been using it for years across multiple projects. Because it’s pay-per-use, it ends up being extremely cost-effective.
What I like most is how all their features work seamlessly together:
- Buckets → host and deliver your files.
- CDN → accelerate performance worldwide.
- Optimizer → compress and transform files/images on the fly.
It honestly feels like a no-brainer to have all this DRM and hosting in the same place 😄.
The setup is frictionless. You just preload a digital wallet, and that’s it - no surprise invoices like Vimeo. And the native player is pretty decent.
Extra perk: Fluent Community already integrates directly with Bunny’s CDN. For video, we’re still embedding with HTML (works fine), but probably we will get direct integration too.
I'd suggest, to open a trial, play with it for an hour, and you’ll see why it’s a keeper! 😄
All our clients that come from Vimeo love it!
Jorge de los Reyes If fluent is coming out with a player I might wait to hop into that directly... It'll be a bit of work to move all my files and re-embed them...
Parm Saggu that’s probably coming (and yes, it will integrate with Bunny 🙈 - that’s why I keep mentioning it).
Just to clarify: it won’t be a hosting service, only a player. You’ll still need somewhere to host your videos 😅.
Here’s how it works: you host with Bunny (or any provider you like) - which saves you all the heavy lifting later. When Fluent Player is ready, you’ll just plug it in.
Now, you’re right on one thing: these tools (players) usually work by pulling from a hosting service (e.g. Bunny) and then embedding via shortcodes (e.g. Fluent Player). So yes - if you’re currently using plain HTML (like most of us with Bunny in the community), you’ll need to swap those embeds for shortcodes if you decide to move to the player later.
That’s extra work.
Speaking from experience (we used Presto Player before, which is quite similar to what Fluent build - though Fluent tends to move faster and with more creativity :)): the features were cool (CTAs in lessons, branding overlays, etc.), but eventually it became a pain to remove all those shortcodes when we went back to just using Bunny’s native player. We had on Presto +500 video resources...
The one thing I see as a real game-changer in Fluent Player is the possibility of multilingual support (something Bunny also offers, to upload audio files for different languages). That alone might be worth the switch later - even if it means re-embedding everything 😅.
Well, we’ll have to wait… but I’ve got the feeling it’s coming sooner than later. Fluent Sites are already using it and it looks rock-solid, and if there’s one thing we know: Fluent never disappoints!
So either path you take - it’s going to be top! 🙂🚀
Jorge de los Reyes Just throwing in my hand to say I use Presto and/or Bunny direct. I still like being able to manage the videos through the website and when it comes to my clients doing things, Presto is just easier.
Wendy Shoef Yay! It’s super handy! In our experience, it just wasn’t worth it for courses, only for funnels, marketing, and so on. Mainly because of the extra load: additional tables, extra scripts, potential bugs or incompatibilities (at the end of the day, it’s still a plugin).
The team is fantastic and the solution itself is great - simply, in the long run, we noticed that people didn’t use the statistics side as much as the marketing features.
On top of that, it doesn’t allow VAST ads like Bunny natively does, and you’re adding an extra layer if you want multilingual support -since you have to load subtitles in Presto instead of just adding them in Bunny with AI in one click. Same with audio files in other languages.
Presto is still great, but it feels a bit behind. They’ve been launching features for years that remain half-done (like their playlist function).
Fluent Player, on the other hand, seems to have understood this and already includes audio features.
Still, it’s another extra layer… while in Bunny everything is faster (which for business is a must) and their player keeps improving. The only thing is you don’t yet have the CTA or ad-hoc branding options.
So, yep! Great tools. But probably more marketing oriented than for courses (at least if you have tens or hundreds…).
Jorge de los Reyes Maybe I'm not so versed on this but Fluent community already has a built in place to embed videos... in the left side menu for lessons. This doesn't work for videos hosted on Bunny? What does having an extra player add?
Parm Saggu yep! That’s exactly where all of us are embedding bunny videos.
You can use HMTL.
(When you have direct integration, you can use the direct URL (this last one, not advisable for private content)).
Currently FC has HTML (just okey).
Adding a player (what ever). Means you need, first, integration: in this case for shortcodes. However, you have workarounds when there’s no interaction like now.
A player plugin means, you can add “extras” to the experience.
Like, translations, captions, CTA, sliders, buttons, ads, what ever you want :)
Depending on the player, more or less features.
So, bunny, has his own.
Fluent is developing one.
Presto, is one very well known…
And so on :)
Hope this helps 😄
Jorge de los Reyes it absolutely does. I'm guessing the html you use is the embed code shared by bunny for each video?
If it's not too much to ask, can you share what the final video looks like on a lesson page?
I've actually been embedded Fluent Forms via html below my lesson content and all my global elementor popups come along with the form, I'm not too sure why. The Fluent team threw some code into my forms to stop that behaviour but that code seemed to stop the popups from showing up on my entire website. It was quite a strange experience.
Parm Saggu sure. The bunny player is pretty customizable. So take into account we want things just simple. But you can enable more controls if you want.
It also has “continue where you left”. So, we do not miss much from a player.
Jorge de los Reyes This is perfect thank you, definitely looking into this before my Vimeo subscription renews!
Parm Saggu you won’t regret it :)
I’ll suggest creating the account first with the trial -ref - (and maybe let it end until you migrate, but left the settings done). This is, start toying with it, and not just before a migration.
Why?
Definitely, this does not work like Vimeo.
You will need to create the settings first, and then, all the videos under that “bucket”, will have the same settings (you can edit later).
But there are some settings that you can not edit after, like some configs related to quality (eg.: you can choose to keep original file or just versions of 1080, 720, etc). So you should know what you want to use first.
Everything is super simple, and you have help messages on almost every tab of the configuration. But you may want to “”learn” and get used to it.
Do some testing, choose the kind of protection you want, etc.
It’s not like it’s going to take much. Probably no more than 30’. But I’ll suggest creating your settings asap, and more precisely:
- A private bucket (library), with Securization (eg.: for courses)
- A public bucket (library), with no security (eg.: for ads).
Hope it helps! 😄
—-
Also, in the end, anything you create there can be accessed later by API. So, any player you end using (eg.: fluent player), will be easily connected to your library.
Jorge de los Reyes Definitely useful, saving this comment and making a note to come back to this! Thank you!
I'm using Adilo and Gumlet. Bunny is also great.
Sella Yoffe thanks
does Gumlet work with FC courses?
@ramsiskasis. haven't tried. But you can embed HTML for each video.
Sella Yoffe I'm using Bunny streaming and it works fine. It's just a bit tedious to configure each video to play.
William Beem , I can relate to that, but I think it's necessary to keep it flexible. Maybe it can be done via Bunny API in the future.
William Beem i agree
The problem with most players is that they are either very expensive if you want protection from unauthorized content download (Vimeo) or they allow the users to download your content, which is bad for online courses creators.
I use S3MediaVault (https://s3mediavault.com/), which is great because it's based on very cheap Amazon S3 hosting, and it also protects PDF as well as audio and video, not only by protecting the file but also by using Cloudfront, which makes it almost impossible to download content (as the video file is broken into dozens/hundreds of segments).
S3Mediavault works fine with FluentCommunity if you only use the "simple" Amazon S3 delivery, which isn't the best protection (downloaders can still download the file easily). Unfortunately, it doesn't support videos using the higher Cloudfront protection (and faster delivery worldwide, as it's a CDN).
Rather that spending time developing their own player, it would be great if FluentCommunity could support a fully secure video plugin such as S3Mediavault. I'm not affiliated but I haven't found a better solution for delivering content fast, protecting it, and at a very reasonable cost (especially if you choose the lifetime option, which means you only have the very low Amazon S3 hosting costs).
Screenplay Unlimited Of course, there’s no such thing as absolute protection for videos — and that’s not what content creators are asking for. The key is simply to avoid making downloads as easy as clicking a Download button.
Platforms like bunny.net already offer solid protection and fast delivery. What we really need is a built-in video player inside FluentCommunity that’s simple to use, protects content as much as possible, and saves us from embedding codes manually every time.
Ramsis Kasis It depends on what your content is, but that's another discussion. Sure, if Fluent was able to deliver a secure player that protects content, it would be better than nothing, but why spend hours of development re-inventing the wheel? Bunny is more expensive and less secure than Amazon S3 / Cloudfront.
Personally, I'd rather have Fluent deliver WP plugins that keep bringing new functionality (or improve over existing ones) than try to do something that's out of their domain of expertise and deliver something that is not as good as what other plugins already do. I'd much rather get a webinar plugin from Fluent for example (with full integration with all the Fluent plugins, especially FluentForms and FluentCRM) than a native video player when great options already exist.
Anyway, if Fluent delivers a native player that works with a cheap, secure video hosting provider and provides decent security, I won't complain, I just don't understand why they can't work on providing full compatibility with existing solutions such as S3MediaVault, which would only take a fraction of the time to develop.
For now, we'll have to keep using Learndash and S3MediaVault for our courses.
Screenplay Unlimited "Bunny is more expensive and less secure than Amazon S3 / Cloudfront."
I've honestly found it to be the other way around, which was why I stopped using AWS at least 5 years ago.
Dominic Osborne Thanks, I’ll look into it again then. I haven’t done a comparison since I left Vimeo quite a few years ago.
Presto is built on top of open source libraries. I use, and like it for a few things, but I'd rather see Fluent Community build their own integration with those same libraries.
Ryan Waterbury interesting, I didn’t know open source libraries existed for those. That would definitely make it more doable for Fluent to come up with their own secure video players. Online course makers need content protection, for both video and PDF (at a minimum). Both download protection and watermarking.
Screenplay Unlimited I use it on a custom LMS site to mark video lessons complete with a hook I had to dig around on GitHub to find. I'll see if I can find the link again. It's been awhile!
Thanks everyone for this thread, I re-read it and it looks like Bunny has made quite a bit of progress, eventhough its player doesn't allow watermarking yet.
It sounds like Fluent might be closer than I thought to release their own player, which if it supports Bunny (or S3) would be great if it offers video protection (ideally with watermarking), and is also compatible with LazyCoders' mobile app.
I don't have a plan to migrate from Learndash until next year year, but if we had FluentCart+a good secure video player+minimal integration with Gamipress (especially leaderboards and partial payments), we could consider moving over from Learndash to FluentCommunity at some point in 2026, starting with a free course that doesn't include any gamification, just as a proof of concept.
However, one thing we really need is cohort onboarding (registering a group of users to the same course / space when importing a CSV). We're currently using Uncanny Toolkit Pro import feature to import all users and assign them to a course / group, with a time-limited access to a course. I have no idea who we could do this with FluentCommunities. Maybe with FluentCRM if it supports CSV import and a corresponding automation? I'll have to dig into this.
Screenplay Unlimited Hello!
Sure, you can bulk import users so easily using FCRM.
You can go directly (add to Space / Course); or you can use Access Management feature, with works syncing tags (any user with the tag, get access).
Pretty straightforward!
Hope it helps!
We migrated from Apprentice. Also from Learndash on the time.
You may miss some things (specially if you come from the Pro): like the add on of notes for students, the customization of course overview pages (still not there) or more importantly, the Reporting. Currently, courses, do not have a reporting system. It will come, sure. But at least now, it's not there 🙈
That being said, after experiencing the upgrade on performance, this is a gem. You're users will definitely love it. We are getting really nice feedback :)
Jorge de los Reyes Thanks, but what I meant was importing a list of new or existing WP users listed in a CSV file directly into wordpress, new users created, all users given access to a specific group/course. This is how we often need to bulk import users for a specific live online event based on one of our courses. I'll contact you by PM if you don't mind as I don't want to take this thread off track.