Uploading images, videos and audio are all possible within WordPress. These items make your website much better than not using them. However, adding videos to your website can take up a large amount of space. There is a way to go about doing it without using up all your space and slowing down your load times.

You should NEVER upload videos directly to your WordPress website for many reasons. The most common reason is the space they take up, though. Here's what you need to know about using and uploading videos.

<h2>The Difference Between Embedding and Uploading Videos</h2>

Understanding the difference between embedding a video and uploading it will answer the title question of this post for most WordPress users. When you upload a video within your WordPress dashboard, it takes up space on your server. If you plan to use multiple videos, you could take up way too much space, which could slow down your site load times.

Instead of uploading a video to your own server, you can upload it to a video hosting site, such as YouTube. Once uploaded, you will be able to use a link from the video to embed it within a post or page. This means, you can use the video without affecting your server at all.

<h2>What Type of Hosting do You Need if You Choose to Upload Videos?</h2>

In some situations, embedding videos won't give you the benefits you need. When you need to upload videos to WordPress, using shared web hosting won't cut it. 

You will need to upgrade to at least VPS hosting, but most likely, you will need a dedicated hosting package. This will give you plenty of space to host your own videos without slowing down your load times. 

Since videos take up bandwidth, you may want to use a VPS or dedicated hosting package with a large amount of bandwidth. Monitor this closely and upgrade as necessary.

If you plan to host multiple video websites for other users or just for yourself, you might as well start with a large dedicated server package. When you decide that hosting your own videos is a necessity, you will need plenty of resources. Each video will cost you bandwidth and disk space, which means you need to look at the overall potential of your project to figure out how large a server you will need.

<h2>Benefits of Embedding Videos</h2>

When you decide to upload videos to YouTube or another video hosting site, you gain many benefits compared to uploading the video to your own server. YouTube will process the video and create a better quality video for the internet. This makes it possible for viewers to watch the video in HD or in lower resolutions. 

Along with the better quality video, you gain another outlet for your video to bring you traffic. You can link back to your website within the description of the video on YouTube. This provides both traffic and search engine optimization benefits.

Alexa rankings have YouTube as the second most used search engine on the internet and the third most visited website. Why wouldn't you want your video to be found on YouTube? This makes it very easy to bring in more viewers and they can easily share your videos across social media platforms.

When you use YouTube or another video hosting site, you also gain an easier video to share. People love to share videos across their social media profiles and it's far easier to do this from YouTube or another video site. The average internet user may not know how to share a video from your website, but YouTube makes this very easy for them. Most users are very familiar with how to do this from YouTube.

Finally, the fact that you won't be using your own space for the video will keep your load times faster. This will benefit you in many ways including SEO and a better visitor experience.

In most situations, it's a good idea to upload you videos to a third-party and embed them into your posts and pages. However, if you have plenty of hosting space, you may want to host your own videos on your server.

