Remember VideoPress? If you answered no, I don’t blame you. It’s a video hosting service that Automattic launched back in 2009. If you’ve ever watched a video on WordPress.tv, then you’ve interacted with the VideoPress player. According to their announcement, VideoPress has undergone a facelift.
It’s now fully integrated with the post editor and supports drag-and-drop options. Users can customize the player’s colors to match the design of their site. There’s also support for private video options which opens up the possibilities of offering exclusive content. Multiple users can access an account to make collaboration easier and because it’s a paid service, there are no intrusive ads or branding.
VideoPress is included in the Premium, Business and eCommerce plans on WordPress.com. But if you run a self-hosted site, you may have noticed this bit of text at the end of their announcement, “now available as a standalone product.” There has been some confusion as to what that means.
In this instance, the marketing team defines a standalone product as, “you no longer have to purchase the larger Jetpack bundles (i.e. the old Premium Plan, or the current Jetpack Complete plan) to access a feature. You can simply pay for the single feature you would like.”
So, you still have to use Jetpack to use VideoPress, but you can purchase a plan so that VideoPress is the only feature you’re paying for. This move is a continuation of unbundling services and features from Jetpack and putting them in various bundles and packages you can purchase. They’re also at the point, if they’re not already, to offering features in Jetpack ala carte. So if you need a few specific features or services, you can buy those without having to get everything. It’s a smart idea and it’s about time considering how Jetpack was becoming a behemoth of a plugin with its all-or-nothing approach.