A live stream is a great way to communicate with your audience. To achieve this on your WP site, you need a WordPress plugin for live streaming. Check our list of the best WordPress plugins for live streaming here.
Best live stream plugins for WordPress
We picked both free and premium solutions in the search of live stream plugins for WordPress. You’ll find both audio and video live stream plugins for WordPress here. Explore the list and choose the best one for your needs.
bzPlayer Pro
bzPlayer Pro is an HTML5 live streaming WordPress player plugin. The plugin offers a responsive design and great functionalities. bzPlayer Pro is a premium solution to the live stream plugins for WordPress, which costs $21 on CodeCanyon.
You can use shortcodes to insert videos on your WordPress website. You can live stream or decide to playback videos of many formats such as mp4, webm, mkv, hls, mpeg-dash, etc. (thanks to its good player support). You can live stream audios of mp3 and ogg format.
Live Streaming from Youtube Video, YouTube Live, and Google Drive is possible too. If you’ve been looking for a WordPress plugin for live streaming on YouTube, this one is a good choice. It can be a good party service offering!
bzPlayer Pro has advertising features to monetize live streams broadcasted on your WordPress website. Social sharing is an easy option with bzPlayer Pro. The plugin is Gutenberg compatible. It lets you put your own logo image on the video player as well.
WpStream
With the focus on live streaming, video-on-demand, and pay-per-view system, WpStream is a strong contender in this list of best live stream plugins for WordPress. The plugin offers an affordable and seamless live streaming experience.
You can live stream via any app with RTMP capability using the WpStream plugin. The plugin can work with unlimited viewers on a live stream. You can easily drop the player anywhere on the website using WordPress shortcodes.
Content live broadcasted via the plugin is fully encrypted so you don’t have to worry about privacy. Using the same WpStream account for multiple WordPress websites is possible as well. The plugin works just fine with any WordPress themes out there.
Embed Plus for YouTube
Embed Plus for YouTube is actually an embedding plugin that works for all YouTube content. For instance, you can embed YouTube videos, playlists, and even live streams.
The plugin comes with a huge number of features. It supports both WordPress classic editor and Gutenberg. Embed Plus for YouTube is compatible with popular page builders like Elementor, Beaver Builder, SiteOrigin, and Visual Composer.
Embed Plus for YouTube offers improved privacy and GDPR compliance options such as YouTube no cookie, YouTube API restrictions, and last but not the least, a customizable GDPR consent message. All the attributes that come with the plugin are customizable. There is a pro version too if you want to take things further.
WebinarPress
WebinarPress is one of the most feature-packed live stream plugins for WordPress. You can host live and automated webinars using WebinarPress directly on your website. The plugin offers a fully customizable attendee experience regardless of any technical skill.
WebinarPress offers a huge list of features. Live streaming can be broadcasted via YouTube, Vimeo, etc. You can customize every single page of the webinar. You can use shortcodes to place registration and login form anywhere using shortcodes.
As said before, you can use YouTube’s live streaming as your video host or you can use any video from YouTube, Vimeo, or hosted on your own server. You can let the attendees ask questions and answer them during the webinar. Answering questions can be done both in your video or with question and answer features.
You can collect attendees’ names and emails to use them later on any purpose. You can send email reminders so that no attendees miss your webinar. Optional replays are there for attendees who might have missed the full event.
There is a pro version available extending the functionalities of the plugin. The pro version offers rich features such as automated recorded webinars, paid webinars, integration with many platforms, etc.
Modern Video Player for WordPress
Modern Video Player for WordPress is a powerful audio & video player for WordPress which supports embedding any kind of embeddable media such as HTML5 video formats, YouTube videos, playlists, live streams, Vimeo videos, channels, mpeg-dash live streams, audio files, image files, etc. Modern Audio Player for WordPress supports embedding for special format media like 360° virtual reality videos and images.
Setting up different video quality for both desktop and mobile browsers is possible too. You can display subtitles in multiple languages, control playback speed and set audio languages for live streaming. Posting password protected videos is possible too.
You can monetize your video content with the help of Google Adsense. You can show video previews on thumbnails like YouTube. There are a lot of playback controls included in the web player. Modern Video Player for WordPress costs $49 on CodeCanyon.
Wp YouTube Live
This particular plugin named Wp YouTube Live works around YouTube live videos only. You can display current YouTube live video from a specified channel via shortcodes. Using the plugin, you can display any public live video on your website.
The plugin shows the channel’s recent videos if there are no live videos ongoing. You can enable auto-refresh to automatically check for a live video every 30 seconds. The plugin works via many shortcodes that are instructed well with the plugin’s manual.
Native Web Radio Player
Native Web Radio Player claims to be the first browser based native HTML5 live stream player radio. The plugin can livestream MPEG-Audio and AAC-Audio. It is written in JavaScript compatible with iOS, Android. The plugin is compatible with all browsers.
The plugin features both small & big layouts for user interface. The plugin also features 7 audio visualizer effects to make the web player look interesting and keeps it engaging. The Native Web Radio Player costs $29 on CodeCanyon.
Kast
Kast is a HTML5 radio player for WordPress. The plugin lets you stream live radio station to your web visitors regardless of their device. The Kast plugin can play any SHOUTcast station. The plugin also supports multiple streams from a single server.
The plugin can playback multiple audio formats such as mp3, ogg, aac and aac+. Please note that this plugin works with SHOUTcast servers only. The plugin’s sticky web player doesn’t increase any server load. You can place Kast Shortcode API anywhere in any page or post. You can pop-up player too as an audio player. You can customize every aspect of the plugin. The Kast plugin costs $189 on CodeCanyon.
Arena.IM
Live blogging has been made easier with Arena.IM. Content generation and distribution can be automated using Arena.IM. You can leverage social media to cover sports, breaking news, or any event live. You can use content from both your team and generated from social media.
User engagement can be boosted by providing users relevant content based on their activities spent on the website. You can connect Google Adsense to increase revenue. Integration with social media platforms like Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc works just fine with the Arena.IM plugin.
You can use interactive polls to keep the audience engaged and entertained at the same time. The plugin sends sound alerts to your audience to let users know about your new content. The plugin features reactions, sharing options, and threaded comments on each post. The plugin is mobile-optimized as well.
From this list of the best live stream plugins of WordPress, which plugin sounds the most promising to you? Let us know in the comments!
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