5 reasons to choose Cloudflare Stream and CF Power Tools instead of Youtube

Cloudflare offers end users a series of tools that help improve the performance of their websites and this article will look at 11 reasons why you should choose Cloudflare Stream and CF Power Tools instead of Youtube.

Cloudflare Stream is a live video platform that lets you stream live video through a simple-to-use web interface, provides internet security service and a free CDN. CF Power Tools is a new powerful plugin for WordPress that ensures maximum security for your content and clear analytics results. Together they can offer the perfect stream service for embed your video content into your site.

Here are the 5 reasons why do you need Cloudflare Stream and CF Power Tools for your videos and for your live streaming

Deliver a premium experience to a large, geographically diverse set of viewers:

CDNs can ensure a faster and efficient experience for your users by allocating bandwidth across multiple servers instead of overwhelmed one server with too many connections. It can be helpful for your site if you want to broadcast a great and big live event or, for your e-commerce if you want to launch a super offer for black Friday or another important opportunity not to be missed. The rule is: never stress a single server and risk crashing it but rather lighten it through the help of other network locations ready to support your server and the requests of your audience, giving it the contents they want in a fast and qualitative way.

Avoiding online piracy:

Through CF Power Tools wordpress plugin you can Prevent the download of your videos by signing their URLs and by whitelisting the only domains you want to stream from. Everything is done behind the scenes in a few clicks and is completely under your control. Choose to sign URL only for certain domains and videos, preventing users from downloading your contents without your permission

Manage all of your videos from WordPress:

Easily copy-paste your shortcodes from within the interface, and see all the video’s details in one single click. CF Power Tools plugin is fully compatible with WPBackery, Gutenberg, and any theme that works with shortcodes. Simply copy-paste the unique video shortcode generated by the plugin in any of your posts or pages to see the CF video player. Compatible with all CF parameters (loop, poster image, autoplay, mute, etc).

Receive useful analytics from your video directly in WordPress:

See video analytics directly from within WordPress: number of views, duration, average view time, average view %, etc. Search and filter them by date. Fetch the previous days, weeks, or months stats and export everything to CSV in one click.

If you want to know more about all the advantages take a look at this.

Let’s take a look at the main features of Cloudflare Stream and CF Power Tools and YouTube:

YOUTUBE

• Wide mix of users, in and out of the target, with the consequent risk of receiving comments and non-constructive feedback in line with your core business
• Offer free version or the premium subscription for $11.99/month that includes ad-free video, the option to continue playing videos or music “in the background, music and video downloads, and access to YouTube original movies and TV
• Without the premium subscription, you will not be stormed and constantly interrupted by advertisements
• Cannot replace a video with a new version and maintain analytics.
• You can organize and manage release times and private options

CLOUDFLARE STREAM AND CF POWER TOOLS

• Detailed and specific audience because it comes from your site
• For Cloudflare: You only pay $1 for 1’000 minutes streamed + $1 for 1’000 minutes stored. It included a professional, modern player, and videos are smoothly streamed across 200 cities in more than 100 countries. For CF Power Tools: choose between three different packages. If you don’t like CF Power Tools over the next 14 days, we will refund 100% of your purchase.No questions asked.
• Adaptive bitrate technology
• Access control with signed URLs
• NO advertisements
• See video analytics directly from within WordPress: number of views, duration, average view time, average view %.

Why understanding those differences will help you select the right option for you.

We have been using CF Power Tools for a while now and it has been a huge improvement over the basic video plugin service which we previously used.

Other plugins have a basic service where you can insert your videos from sites like youtube; but this comes at a cost of an average of 5 seconds of delay from the live stream from your camera to the viewers. This may not sound like a lot but there has been a lot of research conducted around how long it takes for a user to lose attention when it comes to video. This delay time can be a huge factor with a live streaming platform. With the addition of a Cloudflare Stream account and the subscription of CF Power Tools we have been able to remove that gap and have a smooth video without any delays.

So with a video platform that is changing at a fast pace and a lot of new platforms coming out it can be hard to make a decision on which is best for you.

We hope this blog post helps with your decision on which is best for you.