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JW Player

JW Player

Overview

What is JW Player?

JW Player (or JWP) is a video platform boasting 40,000 broadcasters, publishers, and other video-driven brands whose business relies on video as users. It provides these companies with a way to accelerate and scale their video strategy and is a…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

JW Player is a versatile video hosting platform that caters to a wide range of users and their specific needs. With its user-friendly …
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Pricing

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What is JW Player?

JW Player (or JWP) is a video platform boasting 40,000 broadcasters, publishers, and other video-driven brands whose business relies on video as users. It provides these companies with a way to accelerate and scale their video strategy and is a video platform that can be used to stream video,…

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  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Product Demos

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Product Details

What is JW Player?

JW Player (or JWP) is a video platform boasting 40,000 broadcasters, publishers, and other video-driven brands whose business relies on video as users. JWP provides these companies with a way to accelerate and scale their video strategy and is a video platform that can be used to stream video, engage audiences on any screen, and monetize content.

Founded in 2004, the vendor states JW Player customers generate 8 billion video impressions/month and 5 billion minutes of video watched/month. JW Player is headquartered in New York, New York with offices in London, England, and Eindhoven, Netherlands.


JW Player Features

Video Marketing Features

  • Supported: Audience for distribution
  • Supported: Support for advertisements
  • Supported: Video SEO
  • Supported: Integration to Marketing Automation

JW Player Video

There are so many streaming websites which uses JW Player. These videos can't be downloaded by Internet Download Manager (IDM) . This tutorial can help you to download these videos.

JW Player Competitors

JW Player Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
Supported CountriesNorth America, APAC, EMEA

Frequently Asked Questions

JW Player (or JWP) is a video platform boasting 40,000 broadcasters, publishers, and other video-driven brands whose business relies on video as users. It provides these companies with a way to accelerate and scale their video strategy and is a video platform that can be used to stream video, engage audiences on any screen, and monetize content.

Brightcove, THEOplayer, and Muvi Player are common alternatives for JW Player.

Reviewers rate Video quality / Bandwidth controls and Mobile compatibility and Video upload & format support highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of JW Player are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(15)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

JW Player is a versatile video hosting platform that caters to a wide range of users and their specific needs. With its user-friendly interface and efficient performance, the platform has gained positive reviews from users who appreciate its various use cases.

One of the key applications of JW Player is in content creation and sharing. Users have found it easy and reliable to upload videos, analyze audience engagement, and embed videos on web pages. The fast upload speeds make it efficient for including videos in articles, enhancing the overall website experience for visitors. Additionally, JW Player allows for the display of a variety of content on websites, making it flexible and reliable for different needs.

Another notable use case of JW Player is in education and training. It is commonly used for hosting and streaming videos for educational purposes, allowing instructors to deliver instructional content effectively. While some users have reported buffering and loading issues, overall, JW Player has proven to be a suitable solution for hosting and analyzing educational videos.

Furthermore, JW Player finds application in industries such as healthcare and media. In healthcare settings, it enhances the clinical experience by displaying patient-related experience videos and review videos. For media organizations like newspaper newsrooms and TV stations, JW Player provides an affordable and reliable solution for video hosting.

Although there may be some limitations or imperfections, JW Player serves as a reliable player for watching videos and can be a suitable solution for hosting videos on websites. Its customizable settings make it a preferred software for watching movies, music videos, and listening to music. Overall, users appreciate the convenience, functionality, and reliability that JW Player offers in managing and hosting various types of video content.

Simple and Easy to Use: Many users have found JW Player to be simple, easy to use, and integrative with SSO. This positive sentiment was expressed by multiple reviewers who appreciated the user-friendly nature of the platform.

Quick Upload Time: The quick upload time for videos is another frequently mentioned pro. Several users have praised JW Player for its ability to quickly upload videos in under 30 seconds, saving them valuable time and improving efficiency.

High Quality Videos and Elegant Interface: Users have also been impressed with the high quality of videos broadcasted by JW Player as well as its eloquent interface. This aspect has been highlighted by a number of reviewers who appreciate the visually appealing experience provided by the platform.

Inconvenient login process: Some users have found the requirement to be emailed a unique code upon logging in via SSO to be a minor inconvenience. However, they still appreciate the added security it provides.

Confusing interface for moving assets: Several reviewers have mentioned that they initially found it challenging to figure out how to move assets within the platform. However, with some exploration and practice, they were able to navigate it more easily.

Lack of flexibility and functionality: A number of users have expressed their desire for more flexibility and advanced features in the software. They suggested updating and adding more functionalities to make the video hosting platform more versatile and meet their specific needs.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-4 of 4)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use JWPlayer to host both our video and podcasts for our organization. It is managed by the digital products department. The end results (video or podcast) is being utilized by all departments within our organization. It allows us to be highly involved in producing video and podcasts to build our brands and audience engagements.
  • Delivers the video/podcast in the best manner it can - streaming cleanly.
  • It automatically converts the video in various delivery formats for different devices.
  • Definitely missing the ability (in and easy way) to have clickable links in the video.
  • Analytics is a little cumbersome and not very user-friendly.
I think they do a great job of converting a video into various formats (file/size) that will accommodate a variety of devices. From computer to phone to tablet, it streams really nice with little or no latency. I would really, really like to see an easy way to add clickable text and links to the video (in a similar fashion to how YouTube does it).
Video Marketing (6)
N/A
N/A
Lead generation
N/A
N/A
Video personalization
N/A
N/A
eCommerce
N/A
N/A
Support for advertisements
N/A
N/A
Video SEO
N/A
N/A
Integration to Marketing Automation
N/A
N/A
Video Platform Integrations (5)
N/A
N/A
Integration to Salesforce.com
N/A
N/A
Integration to Marketo
N/A
N/A
Integration to HubSpot
N/A
N/A
Integration to Eloqua
N/A
N/A
Integration to LMS
N/A
N/A
Video Security (5)
26%
2.6
Video access controls
N/A
N/A
User management
N/A
N/A
Video link sharing
70%
7.0
Internal video
N/A
N/A
External video
60%
6.0
Video Player (4)
70%
7.0
Player customization
20%
2.0
Embedded videos
60%
6.0
Video quality / Bandwidth controls
100%
10.0
Mobile compatibility
100%
10.0
Video Analytics (5)
6%
0.6
A/B testing
N/A
N/A
Streaming quality reports
N/A
N/A
Per viewer tracking
10%
1.0
Per video tracking
10%
1.0
Video analytics dashboard
10%
1.0
Video Hosting, Management & Storage (6)
38.333333333333336%
3.8
On-Demand video
60%
6.0
Live streaming
N/A
N/A
Impact of streaming on network
N/A
N/A
Video upload & format support
100%
10.0
Video library / File management
70%
7.0
Video portal
N/A
N/A
Video Engagement (3)
N/A
N/A
Audience polling
N/A
N/A
Audience Q&A / Live chat
N/A
N/A
Video comments
N/A
N/A
  • It serves our 4 brands well in delivery of both video and podcasts that we produce.
  • We feel it has presented us with an opportunity at a reasonable rate.
Support is reasonable. I from time to time have made suggestions on improvements that would be nice to see (like the ability to have a clickable link within the video - that is easy to create, without tons of coding) and it seems as though I never see it happen or get much response to "suggestions" to upgrade the software. The good news, other than a few things as I mentioned above, overall, I don't have many "technical issues" in the platform, which is a good thing. On occasion, I have seen some "issues" with the delivery of the video, but it has been pretty scarce. So it is dependable.
Jim Cairl | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
JW Player is our video player across our network of sites. JW Player is only being used as a platform to serve our editorial video content as well as some pre-roll. The problem it addressed was simple... we needed a video player for the website and they were able to provide those services with great tech, and competitive pricing.
  • Simple, intuitive User Interface.
  • It's incredibly snappy - almost no load time ever.
  • Time to render and transcode is also super fast.
  • Good service and sales support - the people who came in and pitched to us were knowledgable, flexible, and smart - that went a long way to getting our business.
  • I could use a little more info on some of the videos. an info panel with things like, for example, bitrate would be helpful.
  • Our previous video player had a publish to YouTube button - so that with one button it took care of a whole other channel. That would be nice to see.
  • I'll be honest, i don't really have a lot of points here. In my experience, it's a solid, all-around well built platform.
JW Player is a web based video player. It is best-in-class for that kind of application. If you need to host video content and need a video player on your website - this is definitely one company to investigate. For pretty much anything that is not video related, you should not use them.
Video Marketing (2)
85%
8.5
Support for advertisements
90%
9.0
Video SEO
80%
8.0
Video Platform Integrations (5)
N/A
N/A
Integration to Salesforce.com
N/A
N/A
Integration to Marketo
N/A
N/A
Integration to HubSpot
N/A
N/A
Integration to Eloqua
N/A
N/A
Integration to LMS
N/A
N/A
Video Security (5)
72%
7.2
Video access controls
90%
9.0
User management
90%
9.0
Video link sharing
80%
8.0
Internal video
N/A
N/A
External video
100%
10.0
Video Player (4)
95%
9.5
Player customization
80%
8.0
Embedded videos
100%
10.0
Video quality / Bandwidth controls
100%
10.0
Mobile compatibility
100%
10.0
Video Analytics (5)
16%
1.6
A/B testing
N/A
N/A
Streaming quality reports
N/A
N/A
Per viewer tracking
N/A
N/A
Per video tracking
N/A
N/A
Video analytics dashboard
80%
8.0
Video Hosting, Management & Storage (6)
60%
6.0
On-Demand video
90%
9.0
Live streaming
N/A
N/A
Impact of streaming on network
N/A
N/A
Video upload & format support
80%
8.0
Video library / File management
90%
9.0
Video portal
100%
10.0
Video Engagement (3)
N/A
N/A
Audience polling
N/A
N/A
Audience Q&A / Live chat
N/A
N/A
Video comments
N/A
N/A
  • We've seen a video stickiness. Users are watching more videos than they were previously
  • Our ad serving solution is smarter, and we have more flexibility about where to slot in pre-roll between videos.
  • Also ad serving related, we have more transcoded sizes to choose from and better overall video quality than our previous provider
JW had more player options, a better/more intuitive user interface, was altogether faster both in rendering the uploaded videos and in time to load on the web page. The integration with OpenX for pre-roll was faster and easier than with Brightcove, and lastly, they offered a great price for service.
4
Editorial - creating uploading and broadcasting of content
Ad Ops - Pre and Mid roll advertising
IT - Player Management
Jim Manney | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
All of our video content is housed on JW Player. It is used by over 30 of our newspaper newsrooms and tv stations. We spent a lot of time looking for an affordable, reliable video hosting system and JW stood out in a crowded field.
  • Ease of use: We have several hundred people who use JW Player on a weekly basis and we needed to be able to train them quickly. JW Player is very intuitive and easy to understand.
  • Reliability: We rarely ever have any unscheduled downtime with JW Player.
  • Analytics: We wanted to be able to chart growth over a period of weeks and months and JW Analytivs give us a good view into how our video is being consumed. The realtime analytics are especially helpful.
  • I would like to be able to follow the analytics of a video series over the course of time. Currently, It's difficult to do that.
  • I would like to have multiple logins for a single account.
  • I don't
  • I don't think there is any revision history. After a video is posted we occasionally need to change a headline or description and the update doesn't show up.
JW Player has flexible plans that won't cost you a lot of money. If you are a startup, JW offers a variety of plans that will suit your specific needs and grow with you as your company grows. You do not need to be a video expert to understand how to upload a video, which allows nearly anyone in the office to do it.
Video Marketing (2)
100%
10.0
Support for advertisements
100%
10.0
Video SEO
100%
10.0
Video Platform Integrations (5)
N/A
N/A
Integration to Salesforce.com
N/A
N/A
Integration to Marketo
N/A
N/A
Integration to HubSpot
N/A
N/A
Integration to Eloqua
N/A
N/A
Integration to LMS
N/A
N/A
Video Security (5)
16%
1.6
Video access controls
N/A
N/A
User management
N/A
N/A
Video link sharing
80%
8.0
Internal video
N/A
N/A
External video
N/A
N/A
Video Player (4)
100%
10.0
Player customization
100%
10.0
Embedded videos
100%
10.0
Video quality / Bandwidth controls
100%
10.0
Mobile compatibility
100%
10.0
Video Analytics (5)
38%
3.8
A/B testing
N/A
N/A
Streaming quality reports
N/A
N/A
Per viewer tracking
N/A
N/A
Per video tracking
90%
9.0
Video analytics dashboard
100%
10.0
Video Hosting, Management & Storage (6)
66.66666666666667%
6.7
On-Demand video
100%
10.0
Live streaming
100%
10.0
Impact of streaming on network
N/A
N/A
Video upload & format support
100%
10.0
Video library / File management
100%
10.0
Video portal
N/A
N/A
Video Engagement (3)
N/A
N/A
Audience polling
N/A
N/A
Audience Q&A / Live chat
N/A
N/A
Video comments
N/A
N/A
  • JW Player has was less expensive (without sacrificing quality) than our previous video platform so the ROI was instant.
  • We were easily able to add a variety of video advertising options including pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll.
  • The quality and consistancy of the look of the video has enabled us to grow our video views by well over 100% since starting with JW.
  • Bright Cove
JW Player is the most widely used internet video player out there, so it was an easy choice for us to trust JW with our video content and delivery. What impressed me most was their hunger to improve and satisfy our business needs. Many of their competitors weren't nearly as interested in our bottom line as they were in their own.
Ross R. Mason | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our firm, Motion Media Solutions is a video production company producing business videos for online use by business professionals, corporations and nonprofit organizations. We deliver a majority of our client videos via a video website we host at VideoproFile.net. In doing so, we not only provide the JW Player embed code our clients may use to put the video on their own websites, but we optimize video pages to help establish video SEO for them, linking the page to their social media profiles online, as well as to syndicated locations of their video on sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, Dailymotion, SlideShare and others.
  • Responsive HTML5
  • Provides share functionality built into the player
  • Platform use enables playlist functionality and playlist players which can be customized or versioned for specific uses
  • Videos uploaded to the JW Platform automatically provide multiple image frame options for selecting video thumbnail
  • Technical support is extremely slow to respond to inquiries and often does no more than point to existing documentation on its knowledgevbase, which is often inadequate, and slows down proper resolution to issues.
  • No access to cases established for customer record of all correspondence with support.
  • JW Platform Playlist RSS feed is not currently compatible with iTunes video podcast submission parameters which is a real disconnect.
It's very well suited for any firm desiring to maintain a high-quality, fully functional online video player that is automatically mobile compliant and contains built-in sharing functionality for email, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest among others.

As previously mentioned, the JW Platform playlist RSS feed NOT being compatible with iTunes video podcasting submission parameters is a huge disappointment as that was originally one of the reasons we chose to use the platform.
  • Positive in the sense that we have been able to integrate its use and their platform for our VideoproFile.net client videos hosting and distribution, with far greater functionality and features than just using the stand-alone player as a plugin for the site.
  • There have been some negative impacts such as the playlist RSS feed iTunes incompatibility as already mentioned.
  • Another negative impact on some videos with the JW Platform is its encoding qualities seem to be lesser than popular video sharing sites such as Vimeo, YouTube and Dailymotion; this is only evident on certain videos, however serious enough that the only alternative is to encode our own, load to our own CDN, then load via URL to the JW Platform, then uploading a separate image for its thumbnail. This is a work-around, but seems completely unnecessary given that since most clients are inclined to just use the FREE video sharing sites anyway, we cannot afford to see some videos appear to display blurry images at places within the videos encoded and hosted on JW Platform. This also places a greater burden on us to review every video hosted with JW Platform as a measure of QA...steps we'd prefer NOT to take if we could rely on its quality of encoding matching that of the most popular video sharing sites.
  • VideoJS, Flow Player and MediaElements
JW Player is competitive with VideoJS and MediaElements. Though we preferred VideoJS based on some features for its player attributes for years, we ultimately switched to JW Player due to its platform capabilities, functionality and recent investments the firm was making to significantly improve its overall offering.
Box, Dropbox for Business, Basecamp, Smartsheet
604
Since we distribute and host the client videos produced by Motion Media Solutions on VideoproFile.net, we use the JW Player and integration with JW Platform for streaming the videos and make its embed code available for clients to add to their own websites. This is also true of the playlist player functionalities as well.
1
General knowledge of basic HTML programming is required to maintain or troubleshoot the JW Player plugin use on our website(s). However, due to our use of the JW Platform, the only knowledge required for adding video content between the platform and our VideoproFile.net site is a series of basic steps which can easily be followed by any level of properly trained administrative support.
However, some recent shortfalls with regards to quality of encoding on certain videos requires that we monitor closely the quality of all videos uploaded to the platform and thus resort to loading to our own CDN account then adding its path for the JW Platform integration, a step we'd prefer NOT to take. However, in certain instances, JW Platform does not seem to execute the same level of encoding as the popular video sharing sites such as YouTube, Vimeo and Dailymotion. Therefore, in these instances, subjective assessment of quality and the workaround steps to resolve require a bit more process understanding, access to FTP software, access parameters, etc. in order to resolve.
  • Client Video distribution
  • Client Video hosting
  • Video streaming
  • Mobile video streaming
  • Integration with our HWDMediaShare module on Joomla.
  • Hopefully iTunes RSS feed parameters compatibility for the JW Platform playlists for video podcasting
Just made the decision to renew given demonstrated improvements being made to the platform to expand compatibility for its player use on devices such as Apple TV, as well as improvements made recently to its JW Platform Dashboard.
Yes
VideoJS was used previously on VideoproFile.net. When JW Platform emerged, we had also previously used hosted platforms from zencoder, encoding.com, Brightcove, Wistia and others. We decided on JW Platform based on its features, especially its access to APIs needed to integrate with our platform using Hwdmediashare, and pricing.
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Prior Experience with the Product
  • Analyst Reports
Ultimately, JW Platform features were most important factors in our decision.
We do evaluate this decision annually, though migrating to alternative solutions is not an insignificant task. With our experience, I would certainly place a higher emphasis on service levels and attempt to gain some indication from the company whether steps are being taken to improve.
Similarly, it seems completely out of step with the market for playlist RSS feeds NOT to include a single data element which iTunes podcast registration requires (language) and would want to see this resolved before seriously considering our renewal.
  • Vendor implemented
No
Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled
  • Finding the right way to configure our platform so that its historical content could still be maintained on AWS, with a plan to migrate over time, while support all NEW content from JW Platform.
One of the primary features promoted by JW Platform is its SEO definition. However, there did not seem to be a way to integrate that data to our platform if selected thus only leaving the benefits of that data to be established on the individual video page hosted by JW Platform, which isn't useful in the end to the client value we are trying to deliver for our VideoproFile.net solution.
Slow responsiveness; staff seems overwhelmed OR does not seem to have SLAs established for performance and there is nothing online for customers to measure responsiveness to cases other than maintain their own tracking methods.
Yes
Some issues have been resolved satisfactorily; however several important issues were not, such as iTunes video podcasting RSS feed incompatibilities with JW Platform playlists and quality of encoding sub-par to that of popular video sharing sites such as YouTube, Vimeo and Dailymotion. As important however seems to be a tendency of support to not pay attention to the requests submitted but rather to quickly assume that issues submitted relate to articles already established in the online knowledgebase, thus mechanically responding with simple links to those articles and OFTEN this requires additional follow-up and reference back to the original request which would have made clear that the information in such articles WAS NOT sufficient for resolving the issue submitted.
It has been helpful that JW Platform accounts seem to have an account manager assigned and that person's contact and ongoing availability has been the ONLY way in which certain support cases submitted EVER get the proper attention and responsiveness. Sadly, in certain cases the issues were still not resolved promptly, nor to our satisfaction even with this manager's intervention.
  • Ability to upload video OR add using URL
  • Ability to select from multiple thumbnail images automatically generated from uploaded videos
  • Access to important defining attributes such as runtime
  • Ability to customize multiple player configurations and apply to individual videos
  • Playlist RSS feeds are incompatible with iTunes podcast registration parameters (no language data element)
Yes
JW Player performs flawlessly when viewing video from mobile.
Reliability and compatibility on a majority of platforms.
Would have received a 10 except recent versions of browsers such as Firefox are now defaulting against Flash components and thus prompting approval from users BEFORE loading which is a HUGE obstacle to an effective user experience thus creating concerns by end-users unnecessarily and risking that they will NOT accept the prompts, thus leaving unable to view video content hosted using the JW Player. Assurances by JW support suggest they will resolve this, so we'll see...
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