Pellio

Description

Pellio gives your videos a clean, fast player in your own colours, whether they live on YouTube, Vimeo, your Media Library or Pellio.

Free: the Pellio player

No account needed.

• YouTube, Vimeo and Media Library videos. Add a Pellio Video block and paste a link, or choose a video from the Media Library. Or use [pellio url="…"].
• Your branding. The play button, progress bar and controls are Pellio’s, in your colour and with your corner radius. For YouTube videos, suggestions at the end come only from the same channel.
• Private until play. Pages show a thumbnail stored on your own site. Visitors’ browsers don’t contact YouTube or Vimeo until they press play, and then only through youtube-nocookie.com and Vimeo’s “do not track” mode.
• Fast. No player code from YouTube or Vimeo loads with the page; the player script is small and deferred.
• Existing embeds too. Optionally play the YouTube and Vimeo embed blocks already in your posts in the Pellio player.
• Accessible controls. Keyboard shortcuts (space, arrows, M, F), playback speed, full screen, and picture-in-picture for Media Library videos.
• Google Analytics. Optionally send video_start, video_progress and video_complete to GA4 or Tag Manager.
• Consent managers. Works with the WP Consent API, Complianz, CookieYes, Real Cookie Banner and Borlabs Cookie: YouTube and Vimeo videos wait for marketing consent (or a click on “Play video” in the player’s notice).

With a Pellio account: host your videos on Pellio

Upload videos to Pellio instead of YouTube, straight from the block editor. Files go directly to Pellio’s storage, not through your server. Pellio-hosted videos add:

• No ads, no YouTube logo and no other channels’ videos.
• Private and domain-locked videos. Every embed is authorised by a short-lived token signed by your site, so videos can’t be hot-linked elsewhere.
• Email capture, calls to action and annotation cards in the player, with leads sent to Pellio.
• Chapters, captions and transcripts, plus VideoObject structured data (with key moments) and a video sitemap for search engines, with Yoast SEO and Rank Math support.
• Viewer analytics: who watched, how much, and from which page.
• Playlist and Lightbox blocks.
• LifterLMS. Require students to watch a percentage of a lesson video (verified in Pellio: skipping ahead doesn’t count) before “Mark Complete”, auto-complete lessons, lock seeking, resume where students left off, and see video progress in LifterLMS reports.
• Migration. Pellio → Migration finds Vimeo, Wistia, YouTube and Presto Player embeds across posts, pages and course fields, replaces the ones already in Pellio (with preview and undo), and moves Media Library videos to Pellio. YouTube and Vimeo embeds can also play in the Pellio player without moving them (Pellio → Settings → Player).
• Page builders and custom fields. An Elementor widget, a Bricks element (with dynamic data, e.g. a custom field holding a YouTube link), Beaver Builder and Divi modules, and an ACF “Pellio Video” field type that returns the player, the video id or its data. In the classic editor, “Add Pellio video” sits next to “Add Media”.
• Block patterns. Ready-made layouts in the inserter (Patterns → Pellio video): video with heading and text, video with a call to action, video beside a list, and a course lesson with “What you’ll learn”.
• Sticky player. Turn on “Sticky while playing” (block, builders, or [pellio id="…" sticky="1"]) and a playing Pellio video keeps playing in a small corner player when visitors scroll past it. Not on phones (narrower than 600px; filter pellio_sticky_min_width).
• Automations. When a logged-in user starts or completes a video (verified by Pellio for hosted videos), apply WP Fusion or FluentCRM tags, or run Uncanny Automator recipes. Developers get PHP actions (pellio_video_played, pellio_video_progress, pellio_video_completed, pellio_lead_captured) and DOM events (pellio:play, pellio:progress, pellio:complete, pellio:lead).
• Roles, not seats. Choose which WordPress roles may upload and manage videos. They use the site’s connection, so they don’t need their own Pellio accounts.
• Your library in WordPress. Pellio → Videos: upload, search and filter by folder, edit titles, descriptions, privacy, thumbnails, chapters and captions, replace a video’s file, and restore from Trash. Each video’s analytics (plays, retention, where it was watched, and which site members watched how much) are there too, with a dashboard widget for your top videos.
• Developers. pellio_video( $video ) template function, [pellio id="…"] shortcode, oEmbed (paste a Pellio link), and WP-CLI: wp pellio status|scan|migrate|rollback|offload.

Connect your account in Pellio → Settings. No API keys to copy.

External services

This plugin connects to the services below. Each is listed with what is sent, when, and where its terms and privacy policy are.

YouTube and Vimeo (the player; no account needed).

• Video details: when a post shows a YouTube or Vimeo link (a Pellio Video block, a shortcode, or a core YouTube/Vimeo embed the plugin plays), your server asks the provider’s oEmbed endpoint for the video’s title, size and thumbnail address (https://www.youtube.com/oembed or https://vimeo.com/api/oembed.json), with the video’s link. The answer is cached for a week (an hour after a failure), and the thumbnail is downloaded once from i.ytimg.com or i.vimeocdn.com into your uploads folder, so visitors’ browsers never fetch it from the provider.
• Playing: visitors’ browsers contact the provider only when they press play. The video then loads from youtube-nocookie.com or player.vimeo.com, which receive the visitor’s IP address and browser details like any embed.

YouTube: terms https://www.youtube.com/t/terms, privacy https://policies.google.com/privacy.
Vimeo: terms https://vimeo.com/terms, privacy https://vimeo.com/privacy.

Pellio (only after you connect a Pellio account). Pellio (https://pellio.io) is a video hosting service operated by ScaleMath Ltd. Your server sends nothing to Pellio until an administrator connects the site in Pellio → Settings. (A Pellio video someone embeds on a page anyway, by block, shortcode or link, loads in visitors’ browsers from play.pellio.io like any embedded video.) Pellio’s API is at api.pellio.io, its player at play.pellio.io, and video files are stored with Pellio’s storage provider at t3.storageapi.dev.

• Connecting (Pellio → Settings): you’re sent to pellio.io to sign in and approve the site. Your site’s address is sent to Pellio, which returns a site token and a signing secret, kept in your WordPress database. Afterwards your server asks Pellio for the workspace’s name and player address every 12 hours, and tells Pellio the site’s new address if it changes (so the new domain may play your videos).
• Showing a Pellio video: when a page shows a Pellio video, playlist or lightbox, your server fetches the video’s or playlist’s details (title, duration, privacy, poster) from the Pellio API, cached for an hour (playlists five minutes). Pasting a Pellio video link into the editor asks Pellio’s oEmbed endpoint (api.pellio.io/oembed) for the embed.
• Uploading and managing videos: the file’s name, size, type and the title are sent to the Pellio API to create the upload. The file itself goes from the browser (editor uploads) or from your server (Media Library offload) straight to Pellio’s storage. Editing a video’s title, description, privacy, poster, chapters or captions in Pellio → Videos sends those changes to Pellio.
• Playing Pellio videos: visitors’ browsers load the player from play.pellio.io and the video from Pellio’s storage. The player records anonymous viewing statistics (which parts were watched, the address of the page it’s embedded on, device and browser type). When a logged-in WordPress user watches, their WordPress user id and display name are included so you can see who watched and each student’s progress, and their email address if you turn on “Identify signed-in users by email” in Pellio → Settings (off by default). These details travel in the player’s address, signed by your site, so they also appear in that page’s source for the signed-in user, and such pages ask page caches not to store them. With “Viewer watermark” on, the player also shows their display name over the video. Viewers who fill in an email-capture form in the player send the details they enter to Pellio. No cookies are set.
• Search structured data: to describe each embedded Pellio video to search engines, your server fetches the video’s title, description, duration, chapters and (when it has captions) its transcript from the Pellio API, cached for 12 hours. Turn this off with the pellio_output_schema filter, or just the transcript with pellio_schema_transcript.
• Linked YouTube and Vimeo videos: the first time a YouTube or Vimeo video is shown in the Pellio player on a connected site, its id, title and thumbnail address are sent to Pellio to list it in your library. While it plays, the player sends Pellio which seconds were watched, the page address and, for logged-in users, their WordPress user id and display name, signed by your site.
• Courses (LifterLMS, LearnDash, Tutor LMS, Sensei LMS): to check whether a student has watched a lesson’s video, your server asks Pellio how much of it that student watched (by WordPress user id) and which version of the video is current. Lesson progress boxes and watch-evidence exports read the same data. When a student’s watch is verified, a lesson is completed or reopened, or they sign an attestation, your server sends Pellio the event for your tamper-evident learner log: the student’s WordPress user id and display name, the course and lesson ids and titles, your site’s address, the watched percentage and video version, and for attestations the statement, the method and the name they typed; their email address only if “Identify signed-in users by email” is on.
• Automations and member analytics: before firing an automation for a logged-in user, your server asks Pellio how much of the video that user watched (by WordPress user id). Pellio → Videos shows each video’s statistics from Pellio.
• Status checks (Pellio → Settings → Status, and Tools → Site Health): your server sends Pellio a test token signed with this site’s secret, and Pellio returns whether it’s valid, its clock time and your workspace’s allowed domains.
• AI agents (WordPress 6.9+ Abilities API): when a signed-in user, or an AI agent or automation acting as them, runs one of Pellio’s abilities, your server makes the matching Pellio API call: listing or searching videos and folders, fetching a video’s details or statistics, updating a video’s title, description or privacy, or importing a video from a link they give (that link is sent to Pellio, which downloads the file). Nothing is sent unless an ability is run.
• Migration: the platform ids of Vimeo and Wistia videos found on your site are sent to Pellio to find the matching imported videos.

Pellio terms of service: https://pellio.io/terms
Pellio privacy policy: https://pellio.io/privacy