Cloudflare adds free Stream video minutes to Business and Pro plans

Starting December 1, 2022, Cloudflare Business and Pro customers will get a complimentary monthly allocation of Cloudflare Stream, the company's video hosting and delivery service. The bundled allowance includes storage for up to 100 minutes of video and delivery of up to 10,000 minutes of video content per month at no extra cost.

Customers whose needs exceed that free tier can upgrade to a paid Stream subscription directly from the Stream Dashboard.

Stream handles the full video lifecycle: storage, encoding, and playback. That makes it suitable for common website use cases such as hero or background videos, product demos, e-commerce footage, tutorials, and customer testimonials.

Upload without writing code

Uploading is a drag-and-drop operation from the Stream Dashboard. Once the file is uploaded, Stream stores the video and automatically generates multiple versions at different quality levels. No manual configuration is required. The Stream Player then picks the most appropriate version for each viewer based on their internet connection, using adaptive-bitrate encoding.

After upload, the video appears in the dashboard list, where you can preview it, adjust settings, or grab the embed code.

Embed with a built-in Player

The Embed tab provides a code snippet that you can copy and paste directly into your site. Before doing so, you can customize the playback experience through several optional properties:

  • Poster: The image shown before playback starts. By default it uses the video's first frame, but you can set a different point in time or link to an external image.
  • Start Time: Begin playback at a specific point. For example, with a 10-minute instructional video, you can send a link that starts playback at the 8-minute mark so the viewer lands right where their question is addressed.
  • Default Text Track: Caption files can be uploaded in multiple languages, with captions off by default. You can select a default language to have captions render automatically whenever the video plays.
  • Primary Color: Define a brand color that applies to player elements such as the play button and seek bar.

Beyond the basics

The bundled Stream allotment gives Business and Pro customers an alternative to embedding videos from free consumer hosting platforms, which often force viewers to sit through ads and expose them to tracking. Using Stream keeps the playback experience in line with your brand, and does so without imposing third-party intrusion on your visitors.

Additional Stream capabilities not covered in this announcement include dynamic thumbnail generation, multi-language captions, live streaming, and analytics. Complete documentation for all available features is provided in the Cloudflare Stream Docs.