My client says the video won't play
How to read the one playback error that is never your video, and the one-line note to their IT that fixes it permanently.
Nine times out of ten the video is fine. Your client's office network is blocking the address the video streams from, HoldFast has already detected it and rerouted, and the fix that makes it permanent is a one-line note to their IT team. Here is how to read the situation and exactly what to send.
What you're seeing
Your client opens the link and the page itself loads: your branding, the titles, the comments. But the player shows Trouble loading this video with a link to run a quick connection check. On your machine, the same link plays perfectly. The client is usually at a larger company, on a VPN, or on a managed office network.
Why it happens
The review page and the video arrive from two different addresses, and some corporate firewalls allow the first while blocking the second, or inspect the traffic in a way that breaks streaming. When that happens, HoldFast notices within seconds and quietly retries the video through the same address as the page, which gets most viewers on strict networks playing without them touching anything. The error your client is describing appears only when every route is blocked.
Fix it
The connection check runs on the viewer side and names the blocker in plain English.
- Ask your client to click Run a quick connection check under the error, or send them the playback check page directly. It tests each route from their side and names the blocker in plain English, with the exact request to pass to IT.
- For a ten-second confirmation, have them open the link on a phone using cellular data. If it plays there, the office network is the problem, not the video.
- Send their IT team this line: "Please allow
holdfast.videoandmedia.holdfast.video, and exempt them from HTTPS inspection." Expected result: once IT applies it, video plays for everyone at that company, permanently.
Still stuck
If the connection check passes and playback still fails, contact us from the help button in the bottom-right corner of HoldFast (the Support tab) and tell us the company and roughly when they tried. Failed plays report themselves to us automatically with the cause attached, so we can usually see exactly what happened on their side.
Questions
Does my client need to install anything to watch?
No. Playback runs in any modern browser with nothing to install. On very locked-down corporate machines where streaming media is disabled entirely, the player falls back to serving the plain video file where it can, and the connection check will tell your client when that is the situation.
Why does the link work for me but not for them?
Because the difference is the network, not the link. You are on a normal connection; your client is behind a corporate filter that blocks the separate address the video streams from, so the page loads and the video does not. A phone on cellular data usually proves this in ten seconds.
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