Adobe After Effects vs. Adobe Animate

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe After Effects
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Adobe After Effects allows users to create cinematic movie titles, intros, and transitions, remove an object from a clip, start a fire or make it rain, or animate a logo or character. The vendor states that with After Effects, users can apply motion-graphics and animation to any digital object.
$20.99
Per User Per Month
Adobe Animate
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Adobe Animate (or Animate CC) supports but replaces the former Adobe Flash, and allows users to design interactive animations for games, TV shows, and the web. With it, the vendor states users can bring cartoons and banner ads to life, create animated doodles and avatars, and add action to eLearning content and infographics. With Animate, users can publish to multiple platforms in many formats, and reach viewers on any screen.
$20.99
per month
Pricing
Adobe After EffectsAdobe Animate
Editions & Modules
Annual Plan (Paid Monthly)
$20.99
Per User Per Month
Monthly Plan
$31.49
Per User Per Month
Annual Plan (Prepaid)
$239.88
Per User Per Year
Annual Plan, Paid Monthly
$20.99
per month
Monthly Plan
$31.49
per month
Annual Plan, Prepaid
$239.88
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe After EffectsAdobe Animate
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe After EffectsAdobe Animate
Considered Both Products
Adobe After Effects
Chose Adobe After Effects
Because of our use of other Adobe products, and how they all play well together, we never really looked at using any other product.
Chose Adobe After Effects
The family apps advantage puts Adobe After Effects at a higher preference for me, but I have heard that Final Cut Pro is also great if you deal with footage and animation.
Chose Adobe After Effects
We have taken After Effects because Adobe Animate is completely focused on animation rather than other things which After Effects can handle very easily, like we needed a program which can handle the professional animation, speed up our workflow, and can do various things like …
Adobe Animate
Chose Adobe Animate
We initially used after effects for many of our animations because it was part of our creative cloud subscription and some teammates had experience. We discovered some of the all-in-on features of Animate and decided to migrate a large percentage of our training video …
Chose Adobe Animate
I find After Effects more difficult to learn. Both are in the same Adobe CC subscription and both have a great interface. But the possibilities in features make After Effects more difficult. Therefore I like to use Animate when the assignment does not need to much complexity, …
Chose Adobe Animate
Adobe Animate works best for advanced animation and cuts and works well with the entire Adobe suite. There is nothing that compares when it comes to working within the same product.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Adobe After EffectsAdobe Animate
Small Businesses
Autodesk Maya
Autodesk Maya
Score 7.9 out of 10
Autodesk Maya
Autodesk Maya
Score 7.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Blender
Blender
Score 9.2 out of 10
Blender
Blender
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Adobe Animate
Adobe Animate
Score 8.1 out of 10
Adobe After Effects
Adobe After Effects
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Adobe After EffectsAdobe Animate
Likelihood to Recommend
7.4
(34 ratings)
7.9
(27 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.2
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(3 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.9
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe After EffectsAdobe Animate
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
Adobe After Effects is well suited for creating short video projects that require intricate animation, like 5 minute or 1-minute countdowns, credit roll-ins, outros, and video bumpers. It is also useful for creating animated elements that can be incorporated into video projects, like animated key titles. For longer videos, I would recommend using Adobe Premiere Pro instead.
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Adobe
Scenarios where Adobe Animate is well suited:2D animation for web, mobile, and video games: Adobe Animate is well suited for creating 2D animations for web, mobile, and video games. With its vector-based drawing tools, bone rigging, and inverse kinematics features, it's easy to create smooth, scalable graphics and realistic movement.Scenarios where Adobe Animate is less appropriate:Complex 3D animation: Adobe Animate is primarily a 2D animation software, and while it does have some basic 3D features, it is not as robust as specialized 3D animation software like Autodesk Maya or Blender.
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Pros
Adobe
  • After Effects is great for creating motion content once and easily exporting it to various formats such as web, broadcast, GIF, etc.
  • After Effects is the industry standard for motion graphics. While I’m an Apple user and have used Motion in the past it is not as feature rich and most clients will expect you to use After Effects.
  • After Effects is great for complex UI animation. Tools like principle and Flinto are great but are quite cumbersome for complex UI animations.
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Adobe
  • The adaptability of what Adobe Animate can do makes it so helpful. You can accomplish something basic like make a ball bob on-screen over certain letters prior to showing your logo, or something more mind-boggling like building up a vivified short to show.
  • Utilizing Adobe Animate recordings on sites is typical, so individuals are accustomed to seeing it and have the essential modules introduced as of now.
  • The records are little, and the pressure is extremely smooth. This aids in the event that you are attempting to send substance to cell phones or essentially keep your site impression little to guarantee quick stacking times.
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Cons
Adobe
  • I would like the Re-Link file structure to mimic Premiere.
  • I would like to see native .obj importing and manipulation.
  • I would like to see better audio editing available within Adobe After Effects. if it could be given a separate layer/panel.
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Adobe
  • There are too many updates and they are constantly popping up - especially during the middle of a projects, which causes me to shut down the application and restart the program. Wastes time.
  • There is no mobile browser or device support. Limits a lot of projects - especially apps.
  • Flash player can require a lot of RAM and battery
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Likelihood to Renew
Adobe
I will renew my use of After Effects since it's affordable and always has been reliable. They also always continue to update new features and add new things to compete with other software out there. I also like all the 3rd party plugins out there that keep my interest for the future and new toolsets and creative solutions.
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Adobe
No answers on this topic
Usability
Adobe
If you have a good computer setup then the program gives you no issues whatsoever. Only if you decide to run multiple tasks on a lower end unit will you then get bottlenecking which really isn't Adobe's fault to begin with. I used to have problems in the past but with newer technology, it has since been a smooth ride.
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Adobe
Flash is usable but definitely has a learning curve that a novice user may need to Google a few tutorials prior. The seamless integration with other Adobe software products is nice for loading content from the cloud. Plus it's great for storing and saving work on the go.
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Support Rating
Adobe
Adobe customer support is wonderful. They genuinely care about their product and the end user experience. The products they create have always been innovative and continue to improve. They have a huge chunk of the user market in their field and still strive to improve. This is such a big deal for me and other small business/organizations that need their products and don't have a large voice on our own.
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Adobe
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Adobe
I find Adobe After Effects to be superior to iMovie and Final Cut Pro in that I am able to do much more with the software. It isn't as limiting as the other two. I also like that it isn't an Apple product. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of Apple. There is a bigger learning curve with After Effects, but once you get the hang of it, there's really no comparison.
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Adobe
Adobe Animate was always the preferred software as the support was much better than the competition. And the ease of rendering was also a deciding factor. Results with character animations are much more crisp with Adobe Animate than in any other 2d based animation software.
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Return on Investment
Adobe
  • Adobe After Effects has a great impact on business as maximum work can be done in one software
  • To run this software you need to have good configuration system
  • Motion Graphics, 2d Animation and video editing can be done in one software
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Adobe
  • Negative, anyone who spent time learning the program now feels sad that it's going away.
  • Animation that was done on Flash but can now be made with Toon Boom or even Adobe After Effects.
  • On the plus side, since it's an Adobe product, you can rent it instead of buying the full license. That means potentially people could use it for a little longer without having to shell out as much money.
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ScreenShots