Animaker is the eponymous platform from the company headquartered in Palo Alto, that enables beginners, non-designers & professionals to create Animation and Live-Action videos for every moment, featuring drag-and-drop editing, a character builder, a catalog of stock images and videos to use, and templates to ease video creation.
$20
per month
Camtasia
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Camtasia is a video editor and screen recorder. Camtasia offers a range of plans designed to meet varying video creation needs, and enables users to produce professional-looking videos. Its features include Camtasia Rev, script generation, text-to-speech, translations, and avatar videos, to streamline the video creation process. The editions available are Free, Essentials, Create, or the Pro plan.
$179.88
per year per user
Pricing
Animaker
Camtasia
Editions & Modules
Basic
$20
per month
Starter
$35
per month
Pro
$79
per month
Enterprise
Custom
Camtasia Business
$198
per year per seat
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Animaker
Camtasia
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
50% discount for annual billing.
*Discounts available for purchases supporting a large volume of users.
Animaker is best suited for short projects that are well-defined. We have found it very useful for developing our explainer videos, concept illustrations for pitching new product functions or iterations, and also for creating content quickly and easily. For an illustration of bigger and more complex projects, they might be less adequate and more difficult to execute seamlessly.
Camtasia is so easy to use that I recommend it over Adobe Premiere, Captivate, Storyline, and other tools. The only problem is the price. Due to the fact that I purchased this for education purposes, and educational prices have gone up exponentially, it has been difficult even at $179 to upgrade, as an educator and the organization is not always willing to reimburse the purchase, it would have been more economical. It was less than $100 (Black Friday) when I bought our updated version in 2019. Camtasia profile accounts aren't the best setup, however. My profile account does not reflect when I was a user or show past invoices, and I wanted to see how long ago I was a user.
USB Microphones can sometimes cause a problem if they become accidentally unplugged during a recording session. This can corrupt some of the files that the Camtasia Recorder application uses to capture directly to .avi mode.
You'll sometimes get a message when you next try to record that .avi mode isn't available and the only way to fix this is by completely uninstalling and reinstalling Camtasia (with a reboot in the middle of these two actions).
This bug only manifested after Camtasia 8 was released, but still seems to cause an issue right up to and including Camtasia 2021.
I'd like to see more standard Annotation options. The existing ones are pretty good, but variety is a little lacking.
More 'Behaviours' would also be really welcome as these are a great feature and make Callouts a bit more interesting and lively. I've not seen any new Behaviours over the past few versions (since Camtasia 2018).
Each release of Camtasia has added just enough functionality to justify the upgrade to the new version. I like that Camtasia is not a subscription-based product as we have more flexibility and control over our spend on the product. We can also purchase support packages that include the next version when released.
I haven't used another video recording and editing tools that is as comprehensive and straight-forward as Camtasia. Typically, if you want a user-friendly video editing tools for novice users, you have to compromise on features. Camtasia solves this problem by offering extensive editing features in a simplistic, user-friendly environment. Highly recommend
With the latest version (Camtasia 2020), I actually had problems with an Imac with HighSierra, but from the first moment they answered and guided me to solve the problem, even before making the purchase (with some doubts I had). And they have support in English and Spanish, I really liked that.
I've tried several freeware recorders, too. If all you want to do is literally record your screen, and nothing else, you don't need Camtasia. There are literally dozens of apps that will do that. If you want an app that will record your screen while capturing mouse clicks, follow you, record your voice while you capture, and annotate when you're done, Camtasia has no equal. Plus, it doesn't stop there. You can add professional intros and outros (many already created to choose from), lower thirds, etc., leading to videos with very high production value. This is THE program to buy if you want to produce training videos of very high quality.
Ever since we switched from using only actual demo videos to adding animated explainers, our conversion rates have increased significantly.
Our productivity when creating presentations and materials for client engagement has more than tripled since we started using Animaker. We can go from storyboard to final output in 3 days or less. Previously, each output took at least 2 weeks to complete.
Creating projects in Animaker is just way more fun. Team members no longer dread having to work on a new concept. And our outputs are a lot more engaging.
