Loom is a screen recorder for Chrome, Mac, Windows, and iOS from Atlassian, presented as quick to install, easy to use, and boasting a functional free edition.
$8
per month
Descript
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Descript is a collaborative audio/video editor, from the company of the same name in San Francisco, that works like a doc. It includes transcription, a screen recorder, publishing, full multitrack editing, and AI tools.
Loom is a must, I am not sure how many other tools like this one there are but Loom really becomes a key player in a team collaboration, specially if that team collaborates remotely or internationally. You can use the video links to embedded these in other places or downloadthem for editing
Descript is well-suited for fast editing of training videos, tutorials, podcasts, and screen recordings, where transcript-based editing and quick cleanup save time. It works best when you need a simple workflow to record, transcribe, remove filler words, tighten sections, and apply basic enhancement tools like noise cleanup. It is less appropriate for high-stakes projects where losing edits would be very costly, or when you need strong guarantees around long-term project history, backups, and recovery. Based on our experience, if you are doing many hours of edits and expect to revisit projects months later, you may want an additional export/archive process outside the platform.
Loom is valuable for creating video tutorials and onboarding materials.
It allows trainers to record step-by-step instructions, share best practices, and provide visual demonstrations, facilitating the learning process for new employees or team members.
Sales teams can create personalized video pitches or product demonstrations to engage prospects effectively.
Collaborating between timezones and replacing meetings/ emails with quick videos.
The still screenshot feature should let us edit/mark up the images.
I work on 3 X monitors and the desktop version of Loom still can't seem to know that I always want to record on the screen from which I open the app. Short of that, it should ask us what screen we want to record on instead of making us catch the fact that it's set to record on some other screen. This causes me to have to stop the recording and restart because it was recording the wrong screen.
You can't yet transfer a video seamlessly between workspaces. This causes you to have to download and then re-upload to the other workspace if you happen to work for numerous companies using Loom.
UX Performance. Because it's synced to the cloud, there can be some delay or lag in the UX when editing.
Editing Transcriptions. Machine-based transcriptions always need some post-editing. While Descript makes it pretty easy, I still think there is some room for improvement. For instance, I would like to be able to automatically update for all occurrences of a word after fixing it in the transcript.
Automatic importing of YouTube and hosted video files. I often have to download a video from YouTube to be able to import it into Descript. Would be nice to be able to just paste in the URL to the video and have Descript automatically import it.
It's dirt easy for the one thing it does exceptionally well. If you think, "hmmm, I should make a quick screen capture of this thing on screen, you can start recording in seconds with almost no additional effort." Once you're done, the recording is automatically uploaded to your account site, and automatically creates a URL you can copy and share with your target audience. From IDEA to EXECUTION to DISTRIBUTION is literally seconds.
It's pretty user friendly, has a easy-moderate learning curve. However during updates they do change the features in different panes / sections that make them harder to find. The text editor is near perfect, some of the other tools such as colour, templates, audio etc. are arranged in a slighlty less intuitive manner
Loom is one of my favorite solutions and I've been a raving fan since they first launched. The value of quickly sharing videos in seconds is amazing. Our customers love it so much that they have even downloaded the Loom Chrome extension for their own use with their clients! It's so simple, and nothing else compares or competes.
I use Loom for simple tasks. Never used customer support really. It's so simple to use. I haven't had any real issue with Loom which would require customer support to help me out. So I just put 5 because I don't know if the customer support is good or bad since I never used, so I'm kind of neutral.
We had a very frustrating experience with Descript and their support.
We used Descript to record and edit several videos. The edits were done around May, mainly using the web app. When we opened those same projects in December, many of them looked like raw recordings again. Cuts were missing and effects were missing.
Support and engineering told us they checked their logs and only saw “creation → recording → transcription,” and they said they could not find proof the edits were ever made. That explanation does not match what we saw in the app. The affected videos show two project backup files. In Descript, backups only appear after you start editing (the app even says so). But when we checked other projects that we know are raw, those do not show any backup files. We asked a simple question: if backups appear only after editing, why do the “raw” affected videos have two backups while truly raw videos have none? They did not answer this clearly.
One rep also said they noticed a spike in network errors in May. That is exactly when the edits were done, which makes it very likely the edits did not save or sync correctly. Instead of admitting this could be the cause, support kept pointing to “no logs of edits” and that it was our fault.
They refunded one month, but called it a “courtesy.” That was disappointing. We also stopped using Descript while they were investigating because we did not feel it was safe to keep working in the platform. If that one-month refund was meant to cover the time we could not use the service during the investigation, that still does not address the real damage. We lost many hours of work, we paid our editor hourly, and we paid for the subscription for convenience and reliability. For the amount of inconvenience and loss we experienced, one month is clearly not enough.
When we evaluated the alternatives, Loom was by far the most advanced tool, with multiple types of integrations. Additionally, Loom also provided a Free plan, which made it easy to consider as an alternative. Vidyard and similar tools integrated better with certain other tools (Vidyard + HubSpot), but Loom had better overall integrations with most tools we use.
Descript is by far superior to the other editing software you can get on Apple computers. It's able to do a lot more and really save us tons of time. Other Adobe apps are great, but take a while to learn. Descript is very user-friendly, making it easy to start from day one with very little training.
Loom has increased my efficiency and value to clients so much. I save a ton of time by being able to send them video recordings walking through their website rough drafts and final tutorials.
Loom is incredibly affordable. I am satisfied with their subscription cost.
Loom has helped me communicate clearly to clients, so there's less room for error/misunderstanding (especially when talking about design decisions).
I can get video completed much more quickly and cheaply
We can produce more video content because of the speed with which we can have a finished product
We can have shorter timelines for example I record on Monday and we publish on Tuesday which wouldn't be otherwise possible with other methods I've used
