Likelihood to Recommend JW Player has flexible plans that won't cost you a lot of money. If you are a startup, JW offers a variety of plans that will suit your specific needs and grow with you as your company grows. You do not need to be a video expert to understand how to upload a video, which allows nearly anyone in the office to do it.
Read full review Powtoon is a very capable suite of tools that help a developer create training videos that look way better than they should. I've used it to create fun, attention-getting commercials for new topics, I've used it to enhance what would otherwise be boring step-by-step tutorials, and I've used it to create all manner of "Explainer videos" for all kinds of topics - this is where it EXCELS! In my opinion, its biggest limitations are limits on imported video (max of 90 seconds), which mean that you have to do a lot of extra work to break up and import anything of substantive length. And because it presents your personal library of imported images and audio ONLY sequentially, it's VERY LIMITED in the re-usability of those assets - it's way faster to just import a new instance of an image and audio than to try to find it in your library.
Read full review Pros Responsive HTML5 Provides share functionality built into the player Platform use enables playlist functionality and playlist players which can be customized or versioned for specific uses Videos uploaded to the JW Platform automatically provide multiple image frame options for selecting video thumbnail Read full review Powtoon is very easy to use; no previous experience is needed. It has a lot of features (images, backgrounds, videos, sounds, etc.) It automatically saves your work After you have created your video, you can download it to your computer in different resolutions Read full review Cons Definitely missing the ability (in and easy way) to have clickable links in the video. Analytics is a little cumbersome and not very user-friendly. Read full review Comparing it to Vyond, it is more time consuming to make videos. The timeline could be easier to understand. They recently started upcharging to use some scenes. This has made updating some of my videos challenging as the scenes that were included as part of my plan are now an upgrade to use. They don't have a voice over option. I have actually taken some of the videos out of the platform over to Vyond to add voiceover. Some items they have introduced, like turning a powerpoint into a video really don't work. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Just made the decision to renew given demonstrated improvements being made to the platform to expand compatibility for its player use on devices such as Apple TV, as well as improvements made recently to its JW Platform Dashboard
Read full review Usability Reliability and compatibility on a majority of platforms. Would have received a 10 except recent versions of browsers such as Firefox are now defaulting against Flash components and thus prompting approval from users BEFORE loading which is a HUGE obstacle to an effective user experience thus creating concerns by end-users unnecessarily and risking that they will NOT accept the prompts, thus leaving unable to view video content hosted using the JW Player. Assurances by JW support suggest they will resolve this, so we'll see...
Read full review Support Rating Support is reasonable. I from time to time have made suggestions on improvements that would be nice to see (like the ability to have a clickable link within the video - that is easy to create, without tons of coding) and it seems as though I never see it happen or get much response to "suggestions" to upgrade the software. The good news, other than a few things as I mentioned above, overall, I don't have many "technical issues" in the platform, which is a good thing. On occasion, I have seen some "issues" with the delivery of the video, but it has been pretty scarce. So it is dependable.
Read full review I have never needed the support feature. As I mentioned, everything was intuitive to me however I have taught myself Adobe, Final Cut and
iMovie so most of these programs became intuitive.
Read full review Implementation Rating One of the primary features promoted by JW Platform is its SEO definition. However, there did not seem to be a way to integrate that data to our platform if selected thus only leaving the benefits of that data to be established on the individual video page hosted by JW Platform, which isn't useful in the end to the client value we are trying to deliver for our
VideoproFile.net solution
Read full review Alternatives Considered JW had more player options, a better/more intuitive user interface, was altogether faster both in rendering the uploaded videos and in time to load on the web page. The integration with
OpenX for pre-roll was faster and easier than with
Brightcove , and lastly, they offered a great price for service.
Jim Cairl Director, Online Advertising and Operations
Read full review Powtoon has the advantage over traditional video editing software in terms of the library of characters and elements that can be easily dragged and dropped onto the canvas. Powtoon is easier to use and has a more intuitive user interface than
Vyond .
Read full review Return on Investment JW Player has was less expensive (without sacrificing quality) than our previous video platform so the ROI was instant. We were easily able to add a variety of video advertising options including pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll. The quality and consistancy of the look of the video has enabled us to grow our video views by well over 100% since starting with JW. Read full review We don't have to spend money on traveling to a location to do an actual live shoot. I'm spending less time on hand animating videos. We used these to create teaser videos for our professional development offerings. I believe because of the captivating graphics, we had a lot more people driven to our site. Read full review ScreenShots