Powtoon is an online video creation platform for making engaging short videos and presentations, from the company of the same name in London.
$89
per month
Wistia
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Wistia specializes in Brand Affinity Marketing for small and medium-sized businesses. Wistia's video marketing software is designed to enable companies to create captivating viewing experiences on their sites and gives them the tools to find, engage and grow a community of brand advocates. Founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the vendor boasts presently more than half a million businesses across 50 countries depend on Wistia's products to build their brands and their businesses,…
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.
For companies that want to integrate their videos into actionable steps like behavioral follow up through a CRM, Wistia is the best tool to use. You can automate your systems to track when a video is viewed, engaged with or how long a person has been watching along with heatmaps to show where people were most interested and least interested so you can adjust your videos to optimize their performance.
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.
Obtaining embed codes for a significantly large number of videos can be very time consuming as there is no way to automatically pull a report.
Within a project, there is no way to set the list to show a specific number of videos and you may only have a certain number of videos shown unless you click to expand the list and continue to do so.
Once the list is expanded and you click in to a video, when clicking back, the list reloads and you must expand the entire list again which can become very time consuming.
Wistia is super easy to use and very reliable, anytime a video needs to be updated, the existing media can be replaced, but the url remains the same so anywhere this media is shared or embedded, it is immediately updated. Their support is extremely helpful, and there is very rarely any issues with this product.
Great, simple, usable product. Would have given it higher marks, but sometimes the folders and permissions aren't the most intuitive. Interface for uploading, tagging, describing videos is simple. Sharing is also relatively intuitive. Overall, a clean and simple interface and most of our marketing team had no issues using it. I think it was easier than using Vimeo.
I have never had any technical issues with Wistia. The service is fast and reliable. video play back begins as soon as a few seconds of video have buffered. The stats are accurate and available within a few hours of current use. I have integrated it with Marketo and found that the integration is clean and is easily incorporated into the campaign logic flow. (ex. If the user played more than 50% of the video, do Action-A, otherwise do Action-B.
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.
We have only had to reach out to Wistia support a handful of times in the 4 years we have been using Wistia. They have always been quick to respond and help us solve the problem. The system is self-service so there should be very little to no need to reach out to support on a regular basis.
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.
Wistia is for business. Period. Vimeo has none of the benefits for a business that Wistia offers. The SEO value and SUPER FAST playback speed are essential. Wistia has it all. Personally, I can rarely get thought a video if hosted on Vimeo because of the glitchy playback and slow rendering.
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.
Doubled lead capture from lead magnet on website from one year to the next.
Increased email interaction on newsletters when embedding Wistia video thumbnail into email campaigns (10-15% links clicked bumped to 30-40% links clicked).
Can save us about 50+ hours of one-on-one client meeting time per year for pointing clients to video content rather than presenting the same info in a live setting.
