6 Loom alternatives for asynchronous video communication

You know that meeting that could have been an email? Well, there are also emails and meetings that could have been a Loom. 

Loom is a screen recorder, mostly used as a Chrome extension, that lets you capture video from your camera and your screen. 

When someone shares their screen during a virtual meeting, they’re giving a live update. With Loom, people create the same experience asynchronously — which is why it’s one of the most popular remote collaboration tools in use.

People use Loom for: 

• Status updates

• Product demos

• Employee onboarding

• Presentations and pitches

…and a lot more. For anyone who works at a desk, Loom is great for communicating anything with a visual component that needs an explanation. Getting a Loom instead of an email is usually a delight.

Where Loom falls short: A limited free plan

You can use Loom for free, but there are serious limits. With Loom’s free plan, your videos are capped at five minutes, and you can only record up to 25 videos before you need to start paying. After that, plans start at $8 per person per month.

The thing is … you’re not getting much for your money. Loom is popular because of its Chrome extension, which makes it easy to use. But beyond that, Loom’s features exist inside other software platforms that do more. 

This is why a lot of teams don’t want to pay for Loom. They see it as an add-on, or “one more tool we have to pay for” when they’re already paying for so many apps. 

Keep reading to expand your options with a few Loom alternatives that do more than screen recording. 

1. Vowel

Vowel is a video conferencing tool and meeting OS that has everything you need to plan, host, act on, and revisit meetings. There's nothing to download and no add-ons required for remote collaboration. 

Vowel replaces Loom because you can use your personal meeting room to record all the videos Loom can: status updates, presentations, demos, onboarding sessions, etc. You can share your video and time-stamped transcript with any member of your team.

Recordings and transcripts come with productivity features like shared notes, collaborative agendas, and shareable clips (like Loom meets Zoom!).

Free plan? Yes, Vowel has a free plan that includes recordings, transcription, and collaboration features. Meetings and recordings are capped at 40 minutes on the free plan, and access to past recordings expires after 7 days.

Top features

• Personal room with camera/screen recording and transcription

• Browser access, nothing to download

• High-quality video conferencing audio-video

• Collaborative agendas and meeting notes

• Universal search across your past meeting content

• Clip creation and sharing

How to use it best for remote collaboration

• Skip meetings you don’t need to attend by scrubbing through past recordings (video and searchable text transcript)

• Use bookmarks to note the most important moments in meetings (ideas, decisions, action items, etc.)

• Share specific clips from conversations when someone needs context

• Use folders to organize similar meetings (employee onboarding, product updates, etc.)

How it’s more than Loom

Vowel is Loom built into a piece of video conferencing software that sits inside a meeting operating system. The personal meeting room used to record video updates is just one part of a larger tool that helps remote teams create a better meeting culture.

2. Vidyard

Vidyard is Loom for sales and marketing teams. Similar to Loom, users can record videos with a Chrome extension and share a link for access. Vidyard’s best features are specific to sales and marketing teams, so you’ll likely want to be part of one of these teams to fully take advantage of the tool (and justify its cost!). 

Free plan? Yes, and it’s pretty good. For free you can record 25 videos of up to 30 minutes (compared to Loom’s five). But when you do pay, it’s expensive — Vidyard plans start at $19 per person per month. 

Top features

• Gmail plugin

• Marketing video SEO

• Custom thumbnails, playlists, and banners

• Video player call-to-action

• Video view notifications

How to use it best for remote collaboration

You don’t, unless you’re paying for it. Vidyard’s free plan doesn’t allow people to post comments or add call-to-action buttons to their videos. If you’re not paying $19 per month per person, communication remains one-way — and it doesn’t solve a lot of the challenges of remote work. 

How it’s more than Loom

Vidyard is built to lead viewers to a next step. If you’re in sales, a CTA button makes it easy to book meetings from a video. If you’re in marketing, videos can drive traffic back to your website. Loom is focused on one-way communication, whereas Vidyard was built to drive sales. 

3. ScreenRec

ScreenRec is as simple and basic as it gets. If you want a free tool for one-to-one video communication, ScreenRec is worth a test. But keep in mind, ScreenRec isn’t available for Mac. As of this writing, ScreenRec’s website lists a Mac version as forthcoming in August 2022 … which has already come and gone. 

Free plan? Yes, and there is no paid version — which seems suspicious. ScreenRec’s FAQ says the team “developed ScreenRec as an internal project … For now, it has all the functionality we think is vital for such a product, so it doesn’t make sense to cut some of the features and make them premium.” To remove a five-minute recording time limit, users need to create a cloud account. 

Top features

• Annotation

• Screen capture cropping

• Unlimited recordings for free

How to use it best for remote collaboration

The same way you would use Loom, except without the ability to react or comment on videos. ScreenRec is a great alternative to text-heavy email updates, but it doesn’t facilitate remote collaboration beyond one-way communication.  

How it’s more than Loom

It’s not! ScreenRec is similar to Loom, but it’s stripped down so it can remain free. 

4. Camtasia

Camtasia is what you would use to make your Loom videos public. Loom is a tool for communication, whereas Camtasia is a tool for professional presentation. If you need to zhuzh up your videos before you send them, Camtasia is what you might use to do it. 

Free plan? Yes, Camtasia offers a 30-day free trial when you download the software and create an account — but when you create a video, it will export with a watermark. If you don’t want the watermark (and don’t want to use add-ons to remove it), single-user licenses start at $300 per year with a $50 annual renewal fee.

Top features

• Advanced editing 

• Video templates

• Royalty-free music library

How to use it best for remote collaboration

If you’re an online creator who uses YouTube, Vimeo, or video on your website to connect with a community, Camtasia is a great tool to help with engagement. The tool may be a lot more than what you need for internal remote collaboration, however. 

How it’s more than Loom

Camtasia is what Loom would be with advanced video editing functionality. If Adobe Premiere Pro and Loom were at opposite ends of a spectrum, Camtasia would sit in the middle. 

5. CloudApp

CloudApp is a screen recorder similar to Loom, except it has more integrations that allow you to embed a video in a separate app. If you take a lot of screenshots and need to annotate them as part of a video update, CloudApp may be the best option. 

Free plan? Yes, but videos are limited to 90 seconds at a maximum of 25 uploads. After that plans start at $9.95 per user per month or $8 per user per month if more than two members join the plan. 

Top features

• GIF maker

• Screenshot annotation

• Media library

How to use it best for remote collaboration

Design and product teams use CloudApp to share feedback on screens. With annotation tools and integrations for Sketch, Asana, AdobeXD, etc., CloudApp is a good complement for sharing quick feedback that would be too much to write in words.  

How it’s more than Loom

CloudApp is pretty similar to Loom, but its integrations allow the software to complement design and productivity software better than Loom. It’s just a question of whether or not you want to pay for an add-on. 

6. SendSpark

SendSpark is a (cheaper) direct competitor to Vidyard, meaning it’s best for sales and marketing teams. Unlike Loom, which is for general communication, SendSpark’s features cater to external video communication with prospects and customers. 

Free plan? Yes, SendSpark’s free plan includes 30 videos with no recording limit. After that plans start at $15 per month per person. 

Top features

• Customer testimonial capture

• Customized branding

• Call-to-action buttons

How to use it best for remote collaboration

Similar to Vidyard, SendSpark isn’t much of a collaboration tool. The platform is geared toward sales, marketing, and customer engagement, with features that encourage viewers to take a next step rather than collaborate on a project. 

How it’s more than Loom

SendSpark sets you up to request videos from people external to your organization, which makes it easy for customers to record testimonials. Compared to Loom, SendSpark is more of a marketing and customer engagement tool. 

What’s the best Loom alternative for remote teams?

Loom is a great tool for simple asynchronous video communication. But if you want better value, Vowel lets you do all the things Loom can and you get a platform to help you have better video meetings.

With Vowel, you’ll get:

• A personal room for recording video updates

• A video conferencing platform (like Zoom, but better)

• One-click recording and live meeting transcription (in multiple languages!)

• Collaborative agendas and meeting notes 

• Universal search across your meeting content 

• Talk-time tracking and other inclusivity features 

• Meeting recaps with shared links and action items 

• Emoji reactions 

• Bookmarks and clip-sharing

• …and more!

The video communication space is full of solutions that make it easy to communicate updates via video.

But Vowel is the only one that helps you prep, participate, and act on your meetings when you’re working with a remote team AND record personal videos to share asynchronously. Try it now for free!