Discover everything there is to know about Loom in this hands-on Loom review.
It’s no secret that video has become a crucial component of modern collaboration. Zoom is already hosting meetings for about 300 million people a day. Video meetings are so common that around one in eight workers are attending them from the bathroom.
But video isn’t just for meetings. It’s also a crucial tool for training and sharing information, making screen recording tools like Loom a popular option for today’s teams. Loom makes it easy to share and record AI-powered video messages with teammates, customers, and more.
But with so many other apps, including platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, offering their own recording options, is Loom really worthwhile? Let’s find out.
Loom Review: The Quick Verdict
Loom is one of the fastest and most convenient tools available for screen recording and video sharing. In fact, more than 25 million people worldwide are using the app. You can access the solution for free, and even take advantage of embedded editing, sharing, and AI tools.
The biggest problem with Loom (for me), is that it might not be entirely necessary for all users. If you’re already paying for a platform like Zoom, with Zoom Clips, you’ll be able to access similar features without a separate app.
Pros:
- Excellent AI tools for transcription and content creation
- Extremely easy-to-use interface
- Great accessibility with a Chrome extension, desktop and mobile app
- Fast and convenient file sharing and video embedding
- Effortless editing and collaborative tools
Cons:
- The free plan is quite restrictive
- Many other services offer similar features for less
- Most videos are made public by default
What is Loom? Overview and Features
Loom, by Atlassian, is a software app that allows users to record videos and screens, edit content, and share it with their teams. It has convenient editing tools that allow you to trim words from transcripts and add elements to videos. Plus, it now has handy AI features, to save you time on creating scripts, content, and transcriptions.
Unlike many other solutions for video-first collaboration, Loom focuses exclusively on asynchronous communication. Instead of allowing you to dive into a call with colleagues like Microsoft Teams or Google Meet, it ensures you can record and share content easily.
You can create video messages that include your screen, your video feed, or both. It’s not exactly a revolutionary app, but Loom’s value comes in its simplicity. You just hit record, edit your video, and instantly share it with your colleagues – no expert skills required.
Features
- Screen recording and camera bubbles (For your video feeds)
- Background blur or virtual backgrounds for camera feeds
- Collaboration features such as time-stamped comments and emojis
- AI-powered transcription services and closed captioning
- Video privacy controls and viewer insights
- Team workspace for creating content together
- Live rewind and “edit by transcript”
- Link embedding for videos
- Password protected videos
- Integrations with tools like Slack, Salesforce, and Gmail
- Screenshots for sharing images
- AI apps for composing messages, CTAs, titles, summaries, and chapters
Loom Review: Pricing and Plans
As I mentioned above, one of Loom’s top selling points is its free plan for beginners, though the features are a little restrictive. For instance, you can only create up to 25 videos, which can only be five minutes long.
You still get access to all of the basic capabilities you need though. For instance, you’ll have all of Loom’s screen recording and cam bubble features, unlimited transcriptions, video privacy controls, access to viewer analytics, and a team workspace. The team workspace enables up to 50 users to comment and react to videos. It also gives you various libraries you can customize.
Unfortunately, the free plan’s video quality is limited to 720p, but you still get audio editing features, virtual backgrounds, and background noise suppression.
There are only two paid plans to choose from:
- Business: $12.50 per month, per user (paid annually): All the features of the free plan, plus unlimited videos, live rewind, transcript editing, link embedding, password protection for videos, and import and download options. You also get to remove Loom branding.
- Enterprise: Custom pricing: All the features of the Business plan, plus you can access a Salesforce integration, SSO and SCIM, and advanced content privacy. You can also work with unlimited team members and enjoy 4K video recordings.
The Loom AI Add-On
Like most AI companions for collaboration apps, Loom AI isn’t included in any plan as standard. You can add the AI toolkit to your Business or Enterprise plan for $4 extra per month per creator. This will give you access to an AI message composer, automatic CTA, title, summary, and chapter generator, and an AI assistant that can remove filler words from content.
It’s not the most expensive AI add-on I’ve seen. However, since solutions like Zoom already come with things like AI companion, and Zoom Clips built in, Loom might not offer the best value for money for everyone. Plus, it’s worth noting that other apps with integrated AI and screen/video recording features can be a little cheaper too.
Tools like Slack, Asana, with its Vimeo account, and Dropbox Capture all give you a more affordable way to capture content to share with your teams.
Loom Review: Ease of Use
As mentioned above, Loom’s biggest selling point is probably its simplicity. You don’t need video editing or creation skills to use this tool. All you need to do is sign up for an account (which you can do with your Google or Slack credentials). Once you install the application, you can access it via desktop, mobile, or a Chrome extension.
There are a few steps to take to make sure your device is configured to capture video, like enabling permissions for recording on your webcam, screen, and microphone. Still, Loom walks you through this process with a step-by-step guide, and handy menu.
Once you have everything set up, you can start recording your video, choosing between recording your screen, webcam feed, or both. One slight downside – the iOS version of Loom doesn’t record both things at once (you have to choose from one or the other).
After you’re done recording, Loom will upload the video to your library, and you’ll be able to start editing. You can trim and stitch video clips together, add transcriptions and closed captions, and more. Plus, you can add handy “calls to action” telling users what to do next.
Everything is extremely straightforward, particularly with the addition of the new AI features (if you’re willing to pay for them).
The Biggest Benefits of Loom
Aside from being extremely user-friendly, Loom does have some great benefits to offer today’s collaborative teams. It’s one of the most convenient asynchronous communication tools I’ve tried, ideal for all kinds of sales, design, and training, and customer support tasks.
Personally, my favorite things about Loom include:
- Sharing features: Every video you create will be publicly accessible (which is both a pro and a con). On the downside, this means you might struggle a little with securing your content. On the plus side, it means sharing content with your colleagues is extremely straightforward. Users don’t even need a Loom account to access your content.
- Collaboration: Even on a free Loom account, you’ll still get plenty of features that help to unify your team. You can share your content with anyone, and they can respond with comments and emoji reactions. There are also plenty of integrations available for other collaboration tools like Slack, Upwork, and Zendesk.
- Controls: For business users, Loom does have some handy access control and security features. You can restrict access to your videos to specific people, and on paid plans, you’ll even be able to create password-protected content.
- Content quality: Though the video quality on Loom’s free plan leaves something to be desired, you can still experiment with virtual backgrounds and leverage noise-cancellation tools. Paid plans upgrade your recording canvas with drawing tools, custom recording dimensions, and 4K video resolution.
- AI upgrades: If you’re willing to pay the extra for Loom AI, it does offer various handy features, allowing you to customize, and summarize content in a couple of seconds. It also makes transcription and content creation a lot easier for beginners.
Loom Review: The Problems with Loom
This wouldn’t be a complete Loom review if I didn’t look at the issues with the app too. First, the screenshot tool you get with the platform is a little basic. There’s no way to annotate the screens you capture, and every time you take a screenshot, the app will load a new window in your browser, which is a bit frustrating.
The other major problem, for me, is that accessing Loom’s most advanced features means paying for an extra subscription for all users, even though you might already have tools that do similar things. Most of the top collaboration tools, from Zoom, to Slack, already give you the option to capture and share content with video feeds and screen recordings.
They also give you way more functionality to experiment with, like threads, chat, and full video conferencing services, which you don’t get with Loom. Of course, if you don’t have a platform that already enables video recording, Loom is a great option. Plus, Loom does offer more advanced editing tools than some of the built-in solutions on other platforms.
Loom Review: The Verdict
Ultimately, Loom is a great tool for capturing and sharing video content and screen recordings. It’s incredibly easy to use and packed with tools to make your life easier. It’s also available for free (if you have limited asynchronous collaboration needs).
However, it’s not going to be a must-have investment for everyone. First, not every interaction with your team members will require you to record a full video. You don’t need to capture a video whenever you need to share a quick update with your colleagues.
I’d imagine Loom will be an excellent tool for salespeople giving product demonstrations and employee training. But it’s not going to replace your other collaboration apps. Secondly, if you’re already using the top collaboration platforms, they’ll probably have screen recording tools built-in.
That said, Loom is still a good choice if you want a sleeker, more professional way to capture and share video content for many different use cases. I can see it appealing to product design, engineering, and sales teams. Most other people will probably be able to get by using the features you can access in Slack, Dropbox, or Zoom.
