Business
Loom Review: The Future of Video Sharing?
Let’s say you’re working with a design service.
You’re working on a whole new vision for your company, and you need to articulate that vision to your designers. Sometimes, a simple text chat isn’t enough to convey what you have in mind. That’s where Loom comes in.
Loom allows users to quickly create videos with screen and face recordings. These make it easy to create tutorials, onboarding videos, and to share new information with your team.
How does this new spin on video sharing shape up? Here’s our Loom review.
What is Loom?
Founded in 2015, Loom has become a massive force in the business world for its convenient video tools. It now boasts over 14 million users, including high-profile companies like Netflix, Volvo, Apple, and Ticketmaster.
Some of the use cases for Loom include:
- Coordinating with teams
- Onboarding
- Education
- Design
- Sales
- Engineering
- Customer support
- Marketing
Loom pricing
You can get started with Loom for free—which is probably a big part of the reason they can boast so many users. It’s one of the easiest ways to create quick videos with editing and transcribing tools included.
Loom offers three pricing plans:
- Starter – $0/mo. Up to 25 videos per person for up to 50 people. Videos can be up to 5 minutes long. Editing and transcribing tools included.
- Business – $150/yr or $15/mo. Unlimited creators, videos, and length. Includes custom branding, engagement insights, embedded links, password protection, video uploads
- Enterprise – Contact sales for pricing. Includes advanced security, admin controls, dedicated support, and Salesforce integration.
Teachers can also apply for Loom for Education. This free tool includes unlimited videos of up to 45 minutes, plus interactive elements, password protection, viewer insights, and more.
How to get started with Loom
You can sign up with Loom for free using Google, Slack, or Apple accounts. You can also simply sign up with an email and password, or use SSO (single sign-on) if your employer has an account.
Once you create your Loom account, you’ll get the chance to see the terms of service and privacy policies, which I always appreciate.
You’ll be guided through a few short screens when you sign up. First, you’re asked whether you’ll be using Loom for work, education, or personal projects. Next, you’ll get the opportunity to name your workspace and invite friends and colleagues to join it.
Loom review: features
To actually make something with Loom, you’ll have to install it on your computer, either as an app or a Chrome extension. This is an extra step, but for me, it was another indication of their commitment to privacy. I don’t know about you, but when a website wants to use my mic and camera, I instantly freak out.
The Loom app appears as a simple overlay on your screen, with a face cam in the lower left corner and a recording timer on the upper left. A small window allows you to change settings for your recording, including:
- Toggle screen recording and camera
- Full screen, window, or custom size
- Camera and microphone options
- Recording quality
Recording canvas
This neat feature allows you to create and customize presentation slides for your video. It seems like a useful tool for tutorials and classroom presentations (although you might get more customization options from simply creating a PowerPoint).
Speaker notes
This simple notepad sticks on your screen, helping you stay prepared for long-form and in-depth presentations. Conveniently, the notes won’t appear in your video, and you can move around or resize the window as you see fit.
It’s really convenient to have your notes on-screen without obstructing your video, but the feature isn’t quite perfect. You can make your text bold, italicized, underlined, or struck through, but that’s about it.
The other issue is with the app itself. This might just be a me problem, but it seems to shut down unexpectedly when you perform certain actions like opening a menu or taking a screenshot. The notes, however, stay in their place, even when the app is closed.
Camera effects and drawing
Once you start recording, you can quickly add backgrounds and frames to your video window for a personalized experience.
There’s also a drawing tool you can use while you record to highlight information on your screen. I found this tool fun, but I wish you could toggle how long the drawings last on screen (as of now, it’s only about 5 seconds).
Recording and sharing with Loom
Naturally, the recording quality on Loom is only as good as your mic and camera setup. Still, I was quite impressed with the speed and quality of the recording. The instant I stopped my 2.5-minute recording, the video was up on Loom, with a URL ready to be shared and an automated transcript you can edit.
It’s really convenient to have the link ready to go right away. You can add tags, a thumbnail, and a call to action to your video, plus change settings and edit the transcript.
There’s also a surprisingly solid video editing tool, letting you cut out clips and splice in other Loom recordings.
You can share your video right away using the Loom link, or quickly download it as an mp4 and modify it however you like.
Loom review: Is it the best?
Loom isn’t the only option out there for sharing screen and camera recordings. For instance, if your team already uses Slack, you can create screen sharing video clips directly from there and not have to worry about another service.
Still, there’s a reason so many big names are using Loom. It offers videos that instantly upload with real-time transcription and easy sharing. It’s an absolute game changer for onboarding, education, and reducing the need for unnecessary meetings.
Which version of Loom should you use?
For most users, the free version of Loom should be plenty. The Business version is most useful for large-scale teams that want to incorporate Loom into their everyday workflow. For instance, a company may use Loom to have every manager present a monthly progress report.
Where can Loom improve?
My one major gripe with Loom is the desktop app. It’s got great UI and some cool features, but it seems glitchy, closes randomly, and can be hard to navigate. The Chrome extension is similarly annoying at times.