5 Best Free and Paid Alternatives to Loom That Are Better For Onboarding

If you didn't have to spend your days locked up without technology during the COVID-19 pandemic, you must have experienced at least one screen recording tool or screen sharing tool.

Loom is the one I used the most.

And I wasn't impressed.

I needed a tool to make remote work and communication faster and easier. Which is when I found Loom. But it wasn't effective enough and the limitations made me look for another alternative.

So here I gathered the 5 best alternatives to Loom.

If you already know about the tool and want to skip directly to the alternatives, click here.

TL;DR

• Loom is an effective but impractical tool for remote communication, but it is a great tool if all you need is video demonstrations.
• The fact that Loom is too expensive for only video recording capabilities can lead you to look for an alternative.
• If you need a capable onboarding solution, UserGuiding is the best option. This is because UserGuiding provides many more features, such as onboarding checklists, resource centers, advanced analytics, and in-app surveys.
• Other alternatives include Soapbox, CloudApp, Iorad, and Camtasia.

What is Loom?

Loom is a screen recording app that lets users record a video message of their screens as they are recording themselves.

It’s a simple, easy-to-use screen recorder for creating interactive documentation in the browser, mobile - android, and mobile - iPhone apps.

Loom is designed to be fast, flexible, and intuitive. It has a simple interface that makes it easy to record your screens and add annotations. You can also share your recordings with others via email or social media.

But just like any other video creation tool, it's not perfect.

Loom provides only the bare minimum that you expect from a tool to help you create guides or tutorials.

Yet, the tool comes with an accordingly affordable price.

Loom Pricing

• Starter pack: Free of Charge
• Business pack: $8/month per user if paid annually
• Enterprise pack: contact the sales team.

Loom Reviews

👍 Pros:

“Easy to set up screen recorder and the recording link is generated easily. You can go back to your video library if you want to view and share old videos easily”

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👎 Cons:

“They have a too simple a product with just simple editing features and not anything else to do. The product development have been stagnant for over an year and nothing new comes up which helps the users.”

Why you need a Loom Alternative

There might be a number of reasons for your search for an alternative to Loom.

From what we’ve experienced, and from the reviews we’ve found online about Loom, we have a few theories:

1- Little to no features

Loom is meant to be a simple app, but this doesn't justify the almost non-existent feature count of Loom. The tool can only help you record your screen and your face in a bubble, and trim the video. That's all.

2- Bugs and Crashes

Many people complained about different types of bugs and crashes within the tool. The sound and the video doesn't match in some videos, and sometimes Loom stops recording without notifying. You would have long conversations with customer service.

3- Inconsistency between the Desktop app and the Chrome Extension

If you don't use google chrome, you would have to download the desktop app - which is not the easiest thing to use related to the browser extension.

Top Loom Alternatives

Well, you might need a more comprehensive tool, or you might be looking for a cheaper option.

Here are the top 5 alternatives to Loom:

1. UserGuiding - UG Now
2. Soapbox
3. CloudApp
4. Iorad
5. Camtasia

I’ll go over each tool, how it compares to Loom, and in which cases they should be preferred.

Without further ado, let’s start with our first product:

1- UserGuiding – UG Now

UserGuiding is a no-code interactive user onboarding solution. It allows you to create beautiful, engaging onboarding experiences while highlighting the key features for new users and existing customers.

UG Now is a new feature that UserGuiding provides. With UG Now, you can quickly create interactive website walkthroughs for any website regardless of who the domain belongs to.

Here's an example:

Here's how it works: you create the engagement flow on-screen and customize the tooltips however you like it, share the link to the guide with others, and let them understand what you need.

The best part is that UG Now is completely free for UserGuiding users. The only thing you have to do is to install the UG Now Chrome extension, and start using it! 🚀

UserGuiding Pricing

With adjustable active user ranges, UserGuiding's scalable plans look like the following when billed yearly:

• Basic Plan: Starting from $69/month.
• Professional Plan: Starting from $199/month.
• Corporate Plan: Custom quote.

UserGuiding Reviews

👍 Pros:

“UserGuiding has great UX - very simple to use. In a few hours after signing up, you can start getting positive results.”

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👎 Cons:

“Some of the implementation was a little hard because of our lack of technical knowledge.”

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2- Soapbox vs. Loom

Soapbox is an online video editing platform, provided by the video platforms of Wistia, that allows you to record your screen, webcam, or other device and add text, images, music, and more.

It's a simple, fast, and easy-to-use video creation platform. The result is a beautiful online guide with a voiceover that helps your audience get more from your content.

Also, Soapbox by Wistia allows you to edit when and where the webcam recording shows, and where only the screen is visible.

So it's a more comprehensive alternative to Loom.

But, since Soapbox offers a lot, it also charges a lot.

Soapbox Pricing

• Free version available
• Solo Plan: $25/year if paid annually
• Teams plan: $35/month if paid annually

Soapbox Reviews

👍 Pros:

“I really like that I can record myself sharing my screen and have the option to have my face included or just have the screen shared.”

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👎 Cons:

“The editing can be time consuming and it is hard to download and send out videos if you don't have the upgraded version.”

3- CloudApp vs. Loom

CloudApp is an easy-to-use, cloud-based video recording tool that allows you to record, edit, and analyze.

You can also add annotations, highlights, voiceovers, etc. It's perfect for creating tutorials, training courses, product demos, webinars, presentations, and more.

CloudApp Pricing

• Free plan available up to 50 screen capture
• Pro Plan: starting at $9.95/month with unlimited screen capture
• Team Plan: starting at $8/month per user with minimum 3 members
• Enterprise Plan: Custom quote

CloudApp Reviews

👍 Pros:

“CloudApp has saved me hours in editing screenshots. Also, I commonly need to show my team how to do a certain task, and that's where I use CloudApp to tape short tutorials that I can share in seconds.”

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👎 Cons:

“I really dislike that it will randomly crash on me and it takes forever to load, and then I have to restart it and start from scratch again.”

4- Iorad vs. Loom

Iorad is a tutorial creation and onboarding tool that helps you create walkthroughs by organizing your screenshots.

Instead of taking screen recordings like Loom, Iorad does the job by recording your actions and turning them into an interactive guide. You can add written descriptions and voiceovers to your tutorials to make them even better, and you can share them with everyone.

It's like a digital magazine where you can add text, images, videos, links, and more.

What makes Iorad the to-go choice is the variety of their pricing model that suit almost everyone.

Iorad Pricing

For personal use:

• Iorad is free for personal use.

For business use:

• Starter plan: $200/month with an additional $15 for one additional creator.
• Pro plan: $500/month with an additional $20 for each additional creator.
• Company plan: $3200/month with an additional $40 for each additional creator.
• Enterprise plan: custom quote for personalized needs.

For educational purposes:

• Educators plan: $10/month for teachers and professors.
• Institution plan: up to 80% off for school districts and universities.

For non-profit organizations:

Non-profit plan: up to 50% off for non-profit organizations

Iorad Reviews

👍 Pros:

“The ability to add voiceover saves a lot of time versus recording your own demo. What would previously take 1hr+ to record a demo, refine it, publish it etc. now only takes around 20 mins.”

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👎 Cons:

“Integration cuts the size of the slides sometimes. Embedding can get complicated with the change of the UI.”

5- Camtasia

 Camtasia is an online video editing software that allows users to record their desktop or webcam, add text and images, then export the video in many different formats.

Unlike Loom, Camtasia has key features like animation, transitions, voice-overs, music, titles, credits, graphics, captions, and more.

Users can make tutorials, demos, explainer videos, product demonstrations, sales presentations, eLearning courses, and much more.

The free version of Camtasia includes all the basic tools, while the premium version adds many advanced essential features. 

Camtasia Pricing

Camtasia is a one-time-purchase tool.

• Free trial available
• Individual Deal: $353.99/user (first year of maintenance included)
• Business Deal: starting from $338.48/user (first year of maintenance included)
• Education Deal: starting from $253/user (first year of maintenance included)
• Government & Non-Profit Deal: Starting From $317.40/user (first year of maintenance included)

Camtasia Reviews

👍 Pros:

“The presets that are available for use in Camtasia offer many options that you won't see in many other applications. For instance, you can create interactive videos for assessments. There are specific applications for this purpose but they don't allow much editing of the video itself. ”

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👎 Cons:

“It just doesn't have the ability to process webcam, screenshare, and audio at the same time. What happens over and over again, is that the audio will drop out which puts the sound out of sync with the webcam which of course is incredibly frustrating if you are making a video.”

Conclusion

There is probably no such thing as ”the perfect product for all needs.”

But at least every product has almost tens of alternatives, and one of them must be the one for you.

Here I tried to gather a diverse range of alternatives to Loom to be able to help you. I hope your demo and tutorial creation processes become easier from now on.

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