Bubbles vs Vidyard
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Both sides assessedBubbles compared with Vidyard
Vidyard exists to put video in front of prospects and log the engagement against a CRM record, at $59 per seat annually with CRM behind a quote. Bubbles has no prospect-facing machinery at all and costs $12 per member. They are not really alternatives: buy Bubbles for how your team talks to itself and Vidyard for how your reps talk to buyers, and expect some companies to run both.
Vidyard compared with Bubbles
Bubbles is the async-first internal alternative at $12 per member per month annually, built around threaded video replies, channels, and an AI notetaker rather than prospect analytics. Vidyard has no equivalent conversational layer and Bubbles has no CRM writeback or avatars. They barely compete: Bubbles for how your team talks to itself, Vidyard for how your reps talk to buyers.
Choose Bubbles if
Distributed teams of three to thirty who want to replace recurring calls with threaded async video conversation, especially engineering, design, and product groups that also want their live meetings recorded and summarized under the same subscription.
Choose Vidyard if
Revenue teams of five and up who send prospect-facing video systematically, need engagement logged against CRM records, and are willing to pay $59 a seat plus add-ons to get avatar generation and agentic sending rather than recording every video by hand.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Bubbles | Vidyard |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Video | Video |
| Starting price | $0 (Basic), then $12 per member per month billed yearly (Pro Teams) (free plan available) | $0 (Free), then $59 per user per month billed annually (Starter) (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Freemium per-member subscription with pricing that adjusts automatically based on team size, discounted for yearly billing. | Freemium per-seat subscription with a published Starter price, quote-only Teams and Enterprise tiers, and a separately priced Video Agent add-on. |
| Free plan | Unlimited screen recordings up to 30 minutes each, five meeting recordings per week, AI summaries, a notetaker joining all meetings, and two channels, with recordings locking after two weeks. | Five video recordings per month at up to 30 minutes each, 15 AI videos, stock avatars, three custom AI avatars, basic editing, sharing options, and limited integrations. |
| Free trial | 14 days on Pro plans, alongside a permanent free Basic plan | 14 days on Starter, plus a permanent free plan; no credit card required to start |
| Best for | Distributed teams of three to thirty who want to replace recurring calls with threaded async video conversation, especially engineering, design, and product groups that also want their live meetings recorded and summarized under the same subscription. | Revenue teams of five and up who send prospect-facing video systematically, need engagement logged against CRM records, and are willing to pay $59 a seat plus add-ons to get avatar generation and agentic sending rather than recording every video by hand. |
| Setup time | Fifteen minutes. Install the Chrome extension or desktop app, connect Google Calendar or Outlook if you want the notetaker, create a channel, and record. The free tier means the first month costs nothing and proves whether the habit forms. | Fifteen minutes to a first sent video: install the extension, sign up without a card, record, share. Setting up a custom AI avatar takes a short guided capture session and processing time. Wiring CRM integration is a Teams-tier project measured in days, not minutes, and usually involves Vidyard's team. |
| Learning curve | Low mechanically, moderate culturally. Recording and replying are obvious. The change that has to be agreed explicitly is that a video reply is an acceptable answer, because if half the team responds by asking for a call the threading model never engages and you have bought an expensive recorder. | Recording is trivial. Avatar and Video Agent workflows are not, because getting good output means writing personalization variables that read naturally and testing how prospects respond to a synthetic delivery. Expect a couple of weeks of iteration before avatar sends beat handmade ones. |
| Platforms | Chrome extension, Desktop application, Web | Chrome extension, Edge extension, macOS desktop app, Windows desktop app, iOS, Android, Slack, Web |
| Compliance | GDPR, Advanced security features available for enterprise customers on request | SOC 2, GDPR, Advanced security options and secure playback on the Enterprise tier |
| Founded | 2018 | 2011 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States | Kitchener, Ontario, Canada |
| Ownership | Venture-backed, private | Venture-backed, private |
Strengths and limitations
Bubbles
Strengths
- Threaded video replies and on-screen anchored comments make async video a conversation rather than a broadcast, which is a structurally better model for replacing meetings than a link and an email.
- The most usable free tier in this category for real work: unlimited screen recordings at 30 minutes each plus five AI-notetaken meetings a week.
- Two products in one subscription, async video collaboration and meeting recording with transcripts and summaries, at $12 per member per month billed yearly.
- Channels give recordings a home, which is why Bubbles archives stay navigable while collections of Loom links generally do not.
Limitations
- Nothing here serves sales: no dynamic personalization, no per-prospect landing pages, no CRM writeback, no animated GIF thumbnails, and no view-based follow-up automation.
- Free recordings lock after two weeks, so the free tier is a working surface rather than an archive and the value of your library depends on paying.
- Embedding and distribution are much narrower than Loom's 400-plus tool coverage, which matters if your documentation lives in Confluence or Notion.
- The AI notetaker is a bot that joins the call, which some organizations and some clients will not accept, and on the free tier it joins every meeting by default.
Vidyard
Strengths
- The most complete revenue-team feature set in the category: recording, hosting, avatars, agentic sending, engagement analytics, and CRM writeback in one platform.
- Fifteen years of video hosting heritage means the library, player, embedding, and analytics are far more mature than any recorder that added sales features later.
- Three custom AI avatars and 15 AI videos on the free plan make it the cheapest serious way to find out whether avatar video works on your prospects.
- Thirty-minute free recordings versus Loom's five-minute cap, which makes the free tier genuinely usable for demos and walkthroughs.
Limitations
- The CRM integrations that justify the platform are gated to the quote-only Teams tier, so the headline capability is not self-serve.
- Starter at $59 per user per month annually is the steepest entry price in this category, and the Video Agent add-on pushes the real number past $80.
- Pricing transparency is poor: Vidyard's own pricing page shows currency without amounts for Starter and the add-on, which is a bad sign for a self-serve buyer.
- The free plan meters at five recordings per month, which is a hard stop for anyone whose video habit is actually forming.
Pricing compared
Bubbles
Freemium per-member subscription with pricing that adjusts automatically based on team size, discounted for yearly billing.
- Basic$0
- Pro Teams$12
- Pro Personal$18
Bubbles at $12 per member per month billed yearly is the cheapest capable team tier in this category and it bundles two products. You get unlimited async recording with threaded video replies plus unlimited AI-notetaken meetings with transcripts and summaries, for less than Loom Business at $15 which does only the first and less than most standalone meeting notetakers which do only the second. The free tier is genuinely usable, with unlimited screen recordings at 30 minutes and a notetaker on every meeting, constrained only by a two-week lock. The value case fails for exactly one reason: none of this helps you sell anything. Judged as internal team infrastructure it is the best price-to-capability ratio here; judged as a sales tool it scores zero because it is not one.
Vidyard
Freemium per-seat subscription with a published Starter price, quote-only Teams and Enterprise tiers, and a separately priced Video Agent add-on.
- Free$0
- Starter$59
- TeamsCustom
- EnterpriseCustom
Vidyard is expensive and mostly worth it for the specific buyer it is aimed at. Starter at $59 a seat annually buys unlimited recording, real engagement analytics, branded pages, and avatar generation, and if video is a systematic part of how your reps prospect, that pays for itself on one extra meeting a quarter. The problem is the shape of the ladder. The free plan is a genuinely good trial, Starter is a serious price, and the CRM logging that makes the analytics actionable sits behind a quote on Teams. A four-person team that wants HubSpot integration is looking at a sales conversation and something in the region of $99 a seat, which is four to six times what Sendspark Growth or Hippo Video Teams would cost for a comparable personalization job. Buy Vidyard when the CRM and hosting depth is the point; buy something cheaper when it is not.
Editorial verdict on each
Bubbles
Bubbles is the best value in async video for a team that talks to itself, and the threading is the reason. When the reply to a recording is another recording in the same channel, async video stops being a broadcast and starts actually replacing meetings, which is the thing every tool in this category claims and few structurally support. At $12 per member per month billed yearly you also get an AI notetaker with transcripts and summaries, which is a second product most teams would otherwise buy separately, and the free tier with unlimited 30-minute screen recordings is the most usable one here. Two caveats. Free recordings lock after two weeks, so the archive is not free, and the notetaker is a bot that shows up in your calls whether or not everyone is comfortable with that. And understand what you are not buying: Bubbles does nothing for sales, has no CRM writeback, and embeds in far fewer places than Loom. For a distributed team of three to thirty that wants fewer calls, it is the first thing to try.
Read the full Bubbles profileVidyard
Vidyard is the most complete product in async video for revenue teams and the only one whose hosting, analytics, and CRM plumbing came first and whose recorder came second. If video is a systematic part of how your reps prospect, the combination of 30-minute free recordings, custom AI avatars, agentic bulk sending, and engagement written onto Salesforce and HubSpot records is not available anywhere else at this depth. The problem is the ladder. Starter is $59 a seat annually, Video Agent adds roughly $24 more, and the CRM integrations that make the whole thing worth buying are behind a Teams quote at around $99. That structure serves a company with a sales budget and actively punishes a four-person team. Small businesses doing personalization at moderate volume should price Sendspark and Hippo Video first, and teams whose videos go to colleagues should not be looking at Vidyard at all.
Read the full Vidyard profileBubbles profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Vidyard last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.