Riverside
Studio-quality recording first, with a webinar plan bolted on properly
Riverside (formerly Riverside.fm) is a browser-based recording and live streaming platform that captures each participant locally at up to 4K video and 48kHz audio on separate tracks so quality does not depend on the internet connection, then provides AI editing, clip generation, transcription, hosting, and publishing; a dedicated Webinar plan adds registration pages, lead capture, Q and A, polls, recurring webinars, and a HubSpot integration.
Overview
Riverside was founded in Tel Aviv by brothers Gideon and Nadav Keyson and built its reputation on one technical idea: record locally, upload progressively. Instead of capturing whatever survived the video call, Riverside records each participant's camera and microphone at full quality on their own device and uploads the files in the background. If a guest's wifi drops mid-sentence, the stream stutters but the recording does not. For anyone who has lost a good interview to a bad connection, that is not a feature, it is the whole reason to use the product.
Historically that made Riverside a podcast and video-content tool rather than a webinar platform, and most of the product still points that way: AI editing, magic clips, show notes, podcast hosting, social scheduling, a creator website, and multi-platform publishing. In the last two years the company has pushed into business use, and the current pricing page carries a dedicated Webinar plan at 99 dollars a month (79 billed annually) covering up to 100 registrants with pre-recording, recurring webinars, lead capture, branded forms, Q and A, polls, webinar analytics, and a HubSpot integration. That is a real webinar product, not a marketing label, though it is smaller in scope than a dedicated platform.
The company has raised roughly 77 million dollars across its rounds, including a 35 million dollar Series B led by Oren Zeev with participation from Lachy Groom and Alexis Ohanian's Seven Seven Six, and a 30 million dollar Series C in December 2024. It rebranded from riverside.fm to riverside.com, and the old domain redirects, which is worth knowing when you go looking for it.
The honest positioning: Riverside is the right choice when the artifact matters more than the moment. A webinar you will cut into a course, an interview series you will edit properly, an executive briefing that has to look good in the archive. It is the wrong choice when what you need is registration volume, reminder sequencing, evergreen automation, and marketing-automation depth, because the Webinar plan tops out at 100 registrants and the next step up is a quote-only Business tier.
Best for
Content-led teams, podcasters, and marketing organizations whose webinars and interviews will be edited, clipped, and republished afterwards, especially those recording with remote guests on unreliable connections, and small businesses running gated sessions under 100 registrants where recording quality matters more than registration scale.
Not the right fit for
- Teams whose webinars routinely draw more than 100 registrants; the Webinar plan caps there and the next tier is a quote-only Business plan, which breaks the self-serve path exactly when your program starts working.
- Marketers who need deep reminder-email sequencing, lead scoring, and multi-CRM sync; HubSpot is the only marketing connector on the self-serve Webinar plan, with Salesforce and Marketo reserved for Business.
- Anyone running evergreen automated funnels; pre-recording and recurring sessions exist, but there is no timed interaction library, no conditional logic, and no just-in-time scheduling.
- Broadcast producers who want live scene switching, custom overlays, tickers, and on-screen chat promotion; StreamYard does that considerably better and Riverside is not trying to.
- Buyers who need a purely webinar-shaped tool and will not use podcast hosting, social scheduling, newsletters, or a creator website; a large part of what you pay for on the lower tiers is content-publishing machinery.
How it works
- 1
You create a studio and invite participants by link. Everyone joins in a browser with nothing to install, on desktop or mobile. What happens next is the part that distinguishes Riverside: each person's camera and microphone are recorded locally on their own machine at up to 4K and 48kHz, and those files upload progressively in the background while the session runs.
- 2
The live view everyone sees is a normal video call subject to normal internet problems. The recording is not. When the session ends you have separate high-quality tracks per participant, isolated from each other, which is exactly what an editor wants and exactly what a composited cloud recording cannot give you.
- 3
For webinars specifically, the Webinar plan wraps registration around the studio: a branded registration form captures leads, confirmation and reminder flows run, and the session can be live, pre-recorded and played at a scheduled time, or recurring. During the session you take moderated questions and run polls, with webinar analytics reporting attendance and engagement afterwards, and registration data syncing into HubSpot.
- 4
Livestreaming runs alongside recording. Full HD 1080p streaming is available from the Grow plan, with multistreaming to several destinations, so a session can be broadcast publicly while the high-quality separate tracks are still being captured for later editing.
- 5
Afterwards the AI layer does the work most teams never get to: magic clips cut the recording into short-form segments, transcripts and show notes are generated, an editing suite trims and cleans without leaving the browser, and publishing pushes the result to podcast platforms, video hosting, social scheduling, or a newsletter, depending on your plan.
Feature breakdown
27 features in 5 modulesRecording architecture
The local-first capture model that is the actual product.- Local recording per participant
- Each person's camera and microphone are captured on their own device rather than off the video stream, so a dropped connection degrades the live view but never the recording.
- Progressive background upload
- Files upload during the session rather than after it, so there is no long wait at the end and no risk of losing a recording to a closed laptop.
- Separate tracks per participant
- Isolated audio and video per person, which is what an editor needs to fix one bad microphone or cut a single speaker without touching the rest. Composited cloud recordings cannot offer this.
- Up to 4K video and 48kHz audio
- Full 4K on paid plans with 48kHz audio; the free plan is limited to 720p and 44.1kHz.
- Nothing to install
- Participants join a studio by link in a browser on desktop or mobile, which is what makes the quality model practical with external guests.
- Teleprompter
- Built-in script prompting for the host, available on paid plans, which matters for scripted content and for anyone presenting to camera.
Webinar capability
A real webinar plan, smaller in scope than a dedicated platform.- Branded registration pages and forms
- Capture registrant details through branded forms on the Webinar plan, feeding lead capture rather than just attendance counts.
- Registrant capacity
- Up to 100 registrants on the 99-dollar Webinar plan, expanding to up to 10,000 on the quote-only Business plan. There is nothing in between, which is the plan's main structural weakness.
- Pre-recorded webinars
- Record the session in advance and play it at a scheduled time, which is the safest format for a high-stakes session and a common request from executives.
- Recurring webinars
- Run the same session on a repeating schedule without rebuilding the registration and email setup each time.
- Q and A and polls
- Moderated question queue and in-session polling, included on the Webinar plan rather than paywalled above it.
- Webinar analytics
- Attendance, engagement, and registration reporting specific to webinar sessions rather than generic recording metrics.
- HubSpot integration
- The only marketing connector on the self-serve Webinar plan; Salesforce and Marketo are reserved for the quote-only Business tier, which is a real constraint for non-HubSpot shops.
Live streaming
Broadcasting alongside the high-quality capture.- Full HD 1080p livestreaming
- Available from the Grow plan upward, so a session can be broadcast live while separate high-quality tracks are captured underneath.
- Multistreaming
- Push a single broadcast to several destinations at once, included from the Grow plan.
- Producer mode
- A dedicated production control view for someone other than the host to manage the session, available on the Business plan.
- Async recording
- Participants record their contribution separately at a time that suits them, which solves the scheduling problem for guests in incompatible time zones. Business plan.
AI editing and repurposing
Where the recording turns into distributable content.- Magic Clips
- Automatic short-form clip generation from a long recording, available even on the free plan, aimed at the social distribution workflow.
- Full editing suite in the browser
- Trim, clean, and assemble without exporting to another tool, including on the free plan, which is unusually generous.
- AI editing and show notes
- Automated cleanup and generated summaries and show notes on paid plans, reducing the post-production pass to a review rather than a build.
- Transcription
- Automatic transcripts for repurposing, captioning, search, and accessibility.
- Collaborative editing
- Multiple people working on the same recording, available on the Business plan.
Publishing and distribution
The content-business machinery bundled into lower tiers.- Podcast hosting and multi-platform publishing
- Host and distribute audio to podcast platforms directly from the Pro plan, without a separate hosting subscription.
- Video hosting
- Host video for embedding and distribution from the Grow plan upward.
- Social scheduling
- Schedule clips and posts to social channels from within Riverside, included from the Grow plan.
- Newsletters and creator website
- Bundled from the Grow plan, which is genuinely useful for a content business and entirely irrelevant to a marketing team that just wants webinars.
- Custom branding
- Branded studios and outputs, available on the Business plan.
Use cases
4 documentedB2B marketer running an executive interview series
Senior guests with fifteen minutes and variable home internet, sessions that will be cut into clips and gated as content, and a track record of losing good material to connection problems.
Local recording means a dropped connection costs a moment of live quality rather than the whole interview, separate tracks let an editor fix one bad microphone, and Magic Clips produces the distribution assets without an editing pass.
Small business running gated customer webinars
Monthly sessions of forty to eighty registrants that must be recorded properly because they are republished as an on-demand library and cut into a customer education course.
The 99-dollar Webinar plan covers registration, lead capture, Q and A, polls, and HubSpot sync, while the recording comes out at a quality that survives being edited into course modules.
Podcaster who also sells
The show is the marketing, and the same recording infrastructure needs to serve both a published podcast and occasional gated webinars for the business behind it.
Pro or Grow covers recording, hosting, publishing, social scheduling, and newsletters; adding the Webinar plan turns the same studio into a lead-capturing session without a second vendor.
Team recording with guests across incompatible time zones
Contributors in three continents cannot reliably be in the same room at the same time, but the finished piece needs to feel like one conversation.
Async recording on the Business plan lets each participant record their contribution when it suits them at full quality, and separate tracks make assembling it into one piece a normal editing job.
Pricing
from $0 (Free), then $24 per month billed annually (Pro)Freemium subscription tiered on recording hours, studio count, download allowances, and feature access, with a dedicated Webinar plan sitting between the content tiers and the quote-only Business tier.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 per month |
Unusually generous for a free tier: the editing suite and clip generation are both included rather than paywalled. |
| Pro | $29 monthly or $24 billed annually ($288 per year) per month |
|
| Grow | $39 monthly or $34 billed annually ($408 per year) per month |
|
| Webinar | $99 monthly or $79 billed annually per month |
The only self-serve plan with webinar registration. The 100-registrant cap is the constraint that decides whether Riverside can be your webinar tool. |
| Business | Custom quote annual contract |
The jump from 100 to 10,000 registrants with nothing in between is the sharpest cliff in Riverside's pricing. |
Billing notes
- Annual billing saves meaningfully across tiers: Pro drops from 29 to 24, Grow from 39 to 34, and Webinar from 99 to 79 per month.
- Separate-track recording hours are metered monthly (5 on Pro, 15 on Grow, more on Webinar), while single-track recording is unlimited. This is the limit people hit first.
- Separate-track download allowances are capped independently of recording hours, so you can record more than you can download on a given plan.
- The Webinar plan caps at 100 registrants and the next step is a quote-only Business plan for up to 10,000, with nothing between. A program that grows past 100 loses the self-serve path entirely.
- Salesforce and Marketo integrations, API access, SSO, and SOC 2 and ISO 27001 evidence are all Business-tier only, so HubSpot is the only self-serve CRM path.
- The free plan watermarks outputs, which rules it out for anything customer-facing.
- Riverside rebranded from riverside.fm to riverside.com; the old domain redirects to the new one.
Value assessment: Riverside is excellent value as a recording platform and mixed value as a webinar platform. At 24 dollars a month annually, Pro gives you 4K local recording, separate tracks, AI editing, transcripts, and podcast hosting, which would cost more assembled from separate tools. The free plan including the full editing suite and Magic Clips is genuinely generous. The Webinar plan at 79 dollars annually is fair for what it does, but 100 registrants is a low ceiling and the absence of any tier between 100 and 10,000 means a successful program falls off a cliff into a sales conversation. Compare that with Demio at around 164 dollars a month for a 500-attendee room or Contrast at around 69 dollars for 250 registrants with better email and CRM tooling, and Riverside is not the value choice for volume. Buy it for the recording quality; treat the webinar capability as a well-executed extension rather than as the reason.
Strengths & limitations
Strengths
- Local-first recording with progressive upload is the best answer to unreliable guest connections available in any browser tool, and it is the reason to choose Riverside over anything else here.
- Separate tracks per participant at up to 4K and 48kHz give editors what a composited cloud recording never can.
- The free plan includes the full editing suite and Magic Clips rather than paywalling them, which makes evaluation genuinely useful.
- The AI layer is deep and practical: magic clips, AI editing, show notes, and transcripts all reduce post-production to a review pass.
- The Webinar plan is a real product with registration, lead capture, pre-recorded and recurring sessions, Q and A, polls, analytics, and HubSpot sync, not a marketing label.
- Bundled publishing (podcast hosting, video hosting, social scheduling, newsletters) removes several separate subscriptions for a content-led team.
- Well funded at roughly 77 million dollars raised, including a 30 million dollar Series C in December 2024, with a clear and consistent product identity.
Limitations
- The Webinar plan caps at 100 registrants, and the only step up is a quote-only Business plan for 10,000, so growth breaks the self-serve path abruptly.
- HubSpot is the only marketing connector available self-serve; Salesforce and Marketo require the Business tier.
- No evergreen automation: pre-recorded and recurring sessions exist, but there is no interaction library, conditional logic, or just-in-time scheduling.
- No live production control comparable to StreamYard: no scene switching, custom overlays, tickers, or on-screen chat promotion.
- Separate-track recording hours are metered monthly and are the limit most users hit first, distinct from and stricter than the download allowance.
- A large share of what you pay for on Pro and Grow is content-publishing machinery (podcast hosting, newsletters, creator websites) that a marketing team running webinars will never touch.
- SOC 2 and ISO 27001 evidence, SSO, and API access are all Business-tier only, so the compliance story is unavailable to self-serve buyers.
Head-to-head comparisons
3 alternativesRiverside vs StreamYard
from $0 (Free), then $35.99 per month billed annually (Core)The closest comparison available. StreamYard is built for the live broadcast, with better layouts, overlays, multi-destination streaming, and on-screen chat promotion; Riverside is built for the recording, with local capture, separate tracks, and 4K files that survive editing. Choose StreamYard when the live moment is the product and it must look composed on YouTube. Choose Riverside when the finished, edited artifact is the product and your guests have unreliable internet.
Full Riverside vs StreamYard comparisonRiverside vs Contrast
from $0 (Free), then around $69 (roughly 60 euros) per month for ProBoth treat the recording as content to be repurposed, and both have AI clipping. Contrast is a webinar platform first with far better registration, email, and HubSpot depth, a free thirty-registrant tier, and pricing that scales past 100 registrants without a sales call. Riverside records at a quality Contrast cannot match. If the webinar is the point, take Contrast; if the video quality is the point and 100 registrants is enough, take Riverside.
Full Riverside vs Contrast comparisonRiverside vs Zoom Webinars
from From about $66.67 per licence per month billed annually (300-attendee capacity), plus a paid Zoom Workplace licenceZoom Webinars scales to thousands, carries full enterprise compliance, and integrates with corporate IT; its recordings are composited and merely adequate. Riverside caps at 100 registrants self-serve but produces broadcast-quality separate tracks. Use Zoom when reach, reliability, and procurement matter. Use Riverside when the session will be edited into a course, a clip series, or a published asset and the recording quality determines whether that is worth doing.
Full Riverside vs Zoom Webinars comparisonImplementation & onboarding
- Setup time
- Under thirty minutes for a first recording session. Create a studio, invite by link, check levels, and record. A webinar takes longer because you also configure the registration form, the schedule, and the HubSpot connection, but it is still an afternoon at most.
- Learning curve
- Low to record, moderate to get the most from it. Understanding the difference between the live view and the local recording, managing separate-track downloads against your monthly allowance, and using the editing suite properly all take a session or two. Guests need no preparation beyond a decent microphone.
- Onboarding
- Entirely self-serve up to and including the Webinar plan. Business adds a dedicated customer success manager. Riverside publishes strong documentation and a large body of tutorial content aimed at podcasters, which translates well to business use.
- Migration notes
- Nothing to import in the usual sense. Existing recordings can be uploaded for editing and clipping but there is no event or registration history to port. If you are moving a webinar program to Riverside, registration pages and email flows must be rebuilt, and you should verify your registrant volume fits under 100 before committing, because exceeding it means a sales conversation rather than an upgrade click.
Platform, API & security
- Platforms
- Web browser (hosts and guests, desktop and mobile)iOS and Android apps for mobile recordingMultistreaming to external destinations
- API
- API access is a Business-tier feature. Self-serve plans integrate through HubSpot and the built-in publishing destinations rather than through a public API.
- Compliance
- SOC 2 (Business tier)ISO 27001 (Business tier)GDPR
- Data residency
- Not published for self-serve tiers.
- SSO
- Business tier only.
- Security notes
- SOC 2 and ISO 27001 evidence, SSO, and API access are all reserved for the quote-only Business plan. Self-serve buyers get GDPR compliance and standard encryption but no certification package, which is a genuine constraint if a security questionnaire is part of your process.
Support & resources
- Channels
- Email supportIn-app chatDedicated customer success manager on Business
- Documentation
- Extensive help center covering studios, recording quality, separate tracks, editing, publishing, and the webinar plan.
- Community
- Large creator and podcaster community with substantial third-party tutorial content; the vendor also runs an active educational blog.
Company
- Founded
- 2019
- Headquarters
- Tel Aviv, Israel
- Ownership
- Venture-backed
- Founders
- Gideon Keyson, Nadav Keyson
- Employees
- Not publicly disclosed
- Funding
- Approximately 77 million dollars raised in total, including a 35 million dollar Series B led by Oren Zeev with Lachy Groom and Seven Seven Six, and a 30 million dollar Series C in December 2024.
Funding history
| Round | Amount | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed and Series A | Approximately 12 million dollars combined | 2020 to 2021 | Early rounds funding the local-recording architecture. |
| Series B | 35 million dollars | 2021 | Led by Oren Zeev with participation from Lachy Groom and Alexis Ohanian's Seven Seven Six. |
| Series C | 30 million dollars | 2024 | Closed in December 2024, bringing total funding to roughly 77 million dollars. |
Timeline
- 2019Founded in Tel Aviv by brothers Gideon and Nadav Keyson around local-first recording with progressive background upload.
- 2021Raises a 35 million dollar Series B led by Oren Zeev with Lachy Groom and Seven Seven Six as remote recording demand accelerates.
- 2022Adds livestreaming and multistreaming alongside recording, and begins building out the AI editing and clip layer.
- 2024Raises a 30 million dollar Series C in December, taking total funding to roughly 77 million dollars.
- 2025Rebrands from riverside.fm to riverside.com and expands into business use with a dedicated Webinar plan carrying registration, lead capture, and HubSpot sync.
- 2026Pricing runs Free, Pro at 24 annually, Grow at 34, a Webinar plan at 79 annually for up to 100 registrants, and a quote-only Business tier reaching 10,000 registrants.
Integrations
- HubSpot (Webinar plan)
- Salesforce (Business plan)
- Marketo (Business plan)
- Podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts and Spotify via built-in hosting
- YouTube and social channels for clip publishing and scheduling
- Multistreaming destinations for live broadcasts
- Video hosting and embedding
- API access (Business plan)
Frequently asked questions
10 questionsWhat is Riverside?
Riverside is a browser-based recording and live streaming platform that captures each participant locally at up to 4K video and 48kHz audio on separate tracks, so recording quality does not depend on the internet connection. It adds AI editing, clip generation, transcription, hosting, and publishing, and a dedicated Webinar plan with registration pages, lead capture, Q and A, polls, and a HubSpot integration.
Why does local recording matter?
Because a video call records whatever survived the network, and a local recording records what actually happened. Riverside captures each person's camera and microphone on their own device and uploads progressively in the background. A guest whose wifi drops mid-sentence will stutter in the live view but come out clean in the recording. If your sessions get edited and republished, that difference decides whether the material is usable.
How much does Riverside cost?
There is a free plan with two hours of multi-track recording, 720p, the full editing suite, and Magic Clips, watermarked. Pro is 29 dollars monthly or 24 annually, Grow is 39 or 34, and the Webinar plan is 99 monthly or 79 annually for up to 100 registrants. Business, covering up to 10,000 registrants, is a custom quote.
What does a 500-registrant webinar cost on Riverside?
You cannot run one on a self-serve plan. The Webinar plan caps at 100 registrants and the next tier is the quote-only Business plan, which reaches 10,000 registrants but requires a sales conversation and an annual contract. There is nothing in between. If your webinars regularly draw hundreds of registrants, Contrast at around 69 dollars for 250 or Demio at around 164 dollars for a 500-attendee room will serve you better and keep you self-serve.
Is Riverside a real webinar platform or a recording tool with a webinar label?
It is a real but modest webinar product. The Webinar plan includes branded registration forms, lead capture, pre-recorded and recurring sessions, Q and A, polls, webinar analytics, and HubSpot sync. What it lacks compared with a dedicated platform is registration scale, deep reminder-email sequencing, multi-CRM support, and any evergreen automation. Treat it as a well-executed extension of a recording platform, not a Demio replacement.
Do participants need to install anything?
No. Participants join a studio by link in a browser on desktop or mobile, and there are also iOS and Android apps. The local recording happens inside the browser session, so you get studio-quality separate tracks without asking a guest to install recording software, which is the combination that makes the whole model practical.
Can Riverside stream live to YouTube and LinkedIn?
Yes, from the Grow plan upward. Full HD 1080p livestreaming and multistreaming to several destinations run alongside the high-quality local capture, so you can broadcast publicly while still ending up with separate 4K tracks to edit. What it does not offer is StreamYard-style live production: no scene switching, overlays, tickers, or on-screen chat promotion.
What are separate tracks and why should I care?
Instead of one composited video where everyone is baked into a grid, Riverside gives you an isolated audio and video file per participant. That lets an editor fix one bad microphone, cut a single speaker's tangent, or re-frame one person without touching anyone else. It is the difference between a recording you can edit properly and one you can only trim.
Who owns Riverside and how is it funded?
Riverside is an independent venture-backed company founded in Tel Aviv in 2019 by brothers Gideon and Nadav Keyson. It has raised roughly 77 million dollars, including a 35 million dollar Series B led by Oren Zeev with Lachy Groom and Alexis Ohanian's Seven Seven Six, and a 30 million dollar Series C in December 2024. Headcount is not publicly disclosed.
Will Riverside pass an enterprise security review?
Only on the Business plan. SOC 2 and ISO 27001 evidence, SSO, and API access are all reserved for that quote-only tier. Self-serve buyers get GDPR compliance and standard encryption but no certification package. If a completed security questionnaire is part of your buying process, budget for Business or look at Livestorm, which publishes ISO 27001 on its self-serve tier.
Editorial verdict
Riverside is the best recording platform in this category by a wide margin, and its Webinar plan is a genuine product rather than a label. Local-first capture with separate 4K tracks means the session survives bad guest internet and can be edited into something worth publishing, which no composited cloud recorder can match. Buy it if your webinars and interviews get clipped, edited, and republished, if your guests are unreliable connections rather than reliable studios, and if 100 registrants covers your program. Look elsewhere if registration scale, reminder sequencing, evergreen automation, or a non-HubSpot CRM is central, because the jump from 100 registrants to a quote-only 10,000-registrant Business plan is the sharpest cliff in this whole category.
Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.