Tella

Name: Tella
Brand: Tella
Price: 13 USD

A recorder that edits the video for you, then hands you the link

Tella is a screen and camera recording platform that applies automatic zooms, layouts, backgrounds, filler word removal, and transcript-based editing to a raw recording, hosts the result on a shareable page with viewer analytics, and runs as native Mac and Windows apps plus a Chrome extension and web app; it is a Y Combinator company founded in 2020 by two former InVision employees and starts at $13 a month.

Visit website

Overview

Tella was founded in 2020 by Grant Shaddick and Michiel Westerbeek, both formerly of InVision, and went through Y Combinator. It has raised roughly $3.5M in total, including a $2.1M seed led by Gradient with AltaIR Capital and others participating, on top of an earlier $1.4M from Y Combinator, Liquid 2, and Gradient. The team is deliberately tiny, in the low single digits, which is unusual for a product with this feature surface.

The positioning is the interesting part. Loom owns the fast, disposable async message. Screen Studio owns the beautiful export. Tella sits precisely between them: it does the automatic zoom and background framing that make a recording look designed, and it also gives you a hosted page, viewer analytics, playlists, and team sharing. The pitch is that you should not have to choose between a video that looks good and a video you can just send.

The editing model is worth understanding before you buy. You edit by editing the transcript, the way Descript popularized, so deleting a sentence deletes it from the video. On top of that sit filler word removal, silence detection, automatic zoom effects, one-click audio enhancement, a teleprompter for scripted takes, and a blur tool for hiding passwords and email addresses in a screen recording, which is the sort of feature that only exists because real users kept doing demos with production data on screen.

Pricing is straightforward and cheap for what it includes. Pro is $13 a month and covers unlimited videos, 4K recording up to six hours per clip, 106 languages of transcription, team collaboration, and analytics. Premium is $19 and adds custom domains, domain restrictions, white labeling, advanced analytics, and filler word removal. Enterprise adds SSO and SCIM and requires a conversation. Every account starts on a seven day trial of the full Pro plan with no card, and there is a free tier whose main constraint is a five minute export limit.

Best for

Founders, marketers, and small product teams on mixed Mac and Windows setups who need recordings that look produced but still want a hosted link with analytics, and who want automatic editing rather than a timeline.

Not the right fit for

Sales teams running systematic video outreach; there are no per-prospect personalized landing pages, no animated email thumbnails tied to a contact record, and no native CRM push of view alerts, so Sendspark, Vidyard, or Dubb do that job properly and Tella does not.
Companies that need a mature vendor relationship; Tella employs roughly three people, and a procurement team will find no SOC 2 marketing, no large support organization, and material key-person risk.
Teams whose entire need is fast internal messaging at scale; Loom's free tier and library management are stronger for the disposable daily video, and Tella's price only makes sense if the polish matters.
Anyone expecting a usable free plan; free exports are capped at five minutes, so it functions as an extended demo rather than a tier you can operate on.
Editors who need multi-track compositing, complex transitions, or precise audio mixing; transcript-based editing plus automatic effects is fast because it is shallow.

How it works

1
You record from the native Mac app, the native Windows app, the Chrome extension, or the web app, capturing your screen, your camera, or both, with system audio in high quality. On macOS an invisible recorder mode keeps the recording controls out of the capture.
2
You choose a layout as you go rather than in post: full screen, picture in picture, side by side, or camera only, switching between them mid-recording so a demo can open with your face and then hand over to the screen.
3
Tella transcribes the recording and gives you a text-based editor. Deleting words deletes video. Filler word removal and silence detection strip out the 'um' and the dead air automatically, which on a rambling ten minute walkthrough typically removes a minute or two without you touching a timeline.
4
Automatic zoom effects, configurable backgrounds, and one-click audio enhancement do the visual and audio polish. The blur tool covers anything sensitive that ended up on screen, which is faster and safer than re-recording the demo with fake data.
5
You share a link to a hosted page with an embeddable player, or export at up to 4K and 60fps on Premium. Analytics show view counts, completion rates, and where viewers dropped off, and videos can be grouped into playlists for onboarding sequences or course-style content.

Feature breakdown

30 features in 5 modules

Recording

Cross-platform capture with layout decisions made live rather than in post.

Native Mac and Windows apps: Real desktop applications on both platforms rather than a Mac-only app or a browser-only recorder, which is the practical reason a mixed team can standardize on it.
Chrome extension and web app: For people who will not install anything, recording works entirely in the browser with no download.
Screen, camera, or both: Capture a display, a window, a browser tab, your camera alone, or any combination, with high quality system audio included.
Layout switching mid-recording: Move between full screen, picture in picture, side by side, and camera only while recording, so the video has structure without you cutting it together afterwards.
Built-in teleprompter: Scroll a script over the camera while you record, which is the difference between a scripted product video taking two takes and taking twenty.
Invisible recorder on macOS: Recording controls stay out of the capture, so you do not spend the edit trimming around your own toolbar.
Recording up to six hours at 4K: Clip length runs to six hours on paid plans with up to 4K resolution, which comfortably covers webinars and long training sessions rather than only short messages.

Automatic editing

The reason to pick Tella over a plain recorder, and the reason it does not need a timeline.

Transcript-based editing: The video is edited by editing its transcript. Delete a sentence in the text and the corresponding video disappears, which is dramatically faster than scrubbing for the cut point.
Filler word removal: Automatically strips 'um', 'uh', and similar hesitations. On a typical unscripted walkthrough this alone tightens the video noticeably. Available on the Premium plan.
Silence detection and removal: Cuts dead air between sentences, which is where most of the wasted length in a screen recording actually lives.
Automatic zoom effects: Zooms are placed on screen recordings without manual keyframing, so small UI text stays legible when the video is watched at a smaller size.
One-click audio enhancement: Noise removal and levelling applied in a single action rather than through an audio panel.
Blur sensitive information: Cover passwords, email addresses, customer names, and anything else that ended up on screen. This is the feature that lets you demo the real product instead of a sanitized fake account.
Backgrounds and framing: Configurable backgrounds, padding, and framing turn a raw desktop capture into a composed shot.

Transcription and captions

Broad language coverage, and it feeds the editor rather than sitting beside it.

106 languages: Transcription and subtitles across 106 languages on paid plans, which is wide coverage for a product this small and matters if your audience is not English speaking.
Subtitles on the hosted player: Captions appear on the shared page, which is what most viewers actually need because a large share of shared video is watched on mute.
Transcript as the editing surface: The transcript is not a separate artifact you download; it is the thing you edit, so its accuracy directly determines how good the editing experience is.
Transcript export: The text of the recording can be reused as documentation, release notes, or the basis of a written follow-up.

Sharing, analytics, and branding

Where Tella behaves like a hosting platform rather than a desktop app.

Instant shareable links: Every recording gets a hosted page you can send immediately, with no export or upload step.
Embeddable player: Drop the player into a landing page, a help center article, or a Notion doc. Relevant because no major email client plays video inline, so what a recipient of an emailed link sees is a thumbnail and a click.
Viewer analytics: View counts, completion rates, and drop-off points showing where viewers stopped watching. Advanced analytics sit on the Premium plan.
Custom domain: Serve videos from your own domain on Premium, so a prospect clicking a link sees your brand rather than a vendor URL.
White labeling: Remove Tella branding from the player and the page on the Premium plan.
Domain restriction: Limit who can view a video by email domain, which is the practical access control for sending an internal walkthrough that must not leak.
Playlists: Group videos into ordered sequences for onboarding, training, or a product tour, so a new hire gets a path rather than a folder.
4K and 60fps export: Download the finished video at up to 4K, with 60fps on Premium. The raw file is yours, which means a Tella recording can outlive a Tella subscription if you export it.

Team and administration

Adequate for a small company, thin for a large one.

Team collaboration: Shared access to recordings on the Pro plan, so a team can work from one library rather than personal accounts.
Per-seat pricing: Plans are billed per user per month, which keeps a two person team at roughly $26 rather than a platform minimum.
SSO and SCIM on Enterprise: Single sign-on and directory provisioning exist only on the custom-priced Enterprise plan.
Enterprise onboarding and Slack channel: Personalized onboarding, volume discounts, and a shared Slack channel are the Enterprise differentiators rather than extra product capability.

Use cases

4 documented

Founder recording a product walkthrough for a landing page

The homepage needs a two minute demo that does not look like a screen share, but hiring a producer costs more than the month's entire tooling budget.

The teleprompter keeps the take on script, automatic zoom and background framing make it look composed, filler word removal tightens it, and the embeddable player goes straight into the page.

Customer success lead building an onboarding sequence

Every new customer gets the same six explanations on a call, and the same six explanations are the reason the team cannot take on more accounts.

Six recordings grouped into a playlist replace the calls, analytics show which video people abandon, and the one with a 40 percent completion rate gets rewritten instead of guessed at.

Support engineer explaining a fix without leaking data

The clearest explanation involves the customer's real account, which is full of email addresses and internal identifiers that must not appear in a shared video.

The blur tool covers the sensitive regions, domain restriction limits who can open the link, and the explanation ships in ten minutes instead of being rebuilt in a demo environment.

Marketer on a mixed Mac and Windows team

The Mac users want the polish of a native recorder, the Windows users have been left out of every tool the team tried, and nobody wants two workflows.

Native apps on both platforms plus a Chrome extension mean one tool, one library, one brand look, and a custom domain on Premium so shared links carry the company name.

Pricing

from $13 per user per month (Pro)

Per-user subscription billed monthly or annually, with a free tier and a seven day trial of the full Pro plan.

Plan	Price	Includes
Free	$0 per user per month	Screen and camera recording Hosted shareable links Exports limited to five minutes Tella branding retained The five minute export cap is the real constraint. Treat this as a trial that does not expire, not a plan.
Pro	$13 per user per month	Unlimited videos Recording up to six hours per clip at up to 4K Transcription and subtitles in 106 languages Team collaboration and shared library Viewer analytics with completion and drop-off The plan most small teams should be on. Annual billing is discounted substantially against the monthly rate.
Premium	$19 per user per month	Everything in Pro Custom domain and white labeling Domain restriction for viewer access control Advanced analytics Filler word removal and 60fps export The $6 gap buys branding removal and the automatic filler word cleanup, which is the feature people actually notice day to day.
Enterprise	Custom contact sales	SSO and SCIM provisioning Personalized onboarding Volume discounts Shared Slack channel Administration and support rather than extra product capability. Skip it unless SSO is a hard requirement.

Billing notes

Annual billing is discounted heavily against the monthly rate, so the effective cost of Pro and Premium on a yearly commitment is well below the headline $13 and $19.
Every account begins with a seven day free trial of the full Pro plan and does not require a card, which is the honest way to evaluate it.
Storage is not published as a hard per-tier cap; the metered constraints are export length on Free and feature gating between Pro and Premium rather than a gigabyte allowance.
Filler word removal, custom domain, white labeling, and 60fps sit behind Premium, so anyone buying Tella for the automatic editing specifically should budget $19 rather than $13.
Because exports at up to 4K are included on paid plans, videos you download survive cancellation. Hosted links and their analytics do not.

Value assessment: Tella is priced sensibly for what it does. At $13 you get unlimited hosted recordings with 106 language transcription, analytics, and automatic zoom, which is roughly Loom Business capability plus better-looking output for a similar price. At $19 you add custom domains and filler word removal, which is where it starts competing with tools costing twice as much. The value case weakens in two places: the free tier is not usable as a plan because of the five minute export cap, and the company is three people, so you are betting on a very small team to keep hosting your links. Export your important videos and the bet is cheap.

Strengths & limitations

Strengths

Native apps on both Mac and Windows plus a Chrome extension and web app, which makes it one of the few polished recorders a mixed-platform team can actually standardize on.
Transcript-based editing plus filler word removal and silence detection turns a rambling ten minute recording into a tight one without opening a timeline.
Automatic zoom, backgrounds, and layout switching produce output that looks composed rather than like a screen share.
The blur tool for sensitive information is a genuinely practical feature that lets you demo real data instead of building a fake account.
Transcription in 106 languages is unusually broad coverage for a company this size.
Custom domain, white labeling, and domain restriction on a $19 plan is aggressive; competitors put those behind enterprise tiers.
4K export means the finished file is yours, so a Tella video can outlive a Tella subscription if you download it.
Playlists turn a folder of recordings into an ordered onboarding path, which is a small feature with an outsized effect on training use cases.

Limitations

The company is approximately three people. Support depth, roadmap velocity beyond the current focus, and long-term hosting of your links all rest on a very small team.
The free tier's five minute export cap makes it effectively unusable as an operating plan, which is a harsher free offering than Loom, Zight, or ScreenRec provide.
No sales-outreach layer: no per-prospect landing pages, no email GIF thumbnails tied to a contact, no CRM push of view alerts.
Filler word removal, custom domain, and white labeling are all Premium-only, so the marketing pitch describes a $19 product while the headline price is $13.
No published SOC 2 or ISO certification and no public trust center, which will stall a security review at a larger buyer.
SSO and SCIM require the custom-priced Enterprise plan, so a 30 person company wanting managed identity has to negotiate rather than buy.
Analytics are viewer-level and useful, but there is no attribution model, no CRM sync, and no campaign reporting, so it informs rather than integrates.

Head-to-head comparisons

5 alternatives

Tella vs Screen Studio

from $9 per month billed yearly ($108 per year), or $20 per month billed monthly

Screen Studio produces a slightly more polished export and gives you a file you own, but it is macOS only, has no real analytics, and costs $108 a year. Tella runs on Mac, Windows, Chrome, and the web, hosts the video with viewer analytics, and adds transcript editing and filler word removal. Choose Screen Studio if everyone is on a Mac and the MP4 is the deliverable; choose Tella if the link is the deliverable or anyone on the team runs Windows.

Full Tella vs Screen Studio comparison

Tella vs Descript

from $16 per month billed annually (Hobbyist), or $24 billed monthly

Descript is the deeper editor by a wide margin: voice cloning, Studio Sound, AI avatars, multi-person remote recording, and a real production pipeline, from $16 a month on the annual Hobbyist plan with metered media hours and AI credits. Tella is a recorder first, with the editing there to save you time rather than to enable production. Pick Descript when you are producing podcasts, courses, or long content; pick Tella when you are recording a lot of short videos and want them shared, tracked, and done.

Full Tella vs Descript comparison

Tella vs Zight

from Approximately $9.95 per user per month billed annually (Pro), or around $12 billed monthly

Zight is the cheaper, broader capture tool: screenshots, GIFs, annotation, and screen recording from roughly $9.95 a month, aimed at rapid visual communication rather than polished video. Tella costs more and produces a far better-looking video with real editing. Take Zight if most of what you send is a screenshot with an arrow on it; take Tella if what you send is a video someone outside the company will watch.

Full Tella vs Zight comparison

Tella vs Loom

from $0 (Starter), then $18 per user per month billed monthly (Business)

Loom is the category default with the strongest free tier, the deepest integration list, and library management built for organizations that record hundreds of videos a week. Tella makes each individual video look considerably better and costs about the same on Pro. Standardize on Loom if async video is a company-wide habit and volume is the point; choose Tella if a meaningful share of your videos gets seen by customers.

Full Tella vs Loom comparison

Tella vs Bubbles

from $0 (Basic), then $12 per member per month billed yearly (Pro Teams)

Bubbles is built around the conversation that follows the video: threaded comments, timestamped replies, and meeting notes, at a lower entry price. Tella is built around the video itself and its viewers. Use Bubbles when the recording is the start of an internal back and forth; use Tella when the recording is a finished thing you want people to watch and you want to know whether they did.

Full Tella vs Bubbles comparison

Implementation & onboarding

Setup time: Fifteen minutes. Create an account, install the Mac or Windows app or the Chrome extension, grant recording permissions, and record. Custom domain setup on Premium adds a DNS record and is the only step that involves anyone else.
Learning curve: Low. Recording and sharing are immediate. The learning is in the editing model: people used to timelines take a little while to trust that deleting a sentence in the transcript is the correct way to cut a video, and layout switching mid-recording takes a few takes to use naturally.
Onboarding: Fully self-serve on Free, Pro, and Premium. Enterprise adds personalized onboarding and a shared Slack channel. Documentation and template recordings cover the workflow.
Migration notes: Existing videos can be uploaded rather than re-recorded. Leaving is manageable because paid plans allow export at up to 4K, so you can pull your library down as files, but every hosted link you have already shared, plus its analytics history, dies with the subscription. If Tella videos are embedded in a help center or a landing page, plan a swap before you cancel rather than after.

Platform, API & security

Platforms: macOS native appWindows native appChrome extensionWeb appEmbeddable player
API: No prominently published public API or developer platform. Sharing is handled through hosted links and the embeddable player rather than through programmatic integration.
Compliance: No SOC 2 or ISO certification publicly marketed
Data residency: Not published. Recordings are hosted by Tella on its own infrastructure; no regional hosting options are advertised.
SSO: SSO and SCIM provisioning on the custom-priced Enterprise plan only.
Security notes: Domain restriction limits viewers by email domain and is the main access control available below Enterprise, alongside the blur tool for redacting sensitive content inside a recording. There is no public trust center or vulnerability disclosure program, which is consistent with a three person company and inconsistent with a corporate security questionnaire.

Support & resources

Channels: Email supportIn-app supportShared Slack channel on Enterprise
Documentation: Help documentation and tutorial content on tella.com covering recording, editing, sharing, custom domains, and analytics.
Community: Visible community among founders and Y Combinator alumni, where much of the product's early adoption came from.

Company

Founded: 2020
Headquarters: Remote, with roots in the Y Combinator network
Ownership: Venture-backed
Founders: Grant Shaddick, Michiel Westerbeek
Employees: Approximately 3 (2026)
Funding: Approximately $3.5M raised, including a $2.1M seed led by Gradient with AltaIR Capital, Mento VC, Lobster Capital, and The Singularity Fund participating, following $1.4M from Y Combinator, Liquid 2, and Gradient.

Funding history

Round	Amount	Year	Notes
Pre-seed and seed	$1.4M	2021	Y Combinator, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Gradient.
Seed	$2.1M	2024	Led by Gradient with AltaIR Capital, Mento VC, Lobster Capital, The Singularity Fund, and angels.

Timeline

2020Founded by Grant Shaddick and Michiel Westerbeek, both formerly of InVision, and backed by Y Combinator.
2021Raises $1.4M from Y Combinator, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Gradient, building a browser-based recorder aimed at founders and creators.
2023Ships native desktop applications for macOS and Windows alongside the Chrome extension, opening the product to mixed-platform teams.
2024Raises a $2.1M seed led by Gradient, positioning explicitly against Loom on output quality, and reaches roughly $5M in revenue with a team of about three.
2025Expands automatic editing with filler word removal, silence detection, automatic zoom, and the blur tool for sensitive on-screen information.
2026Operates on a $13 Pro and $19 Premium structure with transcription in 106 languages, custom domains, playlists, and 4K 60fps export.

Integrations

Chrome extension for in-browser recording
Embeddable player for websites, help centers, and documentation
Direct link sharing into Slack, email, and any chat tool
Custom domain hosting on the Premium plan
4K MP4 export for use in any downstream tool
SSO and SCIM identity providers on Enterprise

Frequently asked questions

10 questions

What is Tella?

Tella is a screen and camera recorder that automatically edits what you record. It applies zooms, backgrounds, and layouts, removes filler words and silences, lets you edit the video by editing its transcript, and then hosts the result on a shareable page with viewer analytics. It runs as native Mac and Windows apps, a Chrome extension, and a web app.

How much does Tella cost?

Pro is $13 per user per month and Premium is $19, both discounted substantially on annual billing. Enterprise is custom priced and adds SSO and SCIM. There is a free tier, and every account starts with a seven day free trial of the full Pro plan without a credit card.

What does the free plan actually let me do?

You can record and share, but exports are capped at five minutes and Tella branding stays on. That cap makes the free tier an evaluation path rather than something you can run a team on, which is a harsher free offering than Loom or ScreenRec provide.

How long can a Tella recording be and is there a storage cap?

Paid plans support clips up to six hours at up to 4K, which covers webinars and long training sessions rather than only short messages. Tella does not publish a hard per-tier storage allowance; the published constraints are the five minute export limit on Free and the feature split between Pro and Premium.

Do I own the raw video file?

Yes on paid plans. You can export at up to 4K, with 60fps on Premium, so the finished file is yours and survives cancellation. What does not survive is the hosted link and its analytics history, so if Tella videos are embedded in your help center or landing pages, swap them before you cancel.

Does Tella work on Windows?

Yes. Tella ships native applications for both macOS and Windows, plus a Chrome extension and a web app. This is a real differentiator against Screen Studio, which is macOS only and therefore cannot be standardized on by a mixed team no matter how good its output is.

What analytics does Tella give me and do they reach my CRM?

You get view counts, completion rates, and drop-off points showing where viewers stopped watching, with advanced analytics on Premium. They do not reach a CRM. There is no native HubSpot or Salesforce push and no view-alert routing, so Tella tells you how a video performed but does not put that signal in front of a seller inside their workflow.

Can I send a Tella video inside an email?

You send a link, not an embedded video. No major email client plays video inline, so what your recipient sees is a thumbnail image and a click through to the hosted page. On Premium that page can sit on your own custom domain with Tella branding removed, which is what makes the click feel like part of your brand rather than a detour through a vendor.

What languages does transcription support?

106 languages on paid plans, covering both the transcript that drives editing and the subtitles shown on the hosted player. That is wide coverage for a company of this size, and it matters because the transcript is the editing surface, so its quality directly determines how pleasant the tool is to use.

Who is behind Tella and how risky is that?

Tella was founded in 2020 by Grant Shaddick and Michiel Westerbeek, both formerly of InVision, went through Y Combinator, and has raised roughly $3.5M. As of 2026 it employs about three people. That means fast, focused product work and real concentration risk, with no SOC 2 marketing and no large support organization. Export your important videos and you can enjoy the product without being exposed to the company.

Editorial verdict

Tella is the most sensible middle path in this category. It gets close to Screen Studio's polish while running on Windows as well as Mac, and it wraps that in hosting, analytics, playlists, and a custom domain at a price that undercuts most competitors offering half of it. Transcript editing with filler word removal and the blur tool are the features that change how you work rather than how the video looks. The reservations are real but manageable: the free tier is too limited to operate on, filler word removal and custom domains are Premium-only so budget $19 rather than $13, there is no sales-outreach machinery at all, and the company is about three people with no compliance posture to show a security reviewer. For a founder, marketer, or small product team that records a lot of video and cares that customers will see some of it, Tella is the one to try first.

Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.