# Zight

> Zight is an async visual communication tool, formerly CloudApp, that captures screenshots, animated GIFs, and screen recordings, annotates them, uploads them automatically, and copies a shareable link straight to your clipboard; it runs on macOS, Windows, iOS, and Chrome, offers a free tier capped at 25 captures and 90 second recordings, and starts at roughly $9.95 per user per month on the Pro plan.

- Category: Async Video Messaging (https://saastracker.org/categories/video-messaging)
- Website: https://zight.com
- Starting price: Approximately $9.95 per user per month billed annually (Pro), or around $12 billed monthly
- Free plan: Roughly 25 total captures, recordings capped at 90 seconds, 720p quality, one user, and Zight branding on shared links.
- Free trial: The free plan serves as the trial; no separate fixed-length paid trial is published
- Founded: 2010, HQ: San Francisco, California, United States, Ownership: Venture-backed
- Profile last reviewed: 2026-08-22
- Canonical profile: https://saastracker.org/products/zight

## Overview

Zight began life in 2010 as CloudApp, founded by Max Schoening, and for a decade it was the tool that a certain kind of engineer or designer had running permanently in the menu bar. Its defining behaviour has not changed: you press a shortcut, drag a box, and by the time you switch back to Slack the link is already on your clipboard. No upload dialog, no file to attach, no waiting. That single interaction is why it survived a decade of competitors doing more.

The company rebranded to Zight in April 2023, launching zight.com and repositioning from a file-sharing utility to a complete asynchronous visual communication platform. Scott Smith is CEO. It has raised roughly $21.1M across a $5.52M seed in 2018, an undisclosed Series A in January 2022, and a secondary transaction later that year. Headcount is small, in the single digits by some public estimates, so this is a mature product run lean rather than a growth-stage company.

The important distinction against Loom, Tella, or Screen Studio is that Zight is not video-first. It is capture-first. Most of what people send with it is a screenshot with an arrow on it or a five second GIF, and the video recorder is one of three capture modes rather than the whole product. If your team's actual communication problem is 'this is faster to show than to describe' and only sometimes needs a talking head, Zight fits the shape of the problem better than a video tool does.

The free tier is real but tight: 25 total captures, 90 second recordings, and 720p. Pro at roughly $9.95 per user per month billed annually removes the caps and unlocks 4K, unlimited recording length, unlimited captures, annotation tools, and password protection. Team pricing sits in the same neighbourhood per seat with a workspace, analytics, and centralized billing, and Enterprise adds SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA. Published Team figures vary between sources, so confirm on the vendor page before budgeting.

## How it works

1. You install the desktop app on macOS or Windows, or add the Chrome extension, and it sits in the menu bar or toolbar waiting for a keyboard shortcut.

2. You press the shortcut and choose what to capture: a still screenshot, an animated GIF of a short interaction, or a full screen recording with webcam and audio.

3. You annotate before sending. Arrows, boxes, blur for anything sensitive, text callouts, and emoji stamps are applied in a lightweight editor rather than by opening a separate image tool.

4. The capture uploads automatically and the shareable link lands on your clipboard. This is the whole product philosophy in one step: there is no save, no export, no attach, and no upload progress bar to watch.

5. You paste the link into Slack, an email, a ticket, or a pull request comment. Recipients open a hosted page and watch or view without an account.

6. You track what happened. View counts and engagement data are available, with team analytics on the higher tiers, and captures are organized into a library with collections and search.

## Best for

Support, engineering, design, and product teams whose async communication is mostly screenshots and short GIFs with occasional video, and who value a sub-five-second capture-to-link workflow over production quality.

## Not the right fit for

- Teams whose primary need is polished video; Zight's recorder is functional rather than beautiful, with no automatic zoom, no filler word removal, and no transcript-based editing.
- Sales teams doing video outreach; there is no per-prospect personalization, no animated email thumbnail tied to a contact record, and no native CRM push of view alerts.
- Buyers who want to run on the free plan; 25 total captures and a 90 second recording limit means most people exhaust it within a fortnight.
- Organizations that need a large vendor with deep support; Zight is a mature product run by a very small team after a decade of ownership changes and a rebrand.
- Anyone needing transcription, captions, or translation as a core capability; that is not what this tool is built around and richer options exist at similar prices.

## Features

### Capture

Three modes, one shortcut, no dialog boxes.

- **Screenshot capture**: Full screen, window, or dragged region, uploaded and linked instantly. Still the most-used mode and the reason most people install it in the first place.
- **Animated GIF capture**: Record a short interaction as a GIF rather than a video. GIF is the only format that renders inline in a GitHub issue, a Jira ticket, or a Slack message, which makes it the right answer surprisingly often.
- **Screen recording with webcam and audio**: Full screen recording with optional camera overlay and microphone, capped at 90 seconds on Free and unlimited on paid plans.
- **Up to 4K recording on paid plans**: Free captures at 720p; paid plans record and export at up to 4K.
- **Capture count limits by tier**: Free is capped at roughly 25 total captures, with unlimited captures on Pro, Team, and Enterprise. The cap is on the number of items, not on time, which is an unusual and quite restrictive way to gate a free plan.
- **Mobile capture on iOS**: An iOS app extends capture and access beyond the desktop, which most competitors in the screenshot category do not bother with.

### Annotation and markup

The step between capturing and sending that stops a screenshot being ambiguous.

- **Arrows, boxes, and shapes**: Point at the thing you are talking about before you send it, which is the difference between a screenshot and an explanation.
- **Text callouts**: Add labels directly on the capture rather than describing positions in an accompanying message.
- **Blur and redaction**: Cover customer names, email addresses, API keys, and anything else that appeared in the capture. This is what makes it safe to screenshot a production screen.
- **Emoji and stamps**: Lightweight annotation for informal internal communication, which is most of what gets sent.
- **Advanced annotation on paid plans**: The fuller markup toolset sits behind Pro, with the free plan offering the basics.

### Sharing and branding

The link is the product, so what the link looks like matters.

- **Instant clipboard link**: Uploading and link generation happen automatically on capture. The elapsed time between pressing a shortcut and being able to paste is the entire value proposition.
- **Custom branding**: Brand the viewing page so a link sent to a customer looks like it came from your company rather than a vendor.
- **Custom domain**: Serve links from your own domain rather than a Zight URL, which is the feature that makes external sharing feel professional.
- **Password protection**: Lock a capture behind a password, available on paid plans, for anything that should not be open to whoever gets forwarded the link.
- **Link expiry and access control**: Control how long a link stays live rather than leaving every screenshot you ever took publicly reachable forever.
- **No account needed to view**: Recipients open the link and see the content without signing up, which is what makes it usable with customers and vendors.

### Organization and analytics

Enough structure to find things later, and enough measurement to know a link was opened.

- **Searchable library**: Every capture is stored and searchable rather than scattered across a downloads folder.
- **Collections**: Group related captures so a set of screenshots documenting a bug or a process stays together.
- **View counts and engagement data**: See whether a link was opened and how many times. Useful for knowing a customer actually looked at the thing you sent, not a full analytics product.
- **Team workspace**: Shared space with team-level visibility on the Team plan, plus centralized billing, with a two user minimum.
- **Team analytics**: Aggregated usage and engagement across the workspace on the Team plan.
- **Storage per user**: Paid plans include a per-user storage allowance rather than a single shared pool, which suits a tool where individuals capture constantly.

### Integrations and administration

Built to live inside the tools where the work already happens.

- **Slack**: Links unfurl in Slack with a preview, which is where the majority of Zight captures end up.
- **Jira and issue trackers**: Attach captures directly to tickets, which is the single most common engineering workflow for this kind of tool.
- **Help desk and CRM tools**: Captures drop into support and sales tools so an agent can show rather than describe. Available integrations should be confirmed against the current vendor list.
- **Chrome extension**: Capture and share entirely from the browser for people who will not install a desktop application.
- **SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA on Enterprise**: The compliance posture buyers ask about sits on the custom-priced Enterprise plan.

## Use cases

- **Support agent explaining a fix**: A customer cannot find a setting, and writing out the four steps to get there takes longer than doing it and produces more follow-up questions. Outcome: A ten second GIF of the click path with an arrow on the relevant button, blurred where the account name appears, sent as a branded link the customer opens without signing up.
- **Engineer filing a bug**: A visual glitch is hard to describe in a ticket and a static screenshot does not show the interaction that triggers it. Outcome: A GIF attached to the Jira issue that renders inline, so the person picking up the ticket sees the bug rather than reading a paragraph about it.
- **Designer giving feedback**: Reviewing a build means pointing at fifteen small things, and doing that in writing is both slow and easy to misread. Outcome: Fifteen annotated screenshots with arrows and text, grouped into a collection and pasted into one Slack thread in the time a written review would have taken to start.
- **Product manager on a mixed platform team**: Half the team is on Windows, the recommended recording tools are macOS only, and nobody wants two different link formats floating around. Outcome: Zight runs on macOS, Windows, iOS, and Chrome, so every capture comes from the same tool, lands on the same custom domain, and behaves the same way for everyone.

## Pricing

Per-user subscription with a capped free tier, billed monthly or annually, plus a quoted Enterprise plan.

- **Free**: $0 per user per month. Approximately 25 total captures; Recordings capped at 90 seconds; 720p quality; One user, Zight branding retained; Basic annotation. The 25 capture cap is a lifetime-style limit rather than a monthly one, so most people exhaust it quickly. Treat it as a trial.
- **Pro**: $9.95 per user per month billed annually (around $12 monthly). Unlimited captures and unlimited recording length; Up to 4K quality; Advanced annotation tools; Password protection and custom branding; Per-user storage allowance around 10GB. The plan an individual should be on. Everything the free tier withholds is here and nothing important is held back for Team.
- **Team**: Around $8 to $11 per user per month depending on billing and source. Everything in Pro; Shared team workspace; Team analytics; Centralized billing; Two user minimum. Published Team figures differ between sources. Confirm the current number on the vendor pricing page before budgeting.
- **Enterprise**: Custom contact sales. SOC 2 Type II; HIPAA support; Custom seat counts and storage; Enterprise administration and support.

Billing notes:

- Annual billing is meaningfully cheaper than monthly on Pro, roughly $9.95 against about $12 per user per month.
- The free tier's constraint is a total capture count, not a monthly reset, which is unusually restrictive and means the plan effectively expires rather than recurring.
- The Team plan carries a two user minimum, so a solo operator wanting workspace features has to buy two seats.
- SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA sit on Enterprise only, so a healthcare or regulated buyer cannot purchase compliance self-serve.
- Published pricing has moved several times through the CloudApp era and the Zight rebrand, and third-party sources disagree on the Team figure. Treat any number you read elsewhere, including here, as a starting point to verify.
- Storage is allocated per user rather than as a shared pool, which suits heavy individual capture habits. When a seat is removed, plan for what happens to that user's captures before you remove them.

Value assessment: At roughly $10 a seat, Zight is priced fairly against Loom Business and below most polished video recorders, and for a team whose async communication is mostly screenshots and GIFs it delivers more value per dollar than any video-first tool would, because it matches the actual shape of the work. The caveat is that you are paying for speed and breadth of capture, not for video quality. If you compare it feature-for-feature against Tella or Loom on video, it loses. If you compare it on how many times a day someone will actually use it, it wins comfortably.

## Strengths

- The capture-to-clipboard-link interaction is still the fastest in the category and is the reason the product has survived fifteen years and a rebrand.
- Three capture modes in one tool: screenshot, GIF, and video, which matches how people actually communicate rather than forcing everything into video.
- GIF capture is a first-class feature, and GIF is the only format that renders inline in issue trackers, chat, and documentation.
- Annotation with blur is built into the capture flow, so redacting sensitive information takes two seconds instead of a detour through another tool.
- Cross-platform across macOS, Windows, iOS, and Chrome, so mixed teams can standardize on it where macOS-only recorders are impossible.
- Custom domain and custom branding at a reasonable price make external sharing look professional.
- Deep integration into Slack and issue trackers, where the links actually get pasted.
- SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA available on Enterprise, which is more than most tools at this price offer at any tier.

## Limitations

- The free tier is capped at roughly 25 total captures and 90 second recordings, which makes it an expiring trial rather than a plan.
- The video recorder is functional rather than good: no automatic zoom, no transcript-based editing, no filler word removal, and no polish features.
- Transcription and captions are not a core strength, so accessibility and searchability of video content are weak next to Tella, Descript, or Loom.
- Very small team, publicly estimated in the single digits, supporting a product with fifteen years of accumulated surface area.
- Pricing information is inconsistent across sources following the CloudApp rebrand, particularly for the Team plan, which makes budgeting harder than it should be.
- Analytics are view counts and basic engagement rather than completion curves, drop-off analysis, or anything routed into a CRM.
- No sales-outreach machinery at all: no personalized pages, no per-prospect thumbnails, no view alerts to a seller.
- SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA are Enterprise-only, so a mid-sized regulated buyer must negotiate rather than buy.

## Comparisons

- **Zight vs Berrycast**: Berrycast is a simpler, cheaper video-only tool at around $9.99 a user with AI transcription and summaries, a free tier of ten videos a month, and Gmail and Outlook integration. Zight is broader, covering screenshots and GIFs as well as video, with a stronger integration list and iOS support. Take Berrycast if you only send videos and want transcription included; take Zight if most of what you send is a screenshot or a GIF.
- **Zight vs ScreenRec**: ScreenRec is genuinely free for unlimited-length 720p recording with 2GB of storage and runs on Linux as well as Mac and Windows, at $8.32 a month for Pro. Zight costs slightly more, caps its free tier hard, and gives a far better annotation flow, custom domains, and integrations. Choose ScreenRec if free and unlimited recording matters most; choose Zight if the daily workflow is capture, annotate, paste.
- **Zight vs Tella**: Tella is a video-first tool with automatic zoom, transcript editing, filler word removal, viewer analytics, and custom domains at $13 to $19 a seat. Zight is capture-first and cheaper, with better screenshot and GIF handling but a much plainer recorder. Pick Tella when the video will be watched by customers; pick Zight when the point is to show a colleague something in under five seconds.
- **Zight vs Loom**: Loom is the video messaging standard with a far better recorder, real viewer analytics, a large integration ecosystem, and a more usable free tier. Zight wins on screenshots and GIFs, on annotation, and on the speed of the capture interaction, at a similar per-seat price. Teams that record long explanations want Loom; teams that mostly point at things on a screen want Zight.
- **Zight vs Bubbles**: Bubbles builds around the conversation after the video, with threaded timestamped comments and meeting notes. Zight builds around the speed of getting a visual out of your head and into a colleague's chat window. Use Bubbles when the recording starts a discussion; use Zight when the recording ends one.

## Implementation

- Setup time: Ten minutes. Install the desktop app or Chrome extension, sign in, grant screen recording permission, and set the keyboard shortcut you will actually remember. Custom domain configuration on paid plans adds a DNS record.
- Learning curve: Essentially none. The product is one keyboard shortcut and an annotation toolbar. The only habit worth building deliberately is using the blur tool consistently, because a fast capture flow makes it very easy to share a screen with customer data on it.
- Onboarding: Fully self-serve on Free, Pro, and Team. Enterprise involves a sales conversation for SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, and custom terms. Documentation covers capture, annotation, sharing, and integrations.
- Migration: There is no bulk importer for another tool's capture library, so historical screenshots stay where they are. Leaving Zight is the harder direction than arriving: every link you have ever pasted into a ticket, a document, or a customer email points at Zight's hosting, and those links break when you stop paying. A team with years of CloudApp and Zight links embedded in its issue tracker should treat that as a real switching cost rather than an afterthought, and should export the library before cancelling.

## Platform, API & security

- Platforms: macOS, Windows, iOS, Chrome extension, Web
- API: An API and developer surface have historically been available from the CloudApp era for programmatic upload and retrieval; confirm current availability and plan requirements with the vendor.
- Compliance: SOC 2 Type II on Enterprise, HIPAA support on Enterprise, GDPR
- Data residency: Not published as a customer-selectable option; captures are stored on Zight's cloud infrastructure.
- SSO: Available as part of the Enterprise plan alongside the broader administration package.
- Security notes: Password protection, link expiry, and access controls are available on paid plans, and the blur annotation tool is the practical first line of defence against sharing sensitive information by accident. SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA support exist but only on the quoted Enterprise plan, so regulated buyers cannot self-serve their way to compliance.

## Support

- Channels: Email support, In-app help, Dedicated support on Enterprise
- Documentation: Help documentation at zight.com covering capture, annotation, sharing, custom domains, integrations, and the CloudApp to Zight migration.
- Community: A long-established user base from the CloudApp era, though there is no large official forum; most community knowledge lives in third-party reviews and comparison content.

## Company

- Founded: 2010
- Founders: Max Schoening
- Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
- Ownership: Venture-backed
- Employees: Very small; publicly estimated in the single digits
- Funding: Approximately $21.1M raised across three events: a $5.52M seed in May 2018, an undisclosed Series A in January 2022, and a secondary transaction in October 2022.

Funding history:

- Seed (2018): $5.52M
- Series A (2022): Undisclosed
- Secondary (2022): Undisclosed

Timeline:

- 2010: Founded as CloudApp by Max Schoening, built around instant capture and clipboard link sharing.
- 2018: Raises a $5.52M seed round and expands from file sharing into screen recording and GIF capture.
- 2022: Raises an undisclosed Series A in January followed by a secondary transaction in October, bringing total funding to roughly $21.1M.
- 2023: Rebrands from CloudApp to Zight on 12 April, launching zight.com and repositioning as an asynchronous visual communication platform.
- 2024: Consolidates the capture, annotation, and sharing product across macOS, Windows, iOS, and Chrome under a small team led by CEO Scott Smith.
- 2026: Operates a four tier structure with a capped free plan, roughly $9.95 Pro, a team workspace tier, and SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA on Enterprise.

## Integrations

Slack, Jira, Chrome extension, Help desk and ticketing tools, Custom domain hosting for shared links, Direct link pasting into any chat, email, or documentation tool, iOS app for mobile capture and access

## FAQ

### What is Zight?

Zight, formerly CloudApp, is an async visual communication tool. It captures screenshots, animated GIFs, and screen recordings, lets you annotate them with arrows, text, and blur, uploads them automatically, and puts a shareable link on your clipboard. It runs on macOS, Windows, iOS, and Chrome.

### Is Zight the same as CloudApp?

Yes. CloudApp announced the rebrand on 30 March 2023 and launched as Zight on 12 April 2023, with a new identity and the zight.com domain. The company is the same one founded in 2010 by Max Schoening, and existing accounts and links were migrated. Older reviews and comparison articles still refer to it as CloudApp.

### How much does Zight cost?

The free plan is $0 with roughly 25 total captures, 90 second recordings, and 720p. Pro is about $9.95 per user per month billed annually, or around $12 monthly, with unlimited captures, unlimited recording length, and 4K. Team sits in a similar per-seat range with a workspace, analytics, and a two user minimum, and Enterprise is quoted with SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA. Published Team figures vary between sources, so verify on the vendor page.

### What are the free plan limits and what happens when I hit them?

Roughly 25 captures in total, not per month, plus a 90 second cap on recordings and 720p quality. Because the capture limit is cumulative rather than resetting, the free plan effectively runs out and stays out. It is a trial with no expiry date rather than a tier a team can operate on.

### How long can I record and is there a storage cap?

Free recordings are limited to 90 seconds. Paid plans remove the length limit entirely and record at up to 4K. Storage is allocated per user rather than as one shared pool, with Pro including an allowance in the region of 10GB per seat. Before removing a seat, work out what happens to that person's captures, because links they shared point at content in their allocation.

### What happens to my links if I stop paying?

This is the most important question with Zight and the answer is uncomfortable. Every link you have pasted into a ticket, a document, or a customer email points at Zight's hosting, and those links stop working when the subscription ends. A team with years of CloudApp and Zight links embedded in its issue tracker is facing a genuine switching cost, so export your library deliberately before cancelling rather than discovering it afterwards.

### Does Zight do transcription and captions?

Not as a headline capability. Zight is capture-first rather than video-first, and its strengths are speed, annotation, and breadth of capture modes rather than making video searchable or accessible. If transcription, captions, and translation matter to you, Tella, Descript, or Loom all handle that far better, and you should treat Zight's recorder as a convenience rather than as your video platform.

### Can I send a Zight video inside an email?

You send a link, and the link is the point of the product because it is already on your clipboard. No major email client plays video inline, so a recipient sees a preview and clicks. Zight's answer to this is branding: custom branding and a custom domain on paid plans mean the page they land on carries your company's identity. Where Zight genuinely wins is GIFs, which do render inline in Slack, GitHub, and Jira.

### Is Zight good for sales videos?

No. There is no per-prospect personalization, no animated email thumbnail tied to a contact record, no view alerts routed to a seller, and no native CRM push. Its analytics tell you a link was opened, not who watched what for how long. Sales teams should look at Sendspark, Vidyard, or Dubb; Zight's place in a sales org is the support and solutions engineering side, where showing something quickly matters more than measuring it.

### Who owns Zight and how stable is it?

Zight is the venture-backed company founded in 2010 as CloudApp by Max Schoening, headquartered in San Francisco and led by CEO Scott Smith. It has raised roughly $21.1M across a 2018 seed, a 2022 Series A, and a 2022 secondary transaction. Headcount is publicly estimated in the single digits, so this is a mature, lean product rather than a growth company. Fifteen years of continuous operation is reassuring; a very small team maintaining a large surface area is not.

## Editorial verdict

Zight earns its place by matching how people actually communicate visually, which is mostly screenshots and short GIFs with the occasional video, rather than by being the best video recorder. The capture-to-clipboard-link interaction remains the fastest in this category after fifteen years, annotation with blur is built into the flow where it belongs, and it runs everywhere including Windows and iOS. At around $10 a seat that is good value for a support, engineering, or design team. Go in with three things clear. The free tier is a 25 capture trial, not a plan. The video recorder is plain, with no zoom, no transcript editing, and no captions worth relying on. And every link you share is hosted by a company with a single-digit headcount, so those links, which are the entire product, depend on a subscription you keep paying. Buy it for speed and breadth of capture, and buy something else if what you need is video that customers will watch.

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Source: SaaSTracker (https://saastracker.org), an independent editorial project. This profile is compiled from public information, carries no peer reviews or paid placement, and was last reviewed 2026-08-22. Awards are judged on published criteria: https://saastracker.org/methodology