If you’re at a stage where you want to level up your marketing game through personalized videos, you need proper tools to do your best work. There is a plethora of personalized video marketing solutions out there, and evaluating which one would be the best fit for you takes time.
Before launching Plainly, I did extensive research of existing software and signed up for free trials to explore available features, user-friendliness, and test the limitations of each individual personalized video marketing solution out there. After all, it was my due diligence given the fact I was entering a fairly competitive market.
To help you make the right choice, here’s my honest and objective review of three completely different personalized video marketing solutions.
Pirsonal
Pirsonal is a cloud-based personalized video marketing solution. It allows you to render and mix videos, images, audio, and text in order to create unique campaigns for your customers. It is based on a drag and drop technology and you can edit the videos in the browser, which is somewhat an industry standard.
What I like: Creating templates is rather simple and the choice of available templates you can use (if you don’t want to start from scratch) is solid. However, some features do require technical knowledge in order to make the most of them. I’m mentioning this just so you don’t assume it’s sort of like a “plug and play” personalized video marketing solution. I mean, it is, but only to a certain extent.
What could be improved: The client delivery system could be improved. Pirsonal offers Zapier integration which solves for around 2000 apps on the market. But just like their own customer support team said, they are working on making it easier for any organization to integrate with Pirsonal system seamlessly.
Pricing: Pirsonal offers four different pricing plans that cover more than just the personlized video editing software. Pricing starts at $149 per month.
Value for money: In my opinion, Pirsonal is more like a one-stop shop for creating personalized video experiences (e.g. they offer analytics and landing page creation), which might be too much. Or to be more precise, it might not be something that a marketer, who’s only getting started with including personalized videos in the marketing mix, really needs. A bit pricey for a starter’s plan.
Who’s it for: If you need a more robust personalized video marketing solution, you have a team that plans on creating personalized videos on a regular basis, and you have a solid budget, then this is a fine option.
Overall score: 4/5
Shotstack
Shotstack is a good option for more tech-savvy teams that want full control over their personalized videos. It is essentially a cloud-based video editing API. By relying on Shotstack’s SDK, you control the tech stack you want to use. For developers, the entire process is quite intuitive: you create applications, post the edit to Shotstack Cloud API which then renders the video, and then you download the video in your preferred format – HD, SD, mp4, or gif.
What I like: From a user perspective, I liked how simple it was to get started. You don’t need to make any payment upfront or leave your credit card number. A free trial is truly free, and the videos that you render come with a Shotstack watermark. This gets removed if you decide to subscribe. Documentation is really comprehensive and the API works great.
What could be improved: From my experience with it, it seems like their app is pretty limited when it comes to templates. I didn’t find a way to build any complex templates. The only thing i was able to create were pretty simple, slide-show like templates. To build a template one, you have to write a JSON file, and put the elements on a timeline that way. I liked Pirsonal’s template builder more, but again, Shotstack is more oriented toward developers who might actually prefer JSON over a visual creator.
In addition to developers, Shotstack targets startups and creative agencies as their customer segments. There is definitely value in not being forced to break the bank with upfront investments in infrastructure and development, not to mention engineering and maintenance overheads get eliminated. Still, I’d say the learning curve is not that mild.
Pricing: Shotstack offers four different pricing plans that differ depending on the number of minutes available and number of images used within the video. Storage and bandwidth also vary. Still, the starting plan is quite affordable: only 49$ per month.
Value for money: Pricing makes Shotstack quite competitive on the market. The obvious shortcoming lies in the fact it requires technical knowledge to make the most of it.
Who’s it for: In my opinion, Shotstack is a great option for marketing teams that do have technical support or developers that want to build automated video workflows.
Overall score: 3.5/5
Plainly
Plainly is a proof that you can have your cake and eat it. I noticed that there was an obvious gap in the market. There wasn’t a tool that allows you to create templates in a design industry standard tool like After Effects, that has a user-friendly Web App for setup & rendering, and also a powerful API for more advanced users.
What I like: Plainly favors simplicity and functionality over flashy features. I wanted to ensure you’d be able to get the job done well without minimum hassle.
- For developers, this means effectively working with API and setting everything up in just three steps (template creation, Plainly setup, integration setup).
- For creatives, it means reducing manual work and automating the creation of video variations (yes, you can create videos from spreadsheets and leverage bulk video creation).
- For no-code lovers, it’s giving the ability to create automated workflows with tools such as Zapier and Integromat.
What could be improved: This isn’t actually a matter of improvement, but a matter of controlling the product roadmap. Plainly is still fresh on the market and is extensively relying on user feedback in order to ensure the features are exactly what the market needs.
Pricing: Three simple pricing models that vary depending on video minutes, storage, and video retention. Monthly plan starts at $59.
Value for money: Combined with responsive support and high-quality tutorials and examples you can use for learning and inspiration, it’s a pretty good deal.
Who’s it for: Great value for both developers, creatives, and no-code lovers.
Overall score: 5/5
How to choose a personalized video marketing solution
This article deliberately looks into three different personalized video marketing solutions so that you can get a good feel of your options.
Here are some of the things you should consider:
- The budget you have available
- The technical capabilities of your team
- How often you will use the personalized video marketing solution
- What product documentation is available
- How are templates created
- How functional is the API
- How often do product updates and releases happen
- What level of support do you get
- What is the quality of learning resources the company provides
To summarize my picks:
Pirsonal is more of a drag and drop solution, but it offers so much more than just a way to create personalized videos. It’s a solid option for those who are less tech savvy, but it also implies your team wants an advanced way to measure video performance and create more holistic personalized campaigns across several channels.
Shotstack is purely technical, their capabilities are quite solid but their template creation is what they lack.
Plainly marries the best of the two worlds, providing you the ability to create amazing templates, have a user-friendly Web App which allows you to customzie your project, and a powerful API for creating complex integrations (or just connecting Plainly with your favorite app using Zapier/Integromat. It is the future of automated video production, which is talking personally to 1000s of customers individually.
I like saying that Plainly is similar to having a team of video-making robots working for you. They cost less than a full-time video editor, they create videos 24/7, and they never rest. But don’t take my word for it: book a demo today to see it in action
