Revised April 4, 2024
Revised August 16, 2023
Revised August 24, 2022
Revised November 15, 2021
Revised September 18, 2020
According to networking giant Cisco, online video accounted for 63% of all Internet traffic in 2015 and nearly two-thirds in 2022. Online video is popular, effective, and easy to watch on mobile devices.
As noted here previously, “85% (of B2B buyers) prefer text over video. But that won’t last. Already, nearly half of all B2B researchers are Millennials, and 42% of B2B searches are on mobile devices. Visual and video content will become increasing important.”
Web video is also getting easier and less expensive to produce. Smartphones have largely displaced expensive camcorders as their video quality has improved. And increasingly sophisticated automated online animation tools are reducing the need to hire professional graphic design talent.
Whether you’re producing animated video, a video slideshow, live action video, a mixture of formats, or editing high-quality online audio, these top video editing tools will help you create professional-grade output without busting your budget.
Video Creation and Editing Tools
1) Animoto
Google Review Count: 341
Easily create business (or personal) videos: select a style and music, add your photos or video clips and text, then produce and share.
Sample review: “You no longer need to be a video geek to create awesome videos. Animoto lets you collect your awesome images and throw them into the creative video. You can choose a template and a music track to play your images.” — Kathryn Aragon Media
Pricing: $8/$22/$34 per month
Showcase reviews: Kathryn Aragon Media, SteamFeed
2) Vyond (formerly GoAnimate)
Google Review Count: 248
Make your own animated videos. Start with a storyboard and script, upload narration (the tool automatically “lip syncs” your voice tracks to characters), choose backgrounds and characters, add a music track from the site’s library, and publish.
Sample review: “Having an animation video custom-made would cost you a small fortune, but you can also use a video animation tool such as Goanimate…(It’s) an easy-to-use tool and it’s not expensive to create an animation. It’s also a lot of fun to play with.” — RazorSocial (Video)
Pricing: $39/$89/$159 per month, plus enterprise pricing by quote
Showcase reviews: HubSpot, RazorSocial (Video)
3) Flipagram
Google Review Count: 243
Create short video-photo stories paired with music. Join the community to follow influencers, edit your Flipagrams, and have your posts reflipped by others. Share your Flipagrams on other social media networks.
Sample review: “(Flipagram is a) mobile app (that) creates a video out of your pictures. You select a range of your pictures, do some minor editing (if you want), and then add some music…(or) your own voice…Flipagram will then make a video with the pictures and the imagery.” — RazorSocial (Video)
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: RazorSocial (Video)
4) VideoScribe
Google Review Count: 220
Create whiteboard-style animated videos without design or coding skills. Download the software; add images, text, music, and your narration; customize with effects (erasing, morphing); and publish.
Sample review: “Video Scribe specializes in whiteboard videos, and it lets you create really nice video animations. It’s a downloadable piece of software that you can take offline if you pay for the PRO plan. It supports both Mac and PC, and also has mobile applications.” — HubSpot
Pricing: $12/$29 per month, or $665 one-time
Showcase reviews: HubSpot
5) PowToon
Google Review Count: 194
Create animated videos using drag-and-drop tools and pre-built templates.
Sample review: “An animated video and presentations creator that can be easily exported to YouTube.” — HubSpot
Pricing: free or $89/$197 per month, with discounts for paying annually
Showcase reviews: HubSpot, RazorSocial (Video)
6) Magisto
Google Review Count: 193
Choose videos and photos, select a theme, add music and effects, and publish short movies to share on social networks.
Sample review: “Making promotional video clips that include nice music, visual effects, and images that ‘dance’ at the rhythm of the soundtrack could require a lot of time and excellent video editing skills. Magisto solves this problem by doing all the work for you.” — RazorSocial (Boost)
Pricing: free (personal) or $10/$50 per month for business plans
Showcase reviews: RazorSocial (Boost)
7) SloPro
Google Review Count: 178
A slow-motion video app that lets you shoot video, edit it and add slow-motion effects and mix fast with slow motion, then share across social networks.
Sample review: “Do you remember those fight scenes on The Matrix, where the action passed from super-fast into super-slow motion whilst the camera moved around? That effect was a mouth-opener back then, and still is these days. You can achieve a very similar effect with Slopro, which will certainly create an impact on those watching your video.” — RazorSocial (Boost)
Pricing: free or $4
Showcase reviews: RazorSocial (Boost)
8) Stupeflix
Google Review Count: 159
This was a site where users could make free movies up to 20 minutes long. It’ no longer active. Here’s what happened to Stupeflix.
Pricing: free; $3-$5 to download full-length, HD videos
Showcase reviews: Siasat
9) Overvideo
Google Review Count: 127
iOS app that lets you add text and music to videos.
Sample review: “What better way to show off your product or display your latest feature than a video? Now take that video and amplify the message with an animated text overlay! With OverVideo, you can take an average video and make it a real stand out.” — Rebekah Radice
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: Rebekah Radice
Video Marketing Tools
1) Wistia
Google Review Count: 393
A professional video hosting and marketing platform: upload videos, optimize for search, add interactivity, monitor analytics, and set security options.
Sample review: “Outside of YouTube, more B2B-focused video marketing resources include…Wistia.” — SnapApp
Pricing: free or $100/$300 per month
Showcase reviews: SnapApp
2) Vidyard
Google Review Count: 178
Convert presentations into video, personalize with splash screens, live stream from your website or social channels, and get analytics for video interaction. Optimize videos for search, edit and add captions, and manage all your video assets. Integrates with popular marketing automation platforms.
Pricing: contact vendor for pricing
Showcase reviews: SnapApp
3) Brightcove
Google Review Count: 176
Create video portals, optimize videos for search, publish video through social channels, live stream events, edit videos, and measure results with video analytics.
Pricing: $199/$400 per month; contact vendor for enterprise pricing
Showcase reviews: SnapApp
Online Audio Tools
1) Audacity
Google Review Count: 276
A free multi-track audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. Record live audio or computer playback; convert tapes and albums to digital recordings; cut, copy, splice, or mix sounds; and change the pitch or speed of a recording.
Sample review: “Audacity (is) a free audio editor for those who want to create podcasts and syndicate their show on sites like iTunes, Stitcher Radio, and Soundcloud.” — BuzzBlogger
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: BuzzBlogger
2) Mixlr
Google Review Count: 182
Broadcast live audio. Chat with listeners and see how many are listening. Record audio and upload it to SoundCloud, Mixcloud, or Dropbox for those who missed the live session. Connect any input device, record from desktop or mobile, add sounds to your playlist and mix up to three different channels at once.
Pricing: $10/$20/$50 per month
Showcase reviews: Siasat
3) Script Timer
Google Review Count: 157
A free tool that calculates the time it will take a professional to read your script based on number of words; copy-and-paste the script; or the number of pages, lines, and average words per line.
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: Wrike
More Tools
Wondershare Filmora
Google Review Count: 217
A video editing tool that combines simplicity with advanced features to save time and effort. Features include keyframing (ability to create custom animations to elevate engagement), motion tracking, audio fade, green screen for changing backgrounds, split screen, speed control, and more. Other popular tools available from Wondershare include PDFelement (an alternative to Acrobat for PDF editing), Dr.Fone (mobile device management and data backup), and UniConverter (a video format conversion and compression tool).
Pricing: $15/$29/$49 per month
DeepBrain AI
Google Review Count: 184
An AI-powered tool to automatically generate videos from text input. Get realistic AI avatars, natural text-to-speech, and powerful AI video creation capabilities all in one platform. Start with a template or AI automation tool; select an avatar (or create a custom one); then finish by editing graphics, background music, and text.
Pricing: $24/$180 per month, plus enterprise pricing by quote
Biteable
Google Review Count: 173
Quickly create branded videos. Start by selecting from an extensive library of pre-built templates. Mix in pictures and clips of your products or service, then add effects and animation. Enhance your creation by adding content from a selection of 800,000+ real-life stock footage clips and gorgeous animations from the Biteable studio. Need an original GIF for social media posting? See their article on how to make a GIF from a video.
Pricing: $15/$29/$49 per month
Lumen5
Google Review Count: 170
Video creation doesn’t get much easier; with Lumen5’s text-to-video capability, simply enter a link to an article or blog post and Lumen5 will automatically fetch the content and populate your storyboard. AI is used to optimize scene length, text positioning, and keyword highlighting. The tool also offers access to video clips, still images, and thousands of free audio files and background music tracks categorized by mood and genre.
Pricing: free (personal) or $19/$49/$149 per month, plus enterprise pricing by quote
Promo
Google Review Count: 169
A video creation tool that lets you access over 3.5 million premium quality video clips, pre-edited licensed music and a user-friendly editor for customizing messages and logos. You can also get ready-made videos and multidimensional download options to use across all social media platforms. They also offer a meme maker which enables you to automatically create memes from video content.
Pricing: $12/$29/$99 per month
Kapwing
Google Review Count: 164
Record, edit, and collaborate on videos. Kapwing supports a wide array of file formats including .mp4, .mov, .png, .gif, .jpg, .avi, and .webm, and also supports full transcoding and conversion to optimize your files. Split clips, rearrange videos, trim footage, and drag and drop files to move them around on the timeline. Kapwing applies AI to features such as auto-generation of subtitles, removing backgrounds in one click, and smart translations, to speed the editing process.
Pricing: free or $16 per user per month
Zencastr
Google Review Count: 160
A podcasting tool that lets you record remote interviews with studio quality. Each guest can be recorded on a separate track. There’s no need to use a third-party service like Skype or Google Hangouts; you can voice chat with guests directly through Zencastr. It also provides a sound board for post-production mixing of intros/outros and music tracks.
Pricing: free or $20/$250 per month
Viddyoze
Google Review Count: 158
Quickly create professional-looking 3D animated videos. Choose from thousands of pre-built templates featuring live action and animation, edit and customize the video for your purposes, and download the resulting output.
Pricing: $15/47 per month
Rev
Google Review Count: 144
Rev offers a range of speech-to-text services for individuals and enterprises including audio and video transcription done by humans, automated transcription using AI, English-language closed captioning and subtitles, translated subtitles, and real-time captioning on Zoom.
Pricing: $1.50 per minute for audio/video transcription and captioning; $5-$12 for translated subtitles
Ripl
Google Review Count: 130
Ripl is a tool for creating visual social media posts—it’s like Snappa or Stencil but with animation. Design short animated posts (collages, slide shows, or other effects); add photos, fonts, and music; share to all of your social media accounts with a single click; and track results from your social posts.
Pricing: free or $15 per month
Speechpad
Google Review Count: 122
Need a transcript of that important conference call, podcast, subject-matter expert interview, or customer call you just recorded? Speechpad offers high-quality transcription services at an affordable price with multiple options for how quickly you get the text back. They also offer standard and premium video captioning services.
Pricing: transcripts $1 to $3 per minute; video captioning from $1.50 to $4 per minute
Motionbox
Google Review Count: 121
An easy-to-use video creation tool, Motionbox offers features like automated captioning, animated text, templates for video ads / Instagram / YouTube intros, a library of HD videos and photos, tools for team collaboration plus trimming and cropping, and more.
Pricing: free or $15/$83 per month
AVS4YOU
Google Review Count: 121
Five tools in one for video and audio file conversion, video editing and creation (drag-and-drop video editing, plus ability to enhance videos with effects, menus, and audio) and audio editing with recording, effects, and filters. The site also offers free tools for image and document conversion, and photo editing.
Pricing: $39/year or $59 unlimited
Descript
Google Review Count: 116
Record, transcribe, then edit audio (or video) by editing the text. Drag and drop to add music and sound effects. Correct voice recordings by simply typing in the right words. Export edited video footage to Final Cut Pro or Premiere. Features include overdubbing and team collaboration.
Pricing: $12/$24 per user per month; enterprise pricing by quote
Animaker
Google Review Count: 111
An easy-to-use tool for creating both animated and live-action video, with features such as a drag-and-drop builder, an animated-character builder (with 20+ different facial expressions), auto-lip sync for animations, more than 100 million stock videos and photos, 1,000+ templates, the ability to upload and edit 4K video, and instant resizing between horizontal, vertical, and square formats for use across different social media platforms.
Pricing: $10/$19/$49 per month
Squigl
Google Review Count: 110
Squigl is a simple animation tool that combines artificial intelligence (AI) with a library of thousands of crowdsourced “glyphs” (images representing objects or ideas) to enable anyone to create animated whiteboard videos in minutes. No coding or artistic skill is needed. The results don’t compare to sophisticated, professionally produced animation, but they are interesting, easy, and fun.
Pricing: free or $5/month
ilos
Google Review Count: 110
Record, edit, host, share your video content, and monitor viewing analytics inside a single app. Capture video or screen activity from any device. Edit with version control, add closed captioning, password-protect videos, and insert clickable links. Pro version provides in-video quizzes and polls, interactive commenting, and advanced analytics including heat maps.
Pricing: $250 or $500 per month, plus enterprise pricing by quote
PixTeller
Google Review Count: 102
PixTeller is an easy-to-use design and animation tool for creating social media graphics, animated GIFs, banners, invitations, online ads, and more. Choose from more than 130,000 templates to turn words, photos and illustrations into animations in minutes. Use the animation editor timeline to modify any aspect of your animation elements separately: size, color, position, filters, and unique video motion effects.
Pricing: free or $7/$12 per month
VEED
Google Review Count: 100
A simple-to-use video editor with an extensive toolset including filters, the ability to add and translate subtitles, video effects, transitions, royalty-free music, auto-transcription, convert podcasts to videos and draw on videos. Trim, crop, add texts/captions, images, progress bars, and music visualizers to videos, record your screen, test your webcam and even live stream. You can also collaborate with team members on group editing projects. VEED offers additional special-purpose video tools including a GIF Compressor, Video Editor, and MP4 Compressor.
Pricing: free or $12/$24/$59 per user per month
MiniTool MovieMaker
Google Review Count: 98
A simple, free downloadable video editor that enables you to add transitions and titles, trim and split video, control the speed (reverse, speed up, slow down), and animate photos. Reviewers have compared the program to Microsoft’s Windows Movie Maker, which has been discontinued.
Pricing: free
VidToon
Google Review Count: 96
Create animated explainer videos up to 25 minutes long (not that it’s advisable to create a video that long!). Use ready-to-go animated characters; royalty-free background images and music files; built-in images, GIFs, and icons; animations and transitions; and more.
Pricing: $49 (one-time payment)
Renderforest
Google Review Count: 92
Renderforest s an online video production platform for creating explainer videos, slideshows, cartoon, whiteboard animations, introduction videos, animated presentations, intros and more with an easy-to-use online editor. Start with a template from the site’s large library, customize the content, save projects to your dashboard, and download any time.
Pricing: free or $10/$20/$30 per export
Podcastle
Google Review Count: 90
Podcastle.ai is a podcast recording tool that enables podcasters to build, edit, and save audio recordings. It provides features for recording remote interviews, converting text to speech and transcribing audio, removing background noise, editing (splitting, fade in/out, intros and outros, speed adjust, music and sound effects) and generating high-quality audio. It also works well for educators and audiobook creators.
Pricing: free; $12/$24 per month; team pricing by quote
dodles
Google Review Count: 84
An online animation tool that lets you create animated comics and memes, movies, sketches, characters, games, and interactive scenes. The tool is free to use, though some content (e.g., pre-designed characters and sound clips) require a small payment. Collaborate with team members, bring drawings to life, and edit photos and video.
Pricing: free
Canva Video Editor
Google Review Count: 81
Canva offers a free video editor with an extensive range of editing tools including the ability to upload media clips then trim, split, or re-size; add text, transitions, graphic elements, and text animations; and enhance videos with music, audio tracks, sound effects, and voice-over narration. Get access to thousands of customizable templates and save video in pre-sized formats for YouTube, social media platforms, and ads.
Pricing: free or $120/$150 per month
Vokal
Google Review Count: 81
A simple video editing tool for podcasters, musicians, and other online content creators, Vokal enables users to easily add waveform animations and generate subtitles in any language for videos. It offers premium professionally designed templates, the ability to add images or stickers, and the capability to display the progress of a video with one of their time visualizers.
Pricing: free or $12/$24 per month
FlexClip
Google Review Count: 81
FlexClip is an easy-to-use yet powerful video maker that helps you create videos for any purposes. Key features include completely free use; a clean storyboard to combine multiple photos and clips; flexible video editing tools like trim, split, text, voice-over, music, and watermark; and high-definition video export.
Pricing: free
Mixilab
Google Review Count: 68
Mixilab offers a suite of product for photo and video editing, including Animotica (an easy-to-use video editor for Windows that’s an alternative to Windows Movie Maker); ScreenMix (a screen recorder to capture your desktop video, record a webcam, mic, or desktop audio in Windows 10/11); Video to Photo (for grabbing photo frames from videos); CropiPic (image editor); Video Cutter & Compressor; and Picofme (a free, AI-powered profile picture maker).
Pricing: varies, but all individual products are available for a one-time fee of less than $20
PhotoADKing Thumbnail Maker
Google Review Count: 61
Create eye-catching thumbnail images for your YouTube videos to attract more views and traffic. Choose from more than 1,000 templates, then customize your video thumbnail image with 100+ typography styles plus stickers, icons, and stock images.
Pricing: free or $54/$96 per year
Piktostory
Google Review Count: 58
Import videos from Zoom, Google Drive, or record using your webcam, then edit and repurpose long videos like webinars and zoom recordings into bite-size clips with automated subtitles. Piktostory lets you highlight the parts of a video you need from the transcript and instantly turn them into bite-size videos, without frame-by-frame editing. You can also change the color, type, and size of subtitles and customize the video background color to match your brand.
Pricing: free or $9/$29/$49 per month
Clipify
Google Review Count: 54
Clipify includes all the basic image editing features you’d expect, like cutting and trimming, effects, and transitions, plus advanced tools such as RGB Tone Curves and voice-over recording. Have a video shot against a plain background or a green screen? Clipify’s Chroma Key tool lets you swap out backgrounds like a pro. Its extensive library of 200+ royalty-free music tracks, 50+ footages, and other stock media will help bring your ideas to life.
Pricing: free or $29/$40/$60 one-time cost
InVideo
Google Review Count: 43
Quickly create professional-looking videos for social media, Instagram stories, promotions, video ads, or other purposes. Start with pre-built templates, add content from a library of more than one million images and video clips, and utilize pre-built components like text boxes and stickers. The product has quickly amassed more than 30,000 users in 135 countries and 400+ five-star reviews.
Pricing: free or $20/$50/$100 per month
Take Note Transcription Service
Google Review Count: 35
Get your audio or video content transcribed as either Verbatim Transcript or Detailed Notes. You choose whether you want to only remove ums and errs, false starts and repetitions, or opt for a more condensed transcript which also summarizes questions and removes off topic chit chat. Take Note also offers video captioning and live note-taking services.
Pricing: transcription starts at 0.79 GBP (roughly $1) per minute
Type Studio
Google Review Count: 34
Edit your video by editing the text, as simply as using Google Docs. Type Studio transcribes your video into text. To edit your video, just select the part of the text you would like to cut and press the delete key. That portion of the video gets cut automatically. You can also automatically add and edit subtitles.
Pricing: free; $14/$24 per month; enterprise pricing by quote
Wave.video
Google Review Count: 30
Wave.video from Animatron is an easy-to-use online video maker for creating marketing and social videos in minutes. Choose from their library of 200-million stock video clips and 300,000 royalty-free audio clips , or upload your own video, images, and music. Add text, custom fonts, and your logo, then output in a variety of formats.
Pricing: $39/$40/$149 per month
Murf
Google Review Count: 23
Murf is basically the opposite of Speechpad (above). Instead of transcribing audio into text, it converts your typed text into a studio quality AI audio voice over for your videos and presentations. All Murf voices are trained on professional voice over artists and checked for quality against dozens of parameters. Murf Studio helps you time your voice overs in sync with your visuals, with features like adding pauses or changing the speed of narration.
Pricing: free or $12/$35/$99 per month
Riverside.fm
Google Review Count: 20
A professional podcast / videocast recording tool that provides local recording with separate audio and video tracks for every guest. Optionally, stream your podcast live to your social media channels including Twitch, Youtube, Twitter. Increase listener / viewer engagement by letting audience members call in live with video and audio.
Pricing: $8/$15/$24 per month; enterprise pricing by quote
Ssemble
Google Review Count: N/A
Trim, split, move, resize, rotate, filter, adjust, speed up, and slow down your video clip. Apply awesome transition effects and VFX. Features include a background remover, voice creator, royalty-free music tracks, and cloud storage. Add sound effects, text, and subtitles; zoom in, rotate, and compress videos.
Pricing: free or $24 per editor per month
Showcase Reviews
BuzzBlogger
HubSpot
Kathryn Aragon Media
RazorSocial (Boost)
RazorSocial (Video)
Rebekah Radice
Siasat
SnapApp
SteamFeed
Wrike
This was the 38th post in the Best Online Business Tools series.
#1: Best Online Business Tools Series Kicks Off Today
#2: The 12 Best Competitive Intelligence and Benchmarking Tools
#3: The Nine Best Facebook Marketing Tools
#4: The 14 Best Content Planning and Research Tools
#5: The 23 Best Content Ideation Tools
#6: The 24 Best Online Writing Tools and Apps
#7: The Six Best Google+ Marketing Tools
#8: The Four Best Online Education Tools For Business Pros
#9: The 14 Best Marketing Automation Tools
#10: The 17 Best Keyword Research Tools for SEO and SEM
#11: The Seven Best File Sharing Tools
#12: The Five Best Infographic Creation Tools and Services
#13: The 28 Best Influencer Marketing Tools
#14: The Five Best Pinterest and Instagram Marketing Tools
#15: The 24 Best Visual Content Creation Tools
#16: The Six Best Online HR, Payroll, and Employee Scheduling Tools
#17: The 20 Best SEO Rank Tracker Tools
#18: The Six Best Screen Capture Tools
#19: The 15 Best Special-Purpose SEO Tools
#20: The Four Best Online Survey Tools
#21: The 26 Best All-in-One SEO Tool Suites
#22: The 32 Best Twitter Marketing Tools
#23: The 29 Best Web Analytics Tools
#24: The 24 Best Email Marketing Tools
#25: The 28 Best Web Design Tools
#26: The 29 Best Social Media Monitoring Tools
#27: The 17 Best Project Management Tools
#28: The 21 Best Content Curation Tools
#29: The 26 Best WordPress Plugins
#30: The 14 Best Personal Productivity Tools
#31: The 11 Best Social Media Campaign Builders and Ad Monitoring Tools
#32: The 12 Best Landing Page and Form Builders for Conversion Rate Optimization
#33: The 17 Best Photo Editing Tools
#34: The Six Best Accounting and Finance Tools for Small Business
#35: The 15 Best Content Distribution and Amplification Tools
#36: The 17 Best Social Media Management Tools
#37: The 23 Best Google Chrome Extensions for Digital Marketers
#38: The 15 Best Audio and Video Editing Tools