Top 20 Explainer Video Software for Every Budget and Skill Level
An explainer video is a short video that focuses on explaining a product, service or concept. It’s typically used in online marketing to demonstrate how something works or what a company does. A well-made high-quality explainer video can help you promote your business or boost your product conversions. And the best part is that you don’t need to hire a video production studio. Armed with special tools, you can create explainer videos on your own.
This is a roundup of 20 explainer video software solutions that can help you create compelling videos and improve your marketing. For convenience, we divided them into five separate groups, from live-action video tools to animated video software. Share them on social media or bookmark this article to come back at any time.
Live-Action Explainer Video Software
Live-action explainer videos are real-life situations with live people. They can be just talking-head videos with annotations or short movies with a plot and actors like the example below:
To create a live-action video, you need a camera and video editing software. Some of the holistic tools we’ve compiled combine three options at once: they allow you to record, edit, and share videos. Check out our short list and find a solution that meets your requirements.
1. iSpring Suite
iSpring Suite is a PowerPoint-based authoring software that includes tools for creating online courses, quizzes, and conversation simulations, as well as a professional video studio. Though the toolkit is more focused on producing eLearning content, with the iSpring video studio, you can also make explainer videos. You can make a screencast, record a webcam video right in the tool, or take a ready-made live action video and enhance it with images, infographics, PowerPoint slides, and captions. The studio also makes it easy to mix videos and support them with music or a voiceover.
As an option, you can create a presentation explaining your product or service in PowerPoint and turn it into a video with iSpring Suite. The tool preserves all PPT effects and transitions.
Cost: $970/year. Free 14-day trial →
2. Camtasia
Camtasia can be helpful both for screen capturing and webcam recording. It also provides basic editing options for polishing videos. Like with iSpring, you can use a webcam or a ready-made recording for your explainer video and make it more engaging by adding eye-catching titles, annotations, effects, and more. To support a video with music, you can choose a track from Camtasia’s library of royalty-free music, or upload your own audio.
Cost: $249. Free 30-day trial.
3. Soapbox
Soapbox is a Google Chrome extension that enables you to quickly and easily record, edit, and share videos. To create an explainer video, you can make a talking-head style recording with your webcam and complement it with text, images, slides, and other videos.
Cost: There’s a free limited plan. The paid version starts at $300/year.
4. Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Premiere Pro is a leading video editing toolkit used by professionals for creating films, video clips, and documentaries. You can also use it as explainer video software. For that, you need to upload a previously recorded video and do some editing. The toolkit enables you to do more than just basic editing, including compositing, layering, tilting, motion graphics, and sound design. What is more, you can edit the footage in any modern format, from 8K to virtual reality.
Cost: $239.88/year. Free 7-day trial.
Explainer Video Slideshow Software
Video slideshow software is typically easy-to-use apps that allow you to create a video by combining photos and ready-made clips. They usually come with basic video and photo editing tools so you can enhance your slideshows.
Here you can see an example of an explainer slideshow video:
Our review covers quite a few programs that can help you make explainer videos in a snap.
5. Animoto
Animoto is a tool for creating video photo slideshows with music to use for marketing purposes. You can create explainer videos simply by draging and dropping your own images and video clips into pre-built templates. The tool allows you to quickly adjust colors, fonts, music, and more to customize your video.
Cost: From $5/month (annual billing). Free 14-day trial.
6. Powtoon
Powtoon is a popular app for creating presentations and videos. It has a gigantic library of video and presentation templates in various styles that can be instantly edited. In addition to live-action templates, Powtoon offers a variety of animation styles including cartoons, infographics, and whiteboards.
Cost: There’s a free plan. The paid version starts at $16/month (annual billing).
7. Wave.video
Wave.video is a simple but robust video-making solution with the largest 300-million stock video and image library. You can use a ready-made template or upload your own video clip and customize it by adding text and logo, setting custom colors and fonts, and applying branded video filters. To make your explainer video even more engaging, you can also add stickers and GIFs.
Cost: There’s a free plan. The paid version starts at $8.25/month (annual billing).
8. Biteable
With Biteable, you can turn your photos and videos into a beautiful explainer video. The app offers hundreds of ready-to-use templates. Depending on your audience and brand, you can choose between tech, professional, humorous, and a host of other styles. To personalize your video, you can add pictures, text, and music, and integrate your brand colors.
Cost: From $20/month (yearly billing). Free trial.
Animated Explainer Video Software
Animated explainer videos illustrate a product, service or concept using moving graphics. With graphic elements, you can create a memorable story and explain abstract or complex concepts. See how iSpring did this:
Here’s a list of the top animated explainer video software that will help you create engaging content that will stand out from the crowd. Go ahead and pick the right tool for your animation work.
9. Vyond
Vyond is a fast online tool for creating animated videos with professional output. It has everything you need to tell a compelling story beautifully and visually through an explainer video. The software offers an extremely rich library of pre-designed scenes, characters, objects, and audio tracks. To make your video even more engaging, you can use dialogue, lip-sync, and realistic movements.
Cost: From $49/month or $299/year per seat. Free 14-day trial.
10. Animaker
Animaker is online animation video-making software with drag-and-drop functionality. With 6 different video styles, including infographics, 2.5D, and typography, and 120 different types of animations, it lets you create beautiful explanatory videos. The app is home to a big collection of characters, charts, and icons, as well as sound and visual effects, which can help you spice things up. With Animaker, you can create vertically optimized videos that fit right on a mobile screen.
Cost: There’s a free plan. The paid version starts at $12 (annual billing).
11. Wideo
Wideo is another web-based app for creating, editing, and sharing animated videos in an intuitive way. It offers 100+ templates which are fully customizable, over 1300 images, and 50+ music tracks. If you don’t want to use the standard objects provided in the library, you can use your own.
Cost: From $19/month (annual billing). Free 7-day trial.
12. Explaindio
Explaindio is a robust tool that allows you to bring together 2D and 3D animations, sketch elements, and full-motion video. You can easily create explainer videos by combining pre-made text animations, animated scenes, fonts, characters, and audio tracks to get the look and story you want.
Cost: From $37/month. 7-day trial with $1.
13. Cinema 4D
Cinema 4D is 3D animation software that features a gentle learning curve. It has everything you need to make an explainer video with stunning 3D graphics. Cinema 4D allows you to create characters from scratch and build whole stories with a plot. To make it easier for you, the app provides an extensive library of preset scenes, materials, and objects.
Cost: On request. Free 42-day trial.
Whiteboard Explainer Video Software
Whiteboard videos are a particular type of animated video in which pictures appear to be hand drawn on a whiteboard. The script is presented as a third-person narration or a use-case that supports the story that is told through the drawing. This is a good example of what a whiteboard animation looks like:
We’ve compiled the most popular tools that can help you quickly get started with your whiteboard animation videos. Take a look to find the one you need!
14. Sparkol VideoScribe
Sparkol VideoScribe lets you create hand-drawn, animated explainer videos with no design or technical know-how. With the large built-in library of images and easy-to-use timeline with drag-and-drop functionality, you can make videos in a snap. VideoScribe also has a great audio library, with around 200 tracks to choose from.
Cost: From €25 per user/month. Free 7-day trial.
15. MySimpleShow
A hand dragging different elements across the screen and swiping them away, supported by a voiceover, is exactly what you can see in videos created with MySimpleShow. This is a simple tool with a unique explainer engine. Just choose a storyline template for your topic, write a story, and the software itself offers you a selection of characters, objects, and animations to build your video.
Cost: From $129/month (monthly billing). Free trial.
16. Raw Shorts
Raw Shorts is whiteboard animation software with a drag-n-drop interface. You can create an explainer video with no animation skills simply by choosing ready-made templates, graphics, and characters, and adding media and text. Raw Shorts stands out among other tools for its specific transitions and animations which can be given to each element beyond just the “drawn by hand” classic whiteboard style.
Cost: There’s a free pricing plan. The paid version starts at $39/month (annual billing).
17. Doodly
If you want a cool explainer video with a marker or pen drawing sketches, you can create it yourself with Doodly. To make a video, you can use doodle images drawn by Doodly’s professional graphic artists, or upload your own images. The tool will automatically draw the image for you. You can also record your voiceover audio directly within Doodly and easily sync it to your sketch.
Cost: from $20/month (annual billing).
Interactive Explainer Video Software
Interactive videos give the viewer the ability to interact with the content itself and even control it as if playing a video game. They can click on-screen objects, answer questions, and even buy products, all within the video. This totally transforms the viewer’s experience by making it more fun and engaging.
See how Maybelline New York uses interactive videos to show how its products can help women look more attractive. This is more than just an explainer video, since it not only explains how the product works, but also teaches customers how to use it properly.
Here are three software tools that will help you create a fully immersive experience for your customers.
18. WIREWAX
WIREWAX is a video platform with broad interactivity capabilities. You can use hotspots, branching, 360-degree experiences, camera switching, slider views, and more in your videos. WIREWAX uses unique artificial intelligence technology that automatically makes the people, products, and scenes in the video clickable and touchable.
Cost: upon request. Free 14-day trial.
19. Rapt Media
Rapt Media is a cloud-based tool that enables you to easily create, embed and analyze interactive videos. With simple drag-and-drop actions, you can add clickable elements and branches to your videos to put the user at the center of the experience and let them choose their own path of content. Rapt has a robust analytics dashboard that can help you measure conversions and behaviors and improve your videos over time.
Cost: upon request. Free 30-day trial.
20. HapYak
HapYak is a video SaaS platform that can help you create explainer videos with active, lean-in experience. You can layer interactivity on your videos by adding hotspots, links, polls, calls to action, shopping carts, and more. The tool comes with a built-in analytics feature that tracks clicks across all the sites where your video is hosted.
Cost: upon request. Free 7-day trial.
All the tools covered in this article are great for creating explainer videos. Pick any of these tools and take them for a trial, or start out on the free plan to get a feel for the app.
Have you used software to create explainer videos before? Let us know in the comments below.
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Original post, — www.ispringsolutions.com/blog
