Biteable vs the world: The best online video makers compared

The days of downloading a massive software suite to edit videos are long gone. Online video makers are the way of the future.

But the “best online video makers” category is more crowded than it used to be. With so many options, how do you choose? We gathered the top online video makers together in one place, to get a good look at them side by side. It’s Biteable vs. the world. Who will win?

The best online video makers at a glance

When it comes to the quality of online video makers, there are plenty of nuances. We’ll get into these nuances in a minute. But first, here is a high-level overview of what we found.

Account setup

Ease of use (video creation time)

Maximum video quality

Integrations

Stock footage library

Video template library

Stock image library

Animations

Royalty-free music

A side-by-side comparison of online video makers

We’re talking about the best of the best here. When you look with a birds-eye-view, all of these online video makers have pretty solid stats. But what happens when we dig deeper? Let’s see how Biteable stacks up vs. PowToon vs. Animoto vs…you get the idea.

Account setup

• Biteable

Biteable is quick and easy to set up. Create an account with just your name and email address. The first time you log in, you’ll customize your experience by answering a few questions.

After that, you’ll be making videos within seconds.

• Biteable vs Powtoon

Powtoon requires you to verify your email address on a desktop computer. That’s a bit less convenient than Biteable account creation, which can be completed on any device.

• Biteable vs Animoto

Biteable and Animoto both use a single-step account setup process. However, you can create a free account in Animoto with just an email address, no name needed. This is helpful if for some reason you prefer to remain anonymous.

• Biteable vs Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark almost has a three-step account creation process, since you must complete a usage survey before you can access the editor. Also, you have to supply more personal information, like your birthday, to create an account. Compared to Adobe Spark, Biteable account setup is definitely simpler and faster.

• Biteable vs Kapwing

Kapwing’s online video maker is accessible without signing in. However, it’s of little use as you’ll have to create an account to export your videos. Animoto also requires a Gmail or Facebook account, which is less flexible than Biteable.

• Biteable vs Renderforest

Renderforest is another video maker that allows access without signing in. Like Kapwing, you must create an account to export videos. Renderforest account creation also requires email address verification, which is less convenient than Biteable account setup.

Ease of use

Ease of use is tough to quantify. So we created a simple test. Using each online video maker, we created a short video (under 2 min) and timed the process to see how long it took.

• Biteable

Biteable’s video maker uses a simple interface, allowing you to edit every part of your video in the same canvas.

A consolidated timeline lets you see your video from a high level, including where text appears in relation to each scene. Clicking on a scene or text block brings that media into the canvas for editing.

All customization options are possible by clicking on elements in the canvas. You can also make blanket changes, like text style and background color, to your entire video. Rearrange scenes with drag and drop, or insert new video clips, then trim them to fit the scene with a simple popup tool.

All in all, the Biteable editor is easy to pick up and get to work. It took about 10 minutes to create a quick video in Biteable.

• Biteable vs Powtoon

In terms of layout, Biteable and Powtoon are fairly accessible. However, the tools in Powtoon are more spread around the editor, which slowed video creation progress.

The Powtoon editor is also sluggish. It takes a few seconds to load new tools and media. But the real hit to production time was an error that occured repeatedly.

This error didn’t cause unsaved work to be lost. But periodically reloading a page isn’t ideal for productivity. That’s why we finished our video almost 25 minutes faster using Biteable vs. Powtoon, which we think is a fair win.

• Biteable vs Animoto

The Animoto editor does a lot of work for you. Text blocks and images automatically resize and snap to align with other objects in the workspace. That makes things pretty quick and simple. That being said, it is tricky to get things just right if you don’t want them perfectly aligned. However, having to edit scenes individually did slow us down.

But all complaints aside, we created a video quite quickly using Animoto.

• Biteable vs Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark was the most difficult video maker to master. There are lots of options for customization, but it takes time to locate everything and learn how to work all the tools (which we admit are quite powerful).

If quick and easy is your goal, Adobe Spark might not be your best bet. Thanks to that steep learning curve and complex editor, it took quite a bit longer to create a short video in Spark compared to Biteable.

• Biteable vs Kapwing

The Kapwing editor offers plenty of customization options for your video. But the video editor is not intuitive at all. The workspace switches views whenever you edit a different video element, which takes time to get used to.

The Kapwing editor comes stocked with a big variety of tools. But Biteable is easier to use by a fairly wide margin.

• Biteable vs Animaker

The Animaker editor is easy to use. Almost everything is controlled through dragging and dropping, even very specific adjustments like letter spacing.

However, the workspace and video timeline change when you edit different elements of your video, which took time to understand and wasn’t as intuitive as Biteable’s consolidated approach. That’s why it took 30 minutes more to create a short video with Animaker vs. Biteable.

• Biteable vs Renderforest

Renderforest uses a simple editor that’s impressively easy to use. The editor also confines most of the information in your browser window to just the scene you’re working on, which makes it easy to stay focused.

The Renderforest editor isn’t as powerful as the Biteable editor. But it was quick and easy to create a short video with Renderforest.

• Biteable vs Promo

The Promo editor is just about as simple and easy to use as the Biteable editor. Plenty of preset styles make video production quick. There is also a tool that lets you apply filters to your entire video in one go.

Promo might have tied Biteable in production time if not for a weird error that occurred a few times.

Things got done eventually. Your mileage may vary.

Video editing capabilities

Video editing capabilities are hard to quantify. But this is what we found when we used each of the online video makers.

• Biteable

Biteable is simple enough to be very user-friendly. But don’t let that simplicity fool you. It’s also a very capable video editor.

There are plenty of templates to work from, and the templates are completely customizable — more so than many of the top video makers we compared. Move and resize text and images, remove any portion of the video template, and add new scenes quickly. You can also insert your own video clips into a template, then edit those clips in the same workspace using the Biteable editor.

Or, start from scratch with a blank canvas. Upload your own videos, add animated text, and supplement your videos with stock footage. There’s music for your soundtrack, too. And a solid selection of scene transitions helps smooth out the flow of your video.

In short, Biteable’s online video editor gives you the tools to maximize your creativity without overwhelming you.

• Powtoon

Powtoon is a powerful option for building videos from a series of preset scenes or slides.

However, it’s relatively limited if you want to create a more free-flowing video. There are only a few options for smoothing the transition between slides, although some scene templates do have transition animations. Still, Powtoon videos tend to feel like high-quality slide shows as opposed to videos.

Powtoon does have a nice option for screen or camera capture. Simply record yourself doing something or giving a quick talk, then turn it into a video tutorial or presentation in the editor. This makes for a decent video editor, with versatility to help you get things done with fewer tools.

• Animoto

Animoto clearly prioritizes ease of use. Even if you have your own videos and images, animoto relies very heavily on preset styles and layouts.

To be fair, there are plenty of preset styles and layouts to choose from, and they are all customizable. However, you must start from a predefined layout and style. This significantly limits the video editing capabilities.

Because of this, Animoto feels more like a video assembler than a video maker. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. But it may not be ideal for people who need more freeform editing capabilities from their online video maker.

• Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark seems to be a super simplified version of Adobe Premier. It’s nowhere near as powerful as Premier. But it does have some of the capabilities.

Adobe Spark has a layout grid for positioning text and graphics. It snaps objects into place, allowing you to quickly and easily align elements in your slides. The darkside is limited freedom in element placement.

Trimming video clips inside the editor is also quite simple. Similar to Biteable, you get a mini-timeline for your video clips, from which you can drag and drop to trim clips or select which portion of a clip to play.

All in all, Adobe Spark might be the closest to a complete, non-linear video editor of all the online video makers. But as we mentioned before, you pay for this with a steep learning curve.

• Kapwing

Although it’s trickier to learn than some of the other online video editors, the Kapwing editor is quite capable.

The video timeline is marked in tenths of a second for ultra-precise timeline navigation. There are more ratio options than many of the other editors (5 aspect ratios, to be exact). And editing text, images, and video clips is freeform. With Kapwing, you have complete creative freedom.

• Animaker

Animaker has relatively strong video editing capabilities. Like Kapwing, the timeline is segmented into tenths of a second for precise navigation and video trimming. And there are some pretty specific customization options, like letter spacing for text.

This video maker is also one of the few that can create a custom, animated character. The animations are a little dated in style, but it’s a nice touch.

• Renderforest

The simplicity of the Renderforest editor definitely impacts its online video creation capabilities.

All videos must start from a template, and you can customize the scenes of the template. The templates are high quality, with plenty of animation. But this is far from a freeform video editor.

However, Renderforest does have a relatively impressive logo maker that animates a logo image. And you can use Renderforest to create mockups, which adds some versatility to the editor.

• Promo

While Promo’s video editor is simple, its capabilities have some limits. The editor relies heavily on templates and preset styles. This makes it difficult to create a fully customized video.

You must work from a template, and the templates aren’t very customizable. Instead, you have to stick with editing the elements already included in the template.

Fortunately, there is a good selection of preset text styles and animations. So you can get quite creative, even if the videos tend to run a bit like a slideshow.

Maximum video quality

• Biteable

Biteable renders and exports your videos in full HD1080p. Biteable is neck and neck with almost all the other video makers in the video quality race.

• Biteable vs Animaker

Animaker is the only one that beat Biteable out in video quality. However, it’s not available to everyone. If you contact their sales team to work out a custom pricing plan, you can get up to 4K video.

Integrations

• Biteable

You can share videos directly from Biteable to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube from the export tab. Sending videos to other platforms is done by downloading, then uploading or scheduling your video for later.

Other online video makers allow you to share videos by integrating with social platforms. This can be advantageous, but does give unwanted control of your account to a third party.

Biteable keeps shared information to a minimum and doesn’t take control of your social accounts or harvest your data.

Stock footage library

• Biteable vs the competition

Comparing stock footage options across video makers is a challenge as there isn’t complete transparency as to what’s available and at what cost.

Biteable offers 800,000 Storyblocks clips on all plans. On Biteable’s annual Teams plan you get access to Shutterstock’s entire clip library, with a choice of twenty clips per year to add to your library. Advanced AI-powered search and the biggest premium stock selection in the world, make Shutterstock a dream to search and use from within Biteable.

Promo has a similar system of video clips, with a standard offering and premium clips. As with Biteable, the higher your plan, the more access you get.

Animoto and Animaker both include the Getty image library of around 1 million images and clips. This is a well-respected library, but the total number of clips available is far less than Biteable and Promo.

Renderforest has a smaller selection again, while Kapwing and Adobe Spark come with no stock content.

Animations

• Biteable

Biteable has hundreds of customizable animations. The animation library includes a broad range of styles that most other online video makers don’t have, including clay animation, quirky characters, and video game style animations.

Unlike other video makers, Biteable has its own in-house studio of animators that are constantly releasing new animation sets in an ever-expanding range of styles.

• Biteable vs Powtoon

Powtoon’s animations are limited to templates and preset text animations. To be fair to Powtoon, there are several different animation styles, and you can get custom animations if you pay for the highest subscription tier. But Biteable offers far more unique animations at a lower subscription price.

• Biteable vs Animoto

Animato has some animated templates using footage from the Getty Images library. So they technically have animated templates. But Animoto animations are mostly limited to animated text. Biteable animations are more creative and versatile.

• Biteable vs Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark animations are limited to the templates. And only about 1 percent of the template library includes animations. Biteable clearly wins the animation game vs Adobe Spark.

• Biteable vs Kapwing

Kapwing video templates include animated text, and there are a handful of stock animations that can be applied to any image or text. But the Biteable animation library is much broader and more engaging.

• Biteable vs Animaker

Animaker offers a lot of animations. You can even create a custom character and scene animations. The animations are relatively short and simple, but the level of customization is higher than in the Biteable animation library. This is great if you want a very specific action animated, but is painful when you’re in a rush.

• Biteable vs Renderforest

Renderforest has an animated logo maker, which is nice (Biteable allows you to animate your existing logo, but not create a logo from scratch). In terms of animation libraries, Biteable and Renderforest are similar in size. Biteable’s library wins on range of styles and polished, contemporary looks.

• Biteable vs Promo

Biteable wins this one pretty handily. Promo animations are limited to preset text only.

Video template library

• Biteable

The Biteable template library is stuffed with over 1200 templates, organized into 35 categories for easy searching. There’s a template for just about every type of business and every type of video. There are also templates for specific parts of your business, like marketing, HR, Ops, and Learning and Development, to help everyone in your business communicate more effectively.

• Biteable vs Adobe Spark

Spark has a library of over 37,000 templates. It’s a ton of templates. It’s more than Biteable, but judging by appearance, the bulk are machine-generated. All Biteable templates are constructed by in-house designers and writers.

Spark’s templates also offer very little guidance in terms of video creation. Biteable may have fewer templates compared to Spark, but Biteable’s templates are more user-friendly.

• Biteable vs Promo

Promo doesn’t say how many templates it has. But the Promo template library is huge. Too many to count. It appears Promo has at least as many templates as Biteable, but far fewer templates with animation.

Stock image library

• Biteable vs other online video makers

Biteable offers over 1 million stock images in all plans.

All the other video makers also offer stock image libraries that have at least as many images. We’ll consider this a tie.

Royalty-free music

• Biteable vs the competition

Biteable and all the competitors have a royalty-free music library. Is our music the best? Probably. But you’ll get royalty-free music with any online video maker.

Pricing

And the winner for online video making is…

Obviously, no online video maker wins in every category. But there is one that has the best combination of easy editing, strong video customization capabilities, and lots of supporting media (animations, stock footage, templates, and music) for a reasonable price.

Maybe we’re biased, but…

(SPOILER ALERT) Biteable WINS!

Biteable gives you a powerful tool that you can learn quickly. In literally minutes, you can create captivating live action and animated videos. And Biteable packs more performance and features per dollar than the other online video makers.

We’re not going to tell you what to do. But there’s a clear winner here… It’s Biteable.