Hey!
I just finished building the first version of Chairkick (this site!), a Loom alternative.
If you don't know what Loom is: It's a screen recorder.
We already use Chairkick at my company OpenRegulatory. Usually we developers use it to showcase whichever recent feature we've built. This is usually much faster than doing clunky stuff like a) writing it up in text, b) requiring others to pull your branch and run it locally or c) set up some sort of staging environment, with all its associated complexity.
Instead, recording a short, 5-minute video is efficient - both for the person recording the video and for the viewers.
Chairkick vs. Loom
The main and obvious benefit of Chairkick is that it's 1) not owned by Atlassian (chuckle) and 2) more affordable. Currently, Chairkick costs only $15/user/month while Loom comes in at at least $18/user/month. If you want Loom's AI features, it's $24, and if you're an "enterprise", it's "talk to sales".
Chairkick is simple - $18/user/month, and you get all features.
I've been using Chairkick myself for the last few weeks, and the somewhat unexpected feature I enjoy the most is that the video quality is simply way better. There's no auto-shrinkage to, say, 720p or 1080p. On Chairkick, you simply get the full resolution which is provided by your screen when you record it. For my Macbook, that's a pretty damn good resolution, and my colleagues viewing my videos literally have the feeling that they're looking at my screen.
It's awesome.
Fancy Features
In addition, I've started shipping some awesome features to Chairkick which I've always been missing at Loom. Notably:
- AI highlights: Quickly jump to sections in the video where the presenter showed something interesting. This is cool for my colleagues if I ramble too much and they want to skip to the interesting sections where I actually show stuff.
- Action items: While demoing software features in my Chairkick videos, I sometimes come up with new to-dos, like "oh, this feature seems broken, I need to fix it". Chairkick automatically scans the videos for these items, and presents you with a list of action items after each videos. It's really cool.
- Timeline: Think of it like "a Twitter feed for my company". You see recent videos recorded by your colleagues, and recent activity, too (who commented on what?). This is still in its early stages, but so far, it looks pretty nice.
Alright, that's it! I'll be off using Chairkick day-to-day, and I hope you will, too.
There's a generous free tier (better than the one Loom offers!), so you should really check it out right now and give it a go.
And if you have any feedback, let me know any time!
Oliver