Loom alternative
A Loom alternative that ships the link before Loom finishes uploading.
Stack Stream lives in your menu bar. Click record, click stop — the share link is already on your clipboard. Auto-transcript, AI summary, AI chapters, and a public page that Google can actually index. $20/month for the whole Stack bundle, no per-seat fee.
Why teams leave Loom
The free tier hits its ceiling in a week.
Loom Starter caps you at 25 videos and 5 minutes per video. That sounds reasonable until you realize the cap is lifetime, not monthly — record a daily standup, a bug repro, two design walkthroughs, and you're already negotiating with yourself about which old videos to delete. The 5-minute limit is the worse one: it's exactly long enough to feel useful and exactly short enough to cut you off mid-explanation. The whole tier is engineered as a trial, not a free product, and the upgrade prompt is never more than two clicks away.
Per-seat pricing punishes the team that adopts it most.
Loom Business is $15/user/month on annual billing. A five-person team is $900/year just to record screencasts. A fifteen-person team is $2,700/year. The pricing scales linearly with adoption, which means the more your team uses Loom, the more it costs you — and the more locked in you are to Loom's ecosystem when you eventually want to leave. Stack is $20/month flat for the whole workspace. Bring as many people as you want; the bill doesn't move.
Atlassian bought Loom and the pricing discipline slipped.
Atlassian acquired Loom in late 2023, and the post-acquisition trajectory has followed the script you'd expect: features that used to be free moved behind paid tiers, transcript export got gated, the free cap got tighter, and the upsell density inside the app increased. The product itself is still good — the company shipping it is now optimizing for ARR per seat across a much larger portfolio. If you've felt the squeeze, you're not imagining it.
Transcript export is gated, so your videos aren't really yours.
Every Loom video has a transcript. Reading it is free; downloading it as text is a paid feature. That's a strange place to draw a line — the transcript is generated automatically from audio you recorded, and it's the most portable, most useful artifact of the recording. Stack Stream gives you the transcript as a plain `.txt`, `.srt`, or `.vtt` download from the share page. No tier check. It's your video; the transcript is yours.
What Stack Stream does differently
Share link on your clipboard before Loom finishes uploading.
Click the tray icon, click record, do the thing, click stop. Stack Stream copies the share link to your clipboard the instant you stop — the upload happens in the background, and the public page renders progressively as bytes arrive. Anyone you paste the link to gets a player that streams from the first available chunk. Loom shows you a 'preparing your video' screen while it processes. On a 60-second recording over residential fiber, Stream beats Loom to a paste-able link by 8–15 seconds. Small numbers, big difference in flow.
Every share page is public HTML — Google can index it.
This is the move that makes Stream different in kind, not degree. When you share a Stream video, the page that renders is real HTML with the transcript and AI-generated chapters in the DOM. Search engines crawl it. Your tutorial video for `how to configure webhooks in <our product>` becomes a search result. Loom's pages are JavaScript-rendered with the transcript hidden behind an interaction. We've had Stream users get inbound traffic — actual support deflection — from videos they recorded as one-off explainers. None of this works on Loom.
Whisper transcription, AI summary, AI chapters — every video, every tier.
Stop recording, transcript appears within ~2× realtime (a 10-minute video is ready in ~20 minutes, often faster on shorter clips). Whisper-quality, not the fast-and-rough model Loom defaults to on lower tiers. The AI summary lands at the top of the share page; AI-detected chapters appear in the player scrubber and as anchor links in the transcript. Click a chapter, jump to the timestamp. None of this is a paid upgrade — it ships with the recorder.
One subscription, eight tools — no per-seat tax.
Stream standalone is $15/month. The Stack bundle is $20/month, flat, for the whole workspace: Stream + Slate (notes) + Sync (scheduling) + Scribble (AI meeting notes) + Momentum (tasks) + Stack Chat + SpeakBar (dictation) + Stack Timekeeper. Five seats on Loom Business is $900/year. Five seats on Stack — for eight tools — is $240/year. That's a $660 swing per year, or 73% off, and you replace four other SaaS line items in the process.
Where Loom still wins
Honest tradeoffs — read this before switching.
Viewer engagement analytics are basic — Loom wins here.
Loom's analytics — who watched, how far they got, drop-off heatmaps, per-viewer timelines — are genuinely good, and sales teams use them to qualify deals. Stream gives you total view count, unique viewers, and an average-completion percentage. We don't render per-viewer drop-off heatmaps. If your video workflow is sales prospecting and you live or die by 'did the prospect actually watch the demo,' Loom's analytics edge is real and it's worth paying for.
Editing is functional, not polished.
Loom's trim, splice, and stitch UI is genuinely well-designed — you can do meaningful post-production without leaving the browser. Stream gives you trim-from-start and trim-to-end, plus the ability to cut a single middle section. We don't have multi-clip stitching, transitions, or zoom-in effects. The product philosophy is record-once-and-share, not record-and-edit. If you're producing polished marketing videos, you'll want a real editor; if you're explaining something to a teammate, Stream's trim is enough.
Ecosystem integrations are a smaller list.
Loom has years of integration work behind it: Salesforce embeds, Slack unfurls with inline players, Notion deep-links, HubSpot, Outreach, Gong. Stream has Slack unfurl, Notion embed, and a generic oEmbed endpoint that covers most modern surfaces. We don't have native Salesforce or HubSpot integrations yet. If you're embedding video into a CRM workflow today, check that the surface you need is supported before you migrate.
Stack Stream vs Loom — feature comparison
| Feature | Loom | Stack Stream |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier video cap | 25 videos lifetime, 5 min each | No free tier — bundle starts at $20/mo |
| Time to share link after stop | ~10–20 s (processing screen) | <1 s (link on clipboard) |
| Auto transcript | Yes (basic model on lower tiers) | Yes — Whisper, every tier |
| Transcript export (.txt/.srt/.vtt) | Paid (Business+) | Included |
| AI summary | Business+ ($15/user/mo) | Included |
| AI chapters | Business+ | Included |
| Public share page is crawlable HTML | No (JS-rendered, transcript hidden) | Yes — transcript + chapters in DOM |
| Viewer engagement heatmaps | Yes — best in class | View count + average completion only |
| In-browser editing | Trim, splice, stitch, zoom | Trim from start/end + middle cut |
| Webcam bubble | Yes | Yes |
| Drawing overlay | Yes | Yes |
| Virtual background | Yes (segmentation) | CSS blur (v0.1); segmentation in roadmap |
| Per-seat pricing | $15/user/mo (Business, annual) | $20/mo flat workspace |
| Bundled with other tools | No | Yes — 8 apps for $20/mo |
Pricing — at 5 seats per year
Loom
Loom Business @ $15/user/mo (annual)
$900 /yr
Stack bundle
Stack bundle @ $20/mo flat (1 workspace, unlimited users)
$240 /yr
Saves $660/yr (73% off)
Migrating from Loom
- 1
Inventory the Loom videos that actually matter.
Most teams have hundreds of Loom videos and care about maybe twenty. Open your Loom library, sort by view count, and flag the videos that are linked from docs, embedded in CRMs, or still surfacing in conversation. Those are the ones to migrate. The rest can stay on Loom until your subscription lapses.
- 2
Pick your migration path: API, download, or re-record.
Loom Business users can use the Loom API to bulk-export — that's the cleanest route. Free-tier users have to download videos individually from each share page. For the videos you'd re-record anyway (out of date, bad audio, on-the-fly explanations), use Stream's Loom-import helper: paste the Loom share link and Stream re-records the public copy with a fresh transcript.
- 3
Re-upload to Stream and update the canonical links.
Drop the downloaded `.mp4` files into Stream's import. Stream re-runs Whisper transcription, regenerates chapters, and gives you a new share URL. Update wherever the old Loom links lived — docs, READMEs, Slack pinned messages, support macros. Set a 30-day calendar reminder to grep for any straggler `loom.com/share` URLs.
- 4
Install the Stream tray app and bind a global hotkey.
Stream lives in the menu bar on macOS. In preferences, bind ⌃⇧R (or your preferred chord) to start a recording from anywhere. This is the single biggest UX shift away from Loom — you stop opening a browser tab to hit record.
- 5
Cancel Loom at the next billing cycle.
Keep your Loom account alive on free tier for 60 days as a safety net while you confirm the migrated videos render correctly in their new homes. Cancel paid subscription at the next billing cycle. If you're on Business with annual billing, set a calendar reminder for ~30 days before renewal.
FAQ
Is Stack Stream a true Loom replacement?+
For most users, yes — record from the menu bar, get an instant share link, auto-transcript, AI summary, AI chapters, public share page, embed support. The two honest gaps are viewer engagement heatmaps (Loom is genuinely better here) and polished multi-clip editing. If you're a sales team that lives by per-viewer drop-off analytics, or you produce edited marketing videos in-app, Loom's edge is real.
How do I export my Loom videos in bulk?+
Loom Business users can use the Loom API to enumerate and download videos programmatically. Free and Starter users don't have an export API — you have to download videos one at a time from each share page. For videos you'd re-record anyway, paste the Loom share URL into Stream's Loom-import helper and Stream re-records the public copy with a fresh transcript and chapters.
How fast is Stream's share link, really?+
Click stop, the link is on your clipboard in under a second. The video uploads in the background while the share page renders progressively — viewers can start watching from the first chunk that arrives. On a 60-second recording over residential fiber, Stream is paste-able 8–15 seconds before Loom finishes its 'preparing your video' screen. Over slow connections the gap widens, because Stream doesn't block on full upload.
Why does it matter that share pages are crawlable HTML?+
Because video content normally hides from search engines. When the transcript and AI chapters render as real HTML in the DOM, Google indexes them — your tutorial video for `how to configure webhooks` can show up as a search result. Stream users have reported inbound traffic and support deflection from videos they recorded as one-off explainers. Loom's pages are JavaScript-rendered and the transcript loads after interaction, so this doesn't happen.
What about viewer analytics — can I see who watched my video?+
Stream shows total view count, unique viewers, and average completion percentage. You can see that 14 people watched and the average viewer made it to 73%. What we don't render is per-viewer drop-off heatmaps or named-viewer timelines, which Loom does. If you're using video to qualify sales prospects, Loom's analytics are still the gold standard.
Can I embed Stream videos in Notion, Slack, and our docs?+
Yes. Stream supports Slack unfurl (inline player), Notion embed, generic oEmbed for most modern docs platforms (GitBook, Outline, Mintlify), and a standard `<iframe>` for anything else. The embedded player is lightweight and starts buffering before the user clicks play. Native Salesforce and HubSpot integrations are not yet available — those are on the roadmap.
Is the bundle worth it if I only need screen recording?+
Probably yes. Stream standalone is $15/month — the bundle is $20, only $5 more, and gets you Slate, Sync, Scribble, Momentum, Chat, SpeakBar, and Timekeeper as free additions. The break-even is whether you'd ever use one of the other seven tools. If you take meeting notes, schedule calls, or write any internal docs, the bundle pays for itself.
What happens to my videos if I cancel Stack?+
You can download every video as `.mp4` plus its transcript, chapters, and metadata at any time, free, with one click. The bundle is built on the principle that your data is portable — there's no proprietary container, no export tax. Cancel and walk away with everything, including the transcripts Loom would have charged you for.
Verdict
If your Loom use today is the everyday async-video flow — bug repros, design walkthroughs, "here's how this works" explainers, customer onboarding videos — Stream is the obvious move. The share-link-on-stop is genuinely faster, the transcript and AI features ship at the base tier instead of as upsells, and the public share pages do something Loom's pages can't: show up in Google. Pricing isn't even close: $660/year cheaper for a five-person team, and you replace four other SaaS subscriptions in the bundle. The honest exceptions are sales teams that live by Loom's viewer engagement heatmaps, in-app editors who use Loom's trim-splice-stitch UI to produce finished marketing videos, and teams whose CRM workflow depends on Loom's native Salesforce or HubSpot integrations. For those use cases, Loom's edge is real and the $15/user/month is doing real work. For everyone else — and that's the large majority of Loom users frustrated with the free-tier squeeze, the per-seat tax, or the post-acquisition pricing creep — Stack Stream at $20/month for the whole bundle is hard to argue with. Install the tray app, bind a hotkey, and you're recording in under five minutes.
Ready to switch?
Try Stack — all 8 apps for $20/mo flat.
Stack Stream is one of eight bundled apps. No per-seat fees. Cancel anytime.