Grain claims to be the easiest meeting insights tool to understand and advocate the needs of your customers. While we agree it’s a powerful tool for user researchers and product managers, we’re gonna have to take a peek at Grain’s competitors before we can decide which meeting recorder gives the best bang for your buck.
We’ve compiled a list of Grain alternatives for you. All of them are forces to be reckoned with, but there can be only one winner (at least, per business).
Your company will have its own needs, so one of the following AI meeting assistants may stand out to you more than the others. That’s perfectly fine. You take what works for you and you run with it!
Unless what works is secretly plotting to take over the world…
@tldv.io Written by ChatGPT #inception #chatgpt #ai #openai #meeting #corporate
♬ original sound - tldv.io - AI Meeting Recorder
Table of Contents
Firstly, What is Grain?
We’re talking about the man, the myth, the meeting recorder; Grain.com. It allows you to record, transcribe, and clip moments from research interviews, sales calls, and customer meetings with ease.
It encourages you to share snippets of the user interviews directly with your stakeholders, empowering them to easily access and view the voice of the customer directly. By making a short clip and sending it over to the boss, they can listen to the user explain what’s wrong with all the emotion that comes with it, rather than listen to a user researcher’s dull notes.
Integrating with Slack, Salesforce, and Notion, Grain makes it easy for you to share customer insights on whichever platform you’re using.
So far, so good. Why would anybody be searching for Grain competitors? Sounds like a great little sales tool to help out with the 10 gazillion meetings product managers have every week, or the painstaking interviews and subsequent analysis that user researchers are subjected to.
Well, as it turns out, there are quite a few nifty tools in the same niche. Let’s have a look at the alternatives to Grain.
The Top 4 Grain Alternatives
1. tl;dv
tl;dv is an online meeting recorder that offers more free features than other tools dream of, including: recording, transcribing, editing, timestamping and tagging.
For teams looking to upgrade their user research game, the Pro version is also competitively priced. It comes with a powerful search function, smooth integrations with important platforms, instant downloading of any recording, and even more customizable share settings.
Its powerful AI is a real gamechanger, too. You can automate summaries, notes, and even recognize speakers for absolutely nothing!
It’s an essential tool for both product managers and user researchers, or at least those that are serious about their user experience.
If you’re setting up a dedicated UX research repository, tl;dv is here to help. It’s a fabulously free way of gathering your user research in one place. With an AI-powered search function to immediately scan all your transcripts, tl;dv lets you find important insights swiftly and simply.
And remember this: there is absolutely ZERO commitment to paying anything. You get the vast majority of features completely free, onboarding is the stuff of dreams, and anybody can learn to use tl;dv effectively within a tiny space of time. The intuitive user interface will make you feel like you’ve already got tons of experience with it, even on your first use!
And, if you want, you can stay on the basic free plan forever.
Let’s make tl;dv’s benefits even clearer:
tl;dv Pros
- Free AI Integration: tl;dv utilizes top-of-the-range AI to provide summaries, notes, and automatic speaker detection.
- Free and Instant Translations: Live transcriptions in more than 25 languages for Zoom, MS Teams, and Google Meet.
- Incredible Free Plan: Unlimited free recordings of Zoom, MS Teams, and Google Meet calls.
- Easy to Use: tl;dv has an intuitive design that makes it super simple to use.
- Timestamps and Tagging Features: Timestamp your meeting highlights to quickly jump back to specific moments in the call. It also features the ability to tag colleagues at specific meeting moments so they get an email with a link straight to their inbox.
- Integrates With All Your Favorite Work Apps: Push timestamps and meeting clips directly to Notion, Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce, and more via third-party integrations.
- Create Clips and Highlights: Scan your library and make clips and highlight reels to condense insights.
- Intuitive Library: Search your meetings library for keywords in transcripts to quickly find what you’re looking for.
tl;dv Cons
- Compatibility: Not yet available for WebEx or BlueJeans.
Pricing
With a free plan to cause envy all over the software world, you can try out tl;dv with no strings attached. And depending on which region of the world you’re in, you can get up to a 40% discount on the paid plans!
Free Plan Features
- Unlimited recordings
- Record Google Meet, Zoom, and MS Teams calls
- Transcribe Google Meets, Zoom, and MS Teams calls
- Transcribe in 25+ languages
- Get AI summaries
- Set timestamps and highlights
- Create and share clips
- Set recording automations
The paid plan offers integrations with over 5,000 productivity tools, the ability to make highlight reels, analytics, downloadable recordings, customizable share settings, as well as priority customer support. Check out the Pro plan features here.
tl;dv vs Grain
We’ve summarized this Grain alternative and its features into a nice, neat, table for a comparison overview.
| Grain | tl;dv | |
| Free Plan? | 20 meeting recordings and 5 uploads | Unlimited recordings & transcripts |
| AI? | Yes | Yes, FREE! |
| Price | $15-29 / month | $20 for users that need advanced features |
| Google Meet? | No | Yes |
| Zoom and MS Teams | Yes | Yes |
| Records Video? | Yes | Yes |
| Automated Transcription? | Yes | 25+ languages (even on Free) |
| Speaker Recognition? | No | Yes |
| Timestamp moments in real-time? | Yes | Yes |
| CRM Integrations? | Yes | Yes |
| Slack Integration? | Yes | Yes |
| Search through all meeting transcripts | Yes | Yes |
| Tagging Colleagues? | No | Yes |
| Viewing Analytics | Yes | Yes (even on Free) |
| Create Clips? | Yes | Yes (even on Free) |
| Speaking time analysis for reps | No | Coming soon |
| Listen to keyword-alerts | No | Coming soon |
While Grain is a pretty special meeting tool, we think tl;dv pips it here. And by “pips”, we mean smashed it out the park. tl;dv acts as a voice of the customer tool just as much as Grain, if not more.
It boils down to this: tl;dv can do everything Grain does, and more, for less.
2. Fathom
Fathom Pros
- Automatic summaries. Fathom automatically generates summaries of meetings, including action items.
- Easily Shareable. It’s super convenient to share data across multiple platforms.
- Powerful AI. Generate highlights mid-call and then get Fathom’s AI to summarize them with a simple click.
- Download instantly. Meetings and transcripts are available to download instantly.
- Good free options. It’s free for personal use and has a 2 week free trial for the team version.
Fathom Cons
- Compatibility. Fathom is only available with Zoom, MS Teams, and Google Meet.
Fathom vs Grain
While Grain and Fathom both offer similar features, Fathom’s free plan (for personal use) is better than Grain’s limited basic plan. tl;dv offers an even stronger free plan than Fathom, and has the option of creating highlight reels, perfect for UX researchers presenting their findings.3. Avoma
Avoma is another AI-enhanced meeting recorder for user researchers and product managers. Make use of its specialized note-taking features during both video and audio calls.
Avoma encourages you to focus on the conversation rather than waste your time making notes. As with tl;dv, your notes are searchable so you can find exactly what you’re looking for in your meeting library.
Avoma also allows for real-time collaboration, making it an excellent tool for teamwork. Like tl;dv, Avoma has a timestamp feature that lets you create a link to an exact moment of your call.
While Avoma is similar to tl;dv in many ways, it’s certainly not when it comes to price. Avoma has a free plan, but it only includes a manual note-taking feature, saving the AI-powered stuff for the paid plans.
Here are the pros and cons of Avoma.
Avoma Pros
- Note-taking. Take notes in real-time on both video and audio calls.
- Search function. Easily search your transcripts and notes to find what you’re looking for.
- Collaborative features. Edit notes collaboratively.
- Timestamps. Timestamp important moments so you can quickly and easily jump back.
- Compatibility. Works with Google Meet, Zoom, MS Teams, and more
Avoma Cons
- Limited integrations. Avoma has limited integrations, including CRM integrations.
- Weak free plan. The free plan is weaker than its competitors.
Grain vs Avoma
Avoma is certainly a strong Grain competitor. It works on audio calls as well as video calls which sets it apart in its utility, but it also works with a wide range of video conferencing platforms, unlike the other Grain alternatives so far.
One of the drawbacks of Avoma, though, is its limited integrations. In comparison to tl;dv, which integrates with over 5,000 productivity tools including dozens of CRMs, Avoma offers a little more than 20. Comparatively, Grain offers just 5 integrations, including Slack and Salesforce.
There’s also the problem of Avoma’s free plan. While the paid plan is not crazily priced, its free plan is very limited in what it offers. If you wanted to test the software out before you bought it, you’d be on a ticking clock, whereas with tl;dv (and Fathom), the free goodies are a lot more enticing.
4. Gong
Gong is a powerful software for product managers and user researchers who are dedicated to analyzing client interactions and maximizing their sales. Gong has a few specialities, one being transcription: its powerful speaker recognition feature detects the length for which someone has been speaking and offers recommendations for how to improve sales pitches.
If you want to enhance your client-facing interactions, then subscribing to one of Gong’s paid plans would be a smart move. However, Gong isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. There’s very little benefit for non-sales teams purchasing Gong over one of the other Grain alternatives. It’s also on the pricey side.
Check out our pros and cons for Gong.
Gong Pros
- Integrations. Offers a variety of integrations with business apps like Klue and Salesforce.
- Analysis. Analyzes data of client interactions and provides advice for how to improve.
- Speaker recognition. Gong features a powerful speaker recognition tool.
Gong Cons
- Sales focused. It’s exclusively focused on Sales teams.
- Long-winded onboarding. Difficult onboarding process.
- Expensive. Gong is the most expensive software on this list.
- Intrusive recommendations. Recommendations on how to ‘improve your sales pitch’ can be annoying and unwanted.
Gong vs Grain
Gong is a very specialized tool, and unless you’re working on improving your sales pitches, it’s probably not going to be for you. Even if you are working on your sales, it still may not be for you once you see the price – that is, if you can see it.
You see, Gong has decided to hide their prices. If you want to figure out how much your plan will cost, you have to reach out to them and wait for a reply. The onboarding process is long and complicated and there are reports of the average price being around $100 per month per user.
Because of this, and because of its highly specialized nature, Gong only really competes with Grain and its alternatives under very specific circumstances. And don’t get us wrong, if you’re in the market for a sales tool that excels at translation and offers you kick-ass tips for improving, then Gong is a real powerhouse. You’ll know if these specific circumstances apply to you.
The Verdict
As we’ve said throughout, the best Grain alternative for you will completely depend upon your business needs. Want to improve sales? Go to Gong. Want to record audio calls? Choose Avoma. Want an easy-to-use tool that integrates with dozens of apps, allows you to create timestamps, clips, and highlights, and lets you search your automated transcripts by keyword – all for free – then you’re left with just tl;dv…
