Viddyoze 4.0 vs Renderforest: Video Animation Software Comparison: Which is the better value?
Why you need a good video animation software in 2021
Branding is incredibly important for establishing trust and building an effective marketing campaign. You used to have to invest hours of time and creative energy, or thousands of dollars in designing custom animations to brand your social media content. Many people avoid this due to costs or having to use complex software like Adobe After Effects. For that reason, many software options have been created to make this animation process easy.
A video animation software can help you with explainer videos, logo reveal videos, slideshow videos, and ad or promotion videos. In addition to short-form social media content, video animation software allows you to spice up your video content and give your long-form video content on YouTube a more premium feel. This can be accomplished through transitions, lower-thirds graphics, and social media call-to-actions that remind your viewer to like, subscribe, and follow you on all the relevant channels.
Renderforst and Viddyoze are two video animation software that makes professional video animations easy. Both of these software programs provide good quality video animations and feature many similarities. They also have a few differences, however, and to many, it may not make sense to pay for both. In this article, we will cover the two software websites and what is included in each offer.
Viddyoze vs Renderforest Software Comparison
Viddyoze runs a more “internet marketing” based marketing strategy. They launched on JV Zoo back in the day and they went on to be one of the biggest success stories from the JV Zoo marketplace. Their strategy involves selling you a “Lifetime Deal” on a certain number of video templates that you can use for your videos (personal license) and your client videos (commercial license) and then upselling you on a Template Club at $37 per month.
Recently, Viddyoze launched a Template Club+ option where you can take your Template Club membership to the next level for just $10 additional dollars per month. Personally, I find the Template Club to be priced above where I think it should be, especially with the limitations of only one render at a time, no upload library, and limited control over template customizations. These issues are addressed with the new “Template Club+” but they come at an added cost, which is less than ideal but better than not having these features at all!
Viddyoze Pricing Comparison (Front-end)
The one-time payment option (Front-end) for Viddyoze 4.0 occasionally goes on-sale, however at the writing of this article, they are $97 for the personal plan and $127 for the commercial plan. It is my understanding you have to pick-up the front-end in order to get into the template club. Some people do not like the “up-sell” strategy while others find the initial one-time-payment option to be sufficient for all of their video template needs and get the maximum value out of Viddyoze.
Renderforest Pricing Comparison (Front-end)
Renderforest runs a freemium marketing strategy. With Renderforest, you can create free video animations that render out in 360p with a watermark. They have many different subscription plans, however, to get the commercial license on Renderforest, you have to pay $49.99 per month for Agency. Even worse, Agency is currently only available on an annual payment – meaning you need to spend $600 just to get started with making these video animations for your clients or selling them.
If you do not need a commercial license for your templates, then Renderforest has plenty of subscription plans available at more friendly pricing options. You can get started for just $6.99 per month on the lite plan (paid annually) and scale up as needed. I recommend going with at least the Amateur plan at $9.99 per month to unlock the HD1080 exports (6) and think the Agency Plan ($49.99) is very much worth it if you are going to be making a ton of videos as it is the only plan that allows unlimited video exports.
Where Renderforest beats Viddyoze 4.0
It is pretty clear by looking at the pricing options that Renderforest offers a lot more than Viddyoze 4.0 for the subscription. With Renderforest, you get access to their Video tools, a Logo builder, Websites, and Graphics. The video tools provide animation style videos (3d animations for storytelling videos) and more explainer video options as well as a ton of different “video toolkit” options, which allow you to make a wide variety of video content. This is not a full video editor, but it is a lot closer to an all-in-one solution, especially for certain individuals than Viddyoze. With Viddyoze you will most likely need access to some video editor in order to maximize your value. I could see making Renderforest videos inside of Renderforest and then uploading them straight to social media networks.
Renderforest video templates are the most “exciting” part of a Renderforest subscription, but it isn’t the only thing you get. Included in your subscription is the ability to create videos, make a logo, edit mockups, build a website, and design graphics. Renderforest strives to be an all-in-one branding platform and that is obvious in its offerings.
Renderforest video templates definitely remind you of Viddyoze templates. Maybe it is the other way around because I actually like Renderforest’s production quality a lot better. Both are great, but Renderforest feels more “custom” or high-end to me. In addition to basic logo reveals, Renderforest adds video “toolkits” which let you make 3d explainer videos, explainer videos, whiteboard animation videos, typography packs, motion titles, slideshow videos, corporate presentation videos, and even audio visualizers for YouTube channel music or podcasts or whatever audio you need “visualized”. Honestly, Renderforest does such a good job offering different “toolkits” or types of videos” that I can’t even cover them all here.
Renderforest also allows you to make graphic designs and add your logos to mock-ups. Now, these mock-ups won’t rival those from Media Modifier or PlaceIt, but it is a nice bonus that comes along with your subscription. Mock-ups elevate your social media content and give your brand a more professional touch. The Graphics component of Renderforest appears to be relatively new and I find the template options to be limited, but with time, I am sure they will grow to include more variety.
The Renderforest logo maker is good but not great. To be fair, I’m not sure there is a “great” logo maker as it is virtually impossible to create a “custom” logo at scale using artificial intelligence. The reason it can’t be “great” in my eyes is that these makers use icons and illustrations that are available to anyone using the tool and therefore it is likely someone else will build a very similar logo to yours. It will always lack in originality and is prone to be duplicated. With that said, if you get creative, you can make the tool work as I did when creating the aiPROFITz logo. Yes, that is right, I designed the aiPROFITz logo with Renderforest! I did it in about an hour and did not have to pay $50 to hundreds of dollars for a logo design from a freelancer marketplace.
Where Viddyoze beats Renderforest
Viddyoze beats Renderforest for long-form content paired with another video editor. Viddyoze has alpha channel options (transparent backgrounds) which allows you to use those on top of your regular clips in the form of transitions, lower-thirds graphics, logo stings, and more. Viddyoze is a great tool that helps someone elevate their YouTube videos or any video content that they will be editing in another video editor.
Viddyoze also wins with the volume of templates. At the time of this writing, Renderforest boasts having 800+ video templates, while Viddyoze provides well over 1500+ video templates. Some of the Viddyoze templates can be a bit outdated, and some will not be relevant to your brand, but Viddyoze does seem to provide more overall templates. Renderforest works with a lot of “toolkits” which can have different animations and templates within the same “toolkit” so I’m not sure if a pure 1v1 comparison is appropriate, but it is worth at least acknowledging.
The third and perhaps most fun way that I find Viddyoze to beat Renderforest is with Live Action video templates. These are high quality, real-life scenes that let you drop your logo right into the action. I love Live Action video templates and these are great ways to build custom stock video content to overlay as content on your YouTube videos or on social media. Using these as “standalone” clips is probably not the best idea as they can feel a bit “awkward” on their own. If you clip and edit them into your footage, however, you can truly elevate your video content and I think the overall quality of their live-action scenes is fantastic.
Which software is the better value?
This depends entirely on your use case, but for most people, I would side with Renderforest. Viddyoze is a great tool and I definitely recommend it for video creators or people who want to scoop up the one-time-payment option and skip on the template club. At similar monthly price points for the Renderforest “agency” package vs the Viddyoze “template club”, I think Renderforest is clearly the better value unless you edit all of your vidoes with original footage in a video editing software. I still have both subscriptions because I am weighing the two to see if I can replace Viddyoze permanently with Renderforest. I love the Viddyoze transitions, Live-action shots, and alpha channel animations – especially when I do paid video work and am shooting with 100% original content. In the future, I will be digging deeper into some of the Renderforest toolkits to see if I can achieve similar results with any of their toolkits or if it is better to use a software like Viddyoze for that.
What are your thoughts? Which video animation software do you think provides the best user experience and high-quality animations? What about the best value? I will continue to update this blog and my YouTube channel as I move along and use both tools throughout 2021. I’d love to hear from the community as to what your experiences are and if there are any alternatives to Viddyoze or Renderforest that you use and prefer.