Explainer videos are a great way to easily convey ideas and deliver messages to your audience. Leveraging the power of visual graphics can help you to promote your startup business or boost your product conversions.
Here’s the list of the best explainer video software to create compelling animated videos and improve your marketing.
Tools For Creating 2D Animations
Here’s the quick list so that you can jump to them.
Just like the term says, 2D animations are those videos with 2 dimensional designs and graphics. These online tools works well for it.
#1) PowToon
Enough with those boring Powerpoint presentations? PowToon is a free online software that lets you create cool animated videos.
They have some really good ready-made templates to produce high-quality animations. Their “drag and drop” really easy to use and without any technical knowledge.
#2) Wideo
This is not just another drag and drop explainer video software. This is my personal favourite right now.
With over 1300 images and 50+ music tracks, you can create full HD explainer videos at ease.
#3) Animaker
With 5 different video styles and 120 different types of animations, Animaker lets you make really beautiful explainer videos for your product. This Do-It-Yourself software is also to use.
Their typography & infographic template styles could be really useful for content marketers.
#4) GoAnimate (Now Vyond)
GoAnimate isn’t free, but it sure isn’t an ordinary animation editor as well. What’s so special about it?
This online animation tool is one of the fastest yet with professional output. I personally love their background setting and characters. Those templates are fun to watch and are highly converting for sure.
#5) Biteable
They claim to be “The World’s Simplest Video Maker”. Why do the stand out? Their light and minimal designs!
Biteable’s free version is more than enough to create awesome explainer videos. It lets you create HD quality videos and directly publish them to YouTube. But if you wanna remove their watermark or download the produced animation to your computer, you need a premium account. It’s $99 USD/year.
And For Creating Whiteboard Animations:
Whiteboard videos works best for educational videos. It helps you to grab the attention of your audience and explain the idea to them or how things work. Take a look at these creative software below.
#6) RawShorts
If you’re looking for a DIY whiteboard animation creator, you should consider RawShorts first. What you’ll love about this software is their creative graphic templates across a lot of categories.
Its transitions and effects are really impressive too.
#7) VideoScribe
Just like they claim, VideoScribe lets you create “Stunning, high-definition, whiteboard-style animation videos. And you can make whiteboard videos with no design or technical know-how”.
The thing I love the most about VideoScribe is that it lets you edit and make animated whiteboard videos using royalty-free images and music (over 1k of them). Customizing them wouldn’t get any easier too.
#8) MySimpleShow
Instead of a marker or a pen drawing in a whiteboard animation, imaging a hand dragging elements across the screen and swiping them away. That’s what MySimpleShow does.
Their light weight vector images and animated characters can help you to create interactive visual explainer videos.
![Powtoon Powtoon](https://fthmb.tqn.com/dxmK2kcZAPkzyjvJEIRA17cfgoY=/1278x895/filters:fill(auto,1)/powtoon-56a3243b3df78cf7727bff6e.png)
#9) Moovly
Moovly lets you add your own audio clips and pictures that can be used to making your whiteboard animation. Isn’t that just super cool?
Its precise editing tools are something I’d personally suggest as well.
#10) Easy Sketch Pro (Last & Maybe The Least?)
This isn’t a popular software (yet). But their whiteboard doodle software’s drag and drop interface is really easy to use.
And Here’s A Bonus Do It Yourself Video Tools For You:
- Lumen5: With this tool, you can create engaging videos from articles. All you need to do is highlight the most important text from the content and click the magic button.
Check out this video created using Lumen5
Over To You
The video revolution is here. If you’re reading this, I’m pretty sure you understand why keeping the pace up with current marketing strategies is important for any business, product or startup.
Obviously, explainer videos are one the best way to increase your ROI and get your target audience to take actions. But, if your company is trying to keep the expense down or doesn’t have a budget that you decided to choose these DIY tools, I’m sorry to break it to you that it’s not the wisest one you’re going to make.
While these software and free online tools give you a lot of features and templates, you’ll not be having full control over the video or output the script the way you want to so that you can convert your customers into buyers.
That’s where we come in. We are an explainer video company that produces professional and highly compelling videos. We’ll help tell your story with a great explainer video. And we’ll certainly make you go wow.
Pros: Easy to use, fun. Produces very professional looking videos.
Cons: It is difficult to select objects and edit if they overlap.
I would like to be able to add tags to the images so I could easily find those I want to use multiple times.
When changing the sizes of objects, both the width and height change proportionately. It would be good to be able to change just one, especially boxes.
Overall: I am an instructional designer/developer and I use PowToon as part of eLearning courses and to communicate changes to end users. The premade templates make PowToon really easy to use. I find a look I like then modify with my content. Each template has its own music but I may upload my own music and upload images to personalize the video even more.
If I have a question, I can chat directly with the support team (and I have had lots of questions). I had some trouble understanding the timing of objects when I first started. (Hint: where the thumbnail displays on the time line has Nothing to do with the exit time) and was frustrated by the lack of technical information about how the product works. This is because they depend on their support team to help users. Generally this is good but I would like to see Some documentation, even if it were just voiceovers on a PowToon to explain something.
I found using a PowToon to communicate a recent system change to end users resulted in about a 70% view rate instead of a close to 10% read rate for just an email for a previous communication. I host the video on our SharePoint site and provide a link so it's easy to track the views.
I just extended my subscription for another year and look forward to new features, new images, and new templates.
Recommendations to other buyers: Contact the support team with questions. Works best with Chrome so install that before you use PowToon for the first time to avoid frustration. Don't be afraid to change the type entrance and exit for objects. They are just a suggestions.
Note to users pre-0.6.0: Offline previously used a cloudfront hosted file as one of it's methods of detecting the connection status. This method is now deprecated and the image has been removed. Please upgrade to Offline 0.7.0+.
Improve the experience of your app when your users lose connection.
- Monitors ajax requests looking for failure
- Confirms the connection status by requesting an image or fake resource
- Automatically grabs ajax requests made while the connection is down and remakes themafter the connection is restored.
- Simple UI with beautiful themes
- 3kb minified and compressed
Install with Eager
The easiest way to add Offline to your site is with Eager.Click Install to see a live preview of Offline on your website.
Manual Installation
Download Powtoon Software
Include the javascript, one of the themes, and one of thelanguages on your site. You're done!
To use only the JavaScript API without a UI indicator, simply leave out the CSS file.
If you'd like to get a peek at how it looks on your site, disconnect your internet, or try out the simulator.
Advanced
Optionally, you can provide some configuration by setting Offline.options
afterbringing in the script.
Options (any can be provided as a function), with their defaults:
Properties
Offline.check()
: Check the current status of the connection.
Offline.state
: The current state of the connection 'up' or 'down'
Offline.on(event, handler, context)
: Bind an event. Events:
- up: The connection has gone from down to up
- down: The connection has gone from up to down
- confirmed-up: A connection test has succeeded, fired even if the connection was already up
- confirmed-down: A connection test has failed, fired even if the connection was already down
- checking: We are testing the connection
- reconnect:started: We are beginning the reconnect process
- reconnect:stopped: We are done attempting to reconnect
- reconnect:tick: Fired every second during a reconnect attempt, when a check is not happening
- reconnect:connecting: We are reconnecting now
- reconnect:failure: A reconnect check attempt failed
- requests:flush: Any pending requests have been remade
- requests:capture: A new request is being held
Offline.off(event, handler)
: Unbind an event
Checking
By default, Offline makes an XHR request to load your /favicon.ico
to check the connection. If you don'thave such a file, it will 404 in the console, but otherwise work fine (even a 404 means the connection is up).You can change the URL it hits (an endpoint which will respond with a quick 204 is perfect):
Make sure that the URL you check has the same origin as your page (the connection method, domain and port all must be the same), or youwill run into CORS issues. You can add Access-Control
headers to the endpoint to fix it on modern browsers, but it will still cause issues onIE9 and below.
If you do want to run tests on a different domain, try the image method. It loads an image, which are allowed to cross domains.
The one caveat is that with the image method, we can't distinguish a 404 from a genuine connection issue, so any error at all willappear to Offline as a connection issue.
Offline also includes a check called 'up'
and another called 'down'
which will always report being up or down respectively fortesting. You can activate them by setting the active
option, adding a data attribute to your script tag with the namedata-simulate
and value 'up'
or 'down'
, or by setting localStorage.OFFLINE_SIMULATE
to 'up'
or 'down'
.
Reconnect
The reconnect module automatically retests the connection periodically when it is down.A successful AJAX request will also trigger a silent recheck (if interceptRequests
is not false).
You can disable the reconnect module by setting the reconnect
to false. Reconnect can beconfigured by setting options on the reconnect setting.
Requests
The requests module holds any failed AJAX requests and, after deduping them, remakes them when the connectionis restored.
You can disable it by setting the requests
setting to false.
You can also set deDupBody to be true if you want deduping to also take into account the content of the request.
Dependencies
None!
Browser Support
Linkin park albums download 2017. Modern Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE8+
It’s safe to say if you’re a business using videos as part of your marketing strategy, you will get great ROIs. And if you are a DIYer, doing a quick how to make animated videos search can leave you overwhelmed.
When it comes to video marketing, the statistics speak for themselves. After watching a video, a whopping 70% of consumers are more likely to be a product. 92% of viewers of videos on a mobile device share the video with others, and 70% of professional marketers assert that video is the most powerful conversion medium.
Whether it is a cartoon video maker or a free animation maker, there are many tools to create video online for your business. Small Business Trends takes a look at some of the best tools to create animated videos for business.
How to Make Animated Videos
The process can be simple or complex, it all depends on how much time and capital you want to invest in the process. You can make just as big of an impact with a free animation maker as you can with an expensive solution. If you have the right message and it connects with your audience your animated video has done its job.
However, solutions which offer more tools and options will allow you to create higher quality products. You can start with easy to use tools, and move up as your needs warrant.
Create Animated Videos for Business
PowToon
PowToon is an easy-to-use animated video tool that enables businesses to make professional videos in just minutes. Users can make striking videos using PowToon’s simple drag-and-drop system.
PowToon’s colourful and eye-catching animated designs can be customized and tailored to a business’s individual needs. Powtoon offers a three-tier pricing structure, one of which is free.
Animaker
Animaker is a do-it-yourself tool for creating video infographics that is based in the cloud. It enables users to show data and statistics in a compelling way, crafting a memorable animated story. With drag and drop functions, pre-animated assets, sound effects, music and in-built data assets, businesses can create videos quickly and creatively.
Animaker videos can be no more than two minutes in length. Businesses can try Animaker for free and then have the choice of three monthly payment options.
Animatron
Animatron allows businesses to master the art of animation, quickly and professionally. The company offers two platforms – Animatron Studio, for creating effective explainer videos, html5 animations and banners, and Animatron Wave, for social video creation designed for sharing across multiple platforms.
Talking to Small Business Trends, Animatron’s CEO, Kate Skavish, described Animatron as an: “Easy-to-use and powerful online animated video maker which enables our users to create stunning animations and videos right in the browser.”
Moovly
Moovly provides a tool to help businesses produce creative animated videos designed to engage employees and win clients. Moovly users can enjoy unlimited downloads and unlimited videos. The easy-to-use customizable video software allows businesses to create video presentations, visual reports, explainer and help videos, and internal communication, easily and creatively.
Moovly’s pricing structure ranges from a basic subscription of $5 a month to a Moovly Business subscription that costs $300 a year.
GoAnimate
GoAnimate is an effective tool for helping businesses make professional animated videos. Without any set up required, businesses can start making a video straight away. This do-it-yourself tool requires no large team or budget, meaning businesses can create compelling video content on a low budget. Subscriptions to GoAnimate include unlimited creation, hosting and download.
![Offline Offline](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-J6eJTj6Ccoc/V5JGZCaZlYI/AAAAAAAAFc4/kidJup6oAtgBXqA2V1He8BH3BciP8I4xwCLcB/w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu/photo.jpg)
Businesses of virtually any secotr can engage their audiences by choosing from GoAnimate’s editable scenes that represent hundreds of industries and occupations. GoAnimate offers a three-tiered pricing structure, ranging from $39 a month or $159 a month for the GoTeam option.
Renderforest
Renderforest is an animated video maker that creates slideshows, logo animations and explainer business videos. The platform is completely free to use and users can produce and export an unlimited amount of high quality videos designed to promote a business and its products in a professional and engaging way.
Renderforest provides hundreds of templates that can be customized, enabling companies to create presentations, promotional videos, event invitations, testimonials and more, quickly and efficiently without having to spend any money.
Powtoon Offline Download
Windows Movie Maker
Windows Movie Maker is a well-established video editing platform, which provides businesses with the essential tools for making videos. With an easy-to-use interface, Windows Movie Maker helps users edit videos, add text and post on a social media channel or onto a website.
Businesses can also add background music, effects, timeline narrations and perform transitions with the Windows Movie Maker. The application is free to download.
Prezi
Prezi provides presentation software, which utilizes zoom, motion and spatial relationships to help individuals make inspiring presentations. In 2012, Prezi unveiled a host of creative presentation effects, including 3D and fading animations tools, designed to help professionals make even more stimulating and exciting presentations, through increased visual appeal.
In 2017, they released a new version called Prezi Next. Prezi has a three-structured pricing plan, including Standard, Plus and Premium.
Google Web Designer
Google Web Designer is a free tool that produces engaging and interactive HTML5-based designs and motion graphics to run on any device. In 2014 Google announced an update to its Google Web Designer HTML5 tool, which enabled greater options to create animated and interactive content. No coding is necessary when using Google Web Designer.
Explee
The Explee application allows users to make powerful animated videos designed to captivate audiences in a concise and engaging way. This cloud-based app can be utilized from laptops, smartphones and tablets, meaning video creators will have access to the latest version of their videos whilst on the go.
Businesses can create animated presentations with their team, invite members to join the workspace and custom their video library, whilst sharing their content with collaborators. Explee’s Business Plan starts from $25 per month.
Do you have experience using video animation tools that have provided an effective medium for your business? We’d love to hear our readers’ experiences and stories about video animation creation.
Video Editing Photo via Shutterstock