Riverside

So what's the big deal with Riverside? It records on each person's own device, not over the call.

Why does that matter? You know how a video call goes blocky when someone's wifi dips. With Riverside the call can look rough while you're talking, but the recording is made on each person's own machine and uploaded in the background. The file you get afterwards is clean.

Everyone comes out as a separate track too, in up to 4K video. Your co-host laughs over the guest's best line? Turn their track down and keep the line.

Guests don't need an account. You send a link, they click it, they're in.

Editing is the other nice bit. Riverside writes out a transcript, and you cut the video by deleting words, like tidying a document. There are AI tools for chopping out silences and filler words, and Magic Clips picks short moments for social.

And it carries on after the edit. Podcast hosting, publishing to Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube, live streaming and webinars are all in there, depending on your plan.

The free plan is closer to a demo. Everything comes out at 720p with a Riverside watermark, and you get 2 hours of multi-track recording in total. Not per month. In total.

Paying doesn't make it unlimited either. You can record as much as you like, but downloading the separate tracks is capped: 15 hours a month on Pro, 20 on Grow, 25 on Webinar. Hit the cap and you wait for next month or upgrade.

Some things you'd expect on Pro sit higher up. Going live needs Grow. Webinars with sign-up forms, Q&A and polls need the Webinar plan. Two people editing together needs Business.

Some AI extras run on credits, too. The pricing page says Pro starts you with 2,000 for things like AI translation and B-roll, and after that you buy more.

There's no Windows app. Only a Mac one, so on Windows you record in the browser.

And the phone app has its critics. App Store reviewers complain about features moving or disappearing after updates, and about how video looks when it's shot on mobile.

Start free to hear and see what the recording is like. Just don't judge the finished look by it, because of the watermark.

Pro is the one most podcasters will want. It's $24 a month on yearly billing, which is $288 up front, or $29 month to month. You get 4K video, 48 kHz audio, no watermark, 15 hours of separate-track downloads and one studio. A studio is Riverside's word for one show.

Grow is $34 a month on yearly billing, or $39 monthly. It adds Full HD live streaming to several places at once, a second studio and 20 hours.

Webinar is $79 on yearly billing or $99 monthly, for webinars with up to 100 people signed up. We'd skip it unless webinars are how you find customers.

Only ever record on your phone? Mobile Plus is $9.99 a month. It removes the watermark and exports up to 4K, but it's for the mobile apps only.

Pro, Grow and Webinar all have a 14-day free trial, and yearly billing saves up to 20%, going by the pricing page.

Riverside has 4.7 on the App Store from about 20,100 ratings. Keep in mind that's the phone app. The main product runs in a browser.

What do the fans say? That it cut the time and cost of making a show. One team says filming and editing takes them a fraction of what it did before, and they lean on Magic Clips for ideas for social posts.

A long-time user made a point we thought was worth passing on. If the picture looks bad while you're recording, check the actual file before you panic. What you see live is only the call. The recording is made on your device and usually looks much better.

The unhappy reviews are mostly about things going wrong at a bad moment. Tracks that took hours to upload. Audio drifting out of sync. Both of those are from 2023, so they may well be fixed by now.

Billing comes up too. One reviewer from 2023 says they were charged after they thought they'd cancelled, and were told monthly plans are only refunded in the first 48 hours. So cancel early and check it went through.

Hacker News gave us nothing on this one. The only matches for its name were about other Riversides.