Loom vs Frame.io for Video Feedback: Which One Your Editors Need
Loom is great for talking through a cut, and a review tool is built for notes pinned to frames. Here is how I use both in my agency and what each one costs.
An eleven-minute Loom on a product launch cut, sent to us by a brand client at my video-editing agency, ended up being my whole Loom vs Frame.io lesson. It was a lovely recording, right, the marketing manager shared her screen, scrubbed through our export and talked really really fast about what she loved and what felt off. My editor watched it three times and still asked me which shot she meant by the bit after the logo, the one that drags, so we jumped on a call that ran past half an hour and rebuilt maybe half the notes from memory.
Nobody did anything wrong there, she used the tool she already had open, and Loom is a very very good tool for talking someone through an idea with your face and your screen. The catch here is that an editor wants a list of notes pinned to exact frames that they can work through one by one, and a recorded walkthrough hands them a story they have to decode first.
So here's how we split the two jobs inside my own agency, including that exact launch cut rewritten as frame notes, and what each side costs once your team grows.
Loom vs Frame.io: two different feedback jobs
The simplest way I can put it, right, is that Loom is a messaging tool that happens to use video, and Frame.io is a review tool built around a video file. So lining them up feature by feature is kind of like comparing a phone call with a marked-up contract.
With Loom you record your screen, your camera and your voice, you send a link, and the person on the other side watches you think out loud. That's brilliant for context and the reasoning behind a decision, and I use it myself when I'm briefing a new editor on a channel's style or explaining why a hook isn't landing.
A review tool works the other way around, right, the video sits in the centre of the screen and every note you leave is attached to a specific moment of that video. Frame.io made that category popular with editors, and tools like PlayPause do the same core job, with the differences showing up mostly in pricing and in how easily a client gets in.
So before picking a side, I'd ask which of the two jobs you're doing on a given day, because most marketing teams I talk to are doing both and blaming one tool for the other one's job. My quick test is whether an editor could fix the note and reply done on it, because if they can, it belongs on a frame, and if it's really about direction, you record it.
great for explaining the why, but the editor has to decode every timestamp from your voice
every note sits on the exact frame, so the editor works through a clean list
When a recorded walkthrough is the right way to give notes
To be very honest, there are moments where a recorded walkthrough beats any comment box, and my agency records one every single week.
Structural notes are the biggest of those moments. If a client wants to swap the second and third act, or feels the piece should open on the result instead of the problem, that's a conversation about story, and squeezing it into a comment at 00:42 makes a rebuild look like a small fix. For instance, when we deliver a rough cut of a long YouTube video, I'll often record five minutes on the overall shape before anyone leaves a frame note, right, because the editor needs the big picture first.
Tone is the other place a recording wins. When I'm giving a junior editor tough feedback, I'd much rather they hear my voice and see I'm relaxed about it than read a stack of blunt comments that feel like a teacher's red pen, and the same goes for onboarding a new client, since none of that is tied to a specific frame.
At the end of the day, if the note is about the why, a walkthrough is great, and it's once the note becomes about the what and the where that things start to slip.
Where Loom for video feedback falls apart for editors
This is where my story from the top comes back in, right. A walkthrough is a single stream of time with the reviewer talking over a video that is itself playing, so every note is really two timestamps glued together and the editor translates one into the other by ear.
At 25 or 30 frames a second, which is the frame rate most of our client work ships at, a note like cut when she smiles can mean any of a dozen frames. A reviewer scrubbing while talking almost never lands on the frame they mean, so the editor makes a guess and the client ends up reviewing that guess next round. Even a comment left on the recording itself points at a moment in the recording rather than a frame of the cut, so the translation problem stays.
My editors also work from a list, fixing one note and moving to the next, and a recording gives them a monologue instead. So somebody rewatches it and types the notes into a doc or a WhatsApp message, which is basically doing the review twice.
It gets messier with more reviewers, because a marketing manager, a founder and someone from legal each send their own recording, sometimes contradicting each other, and the editor quietly becomes the referee. I'm pretty sure anyone who has run a client account has lived through this, and when version two comes back there's no clean way to see which recorded notes were handled.
Every recorded note carries two timestamps, the one in the recording and the one in the cut, and your editor pays to convert them on every round.
What frame accurate review adds
When I think about screen recording feedback vs frame accurate comments, the difference I care about is that in a review tool the note and the frame are the same object, right. You pause on the frame and type your note, it's pinned there with its timecode, and the editor clicks the note and the player jumps straight to it.
In PlayPause that's the basic building block, frame-accurate timestamped comments, and it's on every plan. Around it you get range comments for when a note covers a whole section, and drawing on the frame when a logo sits too close to the edge. Threaded replies and @mentions let the editor ask whether you meant the wide or the close-up right on the note, and custom statuses let you mark a video as in review, changes needed or approved in your own words.
The launch cut, rewritten as frame notes
Here's what the first three notes from that eleven-minute Loom would have looked like in a review link, rebuilt from our call afterwards, so the timecodes are illustrative but the fixes are the ones we actually made:
- A range comment from 00:00:08:12 to 00:00:13:04 saying the hold after the logo drags, so trim about a second and a half and let the product land on the beat.
- A frame comment at 00:00:21:17 with a circle drawn around the price, saying the lower third covers it and should move up.
- A frame comment at 00:00:46:03 saying cut on the smile here, instead of two seconds later.
Each of those sits on its own frame or range, so my editor could have worked through them in one pass and replied on each thread, instead of three rewatches and a half hour call, you see what I mean here.
Range comments matter most for pacing, which is exactly where walkthroughs are weakest, and I wrote a whole piece on giving pacing feedback without words if that's your pain. For phrasing a good note in the first place, the guide on how to give frame-accurate video feedback walks through it properly.
And when version two comes back, it stacks on the same card as MV2, MV3 and so on, and on Agency and up you can put two versions side by side to check whether a change landed.
Using both in the same workflow
What we do in my agency, and what I'd suggest to most marketing teams, is to stop treating this as an either or decision, right, and give each tool the job it's good at.
On a first cut, the creative lead records a short walkthrough on story and tone and keeps it to a few minutes. Then, in the same sitting, they open the review link and drop the specific notes as frame comments, range comments and drawings, so the walkthrough carries the why and the review link carries the what.
One small habit helps a lot, which is pasting the Loom link as the first comment on the video inside the review tool, so the context and the notes live in one place. Does that make sense, right, the recording becomes an attachment to the review instead of the whole review, and trust me on any level, your editors will thank you for it.
- Record a short walkthrough for story and tone on the first cut only
- Leave every specific fix as a frame note or range comment
- Paste the walkthrough link as the first comment on the video
- Skip recordings from version two unless the structure changes
- Approve only when every note has a reply
Pricing models compared
This is where the Frame.io vs Loom comparison gets interesting for a marketing manager with a budget, because the two are priced in ways that don't map onto each other. In most teams I work with, Loom is already on the company card for internal updates, so it feels free at the point of use, which is a big part of why it ends up doing review work.
Frame.io is priced per seat, from $15 per user per month, and that's where teams start doing uncomfortable maths, right, because the list of people who need to be inside a review tool keeps growing. A custom domain is Enterprise only there, and a guest can't upload a file without an account, which matters if freelancers send versions back to you.
Say, purely as illustrative math, eight people on your side need to be in the tool. At the Frame.io starting price that's eight times $15, so $120 a month. PlayPause Creator at $9 already fits up to 10 members, and Agency covers the same eight people for a flat $19 a month with room for up to 50. I went deeper on this in the roundup of video review tools without per reviewer pricing, and our PlayPause vs Frame.io comparison lays the two side by side.
A flat priced Loom alternative for video review
If Loom has been your review tool because it was already there, PlayPause is basically the review side done properly at a flat price per workspace, and you keep Loom for the conversations it's great at.
Creator is $9 a month for 10 members and 100 GB, with version stacks, who-watched analytics showing who opened a link, when and from which city, and Slack so every comment lands in a channel. Agency is $19 a month for 50 members and 250 GB with unlimited projects, and that's where I'd point most marketing teams, right. AI transcription gives you a clickable transcript with SRT export for when a reviewer wants to change one voiceover line, and Playbooks keep a per-client document of style and direction, which has quietly replaced a lot of the briefing Looms I used to record. Enterprise is $27 a month for 150 members and 1 TB, with white-label and a custom share domain like review.yourbrand.com, while SSO and SAML are coming in February 2027 and aren't available yet.
If your editors cut in Premiere Pro, the Premiere Pro panel brings comments into Premiere, and clicking one moves the playhead to that frame. There's a fuller tour on the video feedback and review page, and the guide on a Frame.io alternative for YouTube creators covers the remote editor setup. One reviewer, Rishita Jain, wrote on Trustpilot "This is the best frame.io alternative that I've ever used. Loved it", and if you're worried about losing old notes, I wrote up how to migrate from Frame.io cleanly.
Let the recording carry the why and let the review link carry the what, and your editor stops playing detective.
Frequently asked questions
Is Loom good for video feedback?
It's good for one kind of feedback, right, the big-picture kind, where you're explaining story, tone or why something isn't working and your voice adds context a comment can't. For specific fixes on a cut it's weak, because the notes live inside a recording instead of on the frames, so your editor has to rewatch and translate every timestamp.
Is Frame.io better than Loom for client review?
For notes on a cut, a frame accurate review tool like Frame.io is the better fit, because every comment sits on the exact frame and the editor works through them as a list, while Loom stays better for explaining direction. Most teams I know end up using both, so the real decision is which review tool, since per-seat and flat pricing land very differently.
Is PlayPause cheaper than Frame.io for a marketing team?
For most teams with more than a couple of people it works out that way, because Frame.io is priced per user, from $15 per user per month, while PlayPause is a flat price per workspace. Agency is $19 a month for up to 50 members, so adding a motion designer or a second marketing lead doesn't change the bill. Run the numbers against your own team first.
Do my clients need an account to leave notes in PlayPause?
No, and to be very honest that's one of the things we cared about most. The client opens one link in a browser, with no account and no install, and can leave frame-accurate comments, range comments and drawings straight away. On Agency and up they can even upload a new version as a guest, with their name and email collected.
If you want to try the review side properly, pick a plan on the PlayPause pricing page, since every plan comes with a 7-day free trial, then send your next cut out as a review link, keep your Loom for the big-picture conversations, and see how the next round feels for your editor.
So yeah. That's my way of saying it.
Saumyajit co-founded PlayPause after years watching review and approval quietly eat creative teams' deadlines. He writes about the workflow side of video, feedback, versioning, and getting to a clean sign-off.
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