It wasn’t long ago that if you needed a video for your business, school or any activity, you needed to hire a professional company and pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to get it made.
When Apple introduced iMovie in 1999, it started a transition that would allow anyone to create their own high quality videos. Add to that the abilities of the iPhone to shoot the raw footage anywhere you happen to be, and it seems like anyone can create their own media presentation.
But as good as iMovie is for content editing, it lacks a wide variety of footage to make interesting introductions and closing clips. For that, you should check out FlexClip.
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Apple Tech Talk Scorecard
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Large number of templates and music to meet any need | Free version adds a FlexClip intro to the front of your video |
Free option available |
About FlexClip
FlexClip is a browser-based video creation site. It’s designed to allow individuals and businesses to create professional looking videos. It does this by providing hundreds of royalty-free video themes in a variety of categories, 10,000 music tracks, titling options and video elements. These can all be assembled with an easy to use, drag and drop function on their web site at www.flexclip.com. They currently have over three-million users worldwide, with almost 400,000 registered users and over 615,000 video downloads.
FlexClip – The Power of Templates
When you go to www.flexclip.com, you are greeted with a simple Home page.
You are presented with two choices, Create by Templates or Start from Scratch. We elected to check out the templates.
On that page, you are presented with a wide variety of complete videos that can be used in a variety of ways. The videos are nicely organized based on a variety of categories.
Many of the categories (there are 42 in all) are what you might expect to see on a site like this, and are clearly directed towards commercial users. They include things like Business, Corporate, Technology and Education & Training. But we were pleasantly surprised to see a large collection of categories that would be of interest for personal use like Birthday, YouTube, Facebook, Wedding, Family and Kids. There is also a variety of holiday templates like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas.
What surprised us most was a category for the Coronavirus. In that category was a variety of video clips that might be used by a local news channel or a company trying to deliver a message to it employees and/or customers.
Maybe we’re reading more into it than we should, but we see this as an indication that the people behind FlexClip did not just create a web site and product and move on to their next project. Rather, we see their creation of the category and the content in it as a strong message that they intend to keep the site fresh and perhaps create even more categories as new areas of interest develop.
Regardless of the category you choose, inside, you will find a variety of videos, complete with background music, transitions and even text, that is appropriate for the theme and the topic. Many of the videos are complete as they are while others may be more appropriate as the opening and closing of another video. And most of them can be edited to personalize them with your company name, logo, web address and social media identities.
While we think most people can find a template to meet their needs, you do have the option of starting from scratch and creating your own video, using the video, audio, transition and other elements provided on the FlexClip site.
FlexClip – Other Features
If all you could do on the FlexClip site was create short videos for your personal or business use, we think it would be a valuable tool. But the “Tools” section of the site reveals that it can do much more.
If you have your own video clip, you have the ability to change it to meet your needs, as you can see from the list above.
FlexClip – Plans and Pricing
FlexClip offers a variety of plans with pricing starting at free.
The free plan limits you to SD quality (480p) downloads, 1 stock video per project, a maximum of 12 projects and a video length of up to 1 minute. For someone that just needs a short clip for a one-time project, this may be all you need. Our only complaint is that the free option automatically adds a FlexClip intro to the front of your project. Given the other limitations of the free plan, we really don’t think that was needed.
For any of the paid plans, you get an increase in the video length and download quality all the way up to 1080p. You even get cloud storage for your projects and no FlexClip info.
Prices are based on a monthly subscription. Depending on the type of project you are doing, we think the pricing is very reasonable and for someone working on a mission critical project or an important sales presentation, spending $20 or $30 for a month of use and up to 30 minutes of video length is, quite frankly, a bargain.
For business use, FlexClip offers an annual subscription for all of their plans. Any of the options reflect a significant savings over the monthly pricing. Depending on your needs, it may make sense to buy the annual plan, even if you don’t need the tools for an entire year.
In any case, the pricing of a FlexClip subscription is a fraction of what you might pay a marketing company to create a similar video for you.
The Bottom Line
FlexClip is one of those products that is difficult to review as the best way for you to see what it can do, is to try it yourself. That said, we used it to make a short video and found it to be easy to use and we got great results. But it is difficult to fully explain that in a written review.
More important, since FlexClip offers a free plan, there is no reason not to go to their web site, look at some of the templates they offer and make your own video to see how you like it.
Whether for business or personal use, we think you will find the tools you need to make the perfect video for any occasion and it’s worth your time to check it out at www.flexclip.com.
We would like to thank the folks at FlexClip for providing access to their site so we could do our own testing and review.
Do you make videos for personal or commercial use? Would you use a service like FlexClip? Why not join the conversion and leave a comment below?
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Our original post of this article contained screen shots of the FlexClip web site. On September 14, 2021, we received a violation notice from Google indicating this page contained copyrighted material. As a result, we have removed those images from the article.
Hi, I listen about Flexclip a few times ago but never use it. But now I think of trying to make some videos on the video editor. It is looking easy to use for non professionals and they provided reasonable packages as well.