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Your meeting insights automated—the meeting recorder to understand & champion your users’ needs.
What we love most about tl;dv is that you can take all of your meeting notes directly from a floating pop-up right within the meeting you're in.
As you type the notes, tl;dv automatically timestamps your message and your entire team can also see the notes as they are being written.
No more do we need to find where to take collaborative call notes of which would otherwise not even be connected to the call recording itself.
All of the most important notes and timestamps are automatically sent to everyone on the call (or just your team), and they even have a nifty Slack integration as well.
We do wish it natively integrated with more CRMs though, but know the team is working on opening up the API to allow for it.
For teams of all sizes looking for a modern AI-powered work phone (call + SMS) that can be integrated with other tools.
Having used just about every single VoIP on the market over the past decade, Dialpad is the clear innovator in the space.
So much in-fact that I personally use Dialpad as my professional relationships number (work/angel investing/networking). This is because the mobile app actually feels like a modern SMS app, and is the most stable of the bunch.
The added perk is that I've integrated Dialpad with our CRM (Copper) so all texts and calls automatically log into the CRM (and even automatically create new leads in the CRM if the number doesn't yet exist in our CRM).
You'll see software like RingCentral (the 800lb gorilla in the space) claims to "integrate" with everything, but it doesn't integrate as you'd actually like it to (it's just marketing-speak), and the desktop + mobile apps are incredibly outdated on all fronts.
There's more modern VoIP solutions on the market like Aircall and JustCall, which do have better "native integrations", although they pale in comparison to the UI/UX of Dialpad + have no AI intelligence features like Dialpad does (sentiment analysis, AI call review, etc.).
If you're unable to justify the investment into a custom integration with Dialpad, you'll probably be better off with Aircall or JustCall. Although, if you're interested in using the best tool in the space (clear leader) and are open to investing in a proper integration with your CRM, Dialpad won't let you down.
Rating: B
Dialpad has invested a lot in the AI and sentiment analysis side of things, which makes it really stand of when comparing the top VoIP tools on the market.
When you move into the meeting side of things though, that's where Dialpad Meetings makes itself shown. The truth of the matter is that it's pretty great, and it's included in your subscription. The thing is, actually getting your team (and those you're meeting with) to all switch to Dialpad Meetings is the tough part. So when comparing Dialpad Meetings vs Google Meet for example, there's a ton of trade-offs.
In an odd way, Dialpad Meetings is a positive and negative to the "Features & Differentiation" category. In one part it's cool! In another part, it introduces confusion to anyone who is simply using Dialpad as their company VoIP. Should we also switch over our meetings? Well, the answer is probably no 😅 that said, we got into this more on the Dialpad Meetings page.
Rating: B-
Dialpad is in a bit of an odd boat here. They are quite selective about what apps they choose to build native integrations with, and you can't completely trust their site in determining if the integration exists. This at times makes us feel like they initially built the integration as an MVP v1 more for marketing purposes than anything (to be able to say "we integrate with this software" to check the box for a new buyer).
What we've seen though, is that integrations like their native Copper + Dialpad integration, while technically exists, it's incredibly buggy, doesn't do what you'd expect it to do (e.g. doesn't sync texts over to the CRM, just phone calls—any only sometimes). It also just doesn't work consistently.
So as much as Dialpad is our top pick when it comes to the best VoIP software category, we can't exactly recommend it when customers being asking us deeply about integration. Unless of course they are open to investing in the custom integration path, like the custom Copper + Dialpad integration that we built for ourselves and use.
Their API is decent, and they even have a Zapier connector (which we always appreciate), although it's quite complicated to get it to actually function how you'd like it to work.
Also, if you're hoping to trigger automatic SMS or MMS messages to send out via the API, look elsewhere. Dialpad is not trying to go down that path.
With all of that said, we recommend you check out Aircall if native integration is important to you, and more specifically checking out our Dialpad vs Aircall write-up to better understand the difference.
I will note that A2P (Application to Person) messaging is starting to get worse and worse. Dialpad and other VoIP services used to function more like P2P (Person to Person) messaging, but because businesses have taken advantage of this, carriers and the government have stepped in.
The result? A worse experience and higher costs for everyone. Dialpad now charges on-top of your monthly fee for sending messages (although they will cover the first 250 per user/mo), with stipulations (e.g. local SMS, not international or messaging an application—think Google 2FA codes, yep, those now charge you $0.01.
At the end of the day, SMS/MMS and traditional calling services suck, and are somehow just getting worse. How we're now moving backward to paying per SMS sent, when using just about any other messaging platform is free, is just baffling (not to mention the 30%+ in additional regulatory fees everything costs).
With all the regulatory frustrations, this does seem like it's hitting every business (A2P) VoIP provider, so we need to put this to the side when simply evaluating Dialpad vs the others mentioned.
If you need a VoIP in your business (you're calling customers/receiving calls or texts), then Dialpad is definitely one of the best solutions on the market.
With the regulatory downsides and paying per SMS sent, the upside is that using an A2P business VoIP tool, it enables API access, which allows you to do things like automatically logging SMS and calls + recordings into your CRM—something that will never exist when using a traditional P2P phone number.
We still continue using Dialpad here at Efficient App, as it is helpful to have a more work/business focused number for the occasional call with a customer and business-focused relationship tracking.
So if that's important to you, we recommend you give a business VoIP like Dialpad a shot. If you can get away with not using a phone service at your company, even better! Just don't let that happen if the alternative is your employees using their personal phone number at work. That is a regrettable decision 100% of the time.
Fireflies helps your team transcribe, summarize, search, and analyze voice conversations.
Fireflies was actually one of the first meeting recorder solutions on the market. They managed to build remote tooling that would actually join in existing meetings, like in Google Meet or Zoom, act like a guest, and record the audio.
This was super impressive, back when online video conferencing software was more restrictive, and Google Meet for example didn't even have native video meeting recorder functionality.
We actually used Fireflies almost exclusively for years, super early days back in 2017, and it has come a long way since, moving more into that of a AI meeting assistant.
This is an area where Fireflies really excels, although is the core piece that we think also bites them a bit. Fireflies has a lot of features. Especially with the launch of AI (OpenAI) being integrated with everything, came a whole myriad of features.
When every meeting recorder on the market is flocking to AI, Fireflies is like:
"How can we add that and many different spins on it to differentiate?"
While we appreciate that in theory, it does come at a point of overwhelm. What we find actually missing from Fireflies is actually simplicity. Do more with less. So while we are rating them high in this category, we don't necessarily mean it in a good way per-say.
They've built out a unique feature-set around being able to create snippets of calls, and tag them to a specific playlist, to then reference later or share with your team or others:
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It's a really cool idea, it's just in practice, how often will you really be using it? I could see this being more useful for very specific industry verticals or teams, but not most, and not in the way we use a meeting recorder tool in our day-to-day.
All-in-all, they give you a lot of tools to organize your online meetings. But that's where I sorta wish I could just do less. I'm already organizing so many other facets to my life, from file storage in Google Drive, to channels and notes in Slite. I really just want to record meetings, have them log to my CRM, and forget about them unless I need to reference them.
Thing is, if you aren't staying on-top of organizing your calls though, it almost feels like you're just not taking full advantage of what Fireflies has built, which honestly stresses me out. 😅
Fireflies is pretty clean overall—it looks decently nice, it's just that there's a lot vying for your attention even just on the call review page:
Do you view the AI summary? Create Soundbites? Maybe AskFred? Or a Smart Search? Maybe you just want to make a comment? 🤷
It's just a bit overwhelming until you get used to the interface, but overall design-wise, it is clean.
This is actually what frustrates us most about Fireflies. There's a lot going on. With all of their features, they have a lot vying for your attention, and with many features, also comes miscellaneous bugs.
Even in just trying to create a soundbite clip, I couldn't for the life of me get it to actually play the sound when selecting a small 2 minute clip in the middle of a 2 hour call:
Will they fix this? Of course, although point being—build some stability into your core features before introducing new ones.
This is the recurring theme that we've experienced with Fireflies over the years. I'm saying 5–6 years now. So it's not just a one-off thing, it's pretty core, meaning there's likely a bit of tech debt and feature rushing which is affecting their end-user UX. They just keep adding more, but when simply trying to do the basic things, we find ourselves fighting with the software to make things happen.
This is an area that we really have to hand it to Fireflies—they have focused on integrations quite deeply out of the gate. For example, they integrate with most of the best CRM tools on the market.
They integrated with the usual suspects out of the gate back in the day, from HubSpot to Salesforce, and when reaching out and asking about integrating with Copper, they said "sure!" and a week later, it was built 🤯
So while we counted earlier in the UX area, feature bulk as a negative, this is the area that the speed at which the team does release features is appreciated. They aren't afraid to push a feature or integration live, even if it's only 70% there, which sometimes is okay. 🤷
Their pricing tiers are pretty standard when compared to the best meeting recorder software on the market. If you're looking for free meeting recording software, Fireflies does have that, although what you'll get is incredibly limited at just 3 transcription credits, and 800 total minutes of storage per seat, and audio only at that.
Want any integrations at all, and you'll have to move to the paid Pro tier at $18/user/mo, for which has a pre-set 8,000 minutes of storage, and still no video recording functionality.
So if you do the math and are recording about 30 calls per month (assuming that some days are 0 while others are 3–4), the middle tier will get you about 4–5 months of storage before you're forced to move to the highest tier without losing historical recordings.
This is where they really ultimately force you to move to the highest tier with any meaningful usage. Not to mention, if you, like us, need video recording (which genuinely feels table-stakes when it comes to software that can record online meetings), well, you're going to be immediately on the highest tier right out of the gate. A bit steep with a lot of pressure to upgrade to the annual tier due to the discount on that.
When comparing Fireflies vs tl;dv for example, you'll see that you actually get full video recording and storage for free, you're just giving up some of the summarization features unless you pay. Fireflies, gate keeps not only the AI features, but also video recording features, allowing you to only get basic audio recording on the free tier, and super limited at that.
This is just where we feel like Fireflies has one of the more strict usage models as it relates to pricing. If you use Fireflies over time, you're going to be on their highest tier, guaranteed.
While Fireflies was quick on the scene when it came to recording the audio to meetings, they were laggards when it came to actually recording the video as well. This is actually the main reason that we left Fireflies and moved to tl;dv ourselves a couple years back.
tl;dv on the other hand started out of the gate focusing on being video recording software out of the gate. And for a company like ours, where we're often screensharing important information over video calls with customers and others, and needing to reference the screen recordings at a later time, that's where other tools excelled over Fireflies.
You genuinely can't go wrong here—the only wrong solution is probably not using a video meeting recorder tool. You have your pick from tl;dv, Fireflies, Grain, and others.
The only other thought is to probably select a recording option that allows you to record Google Meet and Zoom calls. Other online meeting recording software like Dialpad Meetings for example have similar functionality, although it actually requires that you fully switch all of your internal and external meetings to that of Dialpad Meetings. This is a complete operational change that may introduce a bit too much friction for your team or clients, so just be forewarned.
If you want video conference recording software that goes to the depths of sentiment analysis, allows for deep organization of snippets, and has focused most of their resources on the audio side of things, Fireflies definitely wouldn't be a bad option.
For teams of all sizes looking for a modern AI-powered work phone (call + SMS) that can be integrated with other tools.
I was actually one of a few people back in the day that tried to make the pivot from Google Meet and Zoom to Dialpad Meetings (formerly UberConference) happen.
The thing is, at the time, there was just too much friction trying to get people to use and accept Dialpad Meetings, because it's just different from what they are used to using (thank you inertia /sarcasm).
Dialpad Meetings is quite clean—we've always appreciated the simplicity it brings with it. I appreciate them coming at it with a more modern approach, but with that, comes more difficult user-adoption (unless you just copy Google Meet and Zoom identically).
This is where we've ran into the most struggles with Dialpad Meetings. It's just not familiar with most people when joining. They don't know where the screensharing icon is, along with everything else. It's just different from what people are used to. While this is normally fine and we don't want to be too negative on Dialpad Meetings for this point, the truth of the matter is they are just battling inertia (familiarity), and people just hate change when it comes to something they also dislike (Meetings) 😅
Dialpad Meetings doesn't have an API that we can connect into, so there's no current way to create custom integrations outside of what they list on their site (native integrations).
So say you want to create a meeting activity within your CRM (e.g. Copper), you can't do that without a meeting recorder tool that can join your meeting, like Fireflies. So the only way to really do this is to hand off the integration side of things to a meeting recorder tool that has deep integrations with CRMs.
What I did back in the day to get this working actually, was relying on Fireflies to join the call and be the native integration with the CRM. They do have a dedicated landing page for their integration with Dialpad Meetings, although it is still has the URL "uberconference". 😅
There are positives and negatives that come with this approach though.
So all-in-all, we know this isn't the most ideal thing to hear. Without Dialpad Meetings having a proper API though (or a native CRM integration), that's all we can really do here.
If the above is you, all I can say is we hear you... It's overwhelming, confusing, and we were going down this exact same rabbit hole 6+ years ago.
At the end of the day, we ultimately just decided to use Google Meet alongside tl;dv, as the native integration they have between eachother, alongside no longer having to fight the inertia (of people not wanting to try a "new" meeting tool), is where we ultimately found ourselves.
It's also more likely that tools will integrate natively with Google Meet and Zoom, especially because for some reason Dialpad Meetings is choosing to highly restrict their API for internal use only. 🤷
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