Vowel AI: The Better Zoom Alternative? (2023)

What if Zoom meeting content can be more searchable and shareable? I have to review Vowel AI, a better Zoom alternative to help you run more effective and engaging online meetings.

To save you time, we will not go over the very basics of meeting functionalities such as scheduling, recording and sharing. Instead, we will focus on on the important and necessary features that do not exist in Zoom.

In terms of setup and accessing any of the features being discussed here, there’s nothing to download and no need to cobble together and pay for a bunch of different tools and add-ons. Vowel AI has all the things you need as a project manager, a creator, and entrepreneur to run better meetings.

Let’s dive in!

1. Automatically summarizes your meeting, at any time!

With just one button click “Recap this meeting so far”, Vowel AI automatically generates a summary for your meeting.

You do not have to wait until the end of the meeting. Instead, the summary is available as soon as it’s needed (and as long as you have been running your meeting for more than two minutes). This single feature can help latecomers quickly catch up with the key points without the meeting host having to reiterate what has been said and be able to proceed with confidence.

But how good is the summary? It’s quite good, and also editable. In my walkingthrough recording of Vowel AI, my summary looks like this:

2. Helps you create action items, bookmarks, and more.

In addition to a quick meeting summarizer, you will also get a list of “Action Items”, Bookmarks for Insights, Bugs, and Pain Points, and Bookmarks you have captured during the meeting.

You can capture and label your meeting moments in real-time similar to Fathom, but with Vowel AI, you do not need to download to connect a 3rd party plugin.

What am I most impressed by Vowel AI? It’s the quality and accuracy of their meeting summary and overview. Look, it detects my 6 minutes meeting about my experience with Vowel AI. It not only provides an overview but also a bullet point list of key points and specific features.

There are so many uses for this type of content, think automatic YouTube chapters because these bullet points come with timestamps too!

3. Instant transcriptions labeled with reactions and insights

Transcription is nothing new to online meeting platforms, but you won’t get transcriptions like this with reaction, labels such as Insights and Bugs to spot and organize your transcription easily.

4. Transcription with multi-language support

Do you or someone in your meeting speak another language? Vowel AI transcription supports multiple languages. I tested out this feature by speaking in English and Mandarin Chinese, and here is what it looks like.

Vowel currently supports the following languages and they are adding more in the future. More details here.

• English (United States, India, Singapore, UK)
• Chinese, Mandarin (Simplified, China)
• French (France)
• German (Germany)
• Italian (Italy)
• Japanese (Japan)
• Portuguese (Brazil)
• Russian (Russia)
• Spanish (Spain)

5. Built-in video clip editor

Wow, this blew me away. Instead of opening yet another video editing tool, waiting to import/export full video and edit clips for your meeting content, Vowel AI has an editor built in. You can edit clips by dragging the clip boundaries OR simply edit by text just like Descript. This is insane!

Editing by text is so easy. This way you don’t have to worry about leaving a word out accidentally when editing using clip boundaries. This means you need zero editing experience and still get it done quickly and accurately.

I have been a long-time advocate for content repurposing. For this added and unexpected feature of Vowel AI, I want to give it a proud five-star.

6. Agenda templates

As a project manager and producer in my pre-entrepreneurial life, I don’t take meeting agenda lightly. It’s absolutely essential for every meeting (including brainstorms). But not everyone knows how to create a good meeting agenda, or knows there are different agenda structures that are meant to accomplish different things. Lucky for them, Vowel AI has templates already created that are also editable. On top of that, you can create and save your own agenda templates for future use.

7. Meeting insights

That’s right! Vowel AI has actual analytics and insights to help you run better meetings.

• Meeting efficiency – measured based on if your meetings are starting and ending on time, coming with an agenda, and completing with action items.

• Filter words – measured based on how often you use common filler words in your meetings

• Talk time percentage – only for 1-on-1 meetings to measure your talk time vs the other person

Conclusion: Is Vowel a good alternative to Zoom?

Yes, absolutely. It’s more than worth it to experiment with your team. This is especially true if you are running more complex projects with multiple team members, clients and stakeholders. I can say with confidence that Vowel AI can and will make any project manager’s life easier.

What about creators such as bloggers and YouTubers? The answer is yes. As a creative entrepreneur, I find myself juggling multiple meetings, having to take notes, follow up on sponsorships, and new business opportunities regularly. I can see myself using Vowel AI alongside HubSpot (my favorite CMS) to run my business with ease and confidence.

What are your thoughts? Please let us know in the comments below.

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