Usefulness degraded by the fact that it auto joins all meetings by default
I downloaded this to try on the recommendation of Birmingham Institute for the Deaf.
The main problem I’ve found is that it will automatically join every meeting in your calendar by default. A better default would be that you have to explicitly invite it or mark a meeting as requiring transcription. You can turn off auto join, but you have to look for the setting and know it’s there.
The subscription price is potentially prohibitive for the occasional/casual user who needs to transcribe meetings over 30 minutes but not that often so don’t go over the free tier 300 minute per month limit. Perhaps some sort of prepaid credits system could be implemented where if an individual meeting goes over your tier limit or you exceed your tier total usage for the month you are charged by the minute or in 5 minute slots. This would be a similar model to a mobile phone plan where you get so many inclusive minutes and text messages each month but if you go over then you are charged per minute/text. It would also help paid subscribers who normally stay within their tier limit but once in a while have a meeting run over or extra meetings, but not often enough that it justifies moving up a tier.
The main problem I’ve found is that it will automatically join every meeting in your calendar by default. A better default would be that you have to explicitly invite it or mark a meeting as requiring transcription. You can turn off auto join, but you have to look for the setting and know it’s there.
The subscription price is potentially prohibitive for the occasional/casual user who needs to transcribe meetings over 30 minutes but not that often so don’t go over the free tier 300 minute per month limit. Perhaps some sort of prepaid credits system could be implemented where if an individual meeting goes over your tier limit or you exceed your tier total usage for the month you are charged by the minute or in 5 minute slots. This would be a similar model to a mobile phone plan where you get so many inclusive minutes and text messages each month but if you go over then you are charged per minute/text. It would also help paid subscribers who normally stay within their tier limit but once in a while have a meeting run over or extra meetings, but not often enough that it justifies moving up a tier.
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Response from developer
Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback. I have tagged this for our product team to review!
Excellent customer support!
I am a student at university, Otter ai helps me a lot with my studies all the time. I have to say I can’t live without it! This is an excellent app! Not only the app is super, also their customer support is awesome! Recently I encountered an issue with my Otter account. The issue related apple private relay as a unique function. When I accidentally signed out, I couldn't sign back to my pro Otter account due to apple private relay security barrier. Since a lot of study materials in Otter, I am so worried these super important materials might be lost. I almost got depressed about the incident and wrote an email to Otter customer support team expressing my concerns. Otter ai team responded to me promptly. They further investigated the issues, making sure my materials were still stored at their end, and helped me bring my account back. I am so impressed by their skill and customer care, putting customers' needs as a priority. I can't thank them enough for doing the effective work! And I must say, you will never worry about the data being lost, because their data equipment has higher quality and support team is very skilled and service is excellent!
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Be careful about deceptive pricing
For their Pro account they say for teams up to 5. What they fail to mention is that you are charged full price for each team member. Very deceptive language in their pricing description.
Response from developer
Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback. Our pricing model is per license, but I have tagged your feedback for our product team to review further for improvement. Thank you!
Love this app!
I love this app y’all! I am a minister, a psychological practitioner, a writer and a black person who loves expression! Ideas spring forth in my mind with uncanny speed and regularity. Picking up the pen and finding one of my notebooks to capture these little gems is not always an option. But my phone is always close by and I can capture so much more with otter than on paper—especially having come from an oral tradition. I have written sermons, autobiographical stories and sketches, and catalogued many ideas for further consideration. Oh! And I also host early morning meditation sessions in which I speak for 1-10 minutes before we go into silence. I record these sessions and they are a treasure trove of insights, questions, and explorations. For some reason, like with today’s meditation session, the transcript contained an unusually high number of errors. While that doesn’t make me happy, it does not detract significantly from my experience of the app. I have and will continue to recommend Otter to anyone who needs a note taking system or who wants to capture their ideas, etc. Thanks Otter!
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Good. Could have been great as claimed by editor
This app worked perfectly transcribing the college tours that we went on including with a lot of noise. Unfortunately, if the recording stopped or paused and then continued, you were charged for your total number of allowed recordings even with a pro subscription. I bought the pro subscription because the allotted monthly minutes were less than the total min of the tours that we went to. Unfortunately, because of the limited number of sessions, I was only able to transcribe about 40% of the allowed monthly minutes. You cannot even upgrade to the next level which of course you are invited to do. You have to do that on a computer which is impossible since it is an ios app. I guess I will have to wait a month to use a new set of minutes and won't receive the minutes I paid for. I have not got reply from the help links.
Update: apple sent me an email asking if I wanted to contact the developers. This say's a lot. They could have contacted me if they wanted to. Apple could hold them accountable for being deceptive if they wanted to. Lesson learned
Update: apple sent me an email asking if I wanted to contact the developers. This say's a lot. They could have contacted me if they wanted to. Apple could hold them accountable for being deceptive if they wanted to. Lesson learned
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Response from developer
Hello! We'd like to look into this issue for you, as you can record as many conversations up to the monthly 1200 minutes, with 90-minute recording limit per conversation. There is one charge per month or annual, and no extra charge for the total number of recordings. Please send us a new email at support@otter.ai with the subject "App review" and our team will gladly help.
Life-changing app in many ways
I have been using this app for a variety of things from keeping a log of my meta-thoughts, to noting important observations of trends as they relate to consumer behavior / business “strategies” / or just my own path here in life. In addition, it helps me get certain thoughts sorted as I am in moment by moment battles living with bipolar spectrum disorder and ADHD and over last several years coping with severe trauma and loss (ptsd symptoms are all too real), I have been an entrepreneur on my own since 2007 when I was 19 yrs old and I wanted to just say thank you to the team that makes this app an incredible tool and way to help cope with some of life’s heavier or more complex topics to sort out. In addition kudos to the devs and UI/UX folks at Otter, appreciate u all and keep up the great work. Ps. I am quite curious if u r using the tech stack I believe ur using but I don’t want to publicly reveal lol but simply bc I have been evaluating the mentioned “service” sdk so as to test it for a platform I’ve funded and am managing the build (unrelated to this industry, but has need for transcription and ML modeling for my use case eg sentiment analysis etc) anyways keep up the amazing work and wish you all the best and a fortuitous future. - cheers, T-BUS
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Loved it, until it cut min limit to 1200
The Pro plan (and Basic plan) has been cut a lot.
1. 1200 transcription minutes per month instead of 6000 - that’s 1/5 of what I paid for.
2. Instead of 4 hours (240 minutes), transcribed minutes-per-meeting is reduced to just 90 minutes - that’s 3/8 only.
3. Unlimited uploads of recordings for transcription has been reduced to 10 only.
4. Dropbox has been removed from Pro plan.
All those changes are disappointing.
Yes, you want to force people to upgrade their plan to Business then you can make more money. But what user get is not what they paid for.
And all those happened during a subscription year and users who loved the App (and that’s why they paid yearly) don’t even have an option to cancel and get refund.
1. 1200 transcription minutes per month instead of 6000 - that’s 1/5 of what I paid for.
2. Instead of 4 hours (240 minutes), transcribed minutes-per-meeting is reduced to just 90 minutes - that’s 3/8 only.
3. Unlimited uploads of recordings for transcription has been reduced to 10 only.
4. Dropbox has been removed from Pro plan.
All those changes are disappointing.
Yes, you want to force people to upgrade their plan to Business then you can make more money. But what user get is not what they paid for.
And all those happened during a subscription year and users who loved the App (and that’s why they paid yearly) don’t even have an option to cancel and get refund.
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Response from developer
Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback. Our price changes will allow us to continue innovating and adding more features, while still being priced low compared to our competitors. Our basic plan is free and offers 300 minutes per month. Additionally, all changes to existing users' plans happened at the end of their subscription, not during. I will definitely pass your feedback along to our team though! Thank you!
Ads after paying
The app is cluttered with ads to upgrade or share with friends. This is expected in a free app but feels a bit cheap to do to your paying users.
Consider adding a “focus” mode that doesn’t have all the bells and whistles. I just want to record audio and have it transcribed. I don’t want social or business features and I’m tired of the upselling.
The accuracy is a bit comical at times.
Consider adding a “focus” mode that doesn’t have all the bells and whistles. I just want to record audio and have it transcribed. I don’t want social or business features and I’m tired of the upselling.
The accuracy is a bit comical at times.
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Response from developer
Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback. Our basic plan is free and offers many of the amazing features we have on the paid plan with limitations. They are surfaced in the app to alert users who need higher limits. I will definitely pass your feedback along to our team though! Thank you!
Don't purchase until
Don't purchase at least until you have used up their free trial allowance.
Because as soon as you paid for the subscription, the free minutes will all be lost, and yet the paid version only allow you 1200 minutes a month, woth no option to purchase extra time, so effectively you've lost 20% worth of minutes.
I am not complaining about the subscription price, as I'm happy to pay for a good app, but the developer doesn't seem to realise their paid service minutes is very limited, so for someone who actually needed the minutes, and since you are not giving option to let user buy more minutes if they need to, then a 200 minutes in the free trial becomes very important and taking it away is simply not fair for a good customer who paid you too soon!
O already got in touch with customer service and their is nothing they can do about it, very disappointed.
Because as soon as you paid for the subscription, the free minutes will all be lost, and yet the paid version only allow you 1200 minutes a month, woth no option to purchase extra time, so effectively you've lost 20% worth of minutes.
I am not complaining about the subscription price, as I'm happy to pay for a good app, but the developer doesn't seem to realise their paid service minutes is very limited, so for someone who actually needed the minutes, and since you are not giving option to let user buy more minutes if they need to, then a 200 minutes in the free trial becomes very important and taking it away is simply not fair for a good customer who paid you too soon!
O already got in touch with customer service and their is nothing they can do about it, very disappointed.
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Response from developer
Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback. Our price changes will allow us to continue innovating and adding more features, while still being priced low compared to our competitors. Our basic plan is free and offers 300 minutes per month. I will definitely pass your feedback along to our team though! Thank you!
Honestly a great help when recording important things
Before I start, I wish to offer my sincerest apologies to the app developers for my previous “review”, in which I lashed out at this application for asking for a review when I was busy; I was having a very bad day and was under a lot of pressure at the time, and what I had written previously was extremely disrespectful and unprofessional of me, for which I deeply apologize, and it does not at all reflect how I feel about this app or its developers. This app is wonderful and has been a lifesaver time and time again in my college studies. I cannot recommend this application enough for those who are in similar situations to my own; you will not be disappointed.
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