Panopto vs. Wistia

The more I used it, the more I appreciated its ease of use. If I ever ran into a situation that I felt might be a learning opportunity at some point in the future, I would simply log in, record a session, and only allow access if/when it was appropriate later. Since the more recent versions also work on mobile phones, there really wasn't a time when I couldn't record something to review or present later. During covid, teachers didn't have access to their normal equipment, and students weren't always able to get access to a robust recording setup to do their recordings. Some students actually did recordings of presentations in their cars, or in the stairwells. Portability is powerful. I think that we all run into situations where our presentation didn't go quite as well as we had intended. As Panopto grew, they focused more on allowing the user to control their content and perform some basic (I would argue more than basic) editing, which made actions like awkward pauses easy to "fix" as you could create smooth, blended transitions easily.

Incentivized

It's so awesome to see my videos come up on Google Search. A click brings viewers right to my website!!! Incredibly powerful. If I were just posting on YouTube, visitors would end up there and then off to the next best cat video instead of taking action with me on my website.

• It captures multiple streams simultaneous (video, desktop, audio only etc) and is pretty smart when it comes to working with imported PowerPoint Decks.
• The end product can easily be shared in multiple formats and it has pretty rich content editing abilities for doing basic post-production clean up.
• They have recently introduced an in-line quizzing feature which can integrate with your LMS's Gradebook.
• The Analytics feature is very strong - we can get student level analytics when we integrate/embed the videos into our LMS.

Incentivized

• Wistia enables a lot of customization in the video player, making it personalized to your business.
• The user experience is pretty intuitive and easy to use without too much training.
• Wistia's help articles, blog and instructional videos were very helpful as we began investing more resources into video production.

Incentivized

• Captions are always a problem for us. We would like to caption all our videos and currently, the automatic captioning is not very good.
• We would like integration with our VLE grade book to allow seamless submission and grading for students.

Incentivized

• Obtaining embed codes for a significantly large number of videos can be very time consuming as there is no way to automatically pull a report.
• Within a project, there is no way to set the list to show a specific number of videos and you may only have a certain number of videos shown unless you click to expand the list and continue to do so.
• Once the list is expanded and you click in to a video, when clicking back, the list reloads and you must expand the entire list again which can become very time consuming.

Incentivized

Wistia is super easy to use and very reliable, anytime a video needs to be updated, the existing media can be replaced, but the url remains the same so anywhere this media is shared or embedded, it is immediately updated. Their support is extremely helpful, and there is very rarely any issues with this product.

Incentivized

Needs some work, but I'm sure improvements will come over time

Incentivized

I just love the interface and the way things are organized. You can find all of the various controls and have the ability to enable/disable each. You can also get to help quickly from any screen. The screens are not cluttered and have a good use of whitepace, without the need to page through controls or reload the screen.

Incentivized

After several years, we have not come across a situation for which Wistia was not available when needed.

Incentivized

Couldn't be happier with the overall performance of the platform. Videos load fast, rarely have loading issues, look sclean and the styling and sizing doesn't have issues. The data comes in quickly and in real time. Also, on the administrative side, the videos seem to upload well without much issue. There's always issues uploading video, but we had way less upload issues with Wistia than with Vimeo.

Incentivized

Panopto has been quick to answer any questions, but their rollouts and updates have caused issues where we felt a little blindsided by unexpected changes. Their development cycle is slow and often their promises for future updates have been extremely slow or never come.

Incentivized

We have only had to reach out to Wistia support a handful of times in the 4 years we have been using Wistia. They have always been quick to respond and help us solve the problem. The system is self-service so there should be very little to no need to reach out to support on a regular basis.

Incentivized

We were in the process of changing our website so that took some time to get Wistia implemented in to our website.

Incentivized

Panopto has the best captioning features that I've seen for a video repository. This enables us to caption videos quickly and efficiently. It also has tags and chaptering which makes viewing videos easier. We can also link videos inside Panopto to outside entities without needing them to have a Panopto account. Panopto works best if you have a LOT of video content, but if you only have some or don't care about organization, SharePoint (or Microsoft Stream) might be a cheaper/more efficient option.

Incentivized

Wistia is in the process of making their livestreaming way better than the free alternative like YouTube and a well known competitor like gotomeeting. It's easy to add in cohosts, interact with chat members, add in polls and other features which can be a bit clunky on gotomeeting.

Incentivized

We use many platforms and Wistia has been a standout in terms of reliability and scaleability.

Incentivized

• During the pandemic, Panopto allows our faculty to quickly stage up lectures that were normally delivered in person, and these recordings reached thousands of students who could not come to campus for class.
• Both faculty and student report high satisfaction with the flexibility and convenience of having Panopto video content available in a course to watch and rewatch for learner reinforcement.
• Panopto's adaptable media distribution reduced impact on student technology and internet speeds when they might not have access to broadband connections, allowing them to continue to access essential course materials.
• Speech to text capabilities. increase accessibility compliance of media content.
• Archiving training materials in Panopto allows faculty, staff, TAs, and students to easily find recordings for reference.

Incentivized

• Doubled lead capture from lead magnet on website from one year to the next.
• Increased email interaction on newsletters when embedding Wistia video thumbnail into email campaigns (10-15% links clicked bumped to 30-40% links clicked).
• Can save us about 50+ hours of one-on-one client meeting time per year for pointing clients to video content rather than presenting the same info in a live setting.

Incentivized