Hippo Video Review 2024: Plans, Features & Alternatives

In this Hippo Video review, we will cover some ways you can use Hippo Video, the features, plan costs, and alternative video marketing options.

What is Hippo Video?

Heralding themselves as a one-stop solution for video, the Hippo Video service offers the opportunity to enhance your traditional communications with customers and prospects with video messages.

The concept is simple: a personalized video will be noticed and get more attention than other traditional forms of communication.

While there are already plenty of ways to send videos, from simply recording and sending your own to using any one of a plethora of video and social media platforms, Hippo Video seeks to offer an integrated platform for business.

The Hippo Video website sits at the core of the service and might be all you need, but it also offers integrations with a host of popular services, so it is likely you can connect or integrate with the platform you already use.

The range of services they offer is impressive, meaning that a large corporate can incorporate Hippo Video into their Salesforce service, while a freelancer could use the add-on with a humble Gmail account.

As well as collecting standard analytics from your videos, such as views and watch times, the videos can also contain interactive elements, allowing recipients to easily respond.

Hippo Video also has the option of allowing your customers to record video responses, so you can engage with them via asynchronous video messages. To describe their videos Hippo has even trademarked the word ‘REAL’; relevant, emotionally engaging, actionable, and lively.

In practice, the service could replace more traditional forms of communication like email. However, for most users, the value will be in using Hippo to enhance specific communications by giving them more impact and power.

What Are Some Ways To Use Hippo Video?

At its most basic Hippo Video provides a form of asynchronous messaging like almost every other form of communication you will be using; you send a message and the recipient can review and respond in their own time.

At this level, it works like anything else you currently use, such as email or even snail mail.

The power of video, however, is in its impact.

Most users, therefore, use it alongside other forms of communication when this power would have the most effective outcome.

The obvious situations are likely to be sales or marketing, but any situation in which impact was needed would be relevant.

Hippo Video has a range of suggestions, and during your account set-up, you can indicate your main use, so the site can suggest appropriate tools and templates.

1. Real Estate Agents Can Use the Hippo Video Email Service

Most people, especially those who make buying decisions, are used to getting offers from virtually everywhere.

Whether it’s a cold call, email, or request to connect on LinkedIn many have become immune to the approaches.

Few, however, will have received a personalized video which is where the impact of a service like Hippo Video lies.

A Hippo Video email allows you to reach out, leaving no doubt that it’s a personal approach and not a mail merge.

Evidence from existing users suggests that the open and view rate of videos is significantly higher than from other, more traditional approaches. This, in turn, creates more interactions and sales.

2. You Can Use Hippo Video Email for Team Communications

While the video could be used for individual messages, making it a bit more personal than emails, there is also a power in using it to send team communications.

Anyone who has worked in a large organization will be familiar with the mass email that comes out from the leaders and managers and will also know that many go straight into the deleted items folder or, at best, get a cursory glance.

Instead of relying on the few that do read emails and pass on the important information, a video is likely to be viewed by far more people and, therefore, any information contained acted on.

3. You Can Use Hippo Video Email for Website Support

Using video to engage with customers and their support needs is another popular use.

Again, the benefit of video is in the impact. It is not just about solving a customer’s problem or issue but doing so in a way that is both personal and impactful.

A Hippo Video might, for example, talk the customer through an issue, using appropriate video to highlight steps.

Or Hippo Video can be used as a communication tool, so the customer can describe and show, in their own terms, what the problem is. In this case, the impact is helping improve customer satisfaction or resolve complaints.

4. You Can Use the Hippo Video Service for Training

Videos are far more powerful in a range of training situations, whether used internally or externally.

From personally introduced onboarding and induction, sharing how-to processes and tips or helping staff or clients learn new skills.

By combining the impact of personal videos alongside visual instruction Hippo Video offers a way of supplementing your existing training offers.

5. You Can Use Hippo Video for Education Purposes

Like training, educational users can benefit from the easy video offered by Hippo.

While many educators already do use video in their tuition, whether as a resource following lessons and lectures or as the main way of delivering educational content, Hippo Video offers a way to extend this.

While the analytics will allow teachers to assess who has ‘attended’, the platform’s asynchronous communication means that students can ask questions, and get answers, using videos.

By sharing the question-and-answer videos the educator can either create a resource or almost replicate a live classroom or lecture theatre as the shared videos spark students’ curiosity and further questions.

Hippo Video Review (Best Features)

HippoVideo comes with a rich feature set built into its website.

From there you can record a video using your webcam or even create a screen share in any browser (or almost any browser, Safari is not supported).

Once recorded, you are presented with your next steps. This might be as simple as copying the link from the video and sharing it.

Visitors to the link would be able to watch your video and leave comments.

However, HippoVideo also provides a set of tools to enhance the video and its impact.

The online editor allows you to perform edits, from a simple trim to editing together multiple clips and adding additional voice-overs.

It will also provide a range of options for the video, from generating GIF previews for the video or adding title cards, to adding tracking options and calls to action for the video’s recipients.

Hippo Video also provides easy options for publishing to common social platforms.

Hippo’s videos are also scalable, meaning that they can be used for one-to-one and one-to-many interactions.

Your sales team might use it to reach out to individual customers and clients with a personal video, while your marketing team could send out a video to a mailing list.

However, HippoVideo also offers personalization, so while everyone will get the same video, personal details can be displayed at key points, for example, a presentation with a personal sales offer featured in it.

A key feature, though, is Hippo Video’s ability to integrate with the services you already use.

This means you might manage mailings using the MailChimp integration, but then handle your communications through Salesforce.

HippoVideo integrates directly with over thirty other platforms, but even if your platform isn’t covered Zapier integration means that using their simple service, you can link Hippo to over two thousand more.

How Much Does Hippo Video Cost?

Aside from the limited featured free account, HippoVideo.io costs start at $15 a month for the starter plan and up to $65 a month for their Growth plan.

Pricing is, possibly, one of HippoVideo’s most complicated features, and it will probably take some thought to decide which price point or package is exactly right for you.

At the most basic level, Hippo offers three tiers (four if you include the basic free account): Starter, Growth, and Pro.

However, these are supplemented by different packages that each offer different feature sets.

The four main Hippo Video packages are Sales, Marketing, Support, and Team Communications.

There are, however, a set of packages for Personalization and Education as well as a top-level Enterprise package.

When you include free and custom options it means there are 24 options, when you combine this with the range of different features each may — or may not — have the choice might prove somewhat bewildering.

While a free seven-day Hippo Video trial is offered, this might not be enough to help decide exactly how you might use the service.

The main differentiators between the packages are things like integrations and the training that Hippo includes.

However, there are some oddities, for example, the Pro sales package includes a custom domain, but the marketing package does not.

So, while the packages might be a good guide for most people, it’s worth spending the time to investigate exactly what you are getting to make sure it includes the services and features you need.

Hippo Video prices range from $7 a month for a Team Communications Starter to $990 a month for Sales Enterprise.

Ignoring the Hippo Video Education and Personalization options the cheapest, and most limited, option is the Team Communications, then Support, with Sales and Marketing offering the most features, but also the highest costs.

The Hippo Video tiers cost $7-23 a month for Starter, $15-49 a month for Pro, and $23-99 a month for Growth.

What Are Some Hippo Video Alternatives?

If you are not sure if Hippo Video is right for you, you could also consider trying some Hippo Video alternatives such as BombBomb or Invideo. Both are top video email marketing platforms for real estate agents and businesses of all types that want to better engage with their audience.

Further Reading: If you are a real estate agent be sure to read our BombBomb review. While it’s more expensive, it’s video email features are a step above that of Hippo Video.

Since all three of these video marketing platforms offer no credit card free trials you could try a couple of different video marketing platforms and stick with the service you are most comfortable with…

Ready To Try Hippo Video?

Hippo Video is a powerful service with the potential to have a hugely positive impact on your business.

The somewhat complex pricing plan, in a world that tends to offer three or four simple tiers to everyone, is a bit annoying.

However, as customer testimonials on the site and reviews elsewhere attest, the benefits of the services can be huge and more than pay off your investment.