In the age of social media, creating visual content is necessary to get your message to your audience.
Many businesses and marketers use animations and similar content to educate their audience and increase user engagement. There are plenty of video creation tools on the internet today, and among the most popular ones are Toonly and Powtoon.
If you’re unsure which one to pick, check out this Toonly vs Powtoon comparison. We’ll dive deeper into their features, pricing, pros, and cons to help you choose the best platform for your business.
Toonly vs Powtoon Overview
Here’s a quick summary of how Toonly and Powtoon compare in terms of features, applications, benefits, and drawbacks:
| Toonly | Powtoon | |
| Applications | Explainer videos, animated clips | Presentations, video content |
| Features | Designer-made backgrounds Extensive props gallery Characters | Slide to Video Conversions Animated Templates Branded Characters |
| Pros | Affordable pricing plans Extremely simple to use Plenty of professional, unique images 30-day money-back guarantee Video exporting is easy | Easy to use Lets you build custom characters Outstanding library of tools and elements Ready-made templates Highly customizable Has a free trial |
| Cons | No free trial Lacks custom animation options No cloud-based option | Plans are a bit expensive Complicated exporting feature |
| Price | $39 to $69 a month | $20 to $100 a month |
What Is Toonly?
Toonly is a video creation software created by the same people who created the whiteboard animation software Doodly. It is known for its drag-and-drop feature that enables you to create professional animated video presentations and explainer videos easily.
Unlike Doodly, there are no whiteboard animation videos. Everything you need, from the characters to music, and other elements, can be found on the platform. It also features preloaded scenes with built-in animation.
Features
What makes Toonly different from other video creation platforms is that it focuses on animations. You can make an explainer video without any experience in the field.
In addition, you will find plenty of Toonly reviews and tutorials to help you get started with your project. Let’s take a closer look at the main benefits of using this animation software.
- Ease of Use
As mentioned earlier, Toonly has a simple drag-and-drop function and a gentle learning curve.
You don’t need any technical background to create an animation. All you need is a little creativity to make a winning presentation that will engage your audience.
To start with Toonly, you must create an account and install the software on your computer. Then, select a background or scene you want to use.
You can drag and drop texts, images, and audio if you want to appear in the animation. You can even record a voiceover straight into your content if you want.
Once you’re done, you can save and export your video and share it.
- Extensive Props Gallery
How do you make an animation without props? No, you can’t.
Toonly boasts an extensive gallery of props custom-made by Bryzen’s team of professional graphic artists. There are no stock photos. All the images you will have are unique.
Toonly also allows you to upload your props if the images are in PNG, GIF, and JPG formats.
- Designer-Made Backgrounds
Toonly has plenty of animated backgrounds you can use for your content. They come in various scenes, solid colors, and gradients.
However, you cannot move elements in the scene backgrounds. All you will have are static images.
Good thing the software allows you to upload your custom scenes or create your own and upload them to the platform.
- Library of Characters
The platform shines well in its character library. You can choose characters from different sexes, ethnicities, ages, and the like.
The customizable branding drag-and-drop function makes creating fun characters exceptionally easy. You can also choose it according to themes. For example, you can search for “policemen”, “superheroes”, “doctors”, and more.
Besides these, you can find Toonly characters that are moving or talking. They have many character animations, such as clapping, doing yoga, saying “Hi”, exercising, or dancing.
To add character expression, you just need to right-click on the character and choose the animation you want. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work on the characters you upload.
Want to make a character talk in your video? Toonly allows you to do that. Simply right-click the character, select “lip-sync animation” from the drop-down menu, and then choose an audio clip.
With lip-syncing enabled, the character’s mouth will start moving according to your selected sound—no need for manual input.
- Audio Track and Voiceover Options
Toonly contain a library of background music but you can also upload your own, as long as it’s in MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV, or AAC format.
What’s interesting is the voiceover feature. You can record your voice and perfectly sync it with your animation.
Moreover, you can modify the audio tracks, although not much. Among the things you can do are adjust the volume, enable the “playthrough”, and apply a fade-out effect.
- Text Animations
Toonly lets you choose from four preinstalled fonts and up to five text animations, but you can also upload your own font. You can customize the text animations by changing colors and opacity, adding a time limit on the screen, and changing the start and end font sizes.
Unfortunately, the software doesn’t allow you to use RGB codes, so you must stick to the color options provided.
- Video Export Options
Your explainer video can be downloaded in varying formats and exported to different devices and software. You can even upload them directly to your social media page or website.
The software supports MKV, WebM, MP4, and OGG formats. Toonly doesn’t state a limit on the length of videos you can make.
However, do note that increasing the length and quality of your video will also increase the rendering time.
- Support
Apart from the overwhelming Toonly tutorials scattered on the internet, Bryxen has created a comprehensive knowledge base to help you make impressive content. Also, when you buy Toonly, you will get a series of video tutorials and an FAQs page for common issues.
You will also be given access to a support ticket system and Toonly’s Facebook group during online support business hours.
Toonly Pricing
Toonly currently offers two plans: Standard and Enterprise.
The Standard plan, designed for freelancers, coaches or educators, and independent users, has a monthly subscription fee of $39. It features 30 character images, 17 character animations, over 1,000 prop images, 71 backgrounds, and 10 premade scenes.
On the other hand, the Enterprise plan costs $69. It comes with 82 images, 30 character animations, over 2,000 prop images, 139 backgrounds, 20 premade scenes, 101 scene transitions, and over 140 background audio.
A critical difference between the Standard and Enterprise plans is that the latter gives you access to the Toonly Club. It’s considered the holy grail of Toonly where you can access new characters and props according to the current trends.
These new elements are added to the Toonly Club every month, allowing you to produce unique videos without feeling restricted.
What Is Powtoon?
Powtoon is another video creation platform that was first released in 2011.
Unlike Toonly, it is a web-based program which means you don’t need to download anything on your computer. You can use it to create explainer-style videos, social media videos, and interactive presentations that you can use in marketing and education, among others.
Currently, 96% of Fortune 500 companies, including Microsoft, Google, IBM, and Cisco, use the app.
Features
Powtoon has an array of tools and templates and a good collection of modern and relevant clipart. Let’s check out the major features of Powtoon.
- Cloud-Based Platform
Powtoon is a user-friendly cloud-based platform designed for businesses and organizations of varying sizes. When you sign up for Powtoon, you will access a comprehensive media library of images, stock videos, and audio tracks which you can use for your marketing videos.
- Professional Presentations
Powtoon allows you to turn slides into rich video content. However, it’s possible to work the other way. You can upload a video and add more media to it.
This feature makes the platform highly suitable for online educators. You can teach through a pre-recorded video with links to reading and other resources and overlaid images you can point to virtually. You can also add text to the screen.
- Animated Templates
Creating videos on Powtoonis simple. The app has hundreds of professionally designed animated video templates.
Choose a template or create a new animated video from scratch to get started. Templates are editable.
The platform has an intuitive video editor that lets you customize your video with illustrations, animation, music, colors, custom characters, and other graphics. Powtoon has many categories: sales, training, learning and development, education, marketing, and more.
- Video Messaging
The platform has a video capture functionality that lets you record your screen, webcam, or both. After that, you can enhance your content by adding your logo, colors, and other visuals, including texts.
Once done, you can download your video message, embed it on your website, or upload it directly on multiple channels, particularly your social media platforms. This feature is ideal for marketing, sales, customer support, IT, and executive teams.
- Branded Characters
A unique and remarkable difference between Toonly vs Powtoon is that the latter allows you to create your characters. You can easily match the characters with your brand or presentation gaol with endless combinations of clothing, facial features, hairstyles, and accessories.
What’s more, the platform features 35 different poses and expressions to elevate your video and visual content.
- PowerPoint to Video Presentation
Another cool feature of Powtoon is its ability to convert simple presentations into engaging videos. All you need to do is import your PowerPoint file and let the app do its thing.
Once converted, you can add royalty-free footage, animation, images, music, characters, and voiceover to your video before exporting it.
Powtoon Pricing
Powtoon has three pricing plans, namely:
- Pro: Priced at $20 per month, this plan provides five premium exports per month, up to ten minutes of full HD video, and 2 GB of storage.
- Pro+: This plan has all the features of the Pro version plus unlimited premium exports, up to 20 minutes of full HD video, and 10 GB of storage. It’s priced at $60 a month.
- Agency: This plan covers all Pro features plus 100 GB of storage and up to 30 minutes of full HD videos. It costs $100 per month.
By the way, Powtoon has a free version that you can try to see if the software works.
Powtoon vs Toonly Pros and Cons
Now, let us take a look at the pros and cons of each video creation software.
Toonly Pros:
- Affordable pricing plans
- Extremely simple to use
- Plenty of professional, unique images
- 30-day money-back guarantee
- Video exporting is easy
Toonly Cons:
- No free plan
- Lacks custom animation options
- No cloud-based option
Powtoon Pros:
- Easy to use
- Lets you build custom characters
- Outstanding library of tools and elements
- Ready-made templates
- Highly customizable
- Has a free trial
Powtoon Cons:
- Plans are a bit expensive
- Complicated exporting feature
Toonly vs Powtoon: Which Should You Get?
When deciding on Powtoon vs Toonly, it all boils down to your content creation needs, goals, and budget.
If you do a lot of explainer videos and require basic character-building tools and animation video features, Toonly is an excellent option. However, if you want a more comprehensive video creation software that lets you create branded characters, transform slide presentations into video, and more, Powtoon fits like a glove.
It’s also a great platform if you do a lot of animated videos, training documentation webinars, and explainer videos.
Toonly vs Powtoon FAQs
Here are answers to common questions regarding Powtoon vs Toonly to help you make a more informed decision:
1. Which is better Toonly or Doodly?
While both are created by the same house, Doodly is a whiteboard animation software suitable for creating educational content. Meanwhile, Toonly is a video creation platform that’s best for humanizing a brand or company.
The latter is also useful for creating explainer videos as it is more dynamic. With Toonly, you can bring characters to life, while in Doodly, you must add strong narration and graphics to create engaging content.
2. Who should use Toonly?
Toonly is ideal for business owners and marketers interested in creating animations as part of their content. Small business owners, in particular, will find plenty of value in using this software as it has fairly inexpensive plans.
3. Who should use Powtoon?
Powtoon is ideal for brands, educators, and organizations that require the ability to create professional presentations and videos. It has features designed for education and business purposes, perfect for educational assessment and content delivery.
4. Is Powtoon good for animation?
Since it’s packed with highly customizable templates, images, and characters, Powtoon is great for animation. Whether you’re looking to make YouTube animation videos, explainer videos, video tutorials, or simple animated clips, the platform has the features you need for your project.
5. Can you customize characters in Toonly?
Yes, but not to the extent you would with Powtoon.
In Animation Settings, you will see the option to Change Colors. Under this, you will see several options to adjust your characters and choose a specific color code you want for the character’s complexion or clothing.
