The demand for personalized and instant video content keeps rising in today’s ever-evolving digital landscape. Aiding this shift is a host of AI-powered video generator tools that claim to cater to various use cases. One such contender is Synthesia.
This niche platform allows users to create avatar-centric videos from text. It looks like a nifty tool, but does it live up to the hype, especially when it comes to offering users personalized video generation? Can it be easily integrated into existing platforms?
In this comprehensive Synthesia review, we dissect its features, evaluate the pros and cons, and exploret some strong competitors to help you make an informed decision.
Join us as we delve into the world of AI video generation and help you determine if Synthesia is the right fit for your needs.
What is Synthesia Used For?
Synthesia offers an API that allows developers to integrate personalized video creation into SaaS applications. It can generate videos from text, serving as virtual spokespeople for sales training, onboarding, marketing, and customer support.
Here’s how it works:
- Add your Synthesia API key to your platform.
- Users insert their text into the interface by cutting and pasting, typing directly into the text box, uploading PowerPoint presentations, or using the Synthesia generator to create the script for the video.
- Users choose a layout and an avatar. Further customizations allow for adding logos, brand assets, images, videos, and more.
- Users hit the generate button to create the video and can then share the video through email, via an embed link, or a download.
Synthesia Review
Let’s take a closer look at Synthesia’s features and answer some frequently asked questions users have about the platform to help them make an informed decision.
Synthesia Features
- AI Avatars: Offers over 150 ethnically diverse AI avatars or custom avatars on more expensive plans.
- Text-to-Speech: Transform text into voice-overs.
- Voice Cloning: Replicates users’ voices and pairs them with an avatar.
- AI Script Assistant: Their Chat GPT-inspired tool helps produce scripts for videos.
- Language Variability: Support in over 120 languages.
- Screen Recorder: Built-in screen recording.
- Multimedia Libraries: Houses video templates, images, icons, soundtracks.
- PowerPoint Import: Add voice-overs to PowerPoint presentations.
Synthesia Pros
Synthesia offers a modern approach to video production integration, with benefits including:
- No film production: Synthesia enables your users to create videos from text alone, without the need to get on camera.
- Multimedia options: There are over 65 video templates to use as a base for content, including access to royalty-free images, footage, music, icons, shapes, etc.
- Large menu of avatars: Synthesia provides a wide range of ethnically diverse stock AI avatars and languages for global content needs.
- Automatic embed updates: When users update a video via the platform, it automatically updates on embedded landing pages.
Synthesia Cons
Despite simplifyingavatar video creation, Synthesia has some serious limitations, including:
- Unrealistic Avatars: The avatars lack different facial expressions and can’t show realistic human emotion, so the videos tend to come off as robotic and uncanny. This can greatly impact user experience, reducing the effectiveness of your platform.
- Lack of media blending: Avatar facial movements slow down to sync with variables and phrases, making their speech clunky and unnatural. Unfortunately, this can make the experience feel disingenuous, devaluing the user experience even more.
- Limited scalability: While producing Synthesia videos could be more efficient than filming videos, users still have to manually produce each video. This lack of scalability means that the individual number of uses is very limited .
- No personalization: While one-off video generation can be helpful in some circumstances, it doesn’t offer the same benefits as one-to-one videos that are customized to each user. Personalized videos have higher engagement, open rates, and viewing times than generic videos…and can boost conversions by 500%.
Synthesia Cost
Synthesia offers two pricing plans:
- Free
- Starter: $18/mo
- Creator: $64/mo
- Business: Pricing is not publicly available
Synthesia FAQs
Now let’s tackle a few common queries developers may have about Synthesia:
Is Synthesia a good AI?
For developers looking to enable users to convert PowerPoint decks into videos or produce videos featuring avatars, then Synthesia may be useful as a video marketing software.
However, there are some glaring weaknesses with this platform. The avatars themselves are quite unnatural since they don’t have facial expressions and their speech is robotic. There’s also room for improvement in the syncing of the avatar’s speech and lip movements because they don’t always align.
Developers should note that these limitations may reduce user engagement, making it harder to deliver personalized, immersive experiences.
Is the Synthesia app safe?
While generally safe, some user reviews report issues with bugs, refund processing, and limited customer support. Developers relying on smooth workflows might face frustrations if these issues arise during integration.
Is Synthesia free or paid?
Synthesia offers a free plan with limited capabilites.
For developers looking to test a more powerful video generation API, consider Tavus. You can test their life-like avatars for free.
Best Synthesia Alternatives
While Synthesia works for creating one-off videos featuring avatars, you may be looking for an alternative video marketing software that enables your users to create videos of real humans, with better scalability and measurable ROI.
1. Tavus API
Tavus offers developers a powerful AI video platform that enables users to create completely personalized videos for audiences of any size–from a hundred to a million. It’s the only AI video generator that seamlessly blends synthetic media with real voices and faces, helping developers enhance their apps with engaging, lifelike videos that drive conversion.
Tavus’ AI automatically lip-syncs words and facial movements to the audio, building realistic personal connections with your audience–all in HD.
Here’s how it works:
- Users record one video on the Tavus platform with a message they want to share with their selected audience. This video becomes a template for the rest of their videos.
- They choose the variables that will change for each recipient. This will vary depending on the use case but may include a customer milestone or a recently purchased product.
- Tavus uses advanced AI lip-syncing and voice cloning to make as many individualized videos as needed at the highest quality.
- Users send their videos via nearly any tool or communication channel you offer, including LinkedIn, e-mail, SMS, social media platforms, or within your product.
- Automate videos within product workflows. Tavus automatically sends out videos to recipients based on a predetermined event–without any additional input required from you. It works directly with 100+ top marketing, sales, ecommerce, and communication platforms so you can focus on your platform.
Key Features:
- Best-in-class HD video lip-syncing and AI voice cloning capture emotion and recreate voices and faces.
- Generate customized videos without the burden of producing countless unique versions, and experience higher engagement rates and boosts in email click-through rates, response rates, and overall higher ROI.
- Ultimate scalability so you users reach as many people as needed without requiring more time investment
- Fully customizable templates, personalized video backgrounds, and personalized GIF previews for videos
- Drag-and-drop landing pages with customizable CTAs, colors, titles, logos, URLs, etc
How does Synthesia compare against Tavus? Let’s take a look.
Tavus vs Synthesia
While both platforms enable AI video creation, Tavus and Synthesia serve different purposes. Synthesia creates one-off avatar videos, whereas Tavus offers scalable solutions, integrating seamlessly into apps for automated video campaigns. We’ll dive into some of the differences here:
- Humans vs Avatars: Tavus lets users appear in videos with their real face and voice, building personal connections. Synthesia relies on generic avatars, often criticized for sounding robotic and lacking emotional resonance.
- Personalization opportunities: Synthesia isn’t focused on personalizing messages to individuals, and therefore doesn't offer functionality in this area. With Tavus, the personalization opportunities are infinite. Users can include embeddable CTAs, custom video backgrounds, personalized preview thumbnails, white labeled URLs, and personalize as many dynamic variables as they need.
- AI Quality: Tavus harnesses the power of advanced AI audio technology, ultra-realistic facial cloning, an industry-leading lip-sync engine, and seamless synthetic media blends to produce the most precise AI videos available today. Unfortunately, Synthesia’s avatars leave a lot to be desired in this regard. Some reviewers share that the avatar quality is poor, with some sounding completely artificial. The inability to add pauses or any inflection results in poor human imitation.
- Scalability: Tavus automates video production, generating as many videos as needed from one template, without extra effort. In contrast, every video created on the Synthesia platform needs manual input. It could, theoretically, cut down on video production time somewhat, but users still need to dedicate someone or a team to the function of creating videos.
Best for:
Tavus is the ideal choice for developers and platforms integrating scalable video communication across various workflows, whether for campaigns, marketing, onboarding, training, recruitment, and beyond.
With a 3x jump in response rates, 85% increase in purchasing, and a 500% increase in conversions, Tavus helps apps engage users and drive results.
Let Tavus help your users connect, engage, and convert.
2. Rephrase.ai
Rephrase.ai is a text-to-video platform that creates personalized videos through a digital avatar. Users pick their digital avatars, type in their desired message, and then the AI generates the videos.
To personalize, users change the variables within the script and then generate each video. However, don’t expect a polished experience. Similar to Synthesia, the AI-generated voices can be robotic (like Siri or Alexa), not quite grasping nuances in human speech. Also, without real media blending, the lip-syncing movements look unnatural.
Key Features:
- Template creator and library
- File sharing
- Real-time streaming
- Editing tools for video and audio
- Subtitles and captions to videos
Best for: SMBs who want to create personalized videos with avatars.
3. DeepBrain AI
DeepBrain AI is a technology company specializing in AI-driven video generation. A nearly identical offering to Synthesia, their cloud-based platform enables users to generate AI avatar videos from text. With the library of video and text templates, DeepBrain AI aims to enable its users to create videos quickly, however, there are no personalization functions and users create each video manually.
Key Features:
- Generate videos from existing text, a URL, PowerPoints, Chat-GPT (embedded within the Deepbrain interface), or their script templates
- Use video templates to streamline production, or add your own elements for a custom experience
- Choose from a wide variety of over 100 avatars and more than 80 languages
- Use text-to-speech to create audio voice-overs or videos
Best for: Businesses that want to manually create avatar videos from text.
4. Lumen5
Lumen5 is video creation software that features a drag-and-drop interface. Users add their text (blog posts, url’s, or their own text), and choose from a library of customizable templates, images, music, and video footage. The experience is similar to creating a slide deck that their AI then stitches into one seamless video.
Lumen5 also offers a “Talking Head” feature where users upload a pre-recorded video of themselves and further enhance it with visual overlays, call-outs, and automatically generated captions.
Key Features:
- Turn written content, like blog posts, whitepapers, websites, articles, etc. into videos
- Automatic generation of videos from blog posts
- Editing tools and a library of multimedia inputs allow for further customization
- Enhance talking head videos with text overlays and call-outs
Best for: The social media and marketing teams of enterprise brands looking to repurpose their static text content into videos.
Is Synthesia.io Worth It?
In the end, Synthesia can be a simple option if you want users to make individual videos with avatars and leave it at that.
However, when it comes to integrating truly authentic, personalized, and scalable content withing applications, it can’t perform. There's a crucial element of humanlike touch and nuanced personalization that only Tavus can offer.
Plus, Synthesia’s only true feature is creating one-off avatar-starring videos. They’re not built to help teams ambitiously scale.
Whereas that’s exactly what Tavus was designed for: enabling users tocreate and scale campaigns throughout their entire customer journey. A quick 30-second template becomes the foundation for countless unique videos triggered by user actions—whether onboarding, lead follow-up, or customer engagement.
At Tavus, we genuinely believe in fostering a deep personal connection with audiences, blending the power of AI with the warmth of human interaction. Our commitment to personalized video content can provide a unique, richer experience that truly engages all users.
While Synthesia may be a viable tool within its niche, we'd like to invite you to experience Tavus. Discover the difference and the value we can bring to your platform — step into the future of offering truly scalable personalized video content with Tavus.
