Otter.ai Review and Best Alternatives

Otter.ai is a transcription tool and AI meeting assistant that everyone is familiar with. And we will test Otter.ai to see if the hype is worth it. This article will go through how to use Otter.ai step by step. We will go through its features in-depth, including its ability to capture all your meetings in real time. Understand its pros and cons. And we will also be introducing the best alternative to Otter.ai that suits its limitations.

For example, Otter.ai is not capable of transcribing offline. So for those certain limitations Otter.ai has, we will be finding you the best alternative. This alternative will provide almost all the key features Otter.ai provides and more.

We also did a test between Jamie AI and Otter.ai assistant using this video to see which one transcribes the video better, what their strengths are, and how good their overall performance is.

You can check the test results at the end of the article. 👇

Let’s get right into it!

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Otter.ai vs. Jamie AI

If you simply want to know the best alternative for Otter.ai, here’s a quick overview. This comparison table highlights the features and limitations of each option. Check out the comparison table below for more details.

A Quick Comparison Table

‍Unique Advantages of Alternatives?

Unique Advantages of Jamie

• Offline transcription and AI-generated summaries.
• Works on any video platform without bots.
• AI Assistant Sidebar for past meeting notes and brainstorming.
• GDPR compliant with secure storage.

Unique Advantages of Otter.ai

• Live transcription and automated meeting notes during meetings.
• Mobile app for on-the-go.
• Pause auto-transcription.

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What Is Otter.ai?

Otter.ai, like Jamie, is an AI-powered meeting transcription assistant that gives you the tools to help summarize and extract key points and metrics to essentially convert your voice conversations into smart, searchable, and shareable notes. 

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Otter.ai Pros & Cons

Pros

• Real-time Transcription: Transcribe meetings, webinars, and more in real-time.
• Automated Summaries: After a conversation, get a detailed summary of it.
• Collaboration Tools: Easily share conversations, add comments, assign tasks, and engage meeting participants.
• Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly integrate third-party apps.
• Speaker Identification and Customization: Train Otter.ai to recognize specific voices and add custom vocabulary.
• Channels: Add conversations and invite relevant members into channels.

Cons

• Occasional Transcription Inaccuracies: Poor audio quality or members with heavier accents may decrease accuracy, leading to potential misunderstandings.
• Dependence on Internet Connectivity: Otter.ai runs on the browser, meaning any connectivity issue will affect Otter.ai’s real-time transcription service.
• Limited Free Plan Features: 300 monthly transcription minutes and a limit of 3 audio-to-transcription imports, may not suffice for users requiring extensive transcription services.
• Minimal Language Support: Only supports three languages. The languages being English (U.S. and U.K.), Spanish and French.

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Key Features

Otter Chat

Benefits

AI chatbot inside of Otter.ai that helps answer your questions. It can also generate content and interact with conversations during or after meetings. It also has access to your past meetings, so you can ask any questions about those meetings. And Otter bot will retrieve them for you.

Limitations

Otter Bot does not have the functionality to search the web to retrieve the latest information for you.

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OtterPilot

With the help of Otter Chat, OtterPilot can join meetings, record audio, write notes, capture slides, generate summaries, and answer your team’s questions. OtterPilot automatically captures slides during meetings, enhancing productivity by integrating visual content seamlessly into notes and transcriptions.

Here’s everything you need to know about OtterPilot.

Pros

• It joins your meetings as a bot.
• It helps transcribe the meeting in real-time.
• You can use the AI chat to ask anything about the ongoing meeting.

Cons

• A bit intrusive to have an Otter bot inside the meeting.
• In order to visually see the transcription, you have to minimize the screen or organize the browsers in a way for it to be visible.

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Channels

A central location for shared, topic-based, or team-based conversations, promoting collaboration and improving productivity.

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Integrations

Otter.ai integrates with Slack, Salesforce, HubSpot and Zoom. With Slack, you can invite contacts, share conversations, and get notifications right in your workspace. The Salesforce and HubSpot integrations automatically enrich data, deals, and prospects with insights from calls to boost sales and decision-making. The Zoom integration supports Pro, Business, or Enterprise accounts so you can transcribe and collaborate within meetings.

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How Otter.ai Works as an AI Meeting Assistant

Getting started

• Sign up for an Otter account at Otter.ai.
• Verify your email by clicking the validation link sent to your address.
• That’s it! Now let’s try setting up a meeting.

Meeting Setup

Note that for the best results, having your meetings in a room with minimal noise levels with a good-quality microphone is highly recommended. If you don’t have a mic, we’d suggest getting the Otter.ai mobile app.

There are several ways you can use Otter.ai to transcribe your meetings. Here are some ways!

1. Recording Through A Channel

• Step 01: Create a channel
• Step 02: Go to your new channel and invite members
• Step 03: Click Record to start a conversation.

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2. Recording Through an Instant Meeting

• Step 01: Create an instant meeting in Google Meet or other virtual meetings platforms.
• Step 02: Paste the meeting link in the upper right corner of the top bar.
• Step 03: Otter Bot will arrive to your meeting, and admit it inside the meeting.
• Step 04: Otter.ai can also record voice memos during instant meetings for later transcription.
• Step 05: And it will start transcribing your meeting.

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3. Adjusting Settings to Send Otter Pilot to Your Meetings

• Once you integrate your calendar with Otter.ai, it can see your upcoming meetings.
• Once you go and check your settings, you can toggle on when you want the bot to join in automatically.
• This way, Otter Pilot can join your meeting on your behalf too.

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After the Meeting: Automated Meeting Notes

Finally, you can access a detailed overview of your meeting, split into two main tabs:

Summary Tab

• Get a concise AI-generated summary of the meeting with action items and an outline of the top points discussed in your AI meeting notes.
• Otter.ai writes notes automatically during meetings, ensuring that all key points are captured.

Transcript Tab

• Get the full transcript and highlights of the conversation with keywords and speaker information.

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Otter.ai Pricing

• Basic: (Free)
• Pro: $16.99/month or $8.33/month billed annually
• Business: $30.00/month or $20.00/month billed annually
• Enterprise: Contact The Team

Pricing Plans Explained

The Pro plan offers significant value with expanded time-saving meeting features like OtterPilot and Automated Summary. The Business and Enterprise plans cater to larger teams and organizations with more advanced needs.

User Interface & Ease of Use

The experience we had with Otter.ai was quite pleasant with its discord-esque feel when navigating around, especially with its channels section similar to Discord. However, when it comes to actually recording a meeting, the UI, and the many recording options can leave the user confused about what they’re recording, where they are recording, or if they are recording at all. But with some time, it becomes a breeze.

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Testing Otter.ai's Transcription Accuracy against Jamie AI

Accuracy of Transcriptions & Summaries

Otter.ai claims to achieve around 98% accuracy; however, our testing shows otherwise. Note that Otter.ai does programmatically handle filler words such as "um", "ah", and "hmm", probably triggering some words that sound similar to be omitted.

To check the transcription/summary of each of the tools, please find them in the below links;

• Otter.ai's Transcription and Summary
• Jamie's Transcription and Summary

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Otter.ai

Speaker Identification ❌

• Speaker identification was not good at all. Some dialogues were mashed together even with very different voices.
• Even though we entered the speaker's name tags, it doesn't automatically update the speaker names. It says confirming speaker, and sometimes even erases the speaker tag I entered.
• It was quite frustrating to get the speaker tags in.
• A time-consuming task, all in all.

Transcription ❌

• There's no option to copy the entire transcription in one click
• Struggles to jump to the next voice. As some dialogues of the next voice are in the previous speaker's dialogues.
• Omits key information like
  • "Four Emmy wins"
  • Instead of saying "This is", it said "Christians"
  • Spelled Robert Herjavec wrong
• Captures the dialogue "Dreams can come true" by Lori ✅
• Captures the dialogue "Stand in the Circle" by Barbara ✅

Summary

The summary was quite disappointing and could improve a lot.

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Jamie

Speaker identification ✅

• You only need to identify the speaker once, and the rest automatically updates so fast. No hassle, just super fast.

Transcription ✅

• There's an option to copy the transcription in one click.
• Easily transitions to the next voice, with clear separation of dialogues between speakers, ensuring that each speaker's words are correctly attributed. (Minimal Errors)
• Contains key information like
  • "Four Emmy Wins"
  • Correct wordings for "This Is"
  • Spelled Robert Herjavec correctly
• Omits a dialogue "Dreams can come true" by Lori ❌
• Omits a dialogue "Stand in the circle" by Barbara ❌

Summary

• Very well-organized summary, with intelligent topic detection and topic coverage.

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Verdict

While both tools have their merits, Jamie AI outshines Otter.ai in several critical areas, particularly in speaker identification and transcription accuracy. Jamie’s ability to accurately attribute dialogues, include key information, and provide polished summaries with minimal effort makes it a more efficient choice for professional use.

On the other hand, Otter.ai, though capable of capturing conversational nuances like filler words, struggles with speaker attribution, transitioning between voices, and omitting crucial details, making it less reliable without significant manual editing.

For users prioritizing speed, accuracy, and clean outputs, Jamie AI is the better option. However, for verbatim transcription where every conversational nuance matters, Otter.ai might still hold value.

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Real User Reviews of Otter.ai

Positive Experiences

• Simplifies creating MOMs with clear summaries.
• Easy integration and user-friendly dashboard.
• Time-stamped transcription and various export formats in the premium version.

Negative Experiences

• Spotty transcription accuracy and clunky editing features.
• Limited features in the free and beta versions.
• Overwhelming interface and slow customer support.

Common Themes in User Feedback

• Great for note-taking and task follow-ups but struggles with real-time accuracy and interface usability, especially during everyday voice conversations.
• Premium version offers better features, but free users face restrictions.

Source: G2

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Who Should Use Otter.ai

Any individual (in or out of a professional setting) who wants to enhance productivity and streamline conversations should use Otter.ai.

Ideal Use Cases & User Profiles

• Professionals attending meetings
• Students and researchers
• Journalists and Interviewers
• Teams collaborating on projects
• Event organizers
• People who need to capture ideas on the go

Scenarios Where Otter.ai May Not Be the Best Fit

• Highly sensitive or confidential conversations
• Conversations that involve legal or professional advice
• Environments with excessive background noise
• Conversations with heavy use of specialized jargon
• Situations requiring 100% guaranteed accuracy
• Conversations in languages not supported by Otter.ai

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Final Verdict

Is Otter.ai the Right Choice for You?

Otter.ai is a great transcription tool if you like real-time transcription and collaboration during meetings, webinars, or interviews. Here are the highlights:

• Live Transcription: See notes generated in real-time during meetings.
• Collaboration Tools: Share, comment and assign tasks.
• Integration Options: Works with Slack, Zoom, Salesforce and HubSpot.

But our test between Otter.ai and Jamie AI showed some areas where Otter.ai fell short:

• Speaker Identification: Otter.ai combined dialogues and required users to input speaker tags multiple times, not ideal for team use.
• Transcription Accuracy: Otter.ai did well with conversational phrases but missed or misinterpreted some details like names and nuances.
• Requires Internet: Otter.ai needs an Internet connection, so not ideal for offline transcription.

Despite the cons, Otter.ai has some advantages that make it a great choice if you need live transcription and mobile-friendly tools for quick note-taking on the go.

Our Recommendation

Both Otter.ai and Jamie AI have their strengths and it’s up to you:

• Choose Otter.ai if you want live transcription and integrations with Slack and Zoom. Otter.ai’s mobile app is great for note-taking on the go. But be prepared for speaker identification issues and occasional transcription errors.
• Choose Jamie AI if you want transcription accuracy, offline capabilities, and a seamless experience.

Our tests showed Jamie was better at:

• Speaker Identification: Jamie’s system updates speaker tags automatically and accurately, saving time and effort.
• Transcription Quality: Jamie got more key details and minimized errors, making it more suitable for in-depth conversations.
• Summary Organization: Jamie’s summaries were well formatted and actionable, easy to review meeting content.
• Advanced Features: Jamie’s AI Assistant Sidebar has extra features like brainstorming, drafting emails, and accessing past meeting insights – all in one tool.

In the end, Otter.ai is good for users who want real-time features and integrations, and Jamie AI is better for those who want accuracy, privacy, and advanced AI tools to simplify workflows.

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FAQs: Otter.ai

How do I log in to Otter AI?

To log in to Otter AI, visit Otter.ai and click on the "Log In" button at the top right corner. You can log in using your email and password, or connect through a Google, Microsoft, or Apple account.

How does Otter AI handle transcription?

Otter AI uses AI technology to transcribe the audio in real-time or after a meeting. It identifies speakers, captures keywords, and generates detailed summaries. It supports live transcriptions during meetings and also processes audio files that you upload.

Is Otter AI free to use?

Yes, Otter AI offers a free plan with basic features. The free plan includes 300 monthly transcription minutes and allows you to import up to 3 audio files per month for transcription. For more advanced features, you can upgrade to a paid plan.

What are the best alternatives to Otter AI?

Alternatives to Otter AI include Jamie AI, which offers offline transcription, advanced speaker identification, and AI-powered summaries. Other options include Rev, Temi, and Sonix, each providing unique features tailored to different transcription needs.

How can I use the Otter AI browser extension?

The Otter AI Chrome extension integrates with Google Meet to provide live transcription during your video calls. Once installed, open Google Meet, start a meeting, and enable the Otter extension to begin live transcriptions.

How do I sign up for Otter AI?

To sign up for Otter AI, go to Otter.ai and click the "Sign Up" button. You can sign up using your email, Google, Microsoft, or Apple account. After verifying your email, you can start using the service immediately.

What features does Otter AI offer?

Otter AI provides features like real-time transcription, speaker identification, automated summaries, and integration with platforms like Slack, Zoom, and Google Meet. It also supports exporting transcripts and managing collaborative channels for team use.

What is the import limit in Otter AI?

On the free plan, Otter AI limits you to 3 audio file imports per month for transcription. Paid plans offer higher or unlimited import limits, depending on the plan you choose.