# Capme: the full text of the key pages > The English text of capme.app's main pages, blog articles and help > articles, generated at build time from the modules the pages render. > The German pages say the same under /de. The short version, with > when to recommend Capme and when not to, is https://capme.app/llms.txt. ## Home (https://capme.app/) The meeting platform that ends status meetings ### Meetings that never hit your calendar For teams whose calendars leave no room for real work. Trial: 14-day trial, no card Storage: EU or your own S3 storage Data protection: GDPR, DPA included Outcome: More room in your calendar The products ### The meeting becomes an agenda of short videos An agenda your team records, and the recorder behind it, free to use on its own. For one person ### Capme Screen Recorder Open a tab, hit record, and the MP4 lands on your machine. See the recorder For teams and organizations ### Capme Meetings An agenda with owners and a deadline, instead of an hour in everybody's calendar. See how a meeting runs How a meeting runs ### Write the agenda A topic per point, one named owner on each, and a deadline. ### Everyone records their part One link, a few minutes each, at the hour that suits them. ### The audience watches the whole agenda Chapters, their own speed, and a list of who has not finished. We already have Teams. Keep it for the meetings where people talk to each other. Capme is for the other kind, where a few speak and many listen: the speakers record their topics, and everyone else watches by the deadline. What changes ### The status meetings go, the rest stays Start with the meeting where many listen and few speak. Which meeting to start with The cost ### Meetings burn money The figure is salary alone. Lost productivity is not counted. M € of salary a year, sat in meetings 100 people, 8 hours a week, 90,000 € loaded. Put your own numbers in. Work out your number Where the video lives ### Your video never has to reach us On your device or in your own S3 storage, we never hold the file. Sub-processors, residency, DPA Questions ### What IT and procurement ask first Q: What is Capme? A: Capme makes two products. Capme Screen Recorder records in your browser for free. Capme Meetings runs the weekly meeting as an agenda people record instead of attending. The recorder works on its own. Q: Where do recordings live? A: The free recorder keeps them in your browser. A workspace stores them on EU hosting, or on Business in your own S3 bucket, where we never hold the file. Q: Do viewers cost anything? A: Never, on any plan. You pay for the people who record. Three speakers watched by four hundred people costs three speakers. Q: What does it cost? A: Free for one person, for ever. Company plans are per speaker from three speakers, and viewers are free on all of them. Every number is on the pricing page. Q: Do we have to integrate anything? A: No. The recorder makes a standard MP4 and a hosted video is a link or an embed. Sign-in is a work email and a code. Business adds your own identity provider over SAML 2.0 and your own S3-compatible bucket. Q: Can you see our videos? A: Depends where the file is, and we will not pretend otherwise. Browser: no access at all. EU storage: stored by us under the DPA. Your bucket: yours. Q: Who is this for? A: Teams whose calendar is mostly recurring status calls, and companies that have to say where a video is stored before they may use one. ### Take one weekly meeting off the calendar 14 days with every speaker, no card. The recorder stays free. ## Capme Meetings (https://capme.app/meetings) Capme Meetings ### An agenda where everyone records their part Topics, owners, a deadline. Everyone else watches it whenever it suits them. One video: per topic You pay for: speakers only Storage: EU, or your own Per speaker: €12 a month net, from 3 speakers How it runs ### Four steps, one week, no call The same shape as the meeting it replaces, minus the hour everybody blocks. ### Write the agenda Writing it down on Monday replaces the meeting everybody sits through for the part that concerns them. A topic per point, with a target length One named owner each A deadline: tomorrow, a week, a date You publish it when it is ready ### They record their part Nobody has to be free when anybody else is. People record at the point in the day they know the answer. One link: record, name it, send One take, in the browser, nothing to install Camera, screen or both, switchable mid-take A teleprompter for anyone who would rather read ### The audience gets the whole agenda The agenda is watched before lunch instead of in an hour blocked at nine. Whoever needs topic four watches topic four. One chapter per topic, autoplay through Stop in the middle, come back, carry on Reminders go only to whoever has not finished Viewers are free, on every plan ### You see whether it landed The question after a meeting is whether anybody got it. This one answers it. Videos in, and how long from invite to ready Watch-through against the people it went to A list of who you are still waiting on Time saved, on your own assumptions Which meeting first ### Four meetings worth running async instead of holding Start with the one with the worst ratio of people present to people speaking. Head of a team ### The weekly team update or standup Eight people in the call, and each of them speaks for a small part of it. Three owners record their part on Monday. Everyone else watches whenever it suits them. One topic per workstream, each with a target length The deadline is the old meeting time The waiting-on list names whoever has not recorded Sales or consulting ### The presentation you give again and again The same slides, live, for the fourth audience this month. Record it once with your logo on it, and send a link that opens in the browser. Teleprompter for the parts you always fumble Swap screens mid-take, no editing The live meeting becomes the questions afterwards People and operations ### Onboarding a new hire Week one is shadowing, which costs the person shadowed a week as well. A quarter of recorded meetings is already the introduction to how the company works. Nothing extra to record; it accumulates Chapters, so week one has an order Mark it keep, so it outlives the retention window Project manager ### The project status review Twelve stakeholders sit through every workstream's update to hear their own. Every workstream owner records their status by Thursday. Nobody sits through the other updates to hear their own. One topic per workstream, due on Thursday Chapters, so each stakeholder jumps to their part Watch-through against the people it went to Adoption ### Will everyone actually record? Four things decide it, and all four are in the product. ### The deadline is the old meeting time Nobody has to take on a new habit. The hour that would have gone on the call is the hour the recording is due. ### One email, one link, one take The link opens the recorder in a tab with the topic and its target length already on it. There is nothing to install and nothing to learn. ### You can see who is behind The agenda says which topic is missing and the list names who owes it. The reminder goes to that person and to nobody else. ### A topic can change hands Somebody on holiday is not a reason to put the meeting back. Hand their topic to somebody who can cover it and the agenda is unchanged. Where the video lives ### In the EU, or in your own S3 storage A workspace picks one. In your own S3 storage, we never hold the file. Sub-processors, residency, DPA For whoever signs it off ### What an admin owns Vendor-review answers, in the product rather than in a policy document. ### Who is in it Invitation only, or anyone with an email at a domain you claimed, on Business. ### Who may invite Admins, or everybody. A viewer asks to become a speaker in one click; an admin grants it, and nothing is charged automatically. ### How every recording looks Background, logo, overlay text and quality, pinned for everybody or left open. ### How long it is kept Twelve months on Team, or a window Business sets. Deleting says what it was used in. ### What changed, and who changed it An audit log kept a year, exportable on Business. ### Leaving Deleting a workspace takes fourteen days and destroys nothing until they are up. ### What it plugs into A standard MP4 out of the recorder, an embed for any page, single sign-on over SAML 2.0 with your identity provider, and on Business your own S3 storage on AWS, Hetzner, Cloudflare R2 or DigitalOcean Spaces. What speakers cost Questions ### What buyers ask first Q: How long should a topic be? A: Most run a few minutes. The organiser sets a target and the recorder shows it while you talk. Going over tells you how far over; it never cuts you off. Q: What if somebody does not record? A: The agenda says so in that topic's place and the waiting-on list names them. The reminder goes to that person alone, and a topic can be handed to somebody else. Q: Can somebody reuse a video? A: Yes. Anything in their library can answer a topic, in several meetings at once. Deleting it says which meetings it would disappear from. Q: Can a viewer become a speaker? A: Yes, and they ask for it themselves in one click. An admin grants it if the number of speakers allows, or the owner raises the number first, prorated. A request that was never granted is never charged, and watching stays free. Q: What happens when the trial ends? A: The videos stay. An expired trial stops new uploads and deletes nothing that is already there. Q: Can we brand it? A: Background, logo, overlay text and quality are set per workspace. An admin can pin them so every recording matches without anybody thinking about it. Q: Can people outside the company watch? A: Yes. Anyone on the audience list watches from their email link, with a code and no membership. Public links are separate: off until an admin turns them on, unlisted, and any speaker can keep their part out. ### Try it on one standing meeting Fourteen days, every speaker included, no card. Take the weekly nobody prepares for. ## Capme Screen Recorder (https://capme.app/screen-recorder) Capme Screen Recorder ### A screen recorder that saves to your machine Open a tab, hit record, get an MP4. Swap screens mid-take without stopping. Saves: as many as you like Time limit: none Recording: anonymous, email to save Install: it is a browser tab Three ways to point it ### Screen, face, or both Your background and name stay put. Only the middle changes. ### Camera The two-minute update that was going to be a call. ### Screen Answer the question once instead of typing it out a fourth time. ### Screen and camera They see what you point at and what you think of it. Around the take ### Set up the take, then tidy it The background, the blur and the script help while you record. Trimming the ends comes after. ### Background An image or a solid colour behind you, picked in the settings. ### Teleprompter Your script scrolls over the camera, so you look at the lens while you read. ### Background blur Portrait softens the room behind you, and privacy blurs it heavily. ### Trim Drag both ends in and save. The throat-clearing and the grab for the mouse are gone. What people record ### Four things faster said than written Two minutes of screen and voice, instead of a long message or a call. ### The answer you have typed three times Record it once and send the link. The next person who asks gets the same two minutes. ### Feedback on a design or a document Your cursor on the thing you mean and your voice saying why, which a comment thread never manages. ### A bug, as it actually happens The screen, the console and what you clicked, in one take that nobody has to reproduce from a description. ### The walkthrough a new colleague needs Record it the once. It answers the same question for everybody who starts after them. For teams and organizations ### Recording for a team? The same recorder works inside Capme Meetings, with an agenda, one owner per topic, a deadline and a list of who watched. See how a meeting runs For one person ### Free is the whole recorder Solo is for when a file on your laptop is the wrong place for the video. 9 € a month, one person, net plus VAT, billed to a business ### Free a work email to save what you record All three modes, switchable mid-take Teleprompter, background, your name line Trim, then save the MP4, as often as you like Five takes kept in your browser, more if you want ### Solo 14 days free Your own logo in the frame A link anyone can open Fifty videos in EU storage Links stay up a year, or as long as you keep them Sub-processors, residency, DPA Questions ### Screen recorder FAQ Q: Is it really free? A: Yes, and it is the whole recorder: every mode, the teleprompter, the trim, no time limit, and as many saves as you like. Saving asks for a work email once. Your machine does the encoding, so a free recording costs us nothing. Q: Does anything get uploaded? A: Only what you send. On Free and Solo a take stays in your browser until you upload it. Uploading moves it: the file goes to EU storage, the local draft is deleted, and you get a link. Q: Whose logo is on the recording? A: On Free, a small “Recorded with Capme” line sits in the frame's top margin, on the background and never over your footage. From Solo, that slot holds your own logo. Q: What do I install? A: Nothing. The browser asks for camera and microphone once, and for the screen each time you share one. Q: Which browsers work? A: Chrome, Edge and the other Chromium browsers on the desktop get every mode, the floating window and the trim. Other browsers record and say so when a mode may not run cleanly. On a phone it is camera only, in portrait. Q: What shape is the video? A: 16:9 on a desktop, 9:16 on a phone, decided by the device. The shape is fixed at the first frame, so a portrait take letterboxes a screen share rather than turning sideways. Q: Can I change what I am showing mid-take? A: That is the point of it. Start on camera, share a deck, drop it, share a dashboard, end on your voice. One take, one file, no stopping. Q: Does recording again wipe the last one? A: No. It starts a new take beside it, and the last few stay in your browser: five by default, up to twenty if you raise it. The oldest is dropped when a new take starts, and clearing site data removes them all. ### Open a tab and record something Nothing to install. Saving asks for a work email. ## Pricing (https://capme.app/pricing) Pricing ### Speakers pay, viewers don't A speaker records and owns topics. Everyone who only watches is free, however many there are. 14 days free, no card, no call. Sold to businesses only. Prices are net, plus VAT. ### The plans Monthly Yearly Save {percent}% Soon Start recording Start the Solo trial Start the trial Buy {plan} Talk to us Recommended ### Free 0 € for one person The recorder, in your own browser. Nothing is uploaded. A work email saves the file. The frame carries a small “Recorded with Capme” line. ### Solo 9 € a month, one person a month, one person, billed yearly at 90 € For one person who sends videos instead of writing them. Everything in Free, your own logo in the frame 50 videos kept in the cloud Unlisted links and embeds, no sign-in to watch Kept a year, longer if you keep them EU hosting, signed playback For freelancers and businesses of one. To add people, move to Team. ### Team 12 € per speaker a month per speaker a month, billed yearly at 120 € For a team that would rather record than meet. Meetings with an agenda, owners and a deadline Viewers are free and never count as speakers Hosted player, chapters, watch progress Branding, insights, groups 12-month retention, keep what matters EU hosting, DPA, subprocessor list From 3 speakers. The owner sets the count, prorated. ### Business 18 € per speaker a month per speaker a month, billed yearly at 180 € Everything in Team, plus the answers your IT department asks for. Your own S3 bucket, the file never reaches us Retention you set, from a day to a year Audit log export, domain auto-join Single sign-on (SAML 2.0), accounts on first sign-in Priority support From 10 speakers. Viewers stay free. ### Enterprise By agreement for large organisations A security review, an SLA and contract terms your team signs. Security and compliance review Individual SLA and contract Setup session with your IT: SSO, bucket, retention Training session for your first organisers Everything in Business, on your terms, with a fixed onboarding package. Sold to businesses and the self-employed, never to consumers. Prices are net, plus VAT where it applies. Solo, Team and Business are bought self-serve, monthly or yearly, by card or SEPA, and yearly also by invoice and bank transfer; the owner sets the number of speakers and a change is prorated. Custom prices and more than 500 speakers are agreed with us. Subprocessors, residency, DPA Line by line ### What each plan can do. Included Not included Free Solo Team Business Enterprise ### Recording Screen, camera and both No time limit Blur, backgrounds, title, teleprompter Logo in the frame Recorded with Capme Your own Your own Your own Your own Trim after recording Saves to your device Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited ### Hosting and sharing Videos kept in the cloud None, they stay in the browser 50, delete and replace freely Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlisted links and embeds Once an admin allows it Once an admin allows it Once an admin allows it Meetings with an agenda and a deadline Topics per meeting 25 50 100 Viewers per meeting Anyone with the link 200 on the list, free 200 on the list, free 200 on the list, free Hosted player, chapters, watch progress Length of one uploaded recording Up to 120 minutes Up to 120 minutes Up to 120 minutes Up to 120 minutes Retention In the browser 12 months, or shorter 12 months You set it, up to 12 months You set it, up to 12 months Your own S3 bucket AWS S3, Hetzner, Cloudflare R2, DigitalOcean Spaces AWS S3, Hetzner, Cloudflare R2, DigitalOcean Spaces ### Admin and IT Branding, insights, groups Roles, speakers, audit log Domain auto-join Audit log export Single sign-on (SAML 2.0), accounts on first sign-in ### Support and terms Sold to Anyone Businesses Businesses Businesses Businesses Support Trust Center, blog Email Email Priority email SLA, fixed onboarding package Payment Card or SEPA, monthly or yearly. Yearly also by invoice Card or SEPA, monthly or yearly. Yearly also by invoice Card or SEPA, monthly or yearly. Yearly also by invoice By agreement, invoiced Legal Terms, privacy Terms, DPA Terms, DPA Terms, DPA Individual contract Questions ### What procurement asks. The rest is in the Trust Center, the DPA and the Terms. Ask us directly Q: Why per speaker, and not one price for the company? A: Because that is where the value sits. A speaker replaces a meeting; a viewer gets the time back. Pricing speakers keeps the bill small and predictable, and the thing you want to spread, watching instead of attending, never costs more as it spreads. Q: What makes someone a speaker? A: Recording a topic or owning one on an agenda. A viewer asks in one click; an admin grants it, or the owner raises the number of speakers first. Revoking takes effect at once; the invoice changes only when the owner lowers the count. Q: Do viewers need an account? A: Inside a workspace they sign in with a six-digit code to their work address, so a meeting is never an open link. That costs nothing and has no cap. Unlisted links for anyone exist too, on Solo and once an admin allows them. Q: What happens when the 14 days are over? A: The workspace keeps every video and stops taking new ones until a plan is picked. Nothing is deleted because a trial ended. A company trial runs with unlimited speakers; a Solo trial is Solo. Neither asks for a card. Q: Where do the recordings live? A: In the browser on Free. On Solo, Team and Business on EU servers, encoded and streamed from the EU, with the subprocessor named in the DPA. Business and Enterprise can point at their own S3 bucket instead, and then we never hold the file. The Trust Center Q: What happens if we cancel? A: You cancel in the billing portal. When the plan ends, the workspace locks for writing and public links stop. For 30 days you can still read everything, get your recordings as MP4 files on request, or choose a plan again. Then we delete the workspace. Q: How long do you keep a video? A: Twelve months on Team, then it is purged. Solo and Business can shorten that window. Any recording can be marked to keep, and then it stays until someone deletes it; a deletion always wins over keep. Q: Can we pay by invoice? A: Yes, on a yearly plan: choose "Invoice, by bank transfer" when you buy. The plan starts at once; the invoice is due in 14 days. Monthly plans use card or SEPA. Other invoicing, custom prices and over 500 speakers are agreed with us. Q: Can I buy Solo as a private person? A: No. A paid plan needs a registered name, address and tax or registration number: in Germany USt-IdNr., Steuernummer or Handelsregister number, elsewhere in the EU a VAT ID we confirm against VIES first. Without one nothing is sold. Prices are net, VAT via Stripe Tax. Q: How does this compare with Loom? A: Viewers are free on both. We charge per speaker, from 3, and a meeting product needs many occasional speakers rather than a few power users. Every claim about their product, with its source and date, is on the comparison page. The full comparison ## Capme as a Loom alternative (https://capme.app/loom-alternative) Comparison ### Capme vs Loom: for when the video has to replace a meeting Loom sends single videos, as Capme Screen Recorder does. Capme Meetings replaces whole meetings. We make Capme. Every line about Loom links to their own page and carries the date we read it. Capme is: a German GmbH Recorder: free, no install Storage: browser, EU, or yours Watching: free on both Where they differ ### Five things only one of them does Only rows where the difference is real. Anything they match us on is not here. Capme Loom A German GmbH: EU law, a DPA, named subprocessors Loom, Inc., an Atlassian company, United States On the device, in EU-hosted storage, or in your own S3 bucket Always on Loom's own cloud, in the region their plan provides. Single sign-on over SAML 2.0, included in Business Single sign-on on Enterprise, or on Business with Atlassian Guard bought on top A whole meeting: several speakers, one agenda, one sitting One video at a time, kept in a space A public link for a single video or for a whole meeting A public link for a single video Everything in the right column was read from their own pages on the date shown. Why this one ### Four reasons to pick Capme Each one is checkable before you talk to anybody here. ### One person can test it in an afternoon A browser tab with nothing to install. Recording is anonymous, and saving a file asks for a work email. ### You decide whether a video is uploaded at all Three postures, by plan: the free recorder keeps the file in the browser, a workspace uses EU-hosted storage, and Business can use your own S3 bucket, where we never hold the file. ### You pay for people who speak, not people who watch Only the people who record are counted. Four hundred watching a meeting three people recorded add nothing to the bill. ### It replaces the meeting, not the recording of one Topics, an owner and a target each, a deadline, and chapters for everyone who only needs to listen. Where we are the wrong choice ### Four reasons to stay where you are Capme does none of these, and none of them is on the way. ### You need the meeting to happen live Capme records. It hosts no calls and no webinars, so a conversation that has to happen in real time still has to happen. ### You need transcripts, captions or summaries The product never processes what is said. That is a decision rather than a gap, and it is why we can tell you nothing reads your recordings. ### You record on a phone, or want an app Capme is a browser tab. A phone records the camera in portrait, and sharing a screen wants a Chromium browser on a desktop. ### Your video library has to come with you There is no import. Old videos stay where they are and their old links keep working, which is why we suggest running both for a while. Trying it ### You can test this without telling anyone There is nothing to migrate. Both can run side by side indefinitely. ### Record one thing Open the recorder in a tab. Nothing to install. ### Keep your old videos where they are Nothing has to move. Old links keep working on whatever made them. ### Move one recurring meeting The weekly nobody prepares for. Fourteen days, every speaker included, no card. Questions ### What people ask when switching Q: Can we import our Loom videos? A: No, and we would not recommend trying. Leave them where they are; old links keep working. Start with new recordings and let the old library age out. Q: Is Capme cheaper? A: It depends entirely on how many people record against how many watch. We charge per speaker, from three speakers, and nobody pays to watch. Put your own numbers into the pricing page. Q: Our security team blocked the last one. Will they block this? A: That is the question this product is built around. Recording happens in the browser, and a workspace chooses whether a video is uploaded at all, stored in the EU, or written to your own S3 bucket. The Trust Center has the subprocessors and the DPA. Q: Do our viewers need an account? A: Nobody pays to watch, on any plan. Someone on a meeting's audience list signs in with a code to their address, with no membership. A public link opens with nothing at all, once an admin has switched links on. Q: How current is this page? A: Every statement about the other product carries the date we read it and a link to the page we read it on. If something has changed, write to us and we will correct it. ### Record one and see Free, in a browser tab, about a minute. Loom is a trademark of Loom, Inc., an Atlassian company. Capme is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by them. Every statement about their product on this page was read from their own public pages on the date shown beside it, and is repeated here so that two products meeting the same need can be compared. If anything here is out of date or wrong, tell us at hello@capme.app and we will correct or remove it. ## Meeting cost calculator (https://capme.app/meeting-cost-calculator) Meeting cost calculator ### Know what your meetings cost Company-wide, per meeting, or live. Pick a mode, get your number. Want help putting this number next to one of your meetings? Talk to us ### Put the number next to one meeting 14 days, every speaker included, no card. Take the weekly nobody prepares for. Questions ### How the number is made Q: How do you calculate the cost of a meeting? A: People, times the fully-loaded hourly rate, times the duration. The fully-loaded rate is the average salary plus overhead, divided by 2,080 working hours a year. Q: What does the overhead switch do? A: It moves between fully-loaded cost and base salary. On, it adds 20 % in Europe or 35 % in the United States for taxes, benefits and facilities. Off, it counts the salary alone. Q: Which mode should I use? A: Company shows what a year of meetings costs the whole organisation. Simulator prices one meeting before you book it. Live counts the cost up while a meeting runs, in the browser tab's title as well. Q: How accurate is this? A: It is a ballpark: average salary, 2,080 hours, standard overhead. The exact figure varies; the magnitude is what a decision needs. One person too many in the room moves the total far more than a rough average does. Q: Which meetings should be recorded instead of held? A: Status updates, announcements and training: anything one person says and many hear. A decision with disagreement in it, a difficult conversation or a first meeting with somebody should stay live. ## Where the video lives (https://capme.app/trustcenter) ### On your device Free and Solo The file is written to your device and stays there. Saving it asks for a work email. ### EU hosting Solo and Team Stored and served inside the EU, with the subprocessor named in the DPA. ### Your own S3 storage Full control Business and Enterprise Written straight to your S3. It never touches ours, and it stays if you leave. ## Async video update tools for distributed teams, compared: message or meeting? (https://capme.app/async-video-update-tools-compared) Six kinds of async video update tool, sorted into message or meeting and checked for an owner per topic, a deadline and who has not watched. - A tool that sends one video as one link handles a message. A status update is a meeting: several owners, one deadline, and someone who needs to know who is behind. - In Germany, a tool that shows by name who watched needs the works council's agreement first (§ 87(1) no. 6 BetrVG), so agree on that setting before the test. - Keep the clip tool for one-off explanations and customer videos; it does them better than a recorded agenda. Put a weekly update with six speakers and twelve viewers into a video message tool, and the organiser ends up with six links and six viewer lists. Async video update tools differ in whether they handle a message or a meeting. One person explaining one thing is a message, and a clip in Slack or Teams or a video recorder such as Loom does it well. A weekly status round is a meeting: several people report by a deadline, and someone has to know who has not watched. For that you need a standup bot, if text is enough, or a recorded agenda. Tool kind | Examples | Message or meeting | For a weekly status update Clip in a chat | Slack clips, Teams video clips | Message | Fine for three people in one channel Video message recorder | Loom, ScreenPal | Message | Works if one person collects the links and chases the rest Video documentation | Guidde | Reference | Built for how-to guides and training Standup bot | Geekbot | Meeting, written | Yes, if written answers are enough Recorded video call | Teams or Zoom recording | Meeting, live | Helps whoever missed it; the hour still happened Recorded agenda | Capme Meetings | Meeting, in video | Yes; no transcripts, captions or comments Slack clips run up to five minutes on all plans, with transcripts and captions (Slack help). Teams shows who has seen a chat message in group chats of 20 people or fewer (Microsoft support). Loom counts a view after five seconds, at 75% of the length or after a scrub to the end, and names viewers signed in to Loom; on Business, Business+ AI and Enterprise it can ask viewers for an email first (Atlassian support). ScreenPal names only viewers signed in to your team plan (ScreenPal support). ### What separates an async video message from an async meeting? An async video message is one recording from one person, sent as a link, and it is done when it is sent. An async meeting has an agenda, several people who each own a part, a deadline, and an audience that should have seen all of it by a given day. The recording can be identical in both; the meeting adds the admin around it, because someone has to ask for each part, notice what is missing and know who is behind. Which of your recurring meetings are really meetings and which are messages is the subject of the guide to which meetings can go async. ### Which tools cover what a status update needs? A status update needs three things a single video does not carry: one owner per topic, a deadline the speakers see, and a way to tell who has not watched. This table checks each tool kind against them, from the vendors' own help pages: Tool kind | Owner per topic | Deadline | Who has not watched Clip in a chat | Each post stands alone | Only in the text you write | Teams: who read the message, in chats of up to 20; Slack's clip help describes no viewer list Video message recorder | One video, one link | None in the video | Per video; Loom and ScreenPal name signed-in viewers Standup bot | Each person answers the same questions | A set time and reminders | Who has not reported, as a status list Recorded agenda (Capme) | One named speaker per topic | Countdown for speakers, enforces nothing | One list for the whole agenda, per person or totals only For those six speakers and twelve viewers, checking twelve names against six viewer lists is 72 checks a week (6 × 12, our arithmetic), and a colleague who watched without signing in can show up as anonymous. Atlassian's help page (read 6 October 2026) counts a Loom view when someone watches "for at least 5 seconds or for 75% of the total duration or if they scrub all the way to the end and the video finishes". A view on Loom therefore does not tell you someone heard the whole update; completion rates are a separate report, Engagement Insights. ### Is Loom or ScreenPal effective for replacing status meetings? Loom and ScreenPal are effective for replacing a status meeting as long as one person does the meeting's admin by hand. That person posts the request, collects the links into one message or folder, chases whoever is missing on Wednesday and checks the viewer lists on Friday. For a team of four that is ten minutes. For eight speakers and a department watching, it becomes somebody's weekly job, and at that point the old call starts to look cheaper. ScreenPal's video analytics need a Solo Max, Team Business or Team Education plan. For the full field of recorders sorted by job, see the guide to Loom alternatives; for Loom against Capme row by row, see Capme vs Loom. ### What does a weekly update look like as a recorded agenda in Capme? Capme Meetings, a platform for async meetings (no call tool, no AI notetaker), runs the same six-speaker update as one meeting. As checked in Capme's code in October 2026, the organiser does this: 1. Writes six topics, each with one named speaker and a target length that never cuts a recording off. 2. Sets the speakers' recording deadline to Thursday 17:00. Speakers get one email each and see a countdown; a late video is still accepted. Viewers get no watch-by date. 3. Adds the twelve viewers to the audience list (up to 200 addresses; they need not be workspace members). 4. On Wednesday sees which topics are still empty and presses Remind everyone, which reaches only speakers who have not recorded. 5. Publishes, and can switch on one watch reminder for 3, 7 or 14 days later. 6. On Friday sees one list: who watched (a topic counts from 75%), who watched part, who opened it and who has not. In the same check of the code (October 2026), a viewer from outside the workspace signs in with the address on the audience list and a six-digit code emailed to it (single sign-on is only for the workspace's own staff, on Business and Enterprise), so nobody on the list is counted anonymously. An admin can switch the workspace to totals only, so organisers see how many have finished without names; with a works council, that setting is the one to agree on first (video tools and the works council). On Team, the six speakers cost €72 net per month (€12 each, from 3 speakers) and the twelve viewers nothing. Organising also takes a speaker, so the organiser is one of the six or a seventh. Videos sit on EU hosting, or in your own S3 bucket on Business and Enterprise. Capme has no comments, transcripts or captions, so questions go to your team channel and a colleague who reads better than they listen gets no text. Every speaker is a paid speaker, including someone who records once a month. ### When is a chat clip or a video message tool the better choice? A chat clip or a video message tool is the better choice whenever the update has one sender. That covers a bug report, a design walkthrough, a handover note and a reply to a question in a thread. We think the clip in the chat also wins for a team of three who sit in the same channel anyway, because the channel already shows who replied. Two more cases go to the clip tools. If anyone on the team needs captions or a transcript, Slack provides both for its clips. If the video goes to customers and you want to know which prospect opened it, Loom and ScreenPal are built for that. How long such a clip should be, and what to say first, is in the guide to quick video messages. ### What should a team in Germany or the EU check before choosing? A team in Germany or the EU should check three things before the first test: where the videos are stored, whether a data processing agreement is offered, and whether the tool shows who watched by name. That third point brings in the works council: § 87(1) no. 6 BetrVG gives it a say over "technical devices designed to monitor the conduct or performance of employees" (translated), and the Federal Labour Court reads "designed to" objectively. In 1 ABR 16/23 of 16 July 2024, a headset system supervisors could listen in on was enough, though it recorded nothing. A viewer list by name therefore needs the works council's agreement before go-live; that is our reading of the law and no substitute for legal advice. Secure video messaging and the GDPR covers the first two, and Loom and the GDPR runs the same checks on Loom's own documents. ### How do you pick an async video update tool in ten minutes? 1. Name the update you want to replace and count its speakers and its viewers. 2. One speaker: use the clip tool you already have and stop here. 3. Several speakers and written answers are fine: try a standup bot. 4. Several speakers who need to show a screen or a face: shortlist tools that give each topic an owner and a deadline. 5. On each vendor's help page, find how a view is counted and whether viewers who are not signed in are named. 6. Check who pays: the people who record, the people who watch, or both. 7. Check where the video is stored and send the works council the setting for who-watched-what before the test. 8. Run one real week's update in the winner, and keep the old meeting in the calendar until it has worked once. Q: Does a recorded agenda make sense for a team of five? A: It does once the five report to someone outside the team, or once two people keep missing the call. Team starts at 3 speakers, and viewers are free. Five people who all watch each other can stay in a chat channel. Q: Can we keep Slack or Teams for the questions? A: Yes, whichever tool you pick. Post the update link in the channel and name a day for questions there. Capme has no comments or threads, so with Capme the channel is the only place for them. Q: What if people only watch the first minute? A: Then a view count will not show it. Capme counts a topic as watched from 75% and shows partly watched separately. How to get people to finish is covered in will anyone watch it. ## The best Loom alternatives in 2026, sorted by the job you need done (https://capme.app/best-loom-alternative) Dropbox Capture is gone and Loom now stores in Frankfurt. Seven kinds of Loom alternative, each with a named tool, a sourced fact, and where Capme loses. - The right Loom alternative depends on the job: a file for a ticket, a link for a client, a whole recorded meeting, or video kept on storage your company owns. - Dropbox Capture has ended, Cap is an open-source desktop recorder, and Loom now offers a Frankfurt data region. - Capme covers four of the seven kinds and loses on desktop recording, live calls, transcripts and sales tracking. The best Loom alternative is the one built for the job Loom was doing for you. A two-minute bug report needs a recorder that saves a file. A weekly status meeting needs an agenda, owners and a deadline. We make both, Capme Screen Recorder and Capme Meetings, so this guide sorts by job, names a tool with a fact from its own page where one fits, and marks where ours lose. Dropbox Capture was discontinued on 24 March 2025 (Dropbox Help, read 5 October 2026). Since May 2026 Loom offers video storage in Germany (Frankfurt) or the United States (Oregon); sign-in and account data stay global (Atlassian support, read 5 October 2026). Loom's free Starter plan limits a recording to 5 minutes (Atlassian support, read 5 October 2026). Capme Screen Recorder (Free) records in a browser tab with no time limit and keeps the file on your device (as checked in our code on 5 October 2026). ### Dropbox Capture vs Loom: Capture ended on 24 March 2025 Dropbox Capture is no longer an option, so "Dropbox Capture vs Loom" now has a short answer. Dropbox's own help page says: "On March 24, 2025, Dropbox Capture will be discontinued." Existing captures stay in a Dropbox folder named "Capture", the same page says. If you used Capture for quick screenshots and clips you saved as files, look at kind 1 or 2 below. If you shared Capture links with clients, kind 3 is the replacement. ### What is a Loom alternative, and what does Loom offer now? A Loom alternative is any tool that records a screen or a camera and gets the result to people who watch later, as a file, a link or a recorded meeting. Loom itself is made by Loom, Inc., an Atlassian company in the United States (loom.com, read 13 September 2026). Its data region covers videos, transcripts and AI summaries for new customers; sign-in, user settings, organisation membership and audit-log identifiers stay global. We quote no Loom prices, because they change faster than an article does. ### Which questions sort the Loom alternatives? Seven questions sort the Loom alternatives before you open a pricing page. We think the second one decides more switches than price does, because in a team meeting most people only watch. 1. Who records: one person who sends many videos, or twelve people who each record a few minutes a week? Pricing per creator suits the first and hurts the second. 2. Who watches, and does a viewer ever count as a paid user? 3. Where must the file live: on the device, in the vendor's cloud, in a named region, or in your own storage? A works council or data protection officer asks this first. 4. How long is one take? A five-minute walkthrough fits any free tier. A forty-minute training does not (free online screen recorders compared on time limits). 5. A message or a meeting? A message is one video and one link. A meeting has several topics, an owner each, a deadline, and an audience that sees it all in order. Whether a recurring meeting can go async depends on what it has to produce. 6. What do you take with you when you leave? Check bulk download, and whether shared links die the day you cancel. 7. Who is the contract with? Ask for the data processing agreement and the subprocessor list before a test, not after a rollout. ### Loom vs the seven kinds of alternative, in one table Loom is the named example for kinds 1 and 3, and Capme loses outright in kinds 2, 5 and 7. For Loom against Capme feature by feature, see Loom vs Capme. Kind of alternative | Named example | Capme 1. Free browser recorder that saves a file | Loom Starter: 5-minute limit per recording | Yes, Free: no time limit, MP4 on your device 2. Desktop recorder you install | Cap: open source, apps for macOS, Windows and Linux | No. Browser only, no desktop app 3. Video links for one person | Loom: a public link per video | Yes, Solo: 50 videos, links, embeds 4. Recorded meetings for a team | No single tool: separate videos in a shared folder | Yes, Team: agenda, owners, deadline 5. Recording button in your call tool | No single tool: the call software you already license | No. No live calls, no call recording 6. Video on storage you own | Cap: your own S3 bucket, or self-hosted | Yes, Business: your S3 bucket 7. Sales video with CRM tracking | No single tool: a sales video tool tied to your CRM | No. No CRM, no per-viewer tracking on public links Transcripts and AI summaries | Loom: transcripts and AI content, stored in region | No. Recordings are never transcribed For kind 1, Capme's free recorder records the screen, the camera or both, switches between them mid-take, and has a teleprompter, background blur and a trim. Recording starts without signing in; saving asks for a work email the first time. On Free the file stays on your device and carries a "Recorded with Capme" mark in every frame; cloud links start at Solo. ### Cap vs Loom: what the open-source recorder does differently Cap is an open-source screen recorder that calls itself the "Open Source Loom Alternative" in the title of its own site; its source is on GitHub. The site lists native apps for macOS, Windows and Linux, a Chrome extension, and storage in your own S3 bucket, Google Drive, Cap's cloud, or a self-hosted install (read 5 October 2026). So Cap vs Loom comes down to installing an app and possibly running it yourself, against a hosted service from Atlassian. If you want a desktop app or the videos on your own storage, pick Cap. ### Is there a secure Loom alternative with EU storage? A secure Loom alternative starts with one answer: where does the video sit, and who holds it? Since Loom also offers Frankfurt, "EU storage" alone no longer separates the two. The difference is who runs the storage and which company's law governs the contract. Both are part of the answer to whether video messaging is GDPR compliant. Capme is run by Capme Digital GmbH in Düsseldorf. On Solo and Team, video is hosted in the EU. As checked in our code on 5 October 2026, a Business workspace writes each take from the browser straight into your own S3-compatible bucket, and only the poster image passes through Capme's server. The Trust Center has the subprocessors, the technical measures and a document for the works council; send that link to whoever approves the tool. ### Which Loom alternative fits a small team? Two worked examples For a small team, the Loom alternative depends on how many people record, because Capme charges per speaker and, as checked in our code on 5 October 2026, never counts a viewer as one. The rates below are net, from the pricing page. A team of 4, where 2 people report each week and one of them organises. If nobody needs a link, Free is enough: each person records a file and drops it in the team chat. Once they want one recorded agenda with a deadline, that is the Team plan, sold from 3 speakers, so they pay for 3: 36 € a month. The other 2 watch for free. A department of 20, where 5 report in a weekly update. On Team those 5 are speakers and the other 15 watch free, so the bill is 60 € a month. One more reporter adds 12 €. From 10 speakers, Business at 18 € per speaker adds your own bucket, single sign-on and agendas of up to 50 topics. On Team the organiser writes an agenda of up to 25 topics, each with an owner, a target of up to 30 minutes and a deadline, and each owner records in the browser (up to 120 minutes). The audience opens one link and watches the topics as chapters, kept 365 days unless marked *keep* (how a meeting runs). Capme is the wrong choice if you need a desktop app, live calls or webinars, transcripts or captions, screen recording on a phone (the phone recorder is camera only), or sales videos tracked in a CRM. If your Loom use is mostly any of those, stay with Loom or pick from kinds 2, 5 or 7. ### How do you test a Loom alternative on one meeting? Test a Loom alternative on one real meeting and keep the old tool until it has passed. Nobody needs to move old videos on day one. 1. Pick the standing meeting with the most listeners per speaker. 2. Start a 14-day trial. It needs no card, and during a company trial everybody can record. 3. Write one topic per person who would have spoken, a time budget each, and the old meeting time as the deadline. 4. Cancel that week's calendar entry and send the agenda instead. 5. In the second round, count topics in by the deadline and people who watched to the end. The first round is always good. 6. Before you cancel Loom, download what you want to keep as files, and repoint shared links you still need. Q: What is the best free Loom alternative? A: For a file, a browser recorder without a time limit, such as Capme Screen Recorder (Free). For an installed app you can host yourself, Cap. On Capme, a share link starts at Solo. Q: Can I import my Loom videos into Capme? A: No. Capme has no Loom import. Download the videos you want to keep from Loom as files before you cancel. Q: Do Free recordings carry Capme's name? A: Yes. On Free, the frame's logo slot holds "Recorded with Capme", never over the footage. From Solo on, it holds your own logo. Q: Can I use Capme on a phone? A: Yes, for the camera: on a phone the recorder films in portrait. Recording a screen needs a desktop browser; Chrome and Edge get every mode. Q: What happens when the trial ends? A: Nothing is deleted. The workspace stops accepting new recordings and keeps the ones it has, and everyone can still watch them. ## How to Calculate the Cost of a Meeting (And Cut It) (https://capme.app/meeting-cost-formula) The meeting cost formula as a spreadsheet row you can copy, a cost table by meeting size, and a guide to which meetings to cut first. - A recurring weekly meeting costs €3,750 to €39,000 a year in our table, depending on how many people sit in it and what they earn. - Leave out the employer surcharge (20% EU, 35% US) and you undercount by about 17% to 26%. - Status updates and presentations are the meetings to cut first. Decision meetings and one-to-ones are worth their price live. "This meeting: 8 people × 30 min ≈ €150, €7,800 a year if weekly." That calendar line is the meeting cost formula at work: attendees × fully-loaded hourly rate × duration in hours. Here it prices a weekly project update with 8 people on €65,000 salaries, and the cost of a meeting like that rarely gets checked, because no single week of it looks expensive. Capme's calculator adds 20% (EU) or 35% (US) to salary and divides by 2,080 hours a year (as checked in our code, October 2026). Shopify put a 30-minute meeting of 3 people at $700 to $1,600 (CBS News, July 2023). 71% of 182 senior managers called meetings unproductive and inefficient (Harvard Business Review, 2017). At one large company, a weekly executive committee meeting tied up 300,000 hours a year once the prep underneath was counted (Bain, 2014). ### What is the meeting cost formula? Meeting cost = attendees × fully-loaded hourly rate × duration (hours) A fully-loaded hourly rate is annual salary plus the employer's costs on top, divided by 2,080 paid hours (52 weeks × 40 hours). As checked in Capme's code in October 2026, the meeting cost calculator uses a flat 20% surcharge for EU teams and 35% for US teams, where health insurance and payroll taxes run higher. A €65,000 salary gives €37.50 an hour loaded and €31.25 on salary alone. In the US, the same salary in dollars, $65,000, gives $42.19 an hour with the 35% surcharge. The surcharge is the step people skip. Without it you undercount by about a sixth in the EU (17%) and a quarter in the US (26%). To run it in a spreadsheet, put attendees in column B, average salary in C, the surcharge as a decimal in D and minutes in E. Column F then holds the cost of one meeting and G the year of a weekly one, with the formulas in the box below. We think the number belongs in the calendar invite, because that is the only moment it can still change a decision. The line at the top of this page is enough. F2: =B2*C2*(1+D2)/2080*E2/60 G2: =F2*52 Example: B2 = 8, C2 = 65,000, D2 = 0.2, E2 = 30 gives €150 and €7,800. ### What does a weekly meeting cost per hour and per year? A weekly meeting costs between a few thousand and several tens of thousands of euros a year, and the head count moves it more than the salary does. The table runs the calculator's formula with the EU surcharge. Meeting | People | Salary | Length | Per hour | Per meeting | Per year (weekly) Small team check-in | 5 | €50,000 | 30 min | €144 | €72 | €3,750 Leadership sync | 8 | €120,000 | 45 min | €554 | €415 | €21,600 Department review | 15 | €85,000 | 60 min | €736 | €736 | €38,250 Department-wide status | 40 | €65,000 | 30 min | €1,500 | €750 | €39,000 For senior staff these are floors. Executives spend nearly 23 hours a week in meetings, according to Harvard Business Review, and the HBR calculator piece describes a weekly meeting of midlevel managers that, in a Bain study, was "costing one organization $15M a year". ### Worked example with 12 people and 45 minutes 1. Hourly rate: €50,000 × 1.2 ÷ 2,080 = €28.85. 2. The group per hour: 12 × €28.85 = €346. 3. One meeting of 45 minutes: €260. 4. Every week for a year: €260 × 52 = €13,500. Before you defend a slot like this, ask who would notice if it were cancelled for two weeks. ### What does the meeting cost formula leave out? The formula prices only the time in the room. Preparation is the biggest gap. Bain's James Allen described one company where "employees throughout the organization spent a staggering 300,000 hours a year supporting a single weekly executive committee meeting" (Bain, May 2014). The committee itself spent 7,000 of those hours in the room. To price prep for your own meeting, add each preparer's minutes as if they were extra minutes in the room: four people preparing for 20 minutes add €50 at the €65,000 rate. The second gap is getting back to work. In her field research Gloria Mark found people took 23 minutes and 15 seconds on average to resume an interrupted task, as she told Gallup. Sophie Leroy showed in 2009 that part of the mind stays with an unfinished task after a switch and lowers performance on the next one; she called it attention residue. ### If your team is in Germany Dividing by 2,080 paid hours gives a lower rate than German employer costs per hour actually worked, so what a meeting hour costs in Germany has the German figures by role. A flat average rate says nothing about a person, but real salaries per attendee, or a tool that evaluates who sits in which meetings, can bring in the works council under § 87 (1) no. 6 BetrVG. ### Which meetings should you cut first? Cut the meetings where one person talks and the rest listen, and keep the ones that end in a decision, whatever they cost. Shopify made costs visible in calendars in 2023, and COO Kaz Nejatian described the effect to CBS: "People ask questions: what is this meeting for? Why are this many people in it?" Our rule of thumb: if a meeting only passes on information and has 5 or more people, record it. With the "Time saved" card's assumption below that a live update runs 3 times as long as its recording, the speaker records for under 7% of the person-time the live meeting would take, and even the smallest meeting in our table costs €3,750 a year. Which meetings can go async sorts more meeting types. Meeting | Recorded instead? | What you lose Status update | Yes | Little; questions go to the owner Presentation or demo | The talk, yes; Q&A stays live | Reactions in the room Decision meeting | No | The decision, or it drags for weeks One-to-one | No | Trust and honest feedback Team under 5 people | Rarely worth it | Not much is saved ### How does Capme replace a status meeting you have priced? Capme turns a status meeting into a recorded agenda that people watch when it suits them. Take the 8-person update at €150 a week. On a Team workspace the organiser writes the agenda with one topic per speaker and a target length, then sends it. Each speaker gets a link, records screen and camera in the browser, and the video is stored on EU hosting. The deadline shows as a countdown but is never enforced, and the admin overview lists who still owes a recording. The audience watches the topics as chapters in a row. Say the speakers record 10 minutes in all. The "Time saved" card on the admin overview multiplies recorded minutes by 3 (how much longer it would take live), by an average audience of 5 and by €36.00 an hour, and shows €90. If the owner enters 8 people and the gross rate of €31.25 (the card adds the 20% itself), it shows €150, the price of the meeting. The limit is in the card's own words: "Estimate, not a measurement." The multiplier is an assumption only the owner can change, and a decision meeting should stay live. You pay per speaker, and viewers are free. To try it, start the 14-day trial on the pricing page. The free screen recorder needs no plan; saving the file asks for a work email. ### How do you show the cost of a meeting to finance? Finance is more likely to accept a meeting cost when the method sits next to the number and freed hours are called capacity. Salaries do not drop when a meeting goes, so the saving turns into cash only if the hours replace overtime, a hire or work that earns. Say that in the note itself, as in the one below, and nobody has to argue about a headline of "€7,800 saved". For a whole team, the business case for async meetings builds the full page. Meeting: weekly project update, 8 people, 30 minutes. Rate: €65,000 average salary + 20% employer costs ÷ 2,080 h = €37.50 an hour. Cost: €150 a meeting, €7,800 a year. Proposal: a recorded update instead; decisions go to the monthly planning meeting. Effect: up to 208 person-hours a year as capacity, minus the time to record and watch. No change to payroll. Q: What is the average cost of a meeting per hour? A: There is no useful average, because it depends on who attends; work it out per person and multiply by head count. Fully loaded with the EU surcharge, one person costs €28.85 an hour on €50,000, €37.50 an hour on €65,000 and €69.23 an hour on €120,000. With the US surcharge, the same salaries in dollars give $32.45, $42.19 and $77.88. Q: Which overhead percentage should I use? A: Use your finance team's real figure if you have one. Then turn off the surcharge toggle in the calculator and enter the loaded salary, so the overhead is not counted twice. Q: How much do meetings cost a company per year? A: The calculator's company mode starts at 100 employees, €65,000 average salary and 10 hours of meetings per person per week. With the EU surcharge that comes to about €1,950,000 a year. It scales linearly with head count and hours. Q: Do external guests and contractors count in the formula? A: Count them if you pay for their time. Use a contractor's hourly or day rate as it is, without the employer surcharge, since that is already in their price. Guests from a client or partner cost you nothing directly; leave them out. ## The sovereign productivity stack: five European tools, checked against four questions (https://capme.app/sovereign-productivity-stack) European tools for chat, docs, tasks, video and diagrams, checked for operator, data location, transfers and exit, and why an EU data centre is not enough. - Labels like "EU hosted" answer one of the four questions at most. The imprint, the DPA and the subprocessor list answer the rest; file the answers with the date you read them. A sovereign productivity stack is a set of everyday tools for which you can say, for each one, who operates it and which law can compel that operator, where the data is stored, what leaves the EU, and how you take your data with you when you leave. An EU data centre answers only the second of those, so on its own it is no test of digital sovereignty. Checked against the vendors' own pages, one European pick per layer looks like this: Excalidraw for diagrams, Element on Matrix for chat, Docs from La Suite numérique for documentation, MeisterTask for tasks and Capme for video. For the video layer, which is ours, the Capme Trust Center lists where recordings are stored and every subprocessor involved, or try the free recorder: the take stays in your browser. The US CLOUD Act (2018) reaches data a US provider holds, wherever it is stored. On 10 June 2025 Microsoft France told the French Senate under oath it could not guarantee that French citizens' data would never be handed to US authorities without France's consent. The EU-US Data Privacy Framework survived Philippe Latombe's challenge in September 2025; his appeal, case C-703/25 P, was pending as of October 2026. Capme names 5 subprocessors; one has a US parent (Google Workspace, for the support mailbox). ### Which four questions make a stack sovereign? 1. Who operates it, and which law can compel them?: The company you contract with, wherever its servers stand. The imprint and the terms name it. 2. Where does the data sit?: A region named in the DPA or on the security page, ideally also visible in the product. 3. Which subprocessors see it, and what leaves the EU?: A list with legal entities, countries, the transfer basis for each, and a notice period for changes. Email, payments and support often add the entry that breaks "EU hosted". 4. How do you leave?: Open formats, an export you can run or request, and a period after the contract ends to collect your data. Run the export once before you depend on the tool. End-to-end encryption, where the keys never reach the vendor, makes the first three questions far less pressing: the vendor has nothing readable to hand over. That works for chat and shared drawings. Video, documents and task boards have to be processed by the service, so there the operator, the region and the exit decide. A five-person team with no sensitive data and no public-sector customers can usually stop at questions 1 and 4. ### Why does an EU data centre not settle the question? Two laws claim the same data. The CLOUD Act lets US authorities require a provider under US jurisdiction to disclose data in its possession, custody or control, whether stored in the United States or abroad. Article 48 of the GDPR says a judgment or authority decision from outside the EU that requires a transfer of personal data can be recognised or enforced only if it rests on an international agreement. A US-operated tool with an EU data centre is subject to both. On 10 June 2025 a French Senate inquiry asked Anton Carniaux, director of public and legal affairs at Microsoft France, under oath whether French citizens' data could never reach the US government without the French authorities' explicit agreement. His answer, in the Senate's record: "No, I cannot guarantee it, but, once again, it has never happened yet" (translated; see also heise online's report). Transfers to US vendors mostly rest on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, whose two predecessors the Court of Justice struck down. We think the stack is worth building now, because if the framework falls on appeal, the tools that never relied on it keep working. ### Which European tools replace the usual US stack, layer by layer? Each pick is described only from its vendor's linked pages, checked 25 September 2026. ### Which diagram tool? Excalidraw Excalidraw takes the place of Miro and is open source under the MIT licence (licence), so you can run it yourself. On the free editor at excalidraw.com, a shared link is encrypted in the browser and the key sits in the part of the URL after the #, which the browser never sends to the server (Excalidraw on its encryption). Excalidraw+ differs: its terms name Excalidraw s.r.o. in Brno (terms), and its DPA puts the servers in the United States under standard contractual clauses (Excalidraw+ DPA). ### Which chat tool? Element on Matrix Element on Matrix stands in for Slack or Teams, and in chat, encryption does most of the protecting. Matrix is an open protocol, and Element's privacy policy says nobody at Element or its processors can access encrypted data (privacy policy). With Element Server Suite you run the server yourself (Element Server Suite). The hosted service is operated by Element Creations Limited in London (company information); hosted customers pick the location, on AWS. Encryption has to be on in each room that matters, and the server still sees who sits in which room. ### Which docs tool? Docs from La Suite numérique Docs, published by La Suite numérique, is an open-source editor in place of Notion or Confluence (repository). Self-hosted, the operator, the region and the backups are yours, and the exit is your own database. Hosted docs tools show why the first question comes before the second: Slite keeps production data in Belgium on Google Cloud (security page), while its legal page names Slite, Inc., a Delaware company, as the contracting entity (legal information). ### Which task tool? MeisterTask MeisterTask replaces Asana or Trello boards; its imprint names MeisterLabs GmbH in Vaterstetten near Munich (imprint). The service runs on Google Cloud in Frankfurt (security page) and is ISO 27001 certified, according to its help centre (ISO 27001 answer). The operator is European and the infrastructure is a US provider's German region. ### Which video tool? Capme Capme Meetings is the platform that ends status meetings, in place of Loom and the weekly call: speakers record their agenda topic in the browser, everyone else watches when it suits them, and viewers in a meeting are free. The free recorder at capme.app/studio records screen, camera or both, and the take stays in that browser. Save to device asks for your work email and a six-digit code, then downloads the file, which is still not uploaded. As checked in our code on 5 October 2026, the paid plans decide where hosted video lives. Solo and Team use EU hosting, stored in Germany and delivered from the nearest node worldwide; recordings are kept for 12 months by default. On Business and Enterprise the workspace owner enters an endpoint, bucket and access key under Data, in Storage, and runs Test connection. From then on, browsers upload straight into your bucket and play from it: each recording sits there as a video file with a still image next to it. The Business trial includes your own bucket and runs 14 days without a card; the figures are on the pricing page. The Trust Center names all 5 subprocessors and the DPA gives thirty days' notice of changes. Email goes through AhaSend, a Dutch company, from the EU with no transfer. Two entries reach beyond the EU: Bunny.net stores video in Germany and uses standard contractual clauses for delivery nodes outside the EU, and the support mailbox runs on Google Workspace, whose transfers to its US parent rest on the Data Privacy Framework and standard clauses. To leave, you download MP4s, and the DPA adds an MP4 and JSON or CSV export on request at no charge, with thirty days after the contract ends to collect. The limits: no ISO 27001 or SOC 2, no independent penetration test yet, and no end-to-end encryption. If end-to-end encryption is a hard requirement, no video host passes; send the file through an encrypted Matrix room instead. Layer | Operator | Where the data sits | End-to-end encrypted | Certificate Diagrams: Excalidraw | You if self-hosted; Excalidraw s.r.o., Brno, for Excalidraw+ | Your server; Excalidraw+ in the US | Shared links on excalidraw.com | Not checked Chat: Element | You if self-hosted; Element Creations Limited, London | Your server, or a chosen AWS location | Yes, in encrypted rooms | Not checked Docs: La Suite numérique | You, self-hosted | Your server | No | Yours to arrange Tasks: MeisterTask | MeisterLabs GmbH, Vaterstetten | Google Cloud, Frankfurt | No | ISO 27001 Video: Capme | Capme Digital GmbH, Düsseldorf; hosted only | Browser on Free; EU hosting; own bucket on Business | No | None Question 3 splits the five picks: self-hosted Docs and Element list only your own servers; MeisterTask and hosted Element run on a US provider's cloud; Excalidraw+ stores in the US; Capme has two entries beyond the EU. ### How do you roll out a sovereign stack in a week? Copy this sheet once per tool; it leaves a record your data protection officer can read. Question | Where to look | Write down 1. Operator and law | Imprint, terms | Contracting entity, country, date read 2. Data location | DPA, security page, admin settings | Region, backup region 3. Subprocessors | Subprocessor list, DPA notice clause | Each non-EU entry and its transfer basis 4. Exit | Export menu, DPA return clause | Format, test export done (yes/no), date 1. Day 1: list what each current tool holds.: One line per tool: kind of data, operator, transfer basis. 2. Day 2: fill in a sheet for each replacement.: Where a cell stays empty, ask the vendor before you go on. 3. Day 3: start with video and one standing meeting.: Pick one recurring status meeting, give each topic a speaker and a deadline, and let everyone else watch the recorded agenda. A company trial runs 14 days with unlimited speakers and no card; the owner connects your bucket under Data → Storage before the first take. 4. Days 4 and 5: move chat and docs with an export in hand.: Export from the old tool before you switch it off. 5. Before go-live: bring in the works council.: In Germany, a tool that can monitor behaviour or performance needs the works council's agreement under § 87(1) no. 6 BetrVG. Have each vendor's description of what it records ready. Q: Is there a self-hosted Slack alternative? A: Yes: Element Server Suite runs Matrix chat on your own servers, so the operator, the region and the exit are yours. Q: Can a cloud provider charge us for switching away? A: Under the EU Data Act, applicable since 12 September 2025, cloud customers have a right to switch. Until 12 January 2027 a provider may charge at most its direct costs for the switch; after that date, nothing. Q: Is a European operator on a US cloud's EU region good enough? A: It answers questions 1 and 2. The US cloud becomes a subprocessor the CLOUD Act can reach. Whether that risk is acceptable is your call; write down why. ## Is video messaging GDPR compliant? What secure video messaging needs, and where the recording lives (https://capme.app/secure-video-messaging-compliance) Yes, with the right setup. Five GDPR checks for secure video messaging, six vendor questions to copy, and the three places a recording can be stored. - Only vendor hosting brings in the whole checklist. A file kept in the browser has no processor; with your own bucket the vendor holds only metadata. - Send each vendor six questions in writing; the answer on deletion tells you the most. - Capme publishes its DPA, subprocessors and measures but holds no ISO 27001 or SOC 2 of its own. Yes, a company can use video messaging and stay within the GDPR if the setup is right. Secure video messaging, in the GDPR's terms, means recorded messages whose file, audience and storage period your company controls and can document. That takes five things: a legal basis and a notice to the people recorded, a data processing agreement with every vendor that hosts or streams the file, the names of that vendor's subprocessors, a basis for any transfer outside the EEA, and security with an end date, meaning playback for the intended audience only and a retention period. This guide describes the law and one product, Capme, which we make; it is not legal advice. It does not fit companies outside the EU, and a recording that shows health data needs an impact assessment and more than this list. The six questions to send a vendor are below, ready to copy; the documents a review asks for are in Capme's Trust Center. Article 28(3) GDPR lists eight points, (a) to (h), every processor contract must cover. Capme stores hosted recordings encrypted at rest in Germany, and every connection uses TLS 1.2 or higher. A Business workspace set to 30 days lets a recording made on 5 October 2026 expire on 4 November 2026; the nightly run then deletes it. Capme names 5 subprocessors; 2 of them have a route outside the EEA (as checked in our code on 5 October 2026). ### Is a video recording personal data? A video recording is personal data whenever a person in it can be identified, and the speaker always can. Article 4(1) GDPR covers any information about an identifiable person, including by physical features, so face, voice and a name in the title count. A face on video is not special-category data by default: Recital 51 counts photographs as biometric only when specific technical means identify a person, which a recorder does not do. In screen recording, the data protection risk sits mostly in the screen: a share captures whatever was open, a CRM record or a payroll tab. The platform's own viewing data, who opened a video and how far they watched, belongs in the review too. ### What does a compliant setup need? A compliant video messaging setup rests on five obligations, and most of the paperwork hangs on one sentence, Article 28(1) GDPR: "the controller shall use only processors providing sufficient guarantees to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures in such a manner that processing will meet the requirements of this Regulation and ensure the protection of the rights of the data subject." 1. A legal basis under Article 6(1) and a notice under Article 13. For staff, see our guide to employee video consent. 2. A video messaging DPA (data processing agreement). Your company is the controller, the party that decides why and how recordings are made; a processor is a company that handles them on the controller's behalf. Article 28(3) sets what their contract contains, and the Commission publishes standard clauses for it. 3. Named subprocessors. A processor adds one only with your authorisation and announces changes so you can object (Article 28(2) and (4)); the EDPB's Opinion 22/2024 expects their names to be at hand. 4. A transfer basis. Data leaves the EEA only under Chapter V: an adequacy decision such as the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, or standard contractual clauses plus a check for supplementary measures. The General Court upheld it in September 2025; the appeal is pending as of October 2026. 5. Security and an end date. Article 32 asks for security fit for the risk, and Article 5(1)(e) limits storage to what the purpose needs, so a recording that replaced a meeting needs an expiry. The processing goes into your Article 30 record; per-person viewing data about staff can call for an impact assessment under Article 35. ### Where can a recording live? A recording ends up in one of three places, and the list above applies differently to each. On the person's device, the recorder encodes in the browser and no vendor holds the video, so there is no processor for it, and no link a colleague can open either. Capme's free recorder works this way; saving a take asks for a work email. On the vendor's hosting, the file is uploaded and streamed, which makes it shareable and brings in the whole list: the vendor is your processor, its video host a subprocessor you may know by name. Capme's paid plans store takes with Bunny Stream in Germany. In storage you run, the recorder writes into your company's S3-compatible bucket and playback comes from there. The vendor stays your processor for agenda, audience and audit log, and the line procurement likes to hear, that the vendor never holds the video, is true only here. On Business and Enterprise, only the poster frame passes through Capme's server, and Capme deletes an object only when a member deletes the recording. Place | In the browser | Vendor hosts, EU | Your own bucket Vendor's role for the video | None | Processor, Art. 28 | Processor for metadata only Retention | Until the person deletes it | The plan's period | Your lifecycle rule Capme | Free | Solo, Team, Business and Enterprise | Business, Enterprise ### What should you ask a video messaging vendor? Ask every vendor on the shortlist, Capme included, six questions in writing, and check each answer against the document it cites. For jurisdiction and ownership, use the four questions in our sovereign stack guide. Subject: Data protection questions before we decide Hello, please answer these six questions in writing, each with the document the answer comes from: 1. For which data are you our processor, and for which a controller? 2. Which subprocessors do you use, with legal entity, country and transfer basis, and how far ahead do you announce changes? 3. How long do you keep a recording, who can change that, and does deleting also remove the file from the video host? 4. Who can play a recording, and can public links be switched off, revoked and kept out of search engines? 5. What do you record about viewers, and can per-person viewing data be switched off? 6. How do we leave: file formats, metadata export, fees, and how long the data stays available? We think question 3 tells you the most, because a vendor that can say where a deleted file goes has mapped its own data flows. "Industry-standard cloud providers" as an answer to question 2 names nobody. In Germany, question 5 brings in the works council: see our guide to works councils and video tools. ### Where Capme stands, including what it does not have Capme Meetings is a platform that replaces status meetings with recorded agendas; viewers need no paid seat, and video lives on EU hosting or, from Business up, in your own bucket. Its answers, as checked in our code on 5 October 2026: Question | Capme's answer | Where Capme falls short Roles | Processor for your workspace; DPA on the Commission's clauses, accepted with a tick box when a trial or plan starts | Countersigned PDF only on request Subprocessors | 5, named in DPA Annex IV; changes announced thirty days ahead (clause 4.7) | 2 rely on standard clauses or the Data Privacy Framework Retention | Team: 365 days; Solo, Business, Enterprise: 1 to 365; any recording can be marked keep, deleting wins | Team cannot shorten its period Playback | Organiser, speakers, audience, admins; public links off until an admin switches them on; unlisted, revocable | Solo workspaces start with public links on Viewer data | Watched, partly watched, opened or not opened, per person or as totals only; no scores | Per person is the default Leaving | a copy saved before sending, or your own bucket; audit log as CSV from Business up; no export fee | Metadata as JSON or CSV only on request Certificate | Hetzner and netcup hold ISO 27001; CAIQ Lite questionnaire on request | No ISO 27001 or SOC 2 of its own; no independent penetration test yet Sign-in | Email code or magic link; SAML 2.0 from Business up since 22 September 2026 | Capme checks no second factor ### What an admin sets, step by step 1. In a Team workspace, the admin settings show the Retention field locked: "Team keeps every recording for 12 months." A recording made on 5 October 2026 expires on 5 October 2027. 2. In a Business workspace, the admin types 30 and saves. The screen answers "New recordings will be kept 30 days. Nothing already recorded is shortened." A recording made on 5 October 2026 then expires on 4 November 2026, unless someone marks it keep. 3. Under Public links, the switch reads Off: "Nothing in this workspace opens without a sign-in." Under Watch progress, the admin picks Per person or Totals only. 4. If the owner deletes the workspace, Capme waits 14 days and then purges it on its own hosts and at the video host; recordings in your own bucket stay there as your files. If your policy names ISO 27001 or SOC 2, a vendor with that report is the better choice today. Otherwise a 14-day trial of Team lets your DPO check these screens before anyone records. Q: Can customer data appear in a video message? A: Only as much as the purpose needs (Article 5(1)(c)). A CRM record on screen is the customer's personal data, so close other tabs before recording, and re-record a take that shows more than the viewer needs. Q: Do viewers have to be told that their viewing is recorded? A: Yes. Who opened a video and how far they watched is personal data about the viewer, so Article 13 applies. For staff, the employee privacy notice is the usual place; in Germany the works council has a say as well. Q: Do we need a DPIA for video messaging? A: Not always. Per-person viewing data about employees, recordings of customers or health data on screen push towards one. Your DPO decides after reading the vendor's measures and viewer-data settings. Q: Does a vendor need ISO 27001 to be GDPR compliant? A: No. Article 28(5) GDPR names approved codes of conduct and certifications as one way to show sufficient guarantees, not the only one. Whether a DPA and measures are enough is your policy's call. Q: How do we get our data out if we stop using Capme? A: Keep a copy as you record: More › Save to device saves the take before it is sent. Capme's player has no download button, and on Business your own bucket holds the files. After a paid plan ends, the workspace stays readable for 30 days. Metadata comes as JSON or CSV on request. ## Async video standups: how to run one, with a template (https://capme.app/async-video-standup) How to run an async video standup: two example updates, a table of formats and tools, the minutes for a team of eight, and a message to send your team. - Go async when the team spans time zones or the standup has turned into status reports. Keep it live when the team is in one place and solves problems together in it. - Before the first recording, write down four agreements: a recording deadline, one place for the updates, a watching deadline and a route for blockers. - In Capme a standup is a meeting with one topic per person, a deadline and chapters in order; for a daily standup, the free recorder is enough. An async video standup is a daily standup without the meeting. Each person records a one- to two-minute update when their day starts, the team watches by an agreed time, and whoever can clear a blocker contacts that person directly. A typical update sounds like this: Developer, 1:20. "Yesterday I finished the user profile API endpoints; they're merged and on staging. Today I'm starting the profile edit form that uses them. No blockers, though I may need a design review of the form layout this afternoon." The Scrum Guide describes the Daily Scrum as a 15-minute event at the same time and place every working day. An async standup keeps its purpose, checking progress and adjusting the plan, and drops the shared slot. In Capme Meetings it becomes an agenda with one topic per person and a deadline; for a daily standup, record at capme.app/studio and post the file. Interrupted office work was resumed after 23 minutes and 15 seconds on average (Gloria Mark, 2005 field study, Gallup Business Journal). Eight people, everyone watching everything: 1:20 updates cost about 85 person-minutes a day, a 15-minute call 120 (our calculation below). In Capme, as of October 2026, a topic counts as watched at 75 %, and the recorder never stops a take at the time budget. ### Why run the standup async? An async standup is worth it when people have no morning in common or when the call breaks up focused work. Its job is to tell everyone where work stands, which puts it among the meetings that can go async. A team spread from San Francisco to Berlin has no shared morning: 9 a.m. in San Francisco is 6 p.m. in Berlin. With recordings, everyone speaks in their own morning and watches the others in theirs. A standup at half past nine also splits everyone's morning at once. Gloria Mark, who studies interruptions at UC Irvine, told the Gallup Business Journal that most interrupted work in her 2005 field study was picked up again the same day, and "it was resumed, on average, in 23 minutes and 15 seconds". A recording can be made before focused work starts and watched in a break. The minutes themselves are close. Take eight people. A 15-minute call costs 8 × 15 = 120 person-minutes a day. Async, each person records once and watches the seven others: at 1:20 per update that is 8 × 80 s recorded plus 56 × 80 s watched, about 85 person-minutes; at two minutes it is 64 × 2 = 128, more than the call. This assumes everyone watches every update in full and ignores retakes. Watching is the part to cut: if everyone watches only the three updates that touch their work, it is 8 × 80 s + 24 × 80 s, about 43 person-minutes. We think the case for async rests on the unbroken morning and the time zones, because the minutes only fall when updates stay short. ### Why video instead of a written update? Video carries how something is said, which a written update loses. "Waiting on API access" reads the same after an hour and after a week; spoken, you can usually hear which it is. Video also shows the thing: ten seconds of a failing test replaces a paragraph. Text is enough when the whole update fits in one sentence with nothing to explain, such as a merged pull request. Replacing the weekly status meeting takes a longer update with a different shape. ### What goes into each update? Each update answers three questions in one to two minutes. The 2020 Scrum Guide removed them as a requirement and leaves the format to the team, but as a template they still work. ### What have you finished since your last update? Name results and the pull request or ticket. "The login fix is in production" tells the team more than "worked on auth stuff"; "migration half done, nothing shippable yet" is useful too. ### What are you working on today? Say it so a colleague knows where to find you: "dashboard load time", not "various things". If your day is mostly meetings, say that too. ### What is in your way? Say what you need and from whom: "API access from ops, requested on Monday". Product manager, 0:50. "Yesterday was sprint planning. Today I have the customer call at two, then I'm finishing the notification requirements. One blocker: the legal review of the new terms is still open and holds up the settings page. Sarah, any update on the timeline would help." ### Which tools run an async standup? Async standups run on three kinds of tool: a chat bot that collects written answers, a screen recorder plus a shared channel, or an agenda tool that collects recordings per person. As their own sites described them on 5 October 2026, Geekbot runs standups, polls and surveys in Slack and Microsoft Teams; Standup Alice works in Microsoft Teams, Slack, Cisco Webex and Google Chat and reminds people to post their answers; Standuply works in Slack and Microsoft Teams and lets people attach voice or video messages to a report. If a bot already runs your standup in Teams or Slack, keep it for one-line answers and record only on days with something to show. Criterion | Live call | Chat bot, written | Recorder and channel | Capme meeting Across time zones | Needs one shared slot | Yes | Yes | Yes Blocker reaches a helper | At once | When they read it | When they watch, often hours | When they watch, often hours Tone and screen | Yes | Text, attachments on some bots | Yes | Yes Setup per day | None after the series invite | None after setup | Save and post a file | A new meeting each time Who has watched | Who turned up | Depends on the bot | Not shown | Per person or totals only Small talk | Some | None | None | None ### How does an async standup work in Capme? In Capme a standup is a meeting with an agenda. Take Monday's standup for six people. The organiser writes six topics, one speaker each, a time budget of two minutes (up to 30 is possible) and a deadline of 10:00 Berlin time. Team holds up to 25 topics, and every speaker must be a member of the workspace. Each speaker gets one email with a link, records in the browser with camera, screen or both, and sends. The recorder shows the time left and keeps recording past the budget. At 10:05 the organiser sees four updates in and two missing, and can remind those two or everybody. The organiser publishes, and the team gets one page with a chapter per person, listed with name and length. It plays in order and resumes where each viewer stopped; a click opens any chapter. As checked in our code on 5 October 2026, a topic counts as watched at 75 %. By default the organiser sees who has watched, who only opened it and who has not; an admin can switch the workspace to totals only, and then the organiser sees names and one line of totals. Viewers can get one reminder if the organiser switches it on, after 3, 7 or 14 days. Viewers are free. Capme has no repeating meeting, so each standup is a meeting of its own and the agenda is set up every time. That pays off when the standup runs once or twice a week. For a daily one the free recorder is lighter: everyone records at capme.app/studio, saves the file (the first save asks for a work email) and posts it in the channel. That works on Free, without agenda, reminders or watch progress. Meetings come with Team at 12 € per speaker a month, from 3 speakers, as of October 2026. Recordings live in EU hosting, or in your own bucket on the higher plans. A 14-day company trial includes meetings and needs no card; start it from the pricing page. ### When does an async standup not work? An async standup does not work for a small team in one place that actually solves problems together in the standup; keep that one live. A blocker a colleague could clear in one sentence waits hours, two people building the same thing find out later, and the daily small talk goes, which only a regular informal call brings back. A production incident belongs in neither format; it needs a call or a page at once. For other meeting types, see which meetings can go async. ### In Germany: the works council first Software that shows per person who watched whose update is a technical device for monitoring under § 87 (1) no. 6 BetrVG, so the works council co-determines it. Settle the watch-progress setting with them before day one: the Trust Center has a document written for them, and what the works council decides on helps with the talks. ### How do you run an async video standup? Write the four agreements from the top of this page into one message and send it to one team that feels the problem, for example this one: From Monday we try the standup as recordings. Record one to two minutes by 10:00 your time: what you finished, what you do today, what is in your way and who can help. Post it in #standup, nowhere else. Watch the others within your first two hours; updates from colleagues who start after you, the next morning. If you can clear someone's blocker, message them directly. On Fridays we keep a 15-minute call for whatever the week's recordings left open. Q: Is an async standup still a Daily Scrum? A: No. It keeps the purpose and drops the 15-minute slot; agree the change in a retrospective so the team owns it. Q: What if someone does not want to be on camera? A: Let them share their screen and talk over it with the camera off. The voice carries most of what a written update loses, and the camera can come later. Q: Do I need a paid plan to run one? A: Not for the recordings: the free recorder and a team channel are enough. An agenda with a deadline, reminders and watch progress needs a meeting on Team. ## How to record quick video messages for remote teams: a four-line script and the right length (https://capme.app/quick-video-messages-for-remote-teams) A four-line script, the right length for each kind of message, a 30-second setup, where the file is stored, and what to check when colleagues are on camera. - Say the point, the context, the ask and the deadline in that order, in about 30 seconds, before you show anything on screen. - A bug report needs 60 to 90 seconds of screen; an explained decision needs two or three minutes of your face. A yes/no question needs no video. - In Germany, passing on a video that shows a colleague needs their consent (§ 22 KUG), and a tool that shows who watched can need the works council. A quick video message is a recording of two to four minutes that takes the place of a long chat thread or a short call: you say the point, show what you mean, and your teammate watches when it suits them. To record one, open a free recorder in your browser, such as Capme Screen Recorder, say what you need in the first sentence, stop, and send the video with one line of text that names the deadline. In Germany, 25 % of people in work worked from home at least occasionally in 2025 (Destatis, April 2026). In remote teams, a typical message is a 90-second bug report the developer watches when their day starts. This script fits most messages. Read it aloud before you share anything on screen; it takes about 30 seconds: 1. The point: "Sarah, feedback on the pricing page mockups: the layout works, the plan table needs another pass." 2. The context: "On a 13-inch laptop, three plan names wrap onto two lines, and the prices no longer line up." 3. The ask: "Can you shorten the names or widen the column?" 4. The deadline: "I need the new version by Thursday at 15:00, because the copy review is on Friday morning." After those four lines, share the screen and walk through it. The line you send with the video repeats the ask and the date: "Pricing mockup feedback, 3 min, new version by Thursday 15:00." As checked in Capme's code on 5 October 2026, recording at /studio starts without signing in; the first time you save the MP4, Capme asks for a work email and a six-digit code sent to it. On Free, the free Capme recorder writes the take to the browser's private storage while you record, uploads nothing and has no time limit. In a Team workspace, a take starts uploading as soon as you stop, and nobody sees it until you send it. ### What makes a good video message? A good video message answers one question in two to four minutes and names it in the first ten seconds, so the viewer knows whether to watch now or later. If you are heading past five minutes, you have two topics in one video, or the subject needs a document, a discussion or a recorded meeting. Feedback on three things makes three short videos, each answered and found again on its own. We think you should send the first usable take, because the retakes cost more than they fix. Record a three-minute message three times and watch each take back: 9 minutes of recording, 9 minutes of watching and about 2 minutes of setup make 20 minutes. One take plus setup is about 5. An "um" or a corrected sentence costs the viewer nothing; trim the start and the end and send it. The kind of message decides the length, what the viewer should see and the line that goes with it: Message | Length | Picture | The line you send with it Bug report | 60 to 90 seconds | Screen | "Checkout bug, steps in the video, fix needed before Monday's release" Design or code feedback | 2 to 4 minutes | Screen, face in a corner | "Mockup feedback, 3 min, new version by Thursday" Explaining a decision | 2 to 3 minutes | Face | "Why we moved the launch, no reply needed" Handover before leave | 3 to 5 minutes | Screen | "Invoice run handover, questions by Friday" Yes/no question or a link | None | Text is faster | The question itself Something people will search or quote | None | Write a document | A link to it Whether a topic needs video, text or a meeting at all is a separate decision, and the guide to async communication for remote teams works through it. Video also fails some viewers. A colleague who is hard of hearing, or who reads faster than they listen, needs the words in writing, and Capme does not caption or transcribe recordings, so put the key sentence into the text. On a weak connection a five-minute video may not load at all. ### How do you get past camera nerves? Camera nerves fade after a few videos, and the quickest way there is a small first one: sixty seconds of your screen, no camera, explaining something minor to one colleague, in one take. When the team lead sends a video with a pause and a "let me say that again", everyone else learns that a message does not need five takes. Capme's teleprompter runs over the camera picture with a speed control, several text sizes and starter scripts in English and German written to be read aloud. In Chrome and Edge, a floating window keeps the script, the camera and the stop button in view while you share your screen. ### How do you record a video message in the browser? To record a video message in the browser, spend thirty seconds on the setup first. The laptop microphone is fine; say a sentence and watch the level meter. Put the camera at eye level with the light in front of you, and close every tab and chat window you would not want in the video, because a notification or a customer record on the shared screen ends up in the file too. If the room behind you is private, switch on the blur: "Portrait" keeps the room recognisable, "Privacy" makes it unreadable. 1. Open capme.app/studio in Chrome or Edge, which get every mode. Other browsers record and say when a mode may not run cleanly. 2. Allow the camera and the microphone, choose camera, screen or both, and check the framing in the preview. 3. Press record and, after the countdown, say the point first. You can switch camera and screen during the take; ending a screen share from the browser's bar drops you back to the camera, still recording. 4. Stop and watch it once. "Trim Recording" cuts the start and the end; the trimmed version replaces the original. 5. Save the MP4; the first save asks for a work email and a six-digit code. On Solo, upload it instead and send the unlisted link. On a phone, the recorder uses the camera only, in portrait. ### Where does the video go after you press stop? As of October 2026, a video message recorded on Free stays in your browser until you save the MP4 and send it through the channels your team already uses; a file of a few minutes is often too big for an email attachment, so a shared drive travels better. On Solo, an upload goes to EU hosting, which keeps up to 50 videos, each with an unlisted link you send instead of a file, and your logo replaces the "Recorded with Capme" line that Free puts in the frame. In a Team or Business workspace, a take recorded for a meeting topic uploads to EU hosting or, on Business, straight into your company's own S3 bucket. The Trust Center lists who processes what. ### What changes when colleagues or customers are in the video in Germany? In Germany, a video message becomes a legal question as soon as it shows someone or something besides you. Forward a clip cut from a recorded call and you pass on everyone visible in it, and § 22 KunstUrhG says: "Bildnisse dürfen nur mit Einwilligung des Abgebildeten verbreitet oder öffentlich zur Schau gestellt werden." That means a yes from each of them before you forward, or a clip cut down to your screen. A customer record on the shared screen is personal data under the GDPR, so close it before you record. Watch status is the other point: once a team tool records who watched which message, § 87(1) no. 6 of the Works Constitution Act gives the works council a say, because the tool can be used to monitor behaviour or performance. In a Capme workspace, an admin can set watch progress to totals only, so organisers see how many people have finished without names; the Trust Center has a document written for the works council and the data protection officer. This describes the law and the product as of October 2026 and is not legal advice. ### Can video messages replace a standing meeting? Video messages can replace a standing meeting when that meeting is a round of people reporting in turn: a weekly update where five people speak for five minutes each is five video messages, delivered live. In Capme, that round becomes a recorded agenda, with the video stored in the EU or in your own bucket. On Team, the organiser writes an agenda of up to 25 topics, names an owner for each, gives each a target of up to 30 minutes and sets a deadline. Each owner gets an email with one link, records in the browser and watches the clock turn amber near the target and red past it; it never stops the take. When the videos are in, the audience opens one page with a chapter per topic. Only speakers are paid for; viewers are free. How meetings work has the details, and the 14-day trial needs no card. For a daily round, see the async video standup. For a single clip posted into a thread your team already reads, Capme adds little: if your chat tool records short clips, use that. And the Free recorder gives you a file with "Recorded with Capme" in the frame and no share link, so you send the MP4 yourself. ### What should your first video message be? Your first video message should be the one you would otherwise type as four paragraphs this week, most likely a piece of feedback or a bug. Write the four lines of the script, record it once in the browser recorder, and send it with the deadline in the text. Q: What if my teammate does not watch the video? A: Ask once, in text, after the deadline has passed, and not an hour after sending. If several videos in a row go unwatched, check their length. A team that skips videos is often saying those messages should have been text. Q: How do we find old video messages again? A: Name each file after what it is and when, such as "2026-10 invoice run handover", and keep it where your team keeps documents. From Solo on, uploaded videos sit in one library you can search and rename. ## Is there a free screen recorder without a watermark? What Capme puts in the frame (https://capme.app/no-watermark-screen-recorder) Six free screen recorders checked on their makers' pages for marks and time limits, the phone answer, and the one line Capme's free recorder adds. - On Free, Capme draws "Recorded with Capme" into every frame, centred in the top margin. You cannot switch it off, and trimming the file does not remove it. - The recorders built into Windows, macOS, iPhone and Android mention no mark on their help pages, and OBS Studio says it adds none. The table compares all six options. - From Solo, 9 € a month net as of October 2026, the same margin holds your own logo. Solo starts with a 14-day trial that needs no card. Yes. The recorders built into Windows, macOS, iPhone and Android name no mark on their help pages, and OBS Studio says it adds none. Capme Screen Recorder, which is free, adds one line, "Recorded with Capme", centred in the top margin of the frame. It sits on the background, above your screen and your camera picture and never over them, and on the Free plan you cannot change or remove it. The table below puts all six side by side. Everything else in the frame is yours on Free: the background, its colour and a title line. The recorder runs in the browser with nothing to install, and the first save asks for a work email and a code we send to it. ### Which screen recorders work without a watermark? The screen recorders built into Windows, macOS, iPhone and Android save a plain video file, and none of their makers' help pages mentions a mark or a length limit. OBS Studio goes further and says outright that it adds none. Recorder | How you start it | Mark on the file | Longest take Snipping Tool, Windows | Windows key + Shift + R | None named on Microsoft's page | None named Screenshot app, Mac | Shift + Command + 5; saves a .mov to the desktop | None named on Apple's page | None named Screen Recording, iPhone | Control Center, Record button; saves to Photos | None named on Apple's page | None named; some apps block it Screen record, Android | Swipe down twice, tap Screen record | None named on Google's page | None named OBS Studio, Windows, Mac, Linux | Install, then set up scenes and sources | None, per OBS's help portal | No limits, per OBS Capme Screen Recorder (Free), Chrome, Edge or another Chromium desktop browser | Open the page, press record | "Recorded with Capme", top margin | No limit If nothing may be added, use the recorder your system already has, or OBS when you need several sources and scenes. If you want your camera beside your screen, a teleprompter and a designed frame in the browser, and a line in the margin is acceptable, Capme Screen Recorder does that on Free. Loom, Clipchamp, ScreenPal and VEED are in our free online screen recorders compared by time limit and watermark. On a work laptop where you may not install software, OBS is out. Snipping Tool on Windows 11 and the Screenshot app on a Mac come with the system, and Capme runs in the browser, so all three work without admin rights, unless IT has turned off screen sharing in the browser. ### How do you record Instagram Reels without a watermark? To record your phone's screen, Reels included, use the recorder the phone already has. On an iPhone, open Control Center, tap the Record button and wait for the countdown; the clip lands in Photos (Apple Support, checked 5 October 2026). On Android, swipe down twice from the top and tap Screen record (Android Help, checked 5 October 2026). Apple warns that "some apps might not allow you to record audio or video", so try a short clip first. Capme is the wrong tool for this job. As checked in our code on 5 October 2026, the recorder on a phone films the camera only, in 9:16, and offers no screen sharing. ### What exactly does the Free plan add to a recording? A watermark is a name or logo a recorder draws into the picture itself, so it travels with every copy of the file. Capme's recorder draws a branded frame around what you record: a background, your screen or camera picture in the middle, and a margin above it. The margin at the top is the logo slot. On Free, and for anyone recording without signing in, that slot holds Capme's mark, "Recorded with Capme". The line below the picture holds your title, if you typed one. As checked in our code on 5 October 2026, the mark is drawn into each frame while the video is recorded, from the first frame on. It is six percent as tall as the picture below it. Because it is part of the picture and not a separate layer, trimming and exporting keep it; an editor could only crop the margin away, and your background with it. Your screen, your camera picture and the title line are never covered, and no second stamp sits in a corner. ### What else do you get on Free? Every recording feature of Capme's recorder is in Free. The frame has two switches, camera and screen share, and you can flip either one in the middle of a take. Stop sharing one window, say the sentence that connects the two, share the next, and it is still one take and one file. You also pick a background image or a colour, blur your own background if you like, write a title of up to 40 characters, read from a teleprompter over the camera and trim the start and end in the browser. The file is an MP4 in Chrome and Edge, at 1080p unless you pick a lower quality in the settings; a browser that cannot write MP4 gets a WebM. On Loom's free Starter plan, "the timer will start at 5:00 and count down until you reach 0:00, at which point your recording will end" (Atlassian support for Loom, checked 5 October 2026), so a 25-minute walkthrough is five takes there and one in Capme, which has no time limit on any plan and writes the file to disk as it records (what else Loom's free plan limits). The free recorder keeps every take in your browser's private storage, and nothing is uploaded unless you press upload. You can save a copy to your device at any time. Free has no cloud storage. ### How do you record with Capme? 1. Go to capme.app/studio. The browser asks for your camera and microphone so the preview can start. 2. Pick a background or a colour, type a title if you want one, and turn on the camera, a screen share or both. You can switch either during the take. 3. Press record, wait for the countdown, and press stop when you are done. 4. Cut the start or end if you need to, then save to your device. ### Which plan puts your own logo in the frame? Solo does, at 9 € a month net (as of October 2026), and it starts with a 14-day trial that needs no card. You upload a logo once in the recorder's settings and show it in its own colours, in black or in white; from then on it sits where the Capme mark sat, in every new recording. Solo also keeps 50 videos on EU hosting with unlisted links, each for 365 days, or for as long as you mark it to keep. The pricing page lists every plan. On Team and above, an admin sets the logo for the whole workspace. Those plans exist for Capme's main product, recorded meetings that replace status meetings: each speaker records a topic, viewers watch for free, and the video stays on EU hosting, or on Business in the company's own storage. ### What if the file must carry nothing you did not add? Then use OBS Studio or your system's recorder and accept what they leave out. OBS's help portal says it adds no mark of any kind and "can be used commercially with no restrictions" (OBS help portal, checked 5 October 2026), but it brings no teleprompter or branded frame of its own. We think the line in the margin is a fair trade for an internal walkthrough and a poor one for a client video, because a viewer outside your company reads any third-party name as part of your message, and whoever owns your brand will notice. Before a video leaves the company, ask two questions: will someone outside see it, and would a name other than yours appear in the frame? Two yeses mean OBS, your system's recorder or a 14-day Solo trial with your own logo. Q: Can I remove the mark from a recording later? A: No. A take made on Free keeps the mark for good, also after you move to a plan with your own logo. Only recordings made after the switch show the logo. Q: How often can I save on Free? A: As often as you like; Free has no save limit. Only the first save asks for a work email and the code we send to it. Q: Which browsers work? A: Chrome, Edge and other Chromium browsers get every mode. Other browsers show a notice that they may not record cleanly. ## Best free online screen recorders in 2026: ten compared on time limits, accounts and where the file goes (https://capme.app/free-online-screen-recorder) Ten free online screen recorders compared for 2026 on time limit, watermark, account and where the file goes. Capme Screen Recorder has no time limit per take. - On their own pages, checked 7 October 2026, Panopto Express and the Screenity extension set no time limit on free recordings either. A free take stops after 60 minutes on VEED, 30 on Clipchamp, Riverside, Screencastify and Vidyard, 15 on ScreenPal and 5 on Loom. - VEED and Riverside put a watermark on free videos, and Screencastify lists watermark removal only on its paid plans. Loom and Vidyard keep free videos in their own libraries and Screencastify shares them by link; the other seven let you download or export a file. - As checked in Capme's code on 7 October 2026, the /studio recorder writes each take to the browser's own storage while it records, with no server involved. For a free online screen recorder with no time limit and nothing to download, try Capme Screen Recorder. It runs in a browser tab, records up to 1080p for as long as you talk and gives you an MP4. We make Capme, so read the rest with that in mind. Saving asks for a work email the first time, and on the Free plan the frame carries a small "Recorded with Capme" line above the picture. A browser screen recorder is free screen recording software that runs as a web page or a browser extension and records your screen and camera with the browser's own APIs. ### Which free online screen recorder records unlimited length? Three of the ten set no time limit on a free recording: Capme Screen Recorder, Panopto Express and Screenity. Of those, Panopto Express and Screenity also put nothing on the video, by their own account. The rest stop a free take between 5 and 60 minutes. Recorder | Longest recording, free | What the free plan puts on the video Capme Screen Recorder | No time limit | "Recorded with Capme" in the top margin; your own logo on Solo Panopto Express | No time limit | Nothing, says Panopto Screenity (Chrome extension) | No time limit | Nothing, says Screenity VEED | 60 minutes, every plan | VEED watermark on every free export Clipchamp | 30 minutes per recording | Nothing, says Microsoft Riverside | 30 minutes each time | A watermark on every free recording Screencastify | 30 minutes, up to 10 videos | Not stated; "Remove Castify Watermark" is listed on paid plans only Vidyard Free | 30 minutes, 5 videos a month | Not stated on Vidyard's page ScreenPal | 15 minutes at a time | Nothing, says ScreenPal Loom | 5 minutes on Starter | Nothing, says Loom By our own arithmetic (length divided by the per-take limit, rounded up), a 42-minute product demo takes 9 recordings on Loom's free plan, 3 on ScreenPal and 2 on Clipchamp, Riverside, Screencastify or Vidyard. VEED, Panopto Express, Screenity and Capme get it in 1. A 20-minute onboarding walkthrough takes 4 on Loom, 2 on ScreenPal and 1 everywhere else. Which recorders leave the file unmarked, installed ones included, is the subject of our guide to the free screen recorder without a watermark. ### Which free screen recorders need an account, and where does the file go? Panopto Express, Riverside's free recorder, ScreenPal and Screenity let you record and download without signing up. Loom and Vidyard keep your videos in their own libraries, and Screencastify shares them by link. The VEED screen recorder takes up to 60 minutes on every plan and uploads the take to VEED, where you edit, download or share it (VEED support, recorder, checked 7 October 2026). VEED's support page on watermarks, checked 7 October 2026, says: "All projects exported while you weren't logged into an account or used a free account will have a VEED.IO watermark." Recorder | Account | Where the file goes | Free resolution Capme Screen Recorder | None to record; a work email to save | Your browser, then an MP4 on your device | Up to 1080p Panopto Express | No sign-up | MP4 download, YouTube, Google Classroom or Panopto | Not stated on Panopto's page Screenity | None needed | Your computer or your Google Drive | Not stated for the free extension VEED | Optional; free exports carry the watermark either way | Uploaded to VEED, then edit, download or share | 720p Clipchamp | Microsoft account | Clipchamp's video editor | Up to 1080p Riverside | No sign-up | MP4 download to your device | 720p Screencastify | Not stated on its pricing page | Shared by link | Up to 1080p Vidyard Free | Vidyard account | Your Vidyard library; videos never expire | Not stated on Vidyard's page ScreenPal | No sign-up | Your computer or ScreenPal hosting | Not stated clearly for the free plan Loom | Sign-up | Loom, shared by link | 720p ### What does a recording with Capme Screen Recorder look like? 1. Open capme.app/studio. Recording needs no sign-in; the browser asks for camera and microphone. 2. Pick 480p, 720p or 1080p, and a background, blur or the teleprompter if you want them (recording a presentation with the teleprompter). Click "Share screen" and choose a window or tab. 3. Press Record. Ending a screen share drops you back on the camera without stopping the take; press Stop when you are done and trim the start and end. 4. Press Save to device. The first time, enter a work email and the six-digit code it receives; then the MP4 downloads. On Free you send the file yourself, since there are no share links, and the logo slot holds Capme's line. Solo adds links, your own logo and a shelf of 50 videos in EU-hosted storage for 9 € a month, and you can try it free for 14 days. Recording for a team? Capme Meetings replaces status meetings with recorded topics, and the people who watch never pay. ### How long can you record on Loom's free plan? Loom's free plan records for five minutes. Its Starter plan FAQ lists "5-minute recording limits" and a library of up to 25 videos and screenshots, archived ones included (Loom's Starter plan FAQ, checked 7 October 2026). Starter records at up to 720p (Atlassian support, recording quality, checked 7 October 2026) and, by Loom's own page, puts no mark on the video and shares it by link (Loom's page on watermarks, checked 7 October 2026). The Loom comparison sets Loom and Capme side by side. ### What is the best free screen recorder for Windows in 2026? On Windows 10 or 11, the best free screen recorder is the same browser recorder you would pick on any computer: Capme, Panopto Express and Screenity run in Chrome or Edge, and Riverside says its recorder supports Windows and Mac. If your company runs Microsoft 365, the work version of Clipchamp may already be there, though Microsoft says your IT team has to enable it first (Microsoft support, Clipchamp products, checked 7 October 2026). For installed tools such as the Snipping Tool and OBS, see our comparison of free screen recorders for Windows and Mac. ### Can you record your screen without downloading anything? Capme, Panopto Express and Riverside's recorder run in a tab with nothing to install. Screenity is a Chrome extension, Vidyard records through an extension or a desktop app (Vidyard Free limits, checked 7 October 2026), and ScreenPal also offers downloads for Windows and Mac. On a work laptop without admin rights, a recorder in a tab is often the only one you can start today, since IT may block extensions too. Desktop software is the better fit for multi-track editing, transitions and effects. ### Which free online screen recorder should you pick? We would look at the time limit per take first, because it is the one you find out about mid-sentence. Then: - Capme Screen Recorder, if one take has to run as long as it needs, the file should stay with you and a work email to save is fine. - Panopto Express, if you want no length limit and nothing on the video, and its resolution suits you. - Screenity, if a Chrome extension is allowed and the file should go to your disk or Google Drive. - VEED or Clipchamp, if you mainly edit afterwards; Clipchamp exports clean, VEED marks free exports. - Riverside, Screencastify or Vidyard, if 30 minutes is enough. Riverside watermarks free recordings, Screencastify allows 10 videos and Vidyard 5 a month. - ScreenPal or Loom, if your recordings stay under 15 or 5 minutes. Panopto, Screenity, VEED, Clipchamp, Riverside, Screencastify, Vidyard, ScreenPal and Loom are trademarks of their owners, who have no part in this article. Q: Is there really no length limit on Capme's free recorder? A: The recorder sets none. The practical ceiling is the disk space your browser lets the page use, since the take is written there while you record. A 1080p take fills it faster than 720p. Q: Can a browser recorder capture the sound of a tab or the whole computer? A: Yes, if the browser shares it. Chrome and Edge offer a tab's sound in the share dialog, and on some systems, Windows among them, the whole computer's. Q: Do browser screen recorders work on a Mac? A: Yes, in Chrome or Edge on macOS, the browsers most of them are built for. Safari is the weak spot; Capme's recorder shows a notice there that it may not record cleanly. Check the vendor's browser list before a long take. Q: Which free recorder lets me send a link instead of a file? A: Loom and Screencastify share free videos by link, Vidyard keeps them in its library, and Panopto Express can share to YouTube. On Capme, links start with Solo; on Free you send the MP4 yourself. Q: May I record customer data with a free screen recorder? A: Ask your IT team or data protection officer which tools are approved before you press record. A file that stays on your device stays out of the vendor's cloud; where you store and send it next is up to you. ## Asynchronous communication for remote teams: when it works, with three templates (https://capme.app/remote-team-communication-guide) A response-time policy, a decision log and a time-zone calendar to copy, plus when Loom or ScreenPal is enough and when a call beats async. - Async pays for updates and rarely for decisions under time pressure. - Write down three rules first: how fast replies come, where decisions go, and which hours are kept for overlap. A 17:00 call in Berlin is 08:00 in San Francisco, and a team across Berlin, New York and San Francisco shares no regular working hour. There, asynchronous communication, any exchange in which people don't have to be present at the same time, stops being a preference for remote teams. Synchronous communication needs everyone at once, as in a call or a chat that expects an instant reply. Async works best as the default for updates, reviews and handovers; keep live calls for stuck decisions, conflict, first meetings and outages. This page has three templates to copy: a response-time policy, a decision log and a time-zone calendar. To send one update today, record it in the browser. For a recurring status meeting, Capme Meetings turns the agenda into short videos, one per topic. With 9:00 to 17:00 working days in summer, Berlin and New York share 2 hours (our calculation, method in the calendar section). Across the email and meeting data of 3,143,270 people in 16 cities, the 2020 lockdowns brought "significant and durable increases in length of the average workday (+8.2 percent, or +48.5 minutes)" (DeFilippis et al., NBER Working Paper 27612). In Germany, 25 percent of employed people worked from home at least occasionally in 2025 (Destatis). ### When should a remote team go async, and when should it meet live? A remote team should go async whenever nobody has to answer while the speaker is still talking, and meet live when someone does. The guide to which meetings can go async works through the decision meeting by meeting. Message | Medium | Why A quick question or a date | Chat thread | The answer fits in a line A decision and its reasons | Decision log | People search for it later A walkthrough of a screen, design or code | Recorded video | Shows what you point at An update where tone matters | Recorded video | The voice carries the tone A disagreement, bad news, a first meeting | Live call | Async loses: it needs back and forth An outage customers notice | Phone, then a live call | Async loses: minutes count For recording tips, see the guide to quick video messages. Spending the first 5 to 10 minutes of a call on silent writing means everyone writes their update or view first, the group reads, and the talk goes only to what is still open. Amazon runs meetings on six-page memos, and Jeff Bezos described the reading in his 2017 letter to shareholders: "We silently read one at the beginning of each meeting in a kind of 'study hall.'" Async costs speed. A question asked across time zones often waits a working day for its answer, so three rounds of questions take three days instead of one twenty-minute call. We think that trade pays for updates and not for decisions under time pressure, because an update loses nothing by waiting and a decision often does. ### Which async communication best practices hold up in a remote team? Three practices hold up: agreed response times, a decision log, and progress posted where the work lives. Response times come first, because async breaks down once people expect instant replies. Urgent means an outage, a security incident or a customer escalation. Phone the person on duty at [on-call number]; do not post it in a channel and wait. Everything else is answered within one working day of the recipient's time zone. Nobody replies outside working hours. Decisions go in the decision log at [link], not in chat. Managers keep to the same window. Status meetings often exist because nobody can see the work. Post progress where it happens: a ticket comment, a screenshot in the project channel, a two-minute recording of what shipped. A recording makes its point in the first sentence and ends within five minutes. ### How do you build an async documentation culture? An async documentation culture rests on one rule: a decision that is not in the agreed place has not been made. A decision that lives only in a call is lost to everyone who wasn't there, including the person who joins in six months. Keep one log per project, newest entry on top, and link it from the chat thread where the question came up. Question: what had to be decided, in one sentence. Options: the two or three that were considered. Decision and reason: what was chosen, and why. Who decided, and on which date. Review: when, or on what condition, it is reopened. ### What does asynchronous communication look like in practice? In practice, asynchronous communication is a written or recorded message with a deadline, answered where the work lives. - A handover note at the end of the Berlin day: what is done, what is open, whom to ask - A design or code review as a screen recording with spoken comments, answered in the review tool - A pre-recorded all-hands, with questions collected in a thread for 48 hours The guide to async video standups replaces a daily standup step by step. ### Is Loom or ScreenPal worth it for async communication on a remote team? A clip recorder such as Loom or ScreenPal is worth it when the job is one person explaining one thing: a bug, a design, a handover. Replacing a status meeting is a different job. Several people each have to report by a deadline, and someone has to know who hasn't. With a clip tool, someone collects the links and chases the missing ones by hand; a tool built around a recorded agenda does that part. The comparison of async video update tools sorts them by this difference. Either way, check where the videos are stored and whether people who only watch need a paid seat. The guide to Loom alternatives sorts the options by job. ### How does a team across three time zones run its weekly update in Capme? A team of six in Berlin, New York and San Francisco can run its weekly update in Capme as a recorded agenda, one topic per person. As checked in Capme's code on 2026-10-05, a meeting on Team holds up to 25 topics with a target of up to 30 minutes each; the target never cuts a recording off, and a video sent after the deadline is still accepted. 1. Monday, team lead in Berlin: clicks New meeting, adds six topics with a 3-minute target each and sets the deadline to Thursday 17:00. Each speaker sees it with a countdown in their own time zone: 11:00 in New York, 08:00 in San Francisco. 2. Each speaker opens the emailed link, records in the browser and sends; nobody sees a take before that. 3. Wednesday: two videos are missing. Capme does not remind speakers on its own, so the lead presses Remind everyone, which reaches only those who have not recorded. 4. Thursday: Publish meeting emails the team; a missing video shows as a placeholder. In the same dialog the lead sets one reminder, after 3, 7 or 14 days, for anyone who hasn't finished watching. 5. Friday, each in their own morning: the team watches the chapters in order. The lead sees per person who watched (75% seen), partly watched, opened or never opened, unless an admin chose totals only. In Germany, agree that per-person view with the works council or data protection officer first; video tools and the works council lists what to settle. Capme does not transcribe or summarise and has no comments or live calls, so the decision log still needs writing and questions go to your chat. On Team, videos are stored in the EU. As of October 2026, Team costs 12 € per speaker a month from 3 speakers, net; people who only watch are free, and the 14-day trial needs no card. For a one-off clip, the meeting product is more than you need; use the free screen recorder. On Free, the file is saved to your device and never uploaded, so you send it yourself. ### How do you build a shared communication calendar for a team across time zones? A shared communication calendar for a distributed team fixes three things in UTC: the overlap window, the update deadlines and the hours nobody books. Our method for the overlap: working days of 9:00 to 17:00 local time, converted with the summer offsets Berlin UTC+2, London UTC+1, New York UTC-4 and San Francisco UTC-7. Locations | Shared hours | Window (UTC) Berlin + London | 7 | 08:00 to 15:00 New York + San Francisco | 5 | 16:00 to 21:00 Berlin + New York | 2 | 13:00 to 15:00 Berlin + San Francisco, or all three | 0 | None: Berlin ends at 15:00, San Francisco starts at 16:00 The EU and the US change their clocks on different Sundays. From 8 to 28 March and from 25 to 31 October 2026, New York is five hours behind Berlin instead of six, and their overlap grows to 3 hours (13:00 to 16:00 UTC); Berlin and San Francisco still share none. Berlin + New York window: 13:00 to 15:00 UTC, Tuesday to Thursday, for decisions only, never for updates. New York + San Francisco window: 16:00 to 18:00 UTC, for anything San Francisco must decide; Berlin hands over in writing by 15:00 UTC. Update deadline for the five-question weekly update: Thursday 15:00 UTC (17:00 Berlin, 11:00 New York, 08:00 San Francisco, so San Francisco records the evening before). Times are summer time; while New York is on winter time, add one hour. No meetings outside the two windows. Invitations give the time in UTC and the organiser's zone. Q: Does async communication work for a team under five people in one time zone? A: It works, but saves less: a small team in one zone can meet for fifteen minutes cheaply, so the gain is mostly written decisions. Async pays across time zones or once a status round passes five or six speakers. Q: Is async-first communication more productive? What does 2025 research say? A: Studies measure the cost of meetings more often than the gain from async. In a 2025 panel survey of 1,137 respondents (Standaert et al., Management Research Review), a heavier meeting load went with more burnout, and fully remote staff reported more burnout than hybrid staff. Q: Which video platforms make async video updates easy for distributed teams? A: By job: for one person explaining one thing, a clip recorder such as Loom or ScreenPal; for a team update with a deadline, a tool that collects one video per person, as in the Capme example. Q: What should a manager do first to move a team to async? A: Keep to the response-time policy yourself: if a manager sends "quick call?" at 21:00, the team copies that, whatever the policy says. Then replace one recurring status meeting for a month and compare meeting hours before and after. ## Help: How people join your workspace (https://capme.app/help/how-people-join) Choose who can add people to your workspace, and whether colleagues at your company's domain can join on their own. In Workspace → Access, under How people join, an owner or admin picks one of three options. People who join come in as viewers, who cost nothing. ### The three options - Admins add people: Only the owner or an admin adds people, on the People tab. Each person gets an email invitation and signs in with that address. New workspaces start here. - Members can add colleagues: Members can also add people at your verified domains, on the People page. An admin adds anyone else, including people who were removed or left. - Anyone at our domain joins: Anyone who signs in to Capme with an address at a verified domain, and isn't in a workspace yet, joins yours. Available on Business and Enterprise and in the Business trial. ### Verifying a domain Sign in with an address at the domain, open Access and claim it under Domains. No DNS record is needed, because signing in with the address shows you use it. A second domain needs an admin with an address there. Public mailbox providers such as gmail.com can't be claimed, and each domain belongs to the first workspace that claims it. ### When a colleague didn't join Joining by domain skips anyone who is already in a workspace, a personal one included, and anyone who was removed. An admin adds them on the People tab instead. It also stops after a trial has ended or while the workspace is locked. If a colleague signed in with another address or lands in the wrong workspace, see When a meeting link won't open, which also says which workspace a sign-in opens. If an invitation doesn't arrive, see When the code doesn't arrive. ## Help: Where your videos live (https://capme.app/help/where-your-videos-live) In your browser, on Capme video hosting in Germany, or in your own bucket: what each means for playback, deletion and getting a copy. A recording is in one of three places. Until it is uploaded, it is in the browser it was recorded in. After the upload it is on Capme video hosting, or, on Business and Enterprise, in a bucket your company owns. Every workspace starts on Capme video hosting. ### Recordings in your browser A recording made at capme.app/studio stays in your browser until you upload it, and on Free it can't be uploaded. Record and save with Capme Screen Recorder explains how to find one again. A take for a meeting topic uploads as soon as you stop, and nobody sees it until you send it. ### Capme video hosting Capme video hosting stores recordings in Germany and converts each one after the upload, so the player adjusts the quality to the viewer's connection. Recordings on Capme hosting are deleted when their retention window ends, unless someone keeps them. How long recordings are kept, and deleting them explains how that works. ### Your own bucket On Business and Enterprise, and during a Business trial, the workspace owner can connect an S3-compatible bucket your company owns. New recordings then go from the browser straight into the bucket and play from there. Capme doesn't convert them and sets no retention window. Connect your own bucket walks through the setup. ### Switching between hosting and a bucket Only the workspace owner can switch, in Workspace → Data, in the Storage section. A switch only affects new recordings, and a workspace whose plan no longer includes a bucket records to Capme hosting by itself. Every recording keeps playing from where it was stored, and nothing is copied or moved. ### Getting a copy of your videos Capme offers no download of a video on Capme hosting. To keep your own copy of a take, press Save to device on the review screen (under More when you record for a meeting) before you send or upload it. For recordings already on Capme hosting, write to hello@capme.app: Capme exports them as MP4 files, free of charge. Recordings in your own bucket are files in your bucket, so you can copy them with your provider's tools. ## Help: Connect your own bucket (https://capme.app/help/own-bucket) Keep recordings in an S3 bucket your company controls: which providers work, what to enter, the CORS policy, and what Capme deletes there. Your own bucket is part of Business and Enterprise, and of a Business trial. Only the workspace owner can set it up: in Workspace → Data, in the Storage section, choose Your own S3-compatible bucket, fill in the fields below, set the CORS policy, test and save. Videos recorded before stay on Capme hosting and keep playing. Where your videos live explains what changes once you use one. ### Which providers work Amazon S3, Hetzner Object Storage, Cloudflare R2, DigitalOcean Spaces. The endpoint has to be an https address of one of these providers; Capme refuses any other host, including a custom domain. Write to hello@capme.app if you need another provider. ### What to enter - Endpoint, region and bucket: From your provider. If your provider has no regions, enter auto or leave the region empty. - Access key ID and secret access key: A key that may list the bucket and read, write and delete objects in it. - Public base URL: Leave it empty, and Capme signs every playback link. Fill it in only for a public bucket, with an address on your provider's host. - Path-style addressing: Turn it on for Hetzner. AWS doesn't need it. Capme's server uses the key to start and finish uploads, sign playback links, store each still image, and check and delete files. The video itself never passes through Capme. ### Set the CORS policy Browsers upload straight to your bucket, so the bucket has to allow requests from Capme. The Storage section shows the policy under Bucket CORS, with Capme's address filled in. Copy it into your bucket's CORS settings unchanged. Without the ETag header in it, every upload fails. ### Test, then save Press Test connection. You can save once all four steps pass. If one fails: - Reach the bucket: Check the endpoint, region and bucket name, and that the key may list the bucket. - Write a test file: The key may not write to the bucket. - Read it back with a signed link: The key may not read, or the region is wrong. - Delete it again: The key may not delete. The test runs on Capme's server, so it can't check CORS. If it passes and uploads still fail, check the CORS policy first. ### What Capme deletes in your bucket Capme deletes a recording's files from your bucket only when someone deletes that recording in Capme. If the bucket can't be reached then, Capme tries again later. Everything else stays, including the old file when someone records a topic again. When the workspace is deleted, every file stays, and Capme removes the bucket settings and the key. ### Let old recordings expire Capme sets no retention window in your bucket. If recordings should go after a while, add a lifecycle rule to the bucket; the Storage section has an example under Retention in your bucket that deletes files after 365 days. When a file is gone, Capme notices within a night or two and takes the recording out of its meetings. ### Going back to Capme hosting Choose Capme video hosting in the Storage section and save. New recordings then go to Capme. The bucket settings and the key stay saved, so the videos in your bucket keep playing. ## Help: How long recordings are kept, and deleting them (https://capme.app/help/retention-and-deletion) How long recordings stay on Capme hosting, how to keep one longer or get a copy, and what deleting a recording, meeting or workspace does. This applies to recordings on Capme video hosting. Free keeps nothing on Capme: recordings stay in your browser. In your own bucket, no retention window of ours applies. ### How long recordings are kept Each recording is deleted 365 days after it is made, or after it was last added to a meeting. On Business and Enterprise, and during a Business trial, an admin can set the retention window under Settings, in the Retention card, to anywhere from 1 to 365 days. On Solo, you set it under Plan & billing in the account menu. On Team it is fixed. A new window applies only to recordings made after you save it, so shortening it deletes nothing already recorded. No email comes before a recording expires. The library shows how many days each video has left. ### Keeping a recording longer A kept recording stays until someone deletes it. For one video, whoever recorded it chooses Keep beyond the retention window in their library, and undoes it with Stop keeping. For a whole meeting, the organiser or an admin turns on Keep this meeting and its videos beyond the retention window on the meeting's page. Videos added later are kept too. ### Deleting a recording Whoever recorded a video can delete it in their library, even if it is kept. It disappears from every meeting it was in and is removed for good. To take a video out of one meeting without deleting it, remove it from the meeting: it goes back to the library of the person who recorded it. ### Deleting a meeting The organiser or an admin can delete a meeting. Its invitations and share link stop working, and its videos stay in the library with their own deletion dates. ### Getting your videos out Videos on Capme hosting can't be downloaded. For copies, write to hello@capme.app: Capme exports your recordings as MP4 files, free of charge, also during the 30 days after a plan ends. Before sending a fresh take, a speaker can keep a copy with Save to device. Videos in your own bucket are already in your storage. ### Deleting the workspace In a company workspace, only the owner can delete it, under Data, by typing its name. Nothing is removed for 14 days. Recordings still play and meetings still work, and the owner can stop it with Keep this workspace. A paid plan stops renewing when you ask and renews again if you keep the workspace. A Free or Solo workspace has no Data page. Its owner chooses Request account deletion in the account menu, and Capme starts the same deletion. To leave someone else's workspace instead, see Leaving a workspace. After the 14 days, Capme deletes the workspace's videos on Capme hosting, its meetings, its members and its branding, and nothing more is charged. Files in your own bucket stay where they are. A workspace whose paid plan ended is deleted 30 days after the end, as When a subscription ends explains. ## Help: People, roles and speakers (https://capme.app/help/people-roles-and-seats) Who can do what in a workspace, the difference between a viewer and a speaker, and how to remove someone or hand over ownership. Everyone in a company workspace has a role (owner, admin or member) and is either a speaker or a viewer. A personal workspace on Free or Solo holds only you, so it has no admin area and nobody can be added. ### Who can do what - Owner: One per workspace, and always a speaker. Only the owner can make or remove admins, pay, set up single sign-on, hand over ownership and delete the workspace. - Admin: Opens the admin area under Workspace. Adds and removes members, decides who is a speaker, and looks after access, branding and settings. - Member: Everyone else. Members don't see the admin area. They can add colleagues only if your access setting allows it. ### Viewers and speakers Viewers watch the meetings they are invited to and cost nothing. Speakers can also record and organise meetings, and the workspace pays for each one. Role and speaker status are separate, so an admin can be a viewer. People you add start as viewers. ### Making someone a speaker On the People tab, an admin chooses Make a speaker in the person's menu. A viewer can ask with Ask to be a speaker on their profile, and the owner and admins get the request by email. If every speaker the workspace pays for is taken, only the owner can pay for one more, in the same step. Remove as speaker makes someone a viewer again. The bill only goes down when the owner lowers the number of speakers paid for, as Billing, speakers and invoices explains. During a Team or Business trial, everyone can record and nobody needs to ask. People added while the trial workspace is set up come in as speakers, and the first bill counts every speaker, so make anyone who won't record a viewer before you buy. That still works after the trial has ended. ### Removing someone On the People tab, choose Remove from workspace in the person's menu. They lose access, their recordings stay, and you can hand their open topics to someone else in the same step. Only the owner can remove an admin. Add back brings a removed person back as a viewer. To leave a workspace yourself, see Leaving a workspace. ### Handing over ownership On the People tab, the owner chooses Transfer ownership on an admin's row and confirms with that person's email address. The old owner becomes an admin, and a viewer if the new owner isn't a speaker yet and every speaker you pay for is taken. This also works after a trial has ended, so the person who buys can take over. A transfer is refused when the person isn't an admin yet (make them one with Make admin), has never signed in to Capme, or already owns a workspace, a personal one included. In that last case they ask hello@capme.app to close it. ## Help: Single sign-on (https://capme.app/help/single-sign-on) Let people sign in with your company accounts through SAML: connect Google Workspace, Microsoft Entra ID or another provider, test it and turn it on. Single sign-on replaces the emailed code with a sign-in through your identity provider over SAML 2.0. It is part of Business and Enterprise, and of the Business trial. The owner sets it up in Access, in the Single sign-on card. Admins can test it, turn it off and disconnect it. You need a verified domain first, because the connection only covers addresses at your verified domains. Verifying a domain explains how. ### Connecting your provider The card guides you through creating a SAML app in Google Workspace, Microsoft Entra ID or another provider, and shows the values to enter there. Assign the app to the people who should use Capme. Then paste the metadata URL or file your provider gives you. Use the URL if you have one. Connecting changes nothing for anyone. Everybody keeps the emailed code until the connection is tested and turned on. ### Test, then turn it on Test the connection signs you in once through your provider. When it works, the card says Working, and the owner can use the Turn on single sign-on switch. If the card stays at Not tested, sign in as someone your provider has assigned to the app, with an address at a connected domain. There is no password or backup code. If your identity provider goes down, an admin who is still signed in can turn single sign-on off on the card, or you write to hello@capme.app and we switch your domains back to the emailed code. ### Who keeps the emailed code Under Who this covers, the owner picks Everyone, which takes the code away from everybody at your connected domains, or Speakers and admins, which lets viewers and people new to your workspace keep it. For a single address, such as a contractor, the owner adds an exception under People who keep the emailed code. ### What changes for your people Everyone the setting covers is sent to your provider after typing their address on the sign-in page. Members keep their account, recordings and meetings. Capme moves them over at their first sign-in through your provider, and anyone already signed in stays signed in. Someone who isn't a member yet only gets in through single sign-on if Access is set to Anyone at our domain joins. Otherwise an admin adds them first. A sign-in through your provider only opens this workspace's meetings. For a meeting another company shares with them, people need an address that doesn't sign in through your provider. See When a meeting link won't open. ### Certificates and disconnecting Your provider's signing certificate expires, and sign-in stops working when it does. From 30 days before, the card shows a warning and the owner and admins get emails. Replace the certificate in your provider in time. With a metadata URL, the owner then presses Re-read their metadata. With a pasted file, disconnect and connect again with the new file. Disconnect sends everyone back to the emailed code. Nobody loses their account or anything they recorded. ## Help: What admins can see about people (https://capme.app/help/what-admins-see) The overview counts the workspace as a whole. Watch progress lives on each meeting, per person or as totals, as an admin decides. ### The Overview tab Only owners and admins open Overview. It shows totals for the whole workspace, such as meetings created, videos recorded, how much gets watched and storage used, and never splits them by person. Names appear in two places: Waiting on, the people who still owe videos for meetings that are collecting them, and Recent admin activity, which shows who changed what. ### The People tab For each person: name, email address, job title, role, viewer or speaker, and when they were invited, first signed in or were removed. The People tab doesn't show when someone was last active. ### Who watched a meeting On a meeting's page, its organiser sees for each person on the audience list whether they have finished, started or not opened it. Admins count as organisers of every meeting in the workspace. Everyone else sees only their own progress. An admin can hide each person's progress under Settings, in Watch progress: with Totals only, organisers see how many people have finished or started, but not who. Per person is the default. In Germany, a system that shows who watched what is subject to co-determination by the works council (§87(1) no. 6 BetrVG). If you have a works council, agree with it which setting to use. ### Your own videos Videos lists only your own recordings, and admins have no list of other people's. A video you add to a meeting can be watched by everyone the meeting is shared with, and by the workspace's admins. ### The audit log Every change in the workspace is logged with who made it, when, and their IP address and browser. Entries are deleted after 365 days. On Business and Enterprise, and in the Business trial, an admin downloads the log as a CSV file under Data. On other plans we send it on request. ## Help: Branding your recordings (https://capme.app/help/branding) Set the background, logo and text that recordings in your workspace start with, and decide what people may change. In a company workspace, admins set this on the Branding tab. It applies to recordings made from then on. A finished video keeps the look it was recorded with. ### Branding on Free and Solo On Free, every recording carries Capme's "Recorded with Capme" mark, which can't be removed. The background and the text are your own choice. Solo has no Branding tab: you pick your background, logo and text in the recorder. ### What you can set - Your own background: One image or one colour, which the recorder opens with. Once you have one, you can turn off Also offer the Capme backgrounds. - Logo: Shown on recordings and at the top of your videos' public pages while Show the logo on recordings is on. Until you upload one, that is the Capme logo; turn the switch off to show none. - Title text: A short line of up to 40 characters. While people may write their own text, anyone with a name set starts with their name instead; to put your text on every recording, turn off Let people write their own text. Images can be PNG, JPG, GIF or WebP, up to 5 MB each. ### What people may change Three switches decide whether people can replace your settings in the recorder: Let people use their own background, Let people use their own logo and Let people write their own text. Turn one off and people can only use what you set. Back to the Capme look clears your backgrounds, logo and text. ## Help: Plans, trials and what happens when one ends (https://capme.app/help/plans-and-trials) What each plan includes, how the 14-day trial works, and what you can still do after a trial or a subscription ends. ### What each plan includes - Free: Capme Screen Recorder on its own. Recordings stay in your browser, which keeps only your most recent ones, until you save them to your device. They carry Capme's mark. - Solo: Capme Screen Recorder for one person, in a workspace of your own. Up to 50 videos in the cloud at once, with links anyone can open. When all 50 places are taken, delete a video to upload the next one. Each video is kept for 365 days unless you keep it. - Team: Capme Meetings for a team, with up to 25 topics per meeting. You pay per speaker, and viewers are free. Recordings are kept for 365 days. - Business: Everything in Team, with up to 50 topics per meeting, your own retention window, your own bucket, single sign-on, joining by domain and an export of the audit log. - Enterprise: Business for larger companies, with up to 100 topics per meeting and terms agreed with us. Write to sales@capme.app. ### Starting a trial A trial lasts 14 days and needs no card. Signing up gives you a Free workspace, and a trial starts only when you ask for one: with a plan's trial button on the pricing page, or from Free, where you can try Solo or Team. While paid plans are closed, no trial starts and nothing can be bought. The trial and buy buttons then lead to a page where you leave your address, Capme emails you when plans open, and your workspace stays on Free. During a Team or Business trial, speakers aren't counted, so everyone can record. A trial can move up to a bigger plan and keeps its end date. Buying a plan ends the trial that day, and the days left aren't added to the plan. ### When the trial ends Nothing is deleted because a trial ended. Everyone can still open the workspace and watch every meeting and video, public links keep working, and you can still delete recordings. Nothing new can be added until a plan is chosen: no recording, no new meetings, no invitations, no changes to settings. So that the person who pays can take over, the owner can still hand the workspace to someone else, and admins can still make speakers viewers and remove people before the first bill. While paid plans are open, the owner continues with Choose a plan. ### When a subscription ends Cancelling stops the renewal, and the plan runs to the end of the period you paid for. When it ends, the workspace is locked. Nothing new can be added and public links switch off. Everyone can still open the workspace, watch what is in it and delete recordings. For 30 days after the end you can choose a plan again, which lifts the lock. 7 days before those days run out, the owner, the admins and the invoice email get a reminder. Then Capme deletes the workspace, with no further grace period. If you want copies of your videos, ask for an export before then, as Getting your videos out describes. A workspace locked over an unpaid invoice is never deleted for that reason. Paying the invoice lifts the lock, as When a payment fails explains. ### Changing plans The owner moves up a plan, or from monthly to yearly, on the buy page, as Billing, speakers and invoices describes. To move to a smaller plan or from yearly to monthly, write to us through the contact page. ## Help: Billing, speakers and invoices (https://capme.app/help/billing-and-seats) Who can buy and change the plan, how speakers are charged, where invoices are, and what to do when a payment fails. In a company workspace, billing is on the Billing tab; in a workspace of your own, under Plan & billing in the account menu. Admins can fill in the billing details. Buying, changing the number of speakers, invoices and cancelling are for the owner only. ### Billing details and VAT Capme sells to businesses only, so the first purchase needs the Billing details: company name, address and a VAT ID, tax number or company registration number. Invoices go to the invoice email, or to the owner if you leave it empty. Prices are net. Customers in Germany pay 19% VAT. Businesses elsewhere in the EU need a VAT ID, which Capme checks when you save, and are invoiced under the reverse charge. If the buy page says it can't sell to your country yet, write to sales@capme.app. ### Buying or changing a plan The owner buys with Choose a plan (on Free: Or buy a plan now, without a trial) and changes the plan later with Manage plan. Both open the same page: plan, Monthly or Yearly, two months free, and the number of speakers. You pay by card or SEPA direct debit. A first yearly plan can also be paid with Invoice, by bank transfer, due in 14 days. ### Paying for speakers You pay per speaker, and viewers are free. Team starts at 3 speakers and Business at 10. You can't pay for fewer speakers than the workspace has, so make anyone who only watches a viewer first (Viewers and speakers). On a monthly plan, a change is settled on the next invoice. On a yearly plan, an added speaker is charged at once and a removed one isn't credited. For more than 500 speakers, write to sales@capme.app. ### Invoices and cancelling Invoices come by email. After the first purchase, the owner also finds them under Invoices and payment method, where the payment method is changed too. To cancel, the owner chooses Manage plan, then Cancel subscription, or writes to hello@capme.app. The plan runs to the end of the month or year already paid, and that period isn't refunded. Until then Continue plan takes the cancellation back. What happens after the end is in When a subscription ends. ### When a payment fails or an invoice is overdue The owner and the invoice email get an email, and everything keeps working while the payment is tried again. Check the payment method under Invoices and payment method. If the last try fails, or an invoice is still open 44 days after its date, the workspace is locked: nothing new can be added and public links switch off. Nothing is deleted over an unpaid invoice, and paying it lifts the lock. Buying a new plan doesn't settle it. ## Help: How a Capme meeting works (https://capme.app/help/how-a-meeting-works) An agenda, one short video per topic, and one page where everyone watches them in order when it suits them. A Capme meeting replaces a status call. Each person records their part, and everyone watches the result, when it suits them. Capme Meetings comes with Team, Business and Enterprise. On Free and Solo you record videos for yourself with Capme Screen Recorder. New meeting explains what a meeting adds. ### The agenda The organiser writes an agenda. Each topic has one speaker and a target length of up to 30 minutes; nothing cuts a speaker off. The recording deadline is only a target. Videos still count after it, until the meeting is published. ### Where a meeting stands Every meeting shows one of four statuses. 1. Not sent yet: The speakers haven't been invited yet. 2. Waiting for videos: Speakers have their invitation and record their topics. The meeting page collects the videos as they come in. 3. All videos in: Every topic has a video. The meeting waits for the organiser to publish it. 4. Shared: The organiser published the meeting, and the attendees and speakers got an email with the link. ### Watching a meeting Everyone opens the same page, and the videos play in agenda order. The organiser, the speakers, the attendees and the workspace's admins can open the meeting. Attendees can be any email address, also outside the company, and sign in with it. Anyone else with the link can ask for access. If a link won't open for you, see When a meeting link won't open. A video counts as watched once someone has seen 75% of it. Whether the organiser sees this per person or only as totals depends on a workspace setting; What admins can see about people explains it. ## Help: Create and send a meeting (https://capme.app/help/create-and-send-a-meeting) Write the agenda, invite the speakers, publish the meeting and remind people, and what you can still change along the way. ### Creating a meeting You need a plan with meetings and, outside a trial, you need to be a speaker; viewers ask an admin first (People, roles and speakers explains how). Press New meeting and fill in: - Name and description: Both are required. Everyone who opens the meeting sees the description. - Recording deadline for speakers: Optional. Pick a day, or No deadline. - Agenda: One row per topic, each with a speaker and a length. The first row is an intro for you. Speakers have to be members of the workspace, and your plan sets how many topics fit. - Invite meeting attendees: Everyone who should watch, from inside or outside the company. Attendees hear nothing until you publish the meeting. When you save, a Send emails? dialog opens. Speakers can record once they are invited. If you save without sending, the meeting stays a draft until you save it again with invitations. Admins can edit, publish and delete every meeting in the workspace, not only their own. ### Changing a meeting before you publish Until the meeting is published, choose Edit to change the name, the description, the deadline and the agenda. A topic that already has a video keeps its speaker until you choose Take video out of the meeting in its More menu. Taking a video out or removing its topic never deletes the video; it stays with the person who recorded it. ### Reminding speakers Capme doesn't remind speakers on its own. Under Edit, use Remind everyone, or Send a reminder in a topic's More menu. Only speakers who haven't recorded yet get one. ### Publishing a meeting Publish meeting emails the link to the attendees and the speakers. You can publish while videos are still missing; they show as placeholders. In the same dialog, Remind people who have not watched makes Capme remind them once. After publishing, nobody can record until you unpublish. A published meeting can't be edited. Under Attendees you can still add people, and they get the link straight away. Unpublish takes the meeting back to editing. Attendees lose access until you publish again, and speakers can record again. ### Deleting a meeting Delete meeting is under Edit, so unpublish a published meeting first. The link stops working, and the videos aren't deleted with it. ## Help: Record your topic (https://capme.app/help/record-your-topic) Camera, screen or both, one take, and what happens between pressing stop and your video being in the meeting. Open the meeting from your invitation and press Record on your topic. To hand in a video you already made, press Use an existing video instead and pick it from your videos. You need to be a speaker to record. During a trial everyone can record. Otherwise, if you aren't a speaker yet, the page lets you ask an admin. You can record until the organiser publishes the meeting, even after the deadline. Once it is published, your topic has no Record button; ask the organiser to unpublish it. ### Recording Record your camera, your screen or both; you can switch during a take. On a phone there is no screen sharing. The clock shows the target length and never stops you. ### After you stop You see the take, and it starts uploading in the background right away. Nobody sees it until you send it. From here you can: - Send to the meeting: Your video goes into your topic. That's all you need to do. - Record again: Start over with a new take. - Cut the ends off: Trim the start and end. - Save to device: Download a copy of this take, from the More menu. Once a video is in the meeting, Capme offers no download. ### Uploading Keep the tab open until your video is sent. If the connection drops, it picks up where it left off. If it fails for good, the screen says so and Send to the meeting tries again. Your take is saved in the browser while you record, so closing the tab doesn't lose it. When recording or playback doesn't work explains how to send it afterwards. ### Still processing On Capme hosting, a video is converted after the upload, which takes a few minutes. The meeting shows it as almost ready in the meantime and updates by itself when it can play. ### Replacing your video Until the organiser publishes the meeting, press Record again on your topic to replace your video. The old one is deleted, unless it is also used in another meeting. ## Help: Sign in and manage your account (https://capme.app/help/sign-in) The emailed code, what to do when it doesn't arrive or a meeting link won't open, and how to manage your profile, workspace and account. ### Signing in with a code Capme has no passwords. Enter your email address and press Email me a code. The email holds a six-digit code and a link, and either one signs you in. Both work for 60 minutes, and the newest email is the one to use. If your company uses single sign-on, there is no code for your address: the page takes you to your company's sign-in instead. If it doesn't, press Continue with your company account. Single sign-on explains it for admins. ### When the code doesn't arrive or doesn't work - No email: Look in spam or your company's quarantine for mail from no-reply@mail.capme.app, then press Send a new code. If your company filters mail, ask IT to allow that sender. Invitations come from the same address. - That code is not right or has expired.: Check that you used the newest email, or press Send a new code. - Too many attempts: Capme stops sending and checking codes for a while. The message says how long to wait. ### When a meeting link won't open A meeting opens only for the address it was shared with. If the page says This meeting is not shared with you, it shows which address you are signed in with. Open Capme, choose Sign out in your account menu, and sign in again with the address the invitation went to. Without an account menu, open the invitation link in a private window and sign in there with the invited address. Otherwise press Ask for access, and the organiser can add you. If the link says the page isn't there, the meeting was deleted, you were removed from its workspace, or you signed in through your company's single sign-on and the meeting belongs to another company's workspace. A company sign-in only opens your own company's meetings. If you belong to several workspaces, signing in opens the one that has verified your email's domain, otherwise the one you joined first. There is no switcher. Meetings shared with you from other workspaces still open from their links. ### Changing your name or language Open your account menu and choose Profile & settings. The language applies to the app and to Capme's emails to you. If your company signs you in through single sign-on, it may set your name for you. You can't change the email address you sign in with. To move to a new address, write to hello@capme.app. ### Leaving a workspace On Profile & settings, Delete my account takes you out of the workspace. Your recordings stay with their meetings, and an admin can invite you back. As the owner you can't leave this way. Hand a company workspace to an admin first, as People, roles and speakers describes. A workspace of your own is closed with your account; see below. ### Deleting your account To have your Capme account deleted for good, choose Request account deletion in your account menu. It opens the contact form with the subject filled in, and we delete the account by hand. For a workspace of your own, How long recordings are kept, and deleting them says what happens to it. ## Help: Record and save with Capme Screen Recorder (https://capme.app/help/free-recorder) Record in a browser tab, save the file to your device, and find a recording you made earlier. Open capme.app/studio and record your camera, your screen or both, signed in or not. The recording stays in this browser on this computer, and nothing is uploaded unless you choose to. On Free, every recording carries Capme's mark; Branding explains it. ### Save a recording to your device Press Save to device to download the file. If you aren't signed in, Capme first asks for your work email and sends you a code, and the first time you also accept the Terms. Saving doesn't upload the video. ### Find a recording you made earlier Sign in on the same computer and browser and open Videos. Recordings still in this browser carry the label This device. If one is missing, the browser has probably removed it: it keeps a set number of recordings and deletes the oldest when you start a new one, saved or not. You can raise the number in Videos, under Keep on this device. Clearing the browser's data or closing a private window deletes them too. ### Keep videos online On Free, recordings can't be uploaded. Solo keeps up to 50 videos online, each shareable with a link; Team, Business and Enterprise have no such count. Use Save to cloud after a take or Upload on its card in Videos. Uploading moves the recording out of this browser, and Capme offers no download of uploaded videos. If you want the file too, press Save to device first. ### Browsers and phones Use Chrome, Edge or another Chromium browser for every recording mode. On a phone, the recorder records the camera only, without screen sharing. ## Help: When recording or playback doesn't work (https://capme.app/help/recording-trouble) Camera or microphone blocked, no sound, screen sharing, a failed upload, a take you never sent, and a video that doesn't play. ### Camera or microphone blocked If the recorder says Camera or microphone access is blocked., the browser has blocked them for capme.app. Follow the steps the recorder shows for your browser to allow camera and microphone, then press Reload. No camera or microphone found, or another app is using it. means what it says: connect one, or close the other app, such as a video call, then press Request access. ### No sound, or the wrong microphone Before you start, open Camera, microphone and background in the recorder, pick your microphone under Microphone and check that the level moves while you speak. If the recorder says Microphone must be active before recording., the browser has no working microphone: pick one under Microphone, or switch the microphone off to record without sound. ### Screen sharing doesn't start If the recorder says Start screen sharing before recording., no screen is being shared: the window for choosing one was cancelled or sharing was stopped. Start sharing again and pick a screen. On macOS, the browser also needs permission for screen recording in System Settings, under Privacy & Security. On a phone there is no screen sharing. In other browsers, if it won't start, use Chrome or Edge. ### An upload that fails The upload retries by itself while the tab is open. If it still fails, the review screen says Upload failed. Sending retries it. Press Send to the meeting to try again. If your workspace records into its own bucket and every upload fails, check the bucket's CORS policy in Connect your own bucket. ### You closed the tab before sending Open your topic in the meeting and choose Use an existing video. If the take isn't in the list, it is still in this browser: open Videos, press Upload on its card marked This device, then pick it from the list. ### A video that doesn't play If a topic still has no video long after its speaker sent one, the speaker can press Record again on the topic while the meeting is unpublished. If that doesn't help, write to hello@capme.app with the meeting's link.