Frame.io VS File Approved
Both File Approved and Frame.io work to keep your files organized and share them with clients to get feedback. Both apps will let you comment on files or approve them, so it’s a pretty cut-throat game when it comes to which app is better.
FILE APPROVED
File Approved is a simple online file approval service that allows users to upload photos, videos, documents, and even audio, and easily share them with a recipient via a short link.
One of the main features that differentiate File Approved from other file approval and review services, like Frame.io, is File Approved gives the creator the ability to define what information or credentials they want or need from the recipient. Whereas mostly all feedback apps require recipients to provide at least their email address, File Approved lets the create define what they need. For instance, if you are working on a platform, like Fiverr.com, that does not allow users to exchange or capture email addresses from each other, you can set your File Approved page to ask for their Fiverr Username and Fiverr Order Number. This way, you can cross-reference their submitted credentials with the project you are working on, without breaking Fiverr’s rule. Or, maybe you are working with someone's manager and the manager wants to send the file to their client. The client may not want to provide their email address to you (to be kept confidential), so you can set your File Approved account to only ask for the recipient's name and project name.
File Approved has a free, 7-day trial, and you don’t need a credit card. This gives enough time for a user to use the app and get a feel for it. There aren’t a ton of features (and this is on purpose), so a week is a plenty of time to see if it works for your workflow and productivity, or not. Then, if you want to sign up for the subscription, File Approved costs just $3.99 per month, with no limitations, other than a 40MB file size cap. You can only upload one file at a time, so they just need to be on the smaller end, as far as file sizes go.
File Approved offers some great additional features such as getting an “approval receipt” PDF, which the creator gets emails when the recipient approves the file. This is so there is an audit trail and proof that the recipient approved the file. There’s nothing more that creators hate than having a client say they never approved something when you are almost done working on the thing they approved. This way, you both have proof that the file was indeed approved.
You can signup for File Approved with a free, 7-day trial (no credit card required) here: https://fileapproved.com/
FRAME.IO
On the other end of the spectrum, we have Frame.io which has a very active community and has a wide variety of advanced functionality for large organizations with multiple employees working on different projects at the same time.
The users of Frame.io are pretty much split down the middle, when it comes to using all the features the platform has to offer. On the one hand, there are large companies that use most, if not all, of the features Frame.io provides. For example, they assign tasks to team members, create sub-folders, allow employees to adjust file permissions before sharing them, and they use all the desktop plugins and mobile apps. Meanwhile, the other group of Frame.io users only take ad ofvantage of the basic features to share files among a couple people or just with clients to get feedback.
Frame.io also has a tight integration with slack, so it can be easy to communicate feedback between team members . It also has integrated plugins for most video editing software. If you aren’t in video production, you can still use Frame.io, but you probably won’t be using it to its full potential. Automatic versioning of files is another great feature that Frame.io has over File Approved.
Frame.io does have a free plan for up to 2 users with 2GB of storage space. However, you can go through this file storage pretty quickly. If you want to upgrade to their paid plans, it starts at $15 per user, per month for the Pro plan, and goes up from there based on your needs. The Pro plan also includes just 250GB of storage space (with 500GB of archival storage if you have inactive projects).
You can signup for Frame.io here: https://frame.io/
WHICH IS BETTER?
Well, it depends. If you want a simple interface and simple controls that anyone can use, whether you are the creator or the file recipient, then File Approved is the way to go. They are also a LOT more affordable, coming in at under $4 per month for unlimited everything. File Approved is still very new to the game, but its devs seem to be trying to catch up with new improvements and features, without moving away from the core principle of keeping the simplicity of their app. If you need a lot more features, app integration, and a video-centric platform, Frame.io is a great option! It is more expensive, but it does come with a lot more features. However, with this, there is a much higher learning curve on both the creator’s end and the recipient’s end.
