Laura’s 1hr app tests

as we hunt for your next business tool

CapCut

The Only Video Editor Your Startup Needs ?

This month, we gave CapCut our one-hour test drive. So, what did we learn? And would we recommend it? First, let’s take a look at what CapCut is designed to do.

What is CapCut?

CapCut is designed to help users quickly create engaging video content. With video becoming an increasingly powerful way to connect with audiences, many startups know they need to be producing video but worry they don’t have the skills or budget to do it well. CapCut aims to solve that problem with an easy editing tool without too steep a learning curve.

Whether you need to produce social media posts, product explainers, or adverts, CapCut makes it easy to produce professional-looking videos — and pretty quickly too.

First Impressions: Quick and Easy Setup

We were impressed with how intuitive CapCut was to use. We started our test drive on the mobile app and started editing video content within moments.

It was easy to jump in and start experimenting. In our first 10 minutes, we’d already created a couple of quick videos, tested out the teleprompter feature, and played around with some of the audio effects. Though, it did feel like you could easily get lost in the endless options of audio and visual effects. We certainly lost a good chunk of our hour just to messing around with testing all the weird and wonderful voice effects! We did initially struggle to switch some of those effects off! But after a minute or two clicking back and forth, we spotted where to click to stop Laura sounding like she’d been through a 1980s synth machine!

The One-Hour Test Drive

In our first hour, we explored these features quite extensively:

  • Teleprompter Tool: If you’re a nervous presenter, or just new to shooting videos of yourself chatting to the camera – this could be a great tool to help you get started. Write out your script on the teleprompter, set it to the speed to suit your speech and hit record.
  • Audio Effects: We tested CapCut’s voice effects and background music options. The library of sounds was extensive, though, unless there’s a TikTok trend you’re trying to hop on board with, we couldn’t see ourselves using most of them as entertaining as some of them were!
  • Video Templates: CapCut offers a range of ready-made templates designed for platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, which could help us create professional-looking content fast and make sure it is perfectly sized for each platform.

The learning curve was minimal, and we spent most of our time experimenting rather than figuring out how things worked.

What We Learned About Our Own Business

Some of our team have teleprompters for presenting our live training workshops from our desktop set ups, so we could see the in-app teleprompter tool would make it easy for team members to present confidently in front of a phone camera. We could see our team using this to make capturing content on the go. 

Quick Wins & Easy Fixes

If you’re short on time, here’s where we’d recommend starting:

  • Try the Teleprompter Tool: It’s an easy way to improve the quality of your spoken content, especially if nerves tend to get the better of you on camera.
  • Auto Captions: We found the auto-captions feature pretty accurate, and with one click of a button, the job couldn’t be made much easier!
  • Video Resizing: If you’re producing content for multiple platforms, the ‘aspect ratio’ option provide a super speedy way to repurpose video content in the right size format for all your social media channels.

    Capcut app in use shown on a phone screen.

    Limitations & Trade-offs

    While CapCut is incredibly user-friendly, there are a few limitations to be aware of:

    • Advanced Editing Features: While great for quick edits, CapCut may feel limiting if you’re looking to produce highly complex or cinematic content.
    • Cloud Storage Dependency: Some features rely heavily on cloud saving, which may slow you down if your internet connection is patchy.

    Free vs Paid — Is It Worth Upgrading?

    The free version of CapCut is surprisingly powerful and should be more than enough for most startups creating social media content or quick promotional videos.

    That said, the premium version unlocks additional effects, transitions, and higher-resolution exports — worthwhile if you’re planning to produce more polished marketing material regularly.

      Would We Keep Using It?

      Honestly, probably not that often!

      For our needs we have access to alternative video creation and editing tools, which for the video content we produce, suit us well – we use a combination of Canva, Adobe Rush and Premier Pro. We don’t have the level of social media output that would really feel the benefits of using this tool currently (we don’t use TikTok so the ease of linking videos produced in CapCut straight through to TikTok, is a benefit that doesn’t matter to us).

      For startups looking to improve their video content without a steep learning curve though, CapCut is a fantastic addition to your toolkit, and it’s free version has more than you’re likely to need. It’s easy to learn, quick to produce results, and powerful enough for most common video needs – especially if social media is your main reason for producing video.

      Verdict: Is CapCut Right for Your Startup?

      Use CapCut If:

      • You need to create engaging video content quickly.
      • You’re new to video editing and want an intuitive tool with minimal learning curve.
      • Your focus is on social media content or short-form video marketing.

      Maybe Skip It If:

      • You’re creating complex video projects with multiple layers, animations, or custom effects.
      • You require highly detailed editing timelines or professional-grade post-production features.
      • You’re concerned about data security, and the potential risks associated with a ban of the operations of it’s parent company ByteDance*.

      Final Thoughts & Next Steps

      To start – you can easily download the CapCut app to your phone, start experimenting with some of the templates, and testing out the teleprompter tool. If you’re feeling adventurous, dive into the audio effects and text-to-speech tools — they’re a great way to elevate your video content with minimal effort.

      For tutorials and deeper insights, CapCut’s help centre offer plenty of useful resources to help you master the platform.

      *CapCut, is owned by ByteDance, the same Chinese company behind TikTok. ByteDance’s connection to the Chinese government, and user reports of data security, raised concerns in the United States about data security and potential political influence, leading to the announcement of a ban which was then delayed, but it did raise the profile of these types of concerns.