Atlassian acquired Loom in 2023, and through 2025 it absorbed the product into the same billing platform that runs Jira and Confluence. The first wave of integration was cosmetic. The second wave, which is rolling out through 2026, is not.
If you run a freelance studio that uses Loom — even quietly, even with a couple of inactive teammates on the free tier — you need to read the fine print. Atlassian's own support documentation says the quiet part out loud: "you cannot stay on current pricing". That sentence is the entire story.
What changed, in plain English
Loom historically had a "Creator Lite" role: a free seat that could be assigned to teammates or clients who needed to view recordings without recording themselves. Lots of freelance studios used Creator Lite to give clients a free login to a shared workspace, or to keep ex-collaborators on the team without paying for a full seat.
That role is being phased out. Per Atlassian's migration documentation, every existing Creator Lite user is automatically upgraded to a full paid Creator seat on the integration date, with a short grace period before billing kicks in. Workspaces created after February 2026 don't get Creator Lite at all.
The arithmetic is what stings. According to a detailed pricing breakdown by Supademo, studios with 14 inactive members on free seats have seen their bills go from ~$15/mo to over $200/mo overnight — roughly 15x — because every previously-free seat becomes a paid Creator at the prevailing per-seat rate.
The current Loom pricing structure
Atlassian Loom's official pricing page lists four tiers in 2026:
- Starter — Free, capped at 25 videos and 5-minute recordings. Personal use only.
- Business — Roughly $12–15 per Creator per month, billed annually. Unlimited recording length, no per-video cap.
- Business + AI — Roughly $18–24 per Creator per month. Adds AI titles, summaries, transcript chapters.
- Enterprise — Custom pricing, SSO, audit logs, advanced governance.
The math problem is on the Business tier, because that is where every Creator Lite user lands. A 5-person studio with 3 active recorders and 2 viewers used to pay for 3 seats; now it pays for 5.
Reliability has gotten worse, too
Pricing is the obvious story. The quieter one is platform reliability. Throughout 2025 and into 2026, complaints about lag, audio sync drift, failed uploads, and login loops have appeared consistently across Trustpilot, G2, and the r/Loom subreddit. Some of that is normal post-acquisition turbulence. Some of it is the migration to Atlassian's identity layer adding latency on cold starts.
For a tool whose entire value proposition is "fast, frictionless async video," even a 30% reliability dip is a problem. Async video only works if the recording happens in five seconds. If you are restarting the app twice a session, you switch back to writing emails.
Seven alternatives freelancers are actually moving to
If you record screens to send to clients — design walkthroughs, dev demos, deliverable explainers — these are the tools getting the most traction in 2026:
- Tella — Studio-quality recordings with templates, layouts, and built-in editing. Per-creator pricing, no Lite-style seat trap. Strong with creators and small studios.
- Screen Studio (macOS) — One-time purchase with no SaaS subscription. The cinematic zoom-and-pan effects are the reason designers keep recommending it on freelance Twitter.
- Vidyard — Sales-focused but works for client deliverables. Per-user, no surprise seat upgrades.
- Riverside — Originally a podcast tool, now a credible Loom replacement for high-quality recordings with separate audio/video tracks.
- Supademo — Interactive product demos rather than passive video. Clients click through at their own pace, which is often what an async deliverable explainer actually needs.
- CleanShot X — Screenshot + screen-recording tool for macOS. One-time purchase, no SaaS subscription, uploads to your own storage.
- Loom (yes, still) — If your team is already on Atlassian and pays for Confluence, the Loom integration into Confluence pages is a real productivity win. The seat trap matters less when you're already paying for the suite.
For most one-to-five-person freelance studios, the move that makes sense in 2026 is Tella + CleanShot X. Tella for the polished client-facing recordings, CleanShot for quick screen captures. Both are flat per-seat or one-time-purchase.
The freelance-studio-specific question: where does this leave client viewing?
If you used Loom's Creator Lite to give clients a "logged-in" view of recordings, that workflow is now expensive. The cleanest replacement is to record once and share via a public link with password protection. Tella, Riverside, Screen Studio, and Supademo all support this. Your client never needs an account. You never pay for a viewer seat.
If you want to go further and stop hosting recordings on third-party platforms entirely, a client portal that lets you ship Loom-style explainers alongside the actual deliverables is the structural fix — your client gets one branded link to the project, and the videos sit next to the contract, the invoice, and the files. No second login, no Atlassian seat audit.
What to do this month
- Audit your Loom workspace. Settings → Members. Count Creator Lite seats. That number is your impending bill increase.
- Decide who actually needs to record. Convert inactive members to "removed" before the integration date, not after — once they upgrade to paid, you have to manage cancellation through Atlassian, not Loom.
- Pick a primary alternative. Tella for polish, Screen Studio for one-time-purchase economics, CleanShot X for macOS-only studios.
- Re-route client-facing video to your portal. Stop hosting client deliverables on a tool whose pricing you don't control. Async video is too valuable to let a vendor change the deal under you.
FAQ
Q: Is Loom still worth it for a solo freelancer?
If you record fewer than 25 videos a month and don't need >5-minute recordings, the free Starter tier still works. The price trap is specifically for teams with multiple seats — solo users on Starter are unaffected.
Q: Does the Creator Lite removal apply to existing workspaces, or only new ones?
Both. Existing workspaces get auto-upgrades on the integration date. New workspaces created after February 2026 don't have Creator Lite at all per Atlassian's migration docs.
Q: Can I export my existing Loom recordings before switching?
Yes. Loom's export-to-MP4 feature still works on every paid tier. Export everything before you cancel or downgrade. Once a workspace is canceled, recordings are deleted after the grace period.
Q: Is Tella materially better, or just a different brand?
For polish, yes — Tella's templates and layouts produce recordings that look studio-quality with zero post-editing, which used to require Screen Studio or a Premiere session. For raw quick-capture, CleanShot X is faster.
Q: What about the AI features in Business + AI?
Loom's AI titles and summaries are good but not unique. Tella, Riverside, and even ChatGPT (paste a transcript, ask for a summary) cover the same ground. Don't pay for the AI tier just for the AI.
Delivvo gives freelancers a single client portal where contracts, invoices, deliverables, and explainer videos live in one branded link — so when a vendor like Loom changes the deal, you swap the recording tool without touching the client experience. See how it works →
Written by The Delivvo team · May 7, 2026
More from the blog →
