Riverside Reviews: 4.8/5 — Highly Rated

The layout and interface is better than Zencastr but...

The "uncompressed" "high quality" WAV files are unusable in a professional setting. In addition, there is no user support; just an off-shore chat option that takes way too long to get connected to. When you do connect, they are not actually technical support but only provide cut-and-paste answers from their script that would indicate that they don't understand the issue.

It was purchased to facilitate the remote recording of talent, but the audio quality is not usable in a professional environment.

The product is easy to use (when things work)

For a product that needs to be bulletproof, Riverside is way too unreliable. I've lost several recordings to a number of different errors, and countless hours of my time to fix or re-record them. Absolutely not fit for purpose.

We use it to record our podcasts.

when it works it's great cause I can use all channels and recordings that come separately.

so frustrating. gives me laggy video that I don't know happened til after the interview, switches mics without warning,bricks out my computer. recording has random echoing. all this stuff you find out after the recordings and you get no warning that your magical podcast interview is actually not usable or you really have to edit a lot for it to be ok

podcast recordings that are recorded locally so you don't have the super compression you get on zoom sometimes. the only problem is you have a whole lot of other problems

I didn't like the app - it let me down in the most terrible way possible... it stopped recording mid-interview without warning.

I disliked finding out later that the app stopped recording and that it didn't notify me there was a problem. I especially didn't like having to tell my best client the interview was screwed. Separately, I disliked the unnecessary video compression. The client-side recording in 4K has visible compression artefacts when there's camera movement - just no need.

Riverside.fm gave me problems, it didn't solve them

Getting started was simple, the interface was ok

Buggy!! I recorded my first episode: * Delays during session recording - I was asking a question, and I saw how my guest kept talking for five more seconds until reacting to my inquiry. * No mic-bleed detection - apparently, first comers, be it the speaker or guest, can have equipment issues. The platform should have detected this mic-bleed issue which manifests itself as an echo of the guest in your soundtrack (or vice versa), you left recording a full hour before finding out! You would expect their getting started guide to recommend a test drive before any guest recording - nope. * Internet backup recordings - they are a mess: jumbled, missing parts, speedy parts - a big unusable mess. Stay away

Wanted to record my pod-cast hassle-free

No other service claims to offer as much functionality in recording, live streaming, and video conferencing from one central platform. If it lived up to its claims, it'd be a great product.

Unfortunately, core features are grossly unreliable. If there's one thing you're guaranteed every recording session, it's encountering a bug of some kind. Ultimately, where it matters most, you're throwing the dice - namely in its ability to record the hosts and guests. Without posted minimum specs, guests on lower-end systems are frequently kicked off due to memory and storage requirements. When they rejoin, Riverside fm is unable to record or interpret multiple files for guests who need to refresh. Under best conditions, where hosts and guests have high bandwidth and computer systems with no interrupts or perceived issues during the recordings, core features work with ~90% reliability. Sometimes files are described as being 100% uploaded, but are unable to be downloaded or are directed to download a missing "xml" file. Advertised features such as live streaming do not work. Audience moderation ability is not available, so rogue audience members can disrupt your session. It is also presently impossible to see who is in the audience aside from viewing chat messages and overall session headcount. Riverside.fm bills itself as a premium service to record wav audio and 4k video. But if you can't access these things with certainty, it's like not having either at all. A better investment is in buying cloud storage space, and asking guests to upload video and audio files there. Conference and livestream elements are better with Zoom or the next competitor vendor.

I've added to the bug list for the developers on my own dime - I wasn't compensated for testing reliability or functionality that their service team asked me to do. This was especially disappointing when there are limited hours provided per month on a paid account. The benefit I realized is that by attempting to fix many of Riverside's introduced bugs and issues, I can do many of these functions without Riverside at all.