How to collect video testimonials for free

What your customer has to do

A happy customer will type two lines for you without much thought. A video asks more of them: a quiet minute and the nerve to talk to a camera. Every extra step in between is a place where they give up, so before you pick a tool, look at the path from your request to a finished video.

There are two ways it usually goes. In a testimonial tool such as Testimonial.to, Famewall or VideoAsk, the customer opens your link, lets the browser use the camera and microphone, and records on the page against a countdown. Shapo describes it as recording "from their smartphone or desktop". In a review tool like Formgong, the customer opens your review page and attaches a video they already have on their phone, the way they would attach a photo. Recording on the page is easier for someone who has nothing filmed yet. Uploading suits buyers who filmed the product anyway: unboxing it, or using it in the garden.

Free plans and their video limits

Read the second column carefully, because the caps count different things. Senja, Shapo, Testimonial.to, Famewall and Vocal Video count videos in total, for as long as you stay on the free plan. Trustmary and VideoAsk reset every month: Trustmary counts responses, and its video reviews page says "Each plan has a monthly limit to responses you can receive." VideoAsk counts minutes of video or audio, 20 a month on Start, its free plan.

The length limits matter less than they look. Two minutes is longer than most good testimonials. VideoAsk's help centre says uploaded files have "no restrictions on the video length", only a 500 MB cap.

Where the video ends up

On every one of these tools, the video lives on the vendor's servers and plays on your site through their widget or wall. That is fine until you want the file itself, for an ad, or for a move to a different tool. The free plans differ most here. Senja and Famewall let you download videos in SD on Free. Vocal Video's free videos are 720p and, in its words, "have a Vocal Video watermark, and can't be downloaded".

In Formgong the file goes to private storage the moment it arrives. It becomes public only while its review is approved, and the widget shows it with a player that never starts by itself. If you hide the review later, the video stops loading on your pages within about five minutes. You can watch every video in your dashboard before you approve it. Storage is 5 GB per account on every plan, shared by all your review sites, which is about 100 videos at the full 50 MB.

What fits in 50 MB

Formgong limits a video by file size, not by time. How many seconds that is depends on the phone and its camera setting, so ask for a short clip: under a minute is a good length for a testimonial anyway. If a customer's file is too big, the page tells them before anything uploads, and they can trim the clip in their phone's photo app or record again at 720p.

When you ask, say how long you want. "30 seconds about how you use it" gets more videos back than an open "send us a video", because the customer knows the job is small.

How video reviews work in Formgong

Photo and video reviews are on the free plan, with no cap on reviews. The steps for your customer:

1. They open your review link. It can come from a review email sent after their order in your store's name, or from a link you share yourself.
2. They give stars and write a few words, then choose up to 5 photos and one video: MP4, WebM or MOV, up to 50 MB.
3. They send. A short Cloudflare check runs against bots, the page shows each file uploading, and it tells them the video appears after you check the review.

On your side, Formgong checks each file by its content, not its name, and runs every video through an antivirus scan before it is kept. A review with a video always waits for your approval, even if you use automatic publishing for text reviews (publishing modes). Once you approve it, the video plays inside the review on your review widget, which has no view limit, and in the photo and video gallery layout.

Some customers will not go on camera but will talk. A form on your own site can take a voice review of up to 2 minutes, and Formgong writes it out as text. The recording stays private to you; your site shows the text only. The voice field needs file uploads on for that form, a verified account email and a Turnstile widget on the page (how to add it).

When a testimonial tool is the better choice

Formgong takes the video as the customer sent it. There is no recording studio with prompts on screen, no trimming, no captions, no branded intro or music, and one video per review. If your goal is a polished testimonial for your homepage or an ad, a tool built for that does more: Senja turns videos into clips for social posts, Testimonial.to has an AI video editor on its top plan, and Vocal Video publishes what it calls pro-style videos generated from the answers.

Formgong fits a shop that wants video next to the stars on each product page, collected after every order, with no limit on how many reviews come in. If you need both, nothing stops you from using a testimonial tool for a few showcase videos and Formgong for product reviews.

Did a free plan change?

Free plans move often. If one of these limits is different when you read this, or a tool we left out handles video well on its free plan, write to support@formgong.com. We read every message and correct the table when we are wrong.

What Formgong Reviews includes for free

• Unlimited review sites and reviews. Text, photo, video and voice reviews on Free.
• A widget with no view limit. The review widget, carousel, badge and stars in product lists load as often as your pages do.
• Review emails in your store's name. Sent after each order with your logo and colours, replies to you, no email service to set up; buyers can rate inside Gmail without leaving the email, and get one reminder (how it works).
• Bring your old reviews. Import from Judge.me, Yotpo, Loox, Shopify Product Reviews, WooCommerce, Etsy or a CSV.
• You decide what shows. Approve each review or choose a publishing mode, reply in public or in private, and let shoppers ask the author a question.
• Google. A Merchant Center review feed, and product rating markup through the WordPress plugin.
• Reviews from your form. People who filled in your contact form can get a review request automatically.
• One account for the rest. Contact forms with Telegram and Google Sheets, an AI help chat, and free website templates.