Vowel at a glance

Starting price: $16.49/mo (Pro)
Free plan: Yes
Platforms: Web

What is Vowel?

Vowel was an AI video conferencing platform that combined meetings, live transcription, collaborative agendas and searchable recordings in one product, removing the need for a separate video tool and a separate notetaker. Founded in New York in 2018, it was well regarded by early adopters for real-time annotation, action item tagging and transcript search tied directly to audio playback.

It is no longer available. Vowel shut down in July 2023 after a signed term sheet fell through, giving users only until 5 July to download their recordings, and in March 2024 Zapier acquired the team and folded the meeting technology into its automation platform. The founders attributed the closure to market conditions rather than product quality: it entered a category dominated by Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, and incumbents added comparable AI features faster than a startup could differentiate.

Key Features

Built-In Video ConferencingLive Meeting TranscriptionCollaborative Meeting AgendasTalk-Time TrackingAction Item TaggingEmoji ReactionsMeeting RecordingSearchable Video ArchiveMeetingGPT AI SummariesMeeting Clips and HighlightsAgenda TimersPost-Meeting RecapsGuest Access (No Download)Real-Time CommentsMeeting SearchTime-Stamped NotesTeam Knowledge Base1-Click Meeting Links

Integrations

Other

Google CalendarCalendly

Communication

Slack

Project Management

Asana

Writing & Docs

Notion

Automation

Zapier

Video

Loom

How to Use Vowel

1Create a Vowel meeting link or connect to Google Calendar

2Share the Vowel link with participants (no download required)

3Host the meeting with built-in video, transcription, and agenda

4Tag action items and key moments live during the call

5After the meeting, review the AI summary and searchable recording

6Share the recording or clips with teammates who couldn't attend

Who is Vowel for?

✅ Best For

Remote-first teams that wanted a single platform for hosting, transcribing, and archiving all their video meetings without needing to pay for a separate video conferencing tool and a separate AI notetaker on top.

❌ Not For

Any team looking for an active, maintained product, as Vowel ceased operations in December 2023 and is no longer supported. Teams should use alternatives like Fellow, Fathom, or Otter.ai for similar functionality.

Reviews

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Pricing

Is Vowel free? Yes, Vowel is free to use. Paid plans start at $16.49/mo (Pro).

Free$0

✓Discontinued - last known free plan

Pro$16.49/mo

✓Discontinued - last known paid tier

Prompts to Try

Summarize the key decisions from this meeting

Show all action items from this week's meetings

Find the moment in the meeting when we discussed the budget

Who spoke the most in today's all-hands?

What did we agree to ship by next quarter?

Use Cases

A remote-first product team used Vowel as their primary meeting platform and built a searchable archive of every design review and roadmap discussion over 18 months, letting new team members rapidly get up to speed on product history.

A startup CEO used Vowel's MeetingGPT feature to generate a 5-bullet summary of every investor call, building a decision log she could reference when tracking investor feedback across 40 conversations during a fundraise.

A distributed customer success team used Vowel's talk-time tracking to run more balanced client QBRs, flagging meetings where the team was speaking more than 60% of the time and adjusting their approach accordingly.

A UX research team used Vowel's searchable video archive to find every mention of a specific user pain point across 6 months of customer discovery calls without rewatching hours of recordings.

An engineering team lead used Vowel's real-time collaborative agenda feature to give every team member a place to add talking points before each sprint planning session, cutting the first 5 minutes of every meeting that used to be spent deciding what to discuss.