Otter.aiReviews of otter.ai

Too many issues, very hard to contact support, my workmate's notetaker was entering all the meetings and I had no control over this, I couldn't access an invoice for my payment, support was hard to contact, no identification of speakers, the list was long.

I am a student. I entered that in my profile and was directed to a free trial Pro account. I ran out of minutes and was prompted to upgrade. After extensive conversation with the chat bot about otter's feature I did. The upgrade to 6000 minutes Otter Business is not the same service at all. They never warned me. They advertise it as everything Pro and more. But you cannot record live on your computer at all. You cannot follow the transcript live to reference in class, comment, add notes, or highlight. Total change. Nonrefundable and no option to "downgrade" back to Pro which has all those features... until the current subscription ends in 365 days! I opened a dispute and they refunded me before it proceeded. So it has already been resolved. I do recommend Otter Pro, if 1200 minutes a month is sufficient for you. Otter Pro can only record a live remote class on your computer, if you turn off the 'Default Audio Enhancements' in your computer's sound settings. This means I have to speak loud and get really close to the mic to be heard in class. I would trial it in your live class before purchasing. 1200 minutes/mo isn't enough for me, even for part time schooling, but the features are good, and they offer a student/teacher discount for the Pro account. Consider offering something like a 3000min/mo option to pro. Otter was able to make a transcript for 2 hours of class . You have to keep your eye on the transcript because it will stop in the middle of class and you need to start a new recording.

It doesnt even have Chinese

Great product. And I mean really great. Sadly the customer service is none existent. I have to cancel my subscription as I have lost my job. Have contacted Otter 3 times now via their submissions page and no one is responding. Not even an auto response. They have just taken the next quarter’s subscription fee which is an awful lot of money when you have no income. I am hoping that they read Trust Pilot and will get back to me. Sad to say as I really enjoyed using Otter at work. Says a lot about company when they are all over you to get your money but disappear into the ether when it’s a case of asking for a refund. I can’t even remove my credit card from my profile. Is that even legal? If I am missing something obvious please let me know Otter. Otherwise please engage with my requests.

If you're looking for a way to discreetly record conversations, find something else! If you're just looking for transcription, it's pretty good. Sadly, Otter stops recording when you're phone screen locks, and there appears to be no way to run it in the background. Otter's developers apparently do not comprehend that there are VALID reasons to secretly record some conversations, and many jurisdictions, such as mine, permit such recordings to be used in trial--as long as one person to the conversation is aware of the recording. In my particular job, privately recording certain interactions is precisely what I am supposed to do. Consequently, for my purposes, Otter was a waste of $100. The inability to use the app to privately record should be made clear up front. The failure to do so is very misleading.

The service functions alright. It definitely combines the words of multiple speakers or confuses the speaker. But overall it is a helpful service with good features that helps efficiency. HOWEVER, I am the only user on our account. This was intentional. I started noticing that instead of just my notetaker trying to join company meetings that multiple notetakers were trying to join. I reached out for support 2 weeks ago and have followed up on that case 2 separate times since then and have not received any info or responses back. I dug deeper and found that without my permission otter.ai invited other members of our organization to our account on temporary trials that were set to turn into full accounts and would have charged us in the coming days had i not discovered and disabled them. I continue to have multiple notetakers try and join the meeting and still cannot get a response from the company. UPDATE 2/27/2025: I have continued to email Otter.ai customer support almost daily asking for a response to my support case that began on 2/7/2025. No responses have been received and the issues with multiple notetakers joining meetings continues. It also continues to try and sign members of our team up in a predatory manner. If the system works well, great, if you have issues you will not get even bare minimum support, they truly just ignore customer service inquiries. It is worth noting we are on a paid subscription which states that we will receive priority customer service. I couldnt imagine how bad the non priority customer service is. UPDATE 5/11/2026 In regards to our original review: otter responded to our case on March 4th after 6 separate emails. They were able to assist me with the issue somewhat, but also the issue seems to continue. I have setup for the sharing of notes to happen the way they outlined for me, but employees continue to end up in a situation where they are signed up for some sort of trial membership and their otter notetakers continue to try and join meetings. They are not tied to the company profile so I cant close out their trial, but it doesnt seem like it has transitioned to charging them. They definitely make it a little confusing to manage accounts and we still see the issue that more and more people in our company have otter notetakers joining our meetings who are confused. In summary, they do eventually respond to cases, but it takes much longer than it should and who knows if I would have gotten a response had I not repeatedly followed up. They also have a program that makes it way too easy to create offshoot accounts to the original. If you have members of your team that arent strong with navigating technology its very likely they will end up in some strange trial account that you dont have access to. Eventually you will see an ridiculous amount of notetakers in internal meetings and the program starts to feel like a virus even if it isnt

They are sending invitation emails in your name without asking in your network!

This doesn’t work when using Apple earbuds and causes distort which makes it unusable