airtape
A side-by-side look at the recorders product, research, and marketing teams actually use for customer interviews — judged on quotability, friction for non-technical participants, and analysis workflow.
Choosing tools for recording customer interviews is different from picking a meeting app. The recording is not the deliverable. It is the raw material for clips, quotes, transcripts, and analysis — and the tool either makes that downstream work easier or harder.
A few things matter more than the marketing pages suggest:
Most teams default to Zoom because it is already paid for. It works fine when the goal is just to have the conversation. It falls short the moment the goal is to use the conversation.
Zoom records a single mixed track at meeting quality. Audio compression is tuned for live intelligibility, not for clean playback. When you try to pull a customer quote for a stakeholder deck, you discover that your own backchannel agreement is overlapping the line you want to use, and there is no way to mute yourself in post.
If you scan what real teams use, the tools cluster into four shapes:
Most mature teams end up using two tools: one for capture and one for analysis. The mistake is asking the analysis tool to also do high-quality capture.
The table below focuses on what matters for customer research workflows: track quality, ease for the interviewee, and analysis support.
| Tool | Local recording | Separate tracks | Guest install | Transcription |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Airtape | Yes, per device | Yes, per participant | No, browser link only | Yes, built in |
| Riverside | Yes, per device | Yes, per participant | No, but more steps to join | Yes, built in |
| Zencastr | Yes, per device | Yes, per participant | No, but heavier setup flow | Yes, on paid plans |
| Zoom | Cloud or local host only | Optional, off by default | Often nudged to desktop app | Add-on or on higher tiers |
| Dovetail | Relies on integrations | Depends on source tool | Depends on source tool | Yes, strong analysis |
| Gong | Cloud only | Speaker-separated transcripts | Often integrated via calendar | Yes, sales-focused |
A few honest caveats: features change, and many of these tools are layering AI features on top each quarter. The cells above describe the shape of each tool, not a frozen spec sheet.
Customer interviews tend to involve participants who do not work in tech, do not want to install anything, and have one specific block on their calendar. That combination is exactly where browser-based remote recording is strongest.
The participant clicks a link, grants mic and camera permissions, and they are in the room. Audio and video are captured locally on their device using the MediaRecorder API, with chunks stored in IndexedDB and uploaded in the background. A brief WiFi blip does not corrupt the source. The host walks away with separate, isolated tracks per participant — the only format where clean quote extraction is realistic.
Tools like Dovetail and Condens are not really capture tools — they are research repositories. They earn their place by making it easy to tag clips, build themes, and turn a pile of interviews into actual insights.
A common pattern that works well: capture interviews in a browser-based recorder with proper separate tracks, then push the recordings and transcripts into a research tool for analysis. You get clean source material plus serious analysis features without forcing one tool to do both jobs.
If you are starting from scratch, the path of least regret is roughly:
The right stack is the one your team actually uses end to end, not the one with the longest feature comparison spreadsheet.
For most teams, a browser-based remote recorder like Airtape is the best default. It records each participant locally with separate tracks, requires no install from the customer, and produces source-quality audio and video that is easy to analyse and clip later.
You can, but Zoom records a single mixed track at meeting quality. That is fine for archives, but painful when you want to pull clean customer quotes for clips, decks, or research reports. Dedicated recording tools give you separate tracks per participant.
Yes. Get explicit recorded consent at the start of the call and document it in your research notes. Recording rules vary by region — when in doubt, follow the strictest applicable rule and consult someone qualified for region-specific legal advice.
Not with browser-based recorders. Tools like Airtape work via a single browser link, no account or download required from the participant. That is a meaningful advantage when interviewing non-technical customers.
Record video when you can. Body language and facial expressions are useful signal for research analysis, and you can always ignore the video later. Storage is cheap; missing context is expensive.
Most teams combine a recording tool with a separate analysis tool. Capture with a browser-based recorder for clean tracks and transcripts, then push the recordings into a research repository like Dovetail or Condens for tagging and synthesis.