Top Rated Play.ht Alternatives
I don't even know where to start. There is so much that I like about play.ht, I'll try not to make this too long.
I first sought out to find a solution to clone my own voice so that as an audiobook narrator, when I got sick and sounded nasal or lost my voice due to laryngitis, it wouldn't stop me from creating new work.
What I got instead, was a mind-blowing look into what's available and possible today. The technology they use and the intuitive way that the AI interprets the text is so stunning and smart, that with a few clever tweaks on the side of the user, anyone can make themselves sound smooth and professional even if they are not outstandings speakers.
Admittedly, I had an advantage because I was able to upload 20 or 30 hours of high quality recordings with no background noise due to the fact that I'm already an audiobook narrator and I worked hard to get this clean body of work.
Learning the little quirks and pro tips of how to make the system work better was like getting to know a new friend. What it likes, what it doesn't like. And because it gave so much back to me, I worked hard to give it what it liked best.
Play.ht prefers short paragraphs. It prefers numbers spelled out. It prefers periods over commas. In fact, the only time you should use a comma is for lists. The system is smart enough that it knows when to put the pauses in because it understands syntax so well, it renders the sentences just like a person would.
If for some reason, you're not crazy about how one sentence turned out, you can hit the button and render it again and it will come out different each time. Sometimes putting a word in all caps will emphasize it.
There are so many other tips and tricks that I could give, this review could go on for days. Suffice it to say that I have had so much fun learning how to make play.ht work for me that I now feel like an expert since I can use it to crank out finished, flawless audio faster than I could read it manually.
It's been a game changer for my audio book narration. I still sometimes can't believe that it works as well as it does. And when it doesn't, I love the challenge of getting it to do what I want it to because it just means that I have to figure out how to communicate what I want which is usually just tweaking the text.
One example is the name Phoebe. It read the name Phoebe and it sounded so funny because it read it phonetically. So instead, I did a global replacement in the entire text and I spelled it Feebee. And it worked perfectly.
It's important that you be able to change the text that you give it to read. Remove all exclamation marks. Even some question marks should be removed because play.ht will make it sound better without the punctuation. Try it both ways and see what you like.
Overall, this technology is worth its weight in gold. I am so thrilled that I discovered it. It is head and shoulders above any of its competitors which I also checked out. I am sticking with this for the long-term.
When I play samples for other people and tell them that this is my voice, but I did not read this, people say, "oh that's so scary."
I laugh because I understand what they mean. It feels like science fiction but we've arrived. It's a great time to be alive. I've always wanted to clone myself I n order to get more done and I finally got my wish. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
There's very little I dislike. Twice while creating custom voices on the best plan possible, the system got stuck in the cloning process and after a few months, it still says that it's cloning. I don't mind because I just breeze past those voices that still show in progress and go to the voices that are already complete. The fact that I can upload a voice of myself doing an Australian accent and have the system crank out any dialogue with me speaking in Australian accent is so amazing and incredible that scrolling past few unnecessary items in my dashboard is really the least of my worries. I would not have even written this except that there was a prompt about what I specifically disliked. Maybe if there was a lifetime price, I would buy it even if it was thousands of dollars. That's about the only other thing I would improve and for early adopters of the technology, it would be kind of a nice perk. Eventually, everyone is going to embrace this incredible technology. At least I hope they do! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
83 out of 84 Total Reviews for Play.ht
Overall Review Sentiment for Play.ht
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The results with some of the voices were really good and the process was easy and convenient. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
We decided to use this service for voicing our training videos. During the free trial phase, we were completely satisfied with the results, so we purchased an annual subscription for an employee to use the service for work purposes. However, we encountered a serious issue.
The subscription was purchased through a Google account, and we are unable to use it. To transfer this account to our employee, we need to set a password, but the links sent to the email for password recovery or setup either don’t work or redirect to the login page without allowing us to take any action.
We have repeatedly contacted customer support, requesting assistance to set up a password, transfer the subscription to another account, or at least refund our money since we cannot use the subscription. However, we have received no response from the support team.
As a result, our company has spent money on a subscription that is unusable, and now we have to look for alternative solutions. We are extremely disappointed with this level of service. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The support received by Play.ht was second to none. Joel was amazing. He supported me throughout my session, responded very quickly to my questions and requests, and found solutions whenever I was stuck, which was often, having never used this app before. I truly appreciate his patience and dedication to helping me navigate the platform and achieve my goals. Thanks to Joel, I was able to overcome the learning curve and produce a high-quality audio recording that exceeded my expectations. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The available selection of Australian accents within the app proved to be inadequate. The limited choices were further compounded by the fact that many of the voices exhibited noticeable British or American influences, leaving even fewer suitable options. This discrepancy between the advertised "Australian" accents and their actual representation posed a significant challenge in finding voices that accurately reflected the distinctive characteristics of the Australian accent.
The process of selecting appropriate voices became unnecessarily time-consuming, requiring extensive auditioning to identify those that genuinely captured the unique qualities of Australian pronunciation and intonation. This experience highlighted a clear need for a more comprehensive and authentic range of Australian voices within the app's offerings. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Quick and easy to use with great quality. Large variety of voices, accents and intonation. Overall, perfect tool to quickly turn text into speech. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
When creating lengths of text, I used to cut it up in pieces and generate them one-by-one. The file structure of Play.ht can be improved to store the various pieces of text that belong together for one purpose. This is currently not that easy to do. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The platform is easy to use and allows someone to take written content straight out of a .doc file and within minutes have an audio file. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
There have been some server side errors in the last month but they usually fix these in under 20 minutes Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Play.ht impresses me with its extensive selection of lifelike voices, offering a range of accents and languages that truly elevate my/our content. The interface is intuitive, making it easy to convert text to speech seamlessly. This variety and ease of use are invaluable for creating diverse and engaging audio content. It´s perfect that each week it seems they add more voices and more languages. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
At times, Play.ht's voice synthesis can lack natural inflection, particularly with technical terms or complex sentences, which can slightly detract from the listening experience. Additionally, the pricing structure can be a bit steep for small-scale users or those needing occasional voiceover work or one big project. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The reason I chose HT is the unlimited regeneration and number of files. Unlike their competitors, there is also no restrictions on foul language. I'm creating multiple audiobooks with 25 or 30 different voices within one book, so the unlimited regeneration is the only way I can accomplish this. I'm not perfect as an author, so the lattitude it gives me to make corrections is invaluable.
I couldn't find any competitor with as many features.
It's easy to use and has everything I need to produce my books. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I happened to get an end of year sale, so it was affordable. Otherwise I would not have been able to afford it.
The 2.0 version is still in Beta, so I have to remind my self that not everything works perfectly, but I think in the future it will be worth the frustration.
It would be helpful if there were a user manual that covered everything in detail. I'm hoping in the future one will be available. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Play.ht uses voice tracks from more than one cloud-based service. This allows us to create voice-based audio for different needs within our organization. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
While the voice creation features are pretty strong, admin control is not as powerful. As the account owner, I need to make sure that another part of the organization does not modify audio projects made in one part of the organization. There are currently (11/7/2023) no checks and balances put into place.
Also, customer support and pricing is not clear. They changed customer service representatives/account managers without clear turnover and the pricing structure drastically changed within a year. The price changed to 23x the cost without a clear reason. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
This was our first time using AI to generate audio dialogues for textbooks and we found both the ultra-realistic and also premium voices excellent to the extent that we were able to fool people into thinking they were real.
There is a wide diversity of accents and languages available, and some of the voices have a range of styles, including emotions and also whispers and shouting, both very helpful.
It's obviously going to be a steep learning curve with so many factors, but the customer support, especially from Joel, was superb. We always got a timely and patient response, and where a glitch had occured, compensation in the way of extra words to use.
After working with it for a few days, it does become much easier to manage and work with, and we're creating much better results faster now. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
It's sometimes a little clunky with the different interfaces, although I think this is transitional as they move between editors. I preferred the earlier model, where we can tinker with the voices free and then pay to download the result rather than paying to adjust them and then downloading free, but perhaps that's because of the cost of the computing itself, so it's understandable.
Sometimes it's hard to get the voices to do what we want, especially with intonation and nonverbal utterances like "umm" or "er" but this is being very picky given that it is AI. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
