At our company, we’ve been using Heygen for almost a year to speed up the video production process. In this guide, we will share our honest Heygen review including Heygen features, pricing, pros, and cons, and how you can use the Heygen AI video generator to create videos.
Video is the most popular content format, from educational to marketing content with a worldwide audience reach of 92.3%. However, creating video content is not an easy job as it consumes a lot of time and money. But what if I say there is a quick and easy way for video production? Yes! That is possible with AI video generators like HeyGen.
Let’s dive into the HeyGen Review!
What is HeyGen?
HeyGen is an AI video generator software that can produce quality videos with AI avatars and voices. Because HeyGen is an AI-based video generator, it is perfect for saving time and money which otherwise you have to speed for manual video shooting/editing. HeyGen is an AI video generator software that can produce quality videos with AI avatars and voices.
Why Are We Using the HeyGen AI Video Generator at Our Company?
Before HeyGen, we were following the manual video production/editing process that consumes a lot of time and money. So, as small business owner, we can’t afford that much budget for video production. But thanks to the HighLevel summit, where our CEO first heard about the HeyGen AI video generator. And this is how we started using HeyGen’s yearly team plan to speed up video production at an affordable budget.
Here are our Top Reasons for using the HeyGen AI video generator:
Cost-Effective Solution:
Our decision to adopt HeyGen was influenced by budget constraints in our video production efforts. Developing marketing courses involves producing a bunch of videos, and the traditional manual creation approach would have incurred significant expenses. HeyGen is a cost-effective alternative, enabling us to allocate our budget more efficiently. Thus, HeyGen became our preferred choice for affordable video production.
Time Efficiency:
While our CEO, Benjamin, is the face of our company in educational and promotional videos, his busy schedule makes it impractical for him to personally shoot every video. HeyGen has become a valuable solution for us, allowing us to generate custom avatars and voices for Benjamin. Now, we can swiftly create videos based on a script, eliminating the need for our CEO to be directly involved in every recording. HeyGen’s custom avatars and voice cloning feature make this process seamless.
Rich in Features:
HeyGen stands out due to its extensive features that cater to our needs for creating high-quality video content. The ability to craft unique avatars and replicate our CEO’s voice distinguishes HeyGen from using generic AI avatars and voices available to the public. Additionally, we heavily rely on HeyGen’s video translation feature, allowing us to translate our entire GoHighlevel English course into Spanish. This strategic move enables us to reach and engage with a broader Spanish-speaking audience.
HeyGen Review Features 2024
Let’s now take a look at the features of HeyGen and how you can take advantage of them to streamline your video production workflow. Let’s look at the HeyGen Features:
1)Use 100+ Pre-Generated Public AI Avatars
Heygen comes with 100+ premium public avatars which cover different ethnicities, ages, poses, and clothes. So, these public AI avatars are pre-generated and you can use any of these avatars to create your videos.
We’re using Heygen’s business plan and as of now in our account, we have access to a total of 114 avatars. Whenever we need to create a video using Heygen’s public avatar, we just come to this public avatar and choose one based on our needs for creating a video.
Would you like to see how your videos look when you use pre-generated public avatars? Here is one of our videos. Go ahead and check it out.
2) Create Your Custom AI Avatars
You might be afraid of using Public AI avatars because lots of concerns such as other brands can also use the same avatar. But that problem is totally solved with HeyGen because you can create custom avatars that are specific to your business only. In Heygen, you can create three different types of custom avatars,
- photo avatar for creating a talking photo
- Instant avatar to create your digital twin
- Studio avatar for creating a high-quality digital twin
Creating videos in Heygen is super easy, all you have to do is record yourself for a single time to build your custom AI avatar. Once a custom avatar is ready, you don’t need to worry about shooting every video Because now HeyGen AI video generator can create videos for you using your custom avatar.
3) Create a Talking Photo
The talking photo feature is perfect for creating social media content. As we all see most YouTube shorts, and reels just have a talking photo with background images, texts and sounds to create impressive social media content. And this type of content, you can easily create with HeyGen’s photo avatar feature.
The HeyGen photo avatar feature allows you to animate your photos. Further, you can add text to your talking photo to create some creative social media content. As of now, we’re mainly leveraging the instant avatar feature as this is perfect for creating long-form video content with our CEO’s digital twin.
How to create a photo avatar in HeyGen?
Navigate to the photo avatar section from the Heygen dashboard. Upload the image that you want to animate. Keep in mind that the photo that you’re uploading should be high quality, otherwise your talking photo may look blurry or low resolution.
I just uploaded one image for creating a photo avatar and Heygen takes only a few seconds to process it. Below you can see that the photo avatar for that image is just ready to use for creating a talking photo. The best thing is you can create unlimited photo avatars even with a starting plan.
Once that photo avatar is ready, click on it and then click “Create video”. Select the video size format whether landscape or portrait. Portrait is best for social media content, so choosing it for creating a video using my photo avatar.
Now you will be landed in the AI video generator space. Here you can use Heygen’s feature to quickly create content such as using pre-built templates, adding text content, and voice, and customizing elements to build creative short video content.
Before submitting your video for creation, make sure you listen to your script to ensure that the pronunciation of your script is correct. Once submitted, your video will be ready in a few minutes to share with the world.
4)Instant Avatar Means your Digital Twin
What is an Instant Avatar? An Instant Avatar is the digital twin of you. You just need to record your video and then HeyGen will generate your digital twin based on that. You don’t have to record every time you need to make a video. All you have to do is record your video, enter the script, choose your instant avatar, and voila, HeyGen will generate a video based on your instant avatar.
Instant Avatars are most commonly used for marketing and sales videos. However, we also use them for educational videos. Depending on the plan you have, you will get a limit on the number of instant avatars that can be created. For instance, we are using the HeyGen team plan that allows us to create 3 instant avatars, out of which one has already been created for our CEO Benjamin. We are using Benjamin’s avatar for almost all of our Heygen videos. This allows him to be a CEO who doesn’t need to shoot every video and instead uses his own instant avatar to make videos.
Steps for creating an Instant Avatar in HeyGen
Let’s now discuss how you can create your digital twin, which means an instant avatar in Heygen. It’s easy and Heygen helps you with step-by-step instructions to make it super easy even for a beginner.
Firstly, provide your footage video, and give your consent that you’re allowing Heygen to use that particular video for creating your digital avatar. And sit back. Now, HeyGen will take care of the further process to get your digital twin ready. HeyGen can take a few minutes and once you’re instant avatar is ready you will be notified.
While recording footage for instant avatar creation, you must follow the HeyGen guidelines to create a top-of-the-line avatar. Here are some guidelines to follow and avoid:
Below are some general gestures that you can use to record your video. Keep your hands below your chest while recording.
Once you have uploaded the video, it will take about 5 minutes to get your avatar ready. Once your avatar is prepared, you will be able to use the same one for all your videos, which means you won’t have to shoot any more videos. All you need to do is give us the script to create a video, select the instant avatar, and you will have your video ready with your new digital twin. Here is one of the videos we made using Benjamin’s instant avatar. Go ahead, and see how AI creates your twin.
5) 300+ Public AI Voices
HeyGen has over 300+ public AI voices available in more than 40 languages. These AI voices can be filtered based on languages, genders, ages, and functionalities to help you find the right voice for your videos.
You need a strong voice to make high-quality videos. You don’t have to worry about that with HeyGen. With AI voiceovers, you can write your script and transform it into a high-quality voiceover in minutes with public AI voiceovers from HeyGen.
6) Clone Your Voice
Another big feature of HeyGen is you can clone your own voice instead of using public AI voices. Yes! This is possible with the voice cloning feature of HeyGen, all you need to do is record your voice once to create an instant avatar, and then every time you need to add a voice, just use your AI voice instead of recording again and again.
For example, we have created Benjamin’s voiceover from his instant avatar. And now whenever we have to create a video in HeyGen, we use his voice-over to clone the voice. And Benjamin doesn’t have to record its voice or shoot at all. here is how it sounds in our video.
We just provide the script to Heygen and choose his voice for creating the video in his voice only. We found this feature very amazing because it saves a ton of time to speed up our video production process. Heygen currently supports 25+ languages for voice cloning. The best thing about Heygen is if you’re creating content in multiple languages then you don’t need to record the voice in each language for cloning. For creating Spanish videos, we are using the same English voice recording and cloning it to create videos in Spanish. Here is one of our Spanish videos that was created using Heygen’s instant avatar and voice cloning feature.
7) Create High-Quality Studio Avatars
Studio avatars are best for creating high-quality videos for learning and development. But you can only create studio avatars if you’re on HeyGen’s enterprise plan. It means If you’re on the lower plans, you cannot use studio avatars for creating videos in HeyGen.
Creating a studio avatar is different from creating instant avatars in some ways. To create a studio avatar you have to follow detailed instructions only then you can reach the high-quality level in your avatar. Also, you have to record two different videos, one is a consent statement and another is official video footage for creating a studio avatar. If you are interested in knowing more about the step-by-step guidelines for creating a studio avatar here is the full guide.
8) Turn One Video into Multiple Languages
Want to target different countries but not be able to produce content in their specific languages? Again, no worries because HeyGen comes with a video translation feature. It allows you to translate one video into 40+ languages with a few mouse clicks.
Steps for translating videos in HeyGen?
- Upload your video or provide the Google Drive/YouTube URL of the video that you want to translate.
- Choose the language in which you want to translate that video
- Click the translation button.
We’re using HeyGen translation features for converting all of our course videos which were originally in English language to Spanish. Here is the link to one of our videos that we translated from English to Spanish using the Heygen translation feature.
HeyGen does provide proofreading features for translation using which you can generate the script and edit it. But these advanced features like proofreading, and voice customization for translation are only available in their enterprise plan.
As you know, when we translate one video from one to another language the video message can be altered and AI can mis-translate some words into another language. So, to avoid these mistakes some human input is required. You need to proofread the script in another language to make sure your message is correct in another language as well.
9) Use HeyGen AI Script Writer to Write Scripts
Now you know how you can use an AI video generator to create videos using custom instant avatars and voice cloning. But the hardest part of the video creation process is still pending which is writing scripts for your videos but with the HeyGen AI video generator you do not need to even worry about writing scripts for your videos because it comes with an AI script writer which you can use for script writing.
You can access HeyGen AI scriptwriter, from your HeyGen main dashboard. provide the topic name on which you want to write the script. You can also provide a link to give AI an understanding of your topic. Select your target language, and tone, and finally provide any additional information if you have any.
The HeyGen AI writer provides a good script around the topic. But when we use custom conditions in an additional info box such as I just need a short script, so as of now HeyGen AI writer is not capable of catching those instructions and it just creates a script based on your topic, language, and tone. So, if you want to create a script with some set conditions, then you can use chat gpt because you can specify different conditions with prompts.
So, HeyGen AI scriptwriter is a good alternative for speeding up your scriptwriting process. However relying solely on it is not a perfect idea, so spend some time editing the scripts to make sure your script has the content as per your specific needs.
How to Create Videos with HeyGen AI Video Generator?
Creating Videos with a HeyGen AI video generator is a game of just a few mouse clicks. Let’s see how we use HeyGen to create videos for our company. If you have not currently signed up for Heygen, no worries, sign up for Heygen free plan and see how you can create AI videos using it.
Step 1: Navigate to Create Video
Click on the “Create Video” button from the top of your HeyGen dashboard. Next, choose the video size format. Landscape is best for long-form video content such as tutorial videos. Portrait is good for creating short video content such as Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts.
Step 2: Choose the Avatar
Firstly choose the avatar for your video. Navigate to the Avatars section from the left-hand side and here you will see the avatar that you have created under the My Avatar section and all the public avatars that you can use for creating your video. Choose either a custom or public avatar. I just selected our custom instant avatar for creating a video.
Step 3: Add the Script to your video:
Type or paste the script in HeyGen in the text script section. You can also provide the audit script by either uploading the video, dragging the audio from an asset, or just directly recording it.
HeyGen also allows you to edit or improve it with the ChatGPT AI feature. You can access this feature from the bottom of your dashboard. Additionally, you can also use HeyGen AI Scriptwriter, to create your script as we have discussed earlier.
Step 4: Add the Voice to Your Video
Click on the bottom left corner to add the AI voice to your video. Either select your custom voice if you have created one or you can find some voices from the HeyGen library. Select the voice for your video.
Additionally, you can also control the speed by speed handle features.
Step 5: Customize Your Video.
To make your video look creative, professional, and engaging play around with the customization features that are available in HeyGen. Such as,
- Add elements, like frames for photos, stickers, icons, and images.
- Add the background music to your videos.
- Add text to your videos,
- Change the avatar positions
- Add transitions like zoom in and zoom out to make our videos interactive,
- Add layers to stack different elements on top of each other, and then manipulate them individually for easy editing
- And many more
Step 6: Listen Your Script
Click on the play button to generate a voice from the text script. It will take some time to listen to how AI cloned your voice to make sure the pronunciation is correct.
Make sure to add pauses using the little clock icon where you want the AI to pause so that your video voice flows well. If you need more help, you can check the Heygen pronunciation guide from the bottom of your screen and apply those recommendations to improve your pronunciation.
Step 7: Submit Your Video
Click on the Submit button and it will ask for confirmation and also let you know how many credits it will take from your account.
Once you hit the submit button, HeyGen will start working on processing your video and it usually takes a few minutes based on how long your video is. Once the video is ready, HeyGen will notify you and you can download that video for use.
Want to see a real video that is created using the HeyGen AI video generator? Perfect! Here is one of the videos that we recently created with the help of an AI-powered AI video generator.
HeyGen Pros and Cons Review
Now it’s time to discuss what we most like about the HeyGen AI video generator and what we think HeyGen is lacking right now. Following are the pros and c of HeyGen which we found after working on it for almost a year:
HeyGen AI Video Generator Pros
- Affordable: HeyGen is quite a budget-friendly solution because we just have to pay as per their plan which is quite affordable if we compare it to manual video production/editing. Also, there is no stress about allocating a budget for shooting studios, fancy video equipment, costumes, props, professional equipment, and additional manpower needed to create manual videos.
- Time-saving: No doubt HeyGen saves lots of hours because with it you have your custom AI-powered avatars and voices that cut down the need to shoot for every video. With HeyGen you just need to provide text, choose avatar and voice, and then your video is ready to go. With less effort, we can produce more video content.
- Customized Avatars and Voice: HeyGen is very flexible when it comes to avatars and voice. You can either choose public AI avatars and voices or create custom avatars and voices that are unique to your brand only.
- Multiple Features: Video translation, AI script writing, pre-built templates, and voice cloning to enhance your video creation process. Support: HeyGen offers live chat support to get assistance if you ever need it. However, their 24/7 call support is only available with an enterprise plan.
HeyGen AI Video Generator Cons:
Now let’s discuss the things that the HeyGen AI video generator is missing currently or needs to be improved.
- Limited Credits: HeyGen uses a credit system. It means when you buy any of their plans, you will get some credits for each month, and if any credits are left from a month that will not carry over to the next month.
- No Preview Option: Once you have finished creating videos in HeyGen, you have to submit the video for creation. But before submission, HeyGen doesn’t allow you to preview how the actual video will look until you submit the video and your credits are deducted.
- Missing personal touch: The AI- avatars are very close enough to a human, but they are not actual humans. When you create videos with HeyGen AI avatars and then at some points in your videos, you may feel like the avatar does not have correct gestures or facial expressions like a real human being.
- Room for Voice Improvement: You may feel like AI is not speaking in a tone, or humor in which a human can better speak the same words. So, this can be a missing factor at some points in your videos.
HeyGen Pricing Review
Now you have a great idea about the features, pros, and cons of HeyGen, but you might be wondering how much HeyGen costs for that. So, let’s discuss the HeyGen pricing in brief. So, HeyGen offers you 4 different plans that come with unique features and pricing. You can choose one of these as per your custom needs.
Free Plan:
Heygne offers you a free plan but it’s more like a trial version. With the free plan, you will only get 1 free credit which you can use to try creating a video with Heygen to see how it works. But if you want to use HeyGen for creating videos then you should have to go with one of their paid plans. So, that’s why we see this free plan as a trial version.
Creator plan:
This is the starting paid plan of Heygen with which you get fast video processing, 3 instant avatars, premium videos, and auto caption features. With this plan, you will get a total of 180 credits yearly, which means every month 15 credits, and for this, it will cost you $24/month if you pay yearly, otherwise, it will cost you $29./month if you choose to pay early. Additionally, if you want more credits you can choose that in this plan, and accordingly, the price of this will change which you can check on the website.
Team Plan:
With this plan, you will total 360 credits per year which means each month you will get 30 credits. The pricing of this plan costs you $72 per month when you pay yearly. We’re using this plan because it comes with more credits and features such as adding 3 team members, high-priority video processing, brand kit, and more credits. We choose a yearly plan because with yearly plans we can save some dollars.
Enterprise plan:
If you have custom needs of usage and want a private studio avatar for high-quality videos. Then you can go ahead with the enterprise plan and talk with their sales team to get customized plans for your business. In this plan, you will be able to create unlimited vi does and some more advanced features such as studio avatar add on feature, generative outfit, highest priority, API Access, and dedicated support.
Want to know more about the plans comparison and details about the features that each plan includes? Perfect! Check their pricing page where they have deeply compared all the plans and it will help you better understand which plan is right for your business.
HeyGen Review Conclusion
HeyGen is a perfect AI video generator tool if you don’t have enough time and money to spend on manual video production. At our company, we are currently not at a stage to allocate thousands of dollars to video production but as we want to grow we need videos for courses so right now HeyGen is the perfect solution for us.
But we think solely relying on HeyGen or any other AI tool is not a good idea because AI can still make some mistakes. So, we think HeyGen is a good solution for speeding up the video production process but keep your team involved to avoid any mistakes.