Timeliner vs Shade.inc
AI-powered media library - search every clip by face, transcript, or scene. A DAM with review on top.
Honest comparison for a 5-editor video agency. We list what they do better, where they fall short for our ICP, and the real monthly cost.
Shade.inc is ≈ $149–175/mo for a 5-seat video team (Growth - $29.75/seat annual ($35 monthly) × 5). Timeliner is $89/mo (Studio - 5 seats, review + full production pipeline), with extra seats at $10/mo and free unlimited client and guest reviewers on every plan.
Pick Shade.inc if…
If your team manages a huge stock-footage or sports/news archive and finding a specific clip is your daily bottleneck, Shade's AI search is genuinely strong. For ad agencies and freelance editors, it's the wrong center of gravity.
Pick Timeliner if…
You need what Shade.inc leaves out:
- Not a project management tool - no task pipeline, no editor assignment, no deadlines, no workload view.
- No internal-then-client review gating.
- No payment tracking or per-project revenue.
Real cost for a 5-seat video team
Posted prices, not list prices. The line item isn’t the whole stack - read the note below.
Shade.inc
Growth - $29.75/seat annual ($35 monthly) × 5
Timeliner
Studio - 5 seats, review + full production pipeline
Why the gap matters: Shade prices per seat and sells storage depth - 500GB of active storage per seat on Growth. That's the right trade if your bottleneck is finding a clip in a 10TB+ archive. If your bottleneck is knowing who owes what and which cut is waiting on a client, you're paying $60–85/mo more for AI search you'll rarely open, and still buying a PM tool and a client portal on top.
Timeliner Studio - $89/mo
5 seats, 3TB, 1080p streaming. Frame-accurate review, the full production pipeline, the internal-then-client approval gate and branded client portals. Right for a small team replacing a review tool plus a PM tool.
Timeliner Agency - $199/mo
10 seats, 8TB, 4K streaming. Everything in Studio plus payment tracking, approval-bottleneck analytics, client intake forms, the social calendar and AI captions, titles and tags. Right once you're billing clients and publishing.
Extra seats are $10/mo each (+250GB). Clients and guest reviewers are free and unlimited on every plan - they never count toward your seat limit. See all plans.
Compare against any Timeliner plan
Growth - $29.75/seat annual ($35 monthly) × 5. Switch tiers to see how seats, storage and features line up against what you’d actually pay.
| Shade.inc | Timeliner Studio | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | ≈ $149–175/mo | $89/mo |
| Seats | Up to 15 seats | 5 included (up to 10) |
| Extra seat | Not published | $10/mo (+250GB) |
| Storage | 500GB active storage per seat | 3TB |
| Streaming quality | Not published | 1080p |
| Client & guest reviewers | Not published | Free & unlimited |
What Timeliner Studio includes
- Transcript & timecode commenting
- Frame-accurate review & comments
- Unlimited projects & versions
- Client approvals via share links
- Branded client portals
- Internal supervisor approval
- Kanban, list & brand views
- Slack, WhatsApp & email alerts
- Locked downloads & watermarks
- Social scheduling for 1 brand
- Priority WhatsApp · 8h response
Where Shade.inc genuinely wins
We’re not pretending Shade.inc is bad. These are real strengths - pick Shade.inc if any of them are central to how you work.
- AI search across the entire media library - find a clip by face, by spoken word, or by 'shot of someone running on a beach.'
- Cloud NAS streaming - full-resolution playback without downloading source files.
- Automatic metadata tagging on ingest, including transcripts and scene detection.
- Deep per-seat storage - 500GB active storage per seat on Growth, 1TB per seat on Enterprise.
- Built for high-volume libraries (sports, news, content engines with thousands of clips).
Where it falls short for a 5-editor video agency
- Not a project management tool - no task pipeline, no editor assignment, no deadlines, no workload view.
- No internal-then-client review gating.
- No payment tracking or per-project revenue.
- No team output analytics built for editors.
- Branded share links, but no multi-brand client portal.
- No workflow automations - nothing moves a task or notifies a client on its own.
- No social publishing or content calendar for approved cuts.
The headache you’ll feel
A 5-editor agency rarely shoots enough footage to justify $149–175/mo for AI library search. You'll still need a separate PM tool, a separate client portal, and a separate payment-tracking tool - Shade is the asset library, not the studio.
Feature Comparison
Green = supported natively. Amber = partial / via add-on. Grey = not available.
Timestamped Video Comments
Side-by-Side Version Comparison
AI Media Search (face / transcript / scene)
Full-Resolution Cloud Streaming
Media Transcripts & Transcript Commenting
Project & Task Management
Custom Task Workflows
Workload & Capacity Planning
Workflow Automations
Internal-then-Client Review Gate
Client Approval Portal (No Login)
Branded Client Portal (Logo + Colors)
Team Analytics & KPIs
Payment Tracking & Pricing Templates
Social Publishing & Scheduling
When Shade.inc is the right call
If your team manages a huge stock-footage or sports/news archive and finding a specific clip is your daily bottleneck, Shade's AI search is genuinely strong. For ad agencies and freelance editors, it's the wrong center of gravity.
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Resources
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