Wistia Soapbox Shut Down: How to Record Screen and Webcam in Wistia Now

Wistia shut Soapbox down on September 1, 2024, and nothing brings it back.^[1] The old Chrome recorder is inaccessible, its plans stopped renewing, and any Soapbox video you did not export or download before then is gone for good, even for Wistia Support. Recording now lives inside Wistia itself: a browser recording studio on every current plan, including Free, plus a desktop app that runs on macOS only. It captures screen, webcam or both at up to 4K. For a solo recorder, Free covers the job. Teams, branding removal and lead capture push you onto a paid plan.

Soapbox is gone, and so are its videos

Soapbox started in 2017 as a free Chrome extension for recording, editing and sharing screen and webcam videos. Wistia later folded that recorder into its main product and, on the sunset date, retired the standalone tool completely. Old Soapbox links stopped working with it. Wistia's support article is blunt about the files: anything not exported or downloaded before September 2024 cannot be recovered. If a teammate still has a broken Soapbox link in an old email sequence, the only fix is to re-record or re-upload the video in Wistia and swap the link.

The replacement is called Wistia Record. It is not a perfect copy. Wistia's own comparison chart shows several Soapbox functions that did not carry over: the HubSpot meetings and Calendly integrations, booking a meeting straight from a video, and engagement data across users. Calls to action and lead-capture forms are marked as paid in the same chart. Soapbox videos you did export also have quirks; Publish to Social does not work with them, and the API cannot archive Soapbox videos imported before September 1, 2023.

If you are shopping around instead, compare limits rather than labels. Loom's free Starter plan allows 25 videos per person, with screen recordings capped at 5 minutes and video at 720p. Vidyard's Free plan allows 5 recorded videos a month, each up to 30 minutes. In the Wistia pages we read, we found no comparable per-video cap on its own recorder, only the storage limit of your plan. That is the real ceiling.

Where recording lives now: the browser studio and the Mac app

Wistia offers two ways in. The browser recording studio works on any plan and opens from the Wistia app, or from inside the editor when you want to add a fresh clip to a video you are already cutting. It records the highest resolution your camera or screen supplies, up to 4K.^[2] Recordings land in your Wistia library, and clips recorded from the editor go to your personal Recordings folder. A recording made or edited in Wistia plays at up to 1080p right away, while uploads start at 360p and improve as processing finishes.

The desktop app is the second route. It runs on macOS only; Wistia says there is no Windows version yet.^[3] On a Mac it captures screen, microphone and computer audio, after you grant screen and microphone access once in System Settings. Wistia's recording page also describes each participant being recorded locally on a separate audio and video track, with every track backed up to the cloud, and it presents this as part of Wistia recording, not as an app-only feature. You can download those speaker tracks for mixing later. Windows users record in the browser studio instead. It still records screen, camera or both.

Two Mac quirks cause most failed sessions. On macOS Sequoia, the browser's screen-sharing permission needs re-approval about once a month, or screen capture suddenly stops. Most MacBook Pros also switch off the built-in microphone when the lid is closed. So plug in an external mic if you record with the laptop shut and a separate monitor attached. Check both before a client call.

Recording a solo screen-and-camera video

The solo flow is short. Follow this order to avoid most retakes:

• Open the recording studio and choose screen, camera or both.
• Load your script into the teleprompter by typing, pasting or uploading a .txt file, then set its speed, size and transparency. The AI script generator can draft one from a short summary, a tone and the channel you will publish on.
• Start recording. You can pause at any point and record several takes.
• Stop, and the video opens in your library, ready to edit, share or publish.

Wistia transcribes every recording automatically, and automated transcripts are free on all plans, at about 95% accuracy per its help center. That transcript drives the editing step, because you cut words and silences from the text rather than from a timeline. Mistakes are cheap to fix. Pause, restart the sentence and delete the flub later. Nobody sees the retake.

Recording with guests and collecting videos from others

Group recording turns the studio into a small remote set. Guests enter their email address before they join, and the host controls start, pause, restart and end, who is on stage, and the layout (Tile, Overlay or Spotlight). For recurring sessions, reusable links give you a permanent Host URL and a Guest URL to paste into meeting invites. Hosts must be logged-in users on the account. Guests get limited controls.

Connections drop. Know the recovery rules first. If a guest's upload is interrupted, Wistia emails that participant a recovery link, which must be opened on the same device and browser within 30 days. Until the missing clips arrive, the recording is assembled from lower-quality cloud backups and its layout cannot be changed. The host's End button stays disabled until every upload completes or fails, and the recording tab should stay open until then.

The second route is collecting videos from people outside your account. A request-a-video link lets a customer or colleague upload a file or record one, with a teleprompter, and no Wistia account is needed. You can cap the number of submissions and set a maximum recording length in minutes. One trap catches people: nothing is saved until the recipient clicks Submit, so a closed tab loses the clip.

After you stop: editing, layouts and downloads

When you open a Record video in the editor, Wistia trims silence at the start and end automatically; a Revert icon undoes it. The Suggestions panel can also enhance speech across the whole video, though that does not work on videos longer than one hour. Recordings that combine screen and camera get four layouts: Spotlight, Grid fixed, Picture-in-picture and Framed picture-in-picture. Only the screen feed can be scaled and repositioned. Backgrounds can be solid, gradient, pattern or an uploaded image, but uploaded images belong to one user, and each video is set individually rather than team-wide.

Downloads are restricted by role. To download a recording you must be the Account Owner, a Manager, or hold Can manage permission on its folder; you can take the final video or the individual feeds as a zip. Deleting a recording cannot be undone, so download before you clean up. Our guide on downloading Wistia videos covers viewer downloads and share-link settings for everyone else.

What recording costs on each plan

The recorder itself carries no extra charge on any current plan. What changes between plans is storage, seats and what you can attach to the finished video. If you need Soapbox-style engagement data in your marketing platform, that sync requires Signals, not plain Business; our Wistia pricing guide covers Signals and storage overages, which are billed monthly even on annual plans. Prices are per account, not per seat, and every recording, clip and created video counts toward storage, according to the pricing page.^[4]

Free has a second limit for anyone sharing recordings widely: 200 GB of bandwidth a month, and embeds stop playing a few days after you pass it, until the monthly reset. On Business, extra users cost $25 a month each on annual billing, or $31.25 each on monthly billing. A five-person team therefore pays $129 a month on annual billing or $161.50 a month on monthly billing, by our arithmetic.

Annual billing has the lower monthly rate at every team size, but it commits you to a full year, and plans renew automatically with no refunds for cancellations, downgrades or unused time. A year on annual billing costs about as much as 9.6 months on monthly billing, for one user or five. Annual only pays off if you keep the plan about 10 months or longer; for a short recording project, pay monthly.

Accounts still on a legacy plan (Pro, Advanced, Premium or Plus) are a special case. Wistia's blog says legacy accounts do not see the Studio, so they lack recording and editing until they move to a current plan. Plans changed in March 2026, so older help pages may still use those names. Webinars are recorded separately and automatically; see our Wistia webinars guide.

The bottom line

Soapbox is finished, and its unexported videos with it, but Wistia's recording studio is a capable successor on every plan. A solo marketer recording tutorials or sales videos can work on Free, accepting Wistia branding, one user and 25 GB. Choose the Mac app if you want to capture screen, microphone and computer audio natively on a Mac; on Windows, the browser studio handles screen and camera recording. Budget for a paid plan once you need teammates, CTAs or lead forms, pick annual billing only if you will keep it about 10 months, and plan for Signals only if engagement data must reach your marketing platform.