TubeBuddy Review – What is it & Should you use it? March 2021
I wanted to share this Tubebuddy review because there is a lot of misinformation out there and reviews which don’t give you the complete story. Another problem is that Tubebuddy has 1 free plan, 3 paid plans and then theres VIDIQ (an alternative), so it’s quite confusing which one is best for your needs.
So I want to explain exactly what it is, what can the free extension do, and is it worth upgrading to their paid plans. We will also go through some of the best features and not so great features of this YouTube growth & productivity tool.
And finally, answer the question on most people’s minds – does it really get you more views and subscribers?
This is the most comprehensive TubeBuddy Review, so stick around to find out whether or not it’s worth it.
Contents
What is TubeBuddy? & Who uses it?
Quick Summary – The Bottom Line
How to get started with TubeBuddy
Pros & Cons
Best Features of TubeBuddy
– Keyword Research Tool
– Canned Responses & Comments
– Bulk Processing Tools
– A/B Thumbnail Tester
– Insta Suggest Tags
– Scheduling Videos (Sunset/Updates)
– Rank Tracking (YouTube & Google)
Other Cool Features
Missing Features of TubeBuddy
Verdict & Recommendations
Which plan is best for you?
TubeBuddy Alternative
TubeBuddy Discounts & Coupons
FAQ
What is TubeBuddy?
TubeBuddy is a Free Browser Extension that you can connect to your YouTube Account to help grow, manage, audit and optimize your YouTube Channel. In addition to their free plan, they also have paid plans (Starter, Star, Legend) which give you access to more tools such as a powerful keyword research tool, productivity tools, bulk processing, A/B Thumbnail Tester and much more.
Who uses TubeBuddy?
Currently, TubeBuddy has over 3,000,000+ users (free & paid). It is used by some of the top creators around the world such as Food Ranger (Food/Travel Channel), Roberto Blake (Marketing), Sarah Beth Yoga (1.15M Subs), Matt Santoro (6.35M Subs), Family Feud (1.6M Subs), Vanessa Lau (400k Subs) and many more!
Note: I am also currently using the Legend plan ($49/month) for my tutorial channel.
Getting Started with TubeBuddy
It’s extremely easy to get started with TubeBuddy, and you can do it for Free. It is a browser extension that you can easily install by following the prompts.
Available on:
Chrome browser
Firefox browser
Safari browser
Opera browser
Microsoft Edge
iPhone/Android App
Simply install and connect with your YouTube account and it will show.
Short on time? Here’s the bottom line.
- The Free version offers some functionality enough to let you get a feel of what it truly offers but doesn’t do too much beyond that.
- Starter $9/month – is definitely worth the money since it gives you the full version of the keyword research tool. This is important in knowing which videos to create that will give you the best chance of ranking but also is something people are searching for.
- Star Plan $19/month – Only If you need the bulk editing + productivity tools. Great if you have a lot of videos and upload frequently. Perhaps can upgrade, then downgrade when not needed.
- Legend Plan $49/month (my current plan) is great for those channels who really want to take it to the next level and your budget allows for it. The main reason for getting the Legend plan is probably going to be the A/B Testing Tool. This allows you to test and compare thumbnails & titles – to see which performs better. In turn helping you get more clicks and views for your videos.
Pros
- Easy to Insall & Use
- Great Keyword Research Tool
- Amazing Productivity & Bulk Editing Tools
- A/B Thumbnail Tester
- Detailed Documentation/How-To-Videos
- Low Price (for Channels Less than 1000 subscribers)
- MemberPerks
Cons
- One License per Channel
- Doesn’t show competitors historical view stats & views per hour
- Lacks Trending Video Analysis
- Keyword Rank Tracking (only available for Star & Legend plans)
The 7 Best Features of TubeBuddy
There are over 65+ features and things you can do with Tubebuddy (which can be seen on their website) but let’s be honest you don’t need all of them. Here are my favourites and how it helps.
#1 Keyword Research Tool
Arguably the most important tool of TubeBuddy is the Keyword Research Tool. This can help you uncover keyword ideas, monthly keyword search volume on YouTube, and help you understand how competitive a keyword is before creating a video for it.
The best thing about it is that it shows a weighted and unweighted version. What this means is that the unweighted version won’t take your channel into the calculation. The weighted version will look at your channel and videos to give you a score that is specific for you.
In my opinion, keyword research is very important for smaller channels in which their content is not trending/viral by nature. e.g. tutorials.
Larger channels with loyal followings can also take advantage of this since you can see the approximate search volume and can prioritize the creation of certain videos.
Note: The free version is limited to 25 searches/day & 3 related search suggestions. To unlock all features & get the most out of it you’ll need the Starter plan at $9/month.
#2 Canned Responses & Comment Filtering
The Canned Responses feature is extremely helpful especially if you get a lot of comments. You probably still want to reply to comments because that builds connection but at the same time, it can be frustrating because you don’t have the time to do so.
What you can do is spend a few minutes to create your canned responses and use them whenever someone asks the same question. It could be about what equipment you are using, common questions about yourself or pointing people to other videos etc.
I personally use this quite often, since I always get the same questions over and over again. It really helps in saving time.
It can also be a great opportunity to create a template that includes an referal link and increase your affiliate commissions!
And you can also add a touch of personalization by using the placeholders, which will take their username and use it for your canned response!
Comment Filtering is also very useful.
Especially the filter where you can check for comments which – you have replied to a comment and they’ve also replied.
Note: with a Free plan, you get only 1 canned response. From Pro ($9) – you can set as many as you need and also more filtering options.
Quick Tip: You can use VIDIQ Free – for unlimited comment templates. So if you are thinking of upgrading just for this feature, then try VIDIQ first 🙂
#3 Bulk Processing Tools
The Bulk Processing tools are not something I use too often but I can imagine it to be indispensable for some channels with many videos.
TubeBuddy offers a range of Bulk Processing tools such as:
- Bulk Copy, Delete & Update – Cards/Endscreens
This can be great, if you have a new video and want to redirect viewers to that specific video. You can bulk update endscreens/cards in a few minutes rather than spending hours updating each video.
- Bulk Find, Replace & Append
Why is this useful? Let’s say, your affiliate links, social profile and website URL has changed. Updating them manually will take hours. But with this tool, you can update it in minutes!
- Bulk Thumbnail Overlays
With this you can add overlays on top of your current thumbnails.
For example on Family Feud’s channel they used the bulk thumbnail overlay to add a logo on top of their thumbnails.
Personally, this method is great because let’s say in 2-3 years time you want to update your logo design to modernize it. Then, if you’ve uploaded the thumbnails with the old logo embedded, you would need to open up photoshop again, update the logos manually, then upload one at a time.
And with over 4200+ videos on Family Feud, I would hate to be the person to do that 🙂
But with this, you can change it anytime and all within a few minutes.
Note: Bulk Processing Tools are only available from Star Plan ($19/month) and above.
Quick Tip: VIDIQ Free includes the bulk copy cards & endscreens. It doesn’t offer as many features as TuebBuddy but generally does the job.
#4 A/B Thumbnail Tester
One of my favourite tools is the A/B Tester. Why? You can create two different thumbnails & titles and see which one gets clicked on more. Not only does it show the click-thru rate but also shows the average watch time of the variation and original. So you can see which one actually performed best overall!
Old Thumbnail
New Thumbnail
So from the results below, it only showed that it performed marginally better. So sometimes you may think the new one does better but in some cases it doesn’t.
It also provides more information such as Total Views, Average View Duration, Est. Total Min. Watched and Traffic Sources. And the average view duration (for the new video) showed to be lower which could mean that the new thumbnail didn’t meet expectations.
Therefore, I decided to keep the old thumbnail and not risk switching permanently.
How does it work?
So basically you can create another variation of your thumbnail then upload it to the A/B Tester – and then it will switch it daily. And then calculate the stats which are pulled in from your YouTube analytics.
You are also able to create a Metadata Test too. This Allows you to change the Thumbnail, Title, Tags and/or Description all in a single test.
Note: Only available for Legend Plans ($49/month). In my opinion – it’s only worth getting if your budget allows for it and also if you are getting thousands of views per day. Cause if you can increase your click-thru rate – for videos that are getting thousands of views per day, it could add up significantly in YouTube Ad revenue.
#5 Insta Suggest Tags
TubeBuddy also will help populate related tags once you type in the first tag. This honestly saves a ton of time and makes uploading a video less tedious. Before this, I would come up with my own tags – but they wouldn’t be that accurate and it would take such a long time!
Make sure to also click the “tell us” link and enter in your keyword that you are targeting, they will show more relevant tags for your video.
It can also provide helpful hints on popular trends and search phrases.
Note: Free plan is limited to only 3. You can’t take full advantage of this until you upgrade to at the least the Pro plan ($9/month).
#6 Scheduling Videos (Sunset/Updates)
While with YouTube you can schedule your video to be set to “public” fairly easily. You can’t hide, change, update a video but with TubeBuddy’s Sunset and Video Update feature you can.
This can be useful for many reasons, one example: You may have a promotional video, or an update video that you want only to be live for 24 hours. With this you can schedule your video to be unlisted/private with a few clicks.
Note: Only available on Star $19/month and above.
#7 Rank Tracking (YouTube & Google Search)
If you want to know what you are ranking on YouTube/Google search results – you can check that using the TubeBuddy’s Search tracking tool.
You can compare your video’s with your competitor to see how it is performing currently and overtime. So, your ranking drops then it may be time to update your video – cause it’s probably not as relevant anymore.
The biggest limitation I noticed is that it’s not available for the pro plan ($9/month) and for the star plan $19/month you can only track 5 keywords. Only with the Legend Plan you can track up to 50 keywords.
5 Cool Features (that you didn’t know about)
There are a lot of hidden tools that you might still find useful but aren’t really part of their core features.
#1 Advanced Video Embed Options
By default when you embed your video on a website. It shows some extra things and sometimes you wish you could remove it right?
With this tool, you can customize the look and feel of your embedded videos – ready for you to paste into your website.
You can use it to:
- Display captions automatically
- Disable play controls
- Loop videos (Auto-Replay)
- Auto-play videos
- Start & end videos at specific times
- Hide YouTube logo on play bar
Firstly, You can make your video look better on your website.
Secondly, (for more advanced users) instead of using a .gif file – you can use a video with auto-play & loop. So this means your video will load on YouTube’s servers (which are super fast) and it won’t slow down your website.
For a video with zero branding at all, more control – you’d probably need something like Wistia though.
Note: Available in Free Version.
#2 Pick a Winner
Another cool feature! This makes running a contest and picking a winner super easy.
#3 Publish to Facebook
You can conveniently publish your video to Facebook (natively) – so it won’t be a shared link but it will upload the actual video file.
This is great because as we all know – sometimes we can be lazy to open up Facebook again (speaking about myself hehe) and upload there. This just makes it so much easier and much more likely for you to take advantage of Facebook.
Note: Only available for Star plan ($19/month) and above.
#4 Quick-Edit Toolbar
This is not something you would normally think about until you actually see it. But it’s extremely useful when you need to edit multiple video descriptions.
Cause normally, you’d have to click back to your video page and then click into your video. It’s a few extra clicks but it adds up.
With this toolbar, you have the videos on the right hand side and you can quickly navigate between videos.
Luckily, this is available with the Free TubeBuddy Extension so you can start using it today.
#5 MemberPerks
Something I didn’t realise until I got the plan – I noticed they also offered some discounts on some tools. Two popular ones that you might have purchased anyway are epidemic sound & placeit.
Epidemic sound is amazing for YouTube videos, you pay a monthly or yearly subscription and you can use the music on your videos. They have a huge library of tracks, music, sounds, etc.
And Placeit – is great if you have an online business and you need designs. Their primary feature is that you can upload your logo and they’ll place it on a mockup in seconds. Really amazing stuff.
They give 25% & 30% off respectively and are available on any one of their plans, including the pro plan ($9/month). There’s some extra things in there too, but I think I’ll let you check those out yourself 🙂
So, What is TubeBuddy missing?
TubeBuddy has so many awesome features, but what is it missing? Nothing is perfect, and neither is this tool so let’s take a closer look.
#1 Historical view statistics and views per hour.
Years ago, you could actually see how many views/subscribers a video got in a graph (some of you may remember) but YouTube has since removed it. I personally loved that feature, cause it gave an idea of how many views your own video could potentially get.
At this current time, TubeBuddy doesn’t have any feature that shows this. Which is a little disappointing.
However, the Free Version of VIDIQ (a TubeBuddy Alternative) has. Besides every video – you can see a sidebar that shows views per hour.
And if you click the icon – it will show the historical views. This is awesome because now you can see how many views your competitors are getting daily and how well it’s performing over time.
The good news is that for Views Per Hour, this is available on the Free VIDIQ Plan but for historical views, you need their Pro Plan $10/month or above.
Overall, I like the VIDIQ video analysis sidebar a lot more than TubeBuddy’s videolytics since it provides more information that is not shown already.
#2 Trending Video Analysis
If you are a channel that leverages latest trends then you may find that TubeBuddy doesn’t have many tools to help in this department to help you search, track or notify you when a video goes viral for a competitor.
However, again VIDIQ does have this. Since they have the views per hour data, it allows them to find trending videos using that metric.
If you are deciding between the two, I recommend reading my Full comparison here.
TubeBuddy Review: Verdict & Recommendations
Other then the two missing features, TubeBuddy is an awesome tool, to help you grow, manage, and optimize your YouTube channel.
BUT
It can’t work miracles…
It’s just a tool and you have to put in the work to create great original content which is an art in itself. If you are doing that (or at least trying) already and are serious about your YouTube channel, then yes – I do believe it is worth every penny!
You should definitely install the Free version of TubeBuddy to try it out.
So which plan should you get?
Once you have tried the Free version of Tubebuddy, although it’s okay – it doesn’t offer too much except giving you an overall feel for what it does and where things are. Now, to get the most out of it you’ll need to get one of their 3 paid plans.
They have a starter plan which starts at $9/month, a Star plan which starts at $19/month and also a Legend plan $49/month.
So I’ll go through each one and give you my recommendations.
Pro $9/month – if you have read this far, then I highly recommend at least trying the starter plan. Because of the keyword research and insta-suggest tags tool. With the Keyword research tool, you can find which keywords people are searching for and also find out what type of videos to create. This gives your video a direction. The tags tool is also great, saving you a lot of time from manually adding them in.
BONUS: You get 50% off if you have less than 1,000 Subscribers for the Pro Plan. It’s a great deal!
Star $19/month – with the star plan you get everything in Pro plan and Bulk Processing, Monetization Tools, Advanced Scheduling, Card/Endscreen Templates. Personally, I don’t use these too much – but if you are uploading a lot of videos (daily/weekly uploads) then this plan can be useful. Perhaps something you can upgrade to, and downgrade back to the starter if you don’t need it every single month.
Instead of this star plan – I’d actually go ahead and VIDIQ Pro ($10/month) – That way you get the best of both worlds. You get the views per hour metric which is awesome, and you also have the bulk cards and endscreens on the free version anyways.
Legend $49/month (My Current Plan) – If you want to use the A/B Tester (I personally think that – this alone is worth the price of this plan).
But, If you aren’t getting thousands of views per day, doing the A/B Test and changing thumbnails may not be worth the time and effort.
This is amazing if you are getting thousands of views daily – this tool can help you get even more by helping you increase your click-thru rates. Which in turn increases your views and therefore increases the amount you can earn from ad revenue. And that itself can actually pay for your monthly fees!
You also are able to give channel access with the Legend Plan.
With all plans, there are no contracts – you can cancel anytime.
TubeBuddy Alternative
A great TubeBuddy alternative is VIDIQ. It is similar in many aspects, the best feature about VIDIQ is the views per hour (VPH). Something that TubeBuddy lacks. And I actually use the VIDIQ Boost Plan in combination with TubeBuddy Legend for this reason. (Yes, you can use both at the same time – might be a bit more cluttered, but you can actually hide certain things)
The views per hour is a useful metric to see how the video is currently performing but also shows historical views. So you can see how it’s performing over time. It also has trending video alerts, which may be useful for channels that leverages trends.
VIDIQ is not as strong in Bulk Processing & Productivity though. It also doesn’t have an A/B test tool to compare thumbnails, titles, descriptions etc. If you want to learn more about the differences then read my Full comparison of VIDIQ vs TubeBuddy.
If you had to choose one paid plan, what should you get?
Personally, if I was on a budget – I would get the TubeBuddy Pro plan $9/month because I prefer their keyword research tool over VIDIQ’s. Then I would install VIDIQ Free – for the views per hour data.
But I think – You may want to consider VIDIQ Pro ($10/month) if you are a channel that leverages trends, and love the trending analysis features. And you want to the historical view data.
If you have a bit more budget, get both the starter paid plans – $9 + $10/month = total $19/month. You can cancel anytime if you don’t find any value in it.
If you don’t have a budget?
Try both their highest plans, see which things you use and cancel if you find you don’t really use them.
TubeBuddy Coupons & Discounts
Currently, TubeBuddy offers a completely 30 day-free trial for any of their plans through my referral link.
They also offer 50% for their pro plan for channels with less than 1000 subscribers. Which brings the monthly cost from $9/month to $4.5/month.
And if you sign up annually, you will get 20% off their plans.
So for example – if you get the pro plan, have less than 1000 subscribers and select the annual plan – it’s only $3.6/month or $43.20/year.
There is also a special discount for non-profit organizations 501(c)(3) . Nonprofits qualify for a Special 25% Discount.
Hopefully, this comprehensive TubeBuddy review has helped you to make the right decision, if you have any concerns or questions drop it below!
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, TubeBuddy is YouTube certified and used by over 3,000,000+ creators & brands around the world.
With that said, it does use an API to connect and collect data from your YouTube Analytics to provide you extra stats/information.
Yes you can, though you may want to hide certain things which might show duplicate information. For example, when I use it I normally hide TubeBuddy’s video sidebar as I prefer VIDIQ since it shows views per hour and the historical views (views over time).
You can navigate to the TubeBuddy Dashboard > Setup > Settings. From there you can hide certain things, if you don’t need it.
For example, if you are using VIDIQ then you might want to hide the “videolytics on the video watch page”
