Templater and Plainly both turn one After Effects template into many videos, and the real difference is where the rendering happens. Templater runs inside the After Effects you already own, on machines you control. Plainly takes your template into its cloud and renders it there. Everything else in this comparison follows from that one choice.
We make Templater, so you should know whose voice this is. We will be fair anyway, because a buyer who picks the wrong tool is a buyer who comes back annoyed, and nobody wants that. Where Plainly is the better fit, we will say so plainly. Everything we say about Plainly comes from its own homepage, and where that page is silent, we say it is silent and leave it there.
Two ways to get from one template to many videos
Start with what they share. Both start from a template you build in After Effects. Both pair that template with a list of changes, such as a name, a photo, a price or a language. Both produce one finished video per row. If you only compare feature lists, they look closer than they are.
Templater is an After Effects plugin. You rig your template inside After Effects, map the data to your layers, preview how each row will look, and then render. The data can come from Google Sheets, a tab-separated file, or a JSON file or feed. QUE, our JSON-based data app, is built to work with Templater as well. The work happens in the application you already use to design, on the computer where you already use it.
Plainly describes itself as a video automation platform for After Effects. You build the template in After Effects and upload it. Plainly scans the project and detects parameters automatically, and you can also mark the dynamic elements yourself, whether text, images, video, animation or audio. Its FAQ says an After Effects plugin can upload templates directly. You then connect a data source and the videos render and go out on their own. Its homepage says it “uses a cloud-based After Effects infrastructure to render your videos.”
So the same After Effects skill gets you into both. The difference is who owns the machine that does the work. With Templater, that machine is yours, which means you buy it, maintain it and keep After Effects installed on it. With Plainly, that machine belongs to someone else, and you rent time on it.
Neither arrangement is better in the abstract. Owning the machine gives you control, and renting it gives you less to look after. The right pick depends on how much control you want, what your files are allowed to touch, and how many hands you have to babysit hardware.
Where Plainly is the better fit
Let us start with the cases where we would tell you to look at Plainly first, because they are real.
You do not want to own render hardware. Running Templater means a computer with After Effects on it. For a single designer on a good workstation, that costs nothing extra, since the computer already exists. For a company that needs a large number of videos on a schedule, it means deciding which machines render, keeping them updated, and looking after them when something breaks. We have written before that After Effects “isn’t known for its blazing export speeds,” and the machine that renders is yours to size and care for. Plainly moves that job to its side. If nobody on your team wants to be the person who owns the render boxes, that is a legitimate reason to pay for someone else to own them.
You want the hosted workflow, with integrations ready to switch on. Plainly lists CSV, its own API and native integrations as data options, plus one-click integrations for transfer and automatic distribution. It also has pages for a Google Sheets setup and for a video editing API. If you want a service that takes the template and handles the cloud side of rendering and delivery, that is what the homepage describes. Templater can reach a similar end result, but you assemble more of it. We give you the CLI, event scripts and the Bot, and your developers build the front end, because Templater ships without a front-end, web or mobile application of its own. That is great if you have developers. It is extra work if you do not.
You cannot or do not want to put After Effects on a server. This one deserves a straight answer, because it trips teams up. Templater needs After Effects installed and running wherever it renders. You can run it on cloud Windows Server machines, and we need no special license from you to do that. But Adobe’s standard license agreement does not permit After Effects to be installed on a server, so you have to talk to an Adobe salesperson to get the right license. If that conversation sounds like a delay you would rather skip, a service that already runs After Effects in its own cloud removes the question from your plate. Plainly also lists itself as an Adobe Video Technology Partner on its homepage.
You want to try it fast. Plainly offers a 14-day free trial. Ours is 30 days and fully featured, but it means installing Templater, checking it against your version of After Effects and activating a license. If your first goal is simply to see whether the idea works for your content, the shorter trial of a hosted service may suit you, and the shorter clock is the only cost.
That last point is small, but notice the pattern. Each reason above is about carrying less. Less hardware, less assembly, less licensing homework. If that is what you are shopping for, Plainly is a sensible place to start, and we would rather you start there than buy a tool that does not match how your team wants to work.
Where Templater is the better fit
Now the other side. These are the situations where we think running inside your own After Effects wins.
Your assets must stay on your machines. This is the strongest argument we have. When you render locally, your footage, your fonts and your customer data stay on hardware you control. Projector, our rendering app, was built as a local desktop application, and we say on its page that your assets, in transit and at rest, are never visible to another party, including us. For a broadcaster working with unreleased material, a company with strict rules about customer data, or a client whose contract names where files may live, that is not a preference. It is a requirement. A cloud renderer has to receive your template and your data in order to do its job. If your rules forbid that, the question is settled before you compare features. If you are weighing this angle, our posts on on-prem video automation go further.
You already own the hardware. Our local installation lets you use the hardware and software you have already paid for, without adding cloud resources. A studio with idle workstations overnight has render capacity it is not using. Templater turns that capacity into output. Plainly, by its own description, sells plans with a set number of rendering minutes, and output is capped by those minutes. Templater subscriptions give you unlimited output capacity, so the ceiling is your hardware and your patience. Prices for both are on the licensing page and Plainly’s pricing page, and we will not guess at them here. Read our licensing guide before you compare.
You want After Effects itself in the loop. Because Templater lives inside After Effects, a designer can open a replicated composition and work on it by hand before it renders. We call that batch replicate. Templater copies your project, inserts the data, and keeps the copies tidy in a clean folder structure. You can send them to the After Effects render queue or to Adobe Media Encoder, which also gives you output formats After Effects does not include. If a human needs to nudge the occasional version before it goes out, this is a good way to work. Our post on batch rendering in After Effects covers it in detail.
You need the controls developers ask for. Templater Bot watches a data source for new rows and starts renders on its own. It has a command line interface and an event script API, so you can hook scripts into its processes. A web or mobile app can feed data to Bot and get a personalized video back, which is the pattern behind on-demand video. The layout rules and the patented Time Sculpting feature adjust a template to text and footage of different lengths, and Templater reads text in any language, including right-to-left scripts. Plainly’s homepage does not mention these specifics, and we will not guess at what its product does beyond the homepage. We list them because they are the reasons our customers pick us.
Your machines are offline, or close to it. We offer an offline activation process for systems with restricted or no internet access. That is a narrow case, but if you work in a locked-down facility, it matters more than any feature on this page.
A concrete scenario, and the limits you should know
Picture a regional retailer with a spreadsheet of a few hundred stores. Each row holds a store name, a manager’s photo, a local offer and a language. The marketing team wants one short video per store, every month, with a quick check by a person before anything goes live. This is a made-up case, but it is the shape of work we see most.
If that team already has two or three capable workstations and a designer who lives in After Effects, Templater fits well. The designer rigs the template once. The sheet drives every version. Pro replicates the compositions so the team can review them, and a second machine running Bot can share the load. As we say in our FAQ, two machines cut the production time in half, three cut it to a third, and so on. To estimate the total, render one representative video, then multiply by the number in the batch. Our guide to making hundreds of personalized videos walks through the full setup.
If that same team has no spare machines, no one to look after them, and a deadline that moves around, Plainly is the better starting point. They upload the template, connect the data, and let the cloud do the rendering. The trade is that the retailer’s footage and store data now travel to a service, and that its plan sets the number of rendering minutes it can use each period. Neither of those is a flaw. They are the terms of the deal, and you should read them before you sign.
Now the limits on our side, because you should hear them from us before you find them yourself.
Templater needs After Effects. If you do not own it, that is a cost on top of ours, and the plugin supports After Effects from CS5 through 2025, on macOS and Windows. The editions matter, too. Rig, the entry level, cannot batch render or replicate. It is built to prepare and preview a project, and we have written that first-time buyers sometimes pick it without realizing that. The free trial includes everything, which makes the surprise worse. Pro adds batch work. Bot adds automation. Check the edition before you buy.
Templater reads from a single data source, and it can map to only a single worksheet within a Google Sheet. It does not read an Excel file directly, so you export to a tab-delimited file first. A single text layer must keep one font, size, weight and style, so a headline with one bold word needs two layers. And none of this comes with a polished interface for your colleagues. If you want non-technical people to submit data and get a video back, someone has to build that front end. We can help, and we offer resources on our learn page, but it is work.
Scale brings its own limit. QUE, our companion for managing data and jobs, does not balance jobs between machines at this time. You assign jobs to particular machines by hand, and you make sure each one has the fonts, plugins and assets it needs. If you would rather not do that bookkeeping, say so when you compare, and ask Plainly how it handles concurrency, which its homepage says depends on the plan.
Finally, a licensing note. A standard Templater license is active on one machine at a time. A floating license works across any number of machines on your network through a licensing server, but only one machine at a time can use it. Plan your rendering machines around that rule. Our pages on QUE and Projector show how the pieces fit with Templater once you outgrow a single workstation.
How to choose without regretting it
Run the decision as a short series of questions, and let the first hard answer settle it.
First, can your files leave your building? If a contract, a client or a regulator says no, choose the local route and stop comparing. If the answer is yes, keep going.
Second, do you already own the computing power? If you have idle workstations and someone who enjoys After Effects, Templater turns them into a render farm for the price of a license. If you have neither, count the cost of buying and looking after the hardware honestly, then set it against Plainly’s plans. Both companies point to their own pricing pages for numbers, so go and read both.
Third, do you want to build, or do you want to subscribe? Templater rewards teams with developers or willing designers, because the CLI, event scripts and Bot let you build your own pipeline. A hosted platform rewards teams who want integrations ready on day one.
Last, test both with the real template. Our trial is 30 days, and Plainly’s is 14. Do not test with a clean demo file. Use the messiest template you have, with the longest names, the heaviest footage and the odd languages. Whichever tool survives that file will survive your workload.
Our honest bottom line is this. Choose Plainly if you want the rendering to be someone else’s job, you are comfortable with files and data going to a cloud service, and a plan built on rendering minutes suits your volume. Choose Templater if your files must stay on your machines, you already have the hardware, you want After Effects in the loop, or you want to build your own automation with a command line and a bot. Plenty of teams will fit one side clearly. If you land in the middle, run both trials on the same file and let the result decide.
Many teams in the middle find that the choice comes down to a single question. Would you rather manage machines or manage a subscription? Answer that honestly and most of this comparison answers itself.
We have covered the main trade-offs above. Here are the questions people ask us most when they weigh these two options.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Templater render in the cloud the way Plainly does?
Not by default. Templater runs inside After Effects on whatever machine you install it on, so the rendering happens there. You can also install it on cloud Windows Server machines, such as ones on Amazon Web Services, and we need no special license from you to do that. After Effects has to be installed on those machines, though, and Adobe’s standard license agreement does not allow After Effects on a server, so you need to speak with an Adobe salesperson first.
What does Plainly do that Templater does not?
Plainly describes a hosted platform. You upload an After Effects template, it detects parameters automatically, and videos render on its cloud-based After Effects infrastructure. It also lists one-click integrations for transfer and automatic distribution. With Templater you set up the machines and the pipeline yourself. If you want rendering handled for you, that hosted approach is the main thing Plainly offers that we do not.
Which one is better if my footage is confidential?
Local rendering is the safer starting point. With Templater and Projector, rendering happens on your own machine, and our Projector page says your assets are never visible to another party, including us. A cloud renderer receives your template and data in order to work. If your contracts limit where files can go, check those terms first, then ask any vendor how it handles your files.
How do the costs compare?
We will not quote numbers here, because prices change and Plainly’s belong on its own page. What we can say is how they are built. Plainly’s plans include a set number of rendering minutes. Templater subscriptions come with unlimited output capacity, but you supply the hardware and After Effects. Read our licensing guide and Plainly’s pricing page, then compare against your real monthly volume.
Can I try both before deciding?
Yes. Templater has a 30-day free trial that includes the full Bot feature set, and a refund is available within 30 days of purchase if it does not fit. Plainly lists a 14-day free trial on its homepage. Run both with your most difficult template and your real data, then compare the finished videos, the setup effort and the time each one took.
Do I need developers to use Templater?
For basic batch work, no. A designer can rig a template, connect a Google Sheet and render with Pro. Developers become useful when you want a front end, a web app, or a system that triggers videos on demand, since Templater Bot has a command line interface and an event script API but ships without a ready-made interface. We can help build one if you lack the staff.
How many videos can Templater make in one run?
Our FAQ says you can produce hundreds of thousands. Templater breaks a large job into manageable batches and queues them, or you can run several machines with Bot in parallel to finish sooner. Two machines halve the time. Total time depends on video length, resolution, effects and hardware, so render one representative video first and multiply by your batch size.
