I have mixed feelings about Rocketium.
I want to like it. I do like it. Sometimes.
But there are many things that are a deal-breaker for me so it's definitely not my software of choice.
In this post I'll go over:
- Why I really do like Rocketium.
- What problems I've encountered and how they might affect you,
- And whether or not you should buy it
Let's dive right in!
The Video Creation Process
Rocketium has a large number of features and is almost a full-fledged online video editor, but with these tons of features come tons of problems.
Let's take a look at the good first & and I'll intersperse all of the problems throughout the review.
Templates
Like with most video-makers it all starts with the templates.
However, I personally prefer starting from scratch as the templates are quite short and only useful for very short videos.
When creating your video you can use different templates on a per slide/scene basis so there's no point in selecting them here.

They don't have a very high number of video templates, but they do have a larger number of scene templates.
The Editor
This is what the editor looks like:

Pretty simple, right?
Well... Things can get complicated pretty fast. (But more on that later)
The first step is making sure you're in the right aspect ratio. Rocketium allows you to create videos of pretty much all ratios for all social media platforms, but not every plan has access to every type of image.

Once that's done the fun begins!
The Media Library
Their media library is pretty much the same as every other platform out there.
You get everything in the Pexels, Pixabay, and Unsplash libraries and the Storyblocks libraries for free, and you get 50% all of Shutterstocks 160,000,000+ videos.
This isn't as good as the Lumen 5 Business plan which gives you 25 free videos from the Shutterstock library per month, but is on par with most other software.
This is what adding a video looks like:

There is an overlay over the Storyblocks videos that's gone once the video is rendered.
You also have the choice of searching the "Premium" media library and purchasing them at a 50% discount or only using the 17,000,000 images and videos library that you get for free.
You can trim each video you add, which isn't crucial, but a useful feature to have.

As for music: it's basically the same as every other video maker out there.
Slide Templates
The next step is adding new slides.
You can either add a blank slide or use one of their many slide templates.

There's a LOT of them, and most, but not all of them, are beautiful.
Some are blurry and have low resolution (which might be useful if you're creating 480P videos, but 1080P is pretty much the current standard.)
Editing Text
Just like in a blog post they have two types of text: Heading and Body.

Each scene can have as much text as you want or you can add another scene with a new video and new text.
You are supposed to be able to add individual media within scenes also, but I was unable to get that feature to work.
The text is pretty simple, but they have a lot of "hidden" features that are only available by adding them through their store (even though the features are free.)
I'll talk more about the store later, but for now here's what that looks like:

The text can be moved around to wherever you want and you can of course change the font and the size of it.
Text animations are pretty self-explanatory: this is how the text "flies in" or appears. There are a total of 32 animations.

Effects are similar to animations, but instead of being applied to the text, it's about what additional objects appear in the background.
So you might have a text animation of the text sliding in from the left combined with a text effect of a colorful background or some rectangles sliding it to add an additional feeling of motion.
This is an example of ones that actually work:

And this is what it looks like with text. A bit weird without the motion, but looks good with motion:

But there are some that don't work at all or look very strange:

Editing Scenes/Media
They also have similar features for editing slides. A lot of them are "hidden" and you have to add them by going to the store, but they're free so I count these as included features.
My assumption is they don't want to overwhelm new buyers with so many options so they just include the crucial ones.

They have separate media & scene animations:


And they also have frames. Frames are pretty cool, but they don't always work and the colors can't be edited.

Voiceover & Timing
You can add a voice over on a per-slide basis, but there's only one problem: the longest voiceover you can have is 120 seconds.
This means that if you want a video with a much longer VO, you would have to cut it up into different pieces which is annoying.
You can, of course, upload it as a "music track," but then you lose the benefit of having background music.
This is what the editor looks like:

And you can change the timing for all elements of the video. The media, the subtitles, etc.

Letterbox/Subtitle Videos
Since letterbox videos perform so well on social media, it's crucial for any tool you're looking at to have this feature.
Rocketium has it. Sort of.
They have templates for letterbox videos:

But if you're only using one video as the background, you'll have to limit yourself to one scene or mess around with the video timings.
And if you have a background voiceover then the limit per slide is 120 seconds which can be a bit annoying.

Article to Video
They do have an Article -> Video "feature," but it's basically a glorified copy & paste tool.
All it does it import the text into the tool so then you can quickly add it to each scene. Since the tool doesn't automatically pick videos or images or automatically format things, this isn't that valuable.

The Store
They have a lot of features that are hidden away in their "store."
I put "store" in quotes because everything in the store is currently free.
I'm assuming they're planning on eventually creating a marketplace for freelancers to sell their own add-ons, but right now it's basically additional free Rocketium features.

Not all of the features work perfectly and there are some glitches, but this is nice to have.
What's Good
- Large number of scene templates
- Can edit pretty much every aspect of the video from timing to transitions to position
- Large number of features
- Media library is similar to pretty much every other tool out there
What's Not So Good
- Some glitches & not all features are fully fleshed out.
- Some templates are low quality
- 120 second maximum VO length
- The 1080P plan is pretty expensive compared to other tools.
- Arbitrary separation between pricing plans
- Low number of features for the cheaper plans
- The article -> video feature is basically a glorified copy & paste tool.
Pricing & Discounts
They have 3 plans, which are all pretty pricy, but the distinctions between the plans seem arbitrary.

I don't like that you can't produce 1080P videos unless you buy the $99/month plan. 1080P is the de-facto standard so having a 720P plan is strange.
The Professional plan is also limited to 3 minute videos while the expert plan is limited to 5 minutes. That's great for social, but a lot of their features seem to be aimed at YouTube videos which need to be longer than 5 minutes, but then you're paying $199/mo for their Agency plan.
You also get a limited number of templates unless you purchase the Agency plan.
While they have tons of features, most of them are only available to the highest plans which means you'll be paying quite a bit for the tool.
The Conclusion
I have conflicting feelings about Rocketium.
On one hand it's on par or better than some other tools out there, and it has many features and reasonable-ish pricing.
On the other hand: for the price they're charging and the features you get it's probably not the best option for most people, especially considering that you can get Lumen5 for the same price or InVideo for much cheaper.
And they seem to be trying to do too much. Many features don't work properly and there are glitches all around.
While it's not a bad tool I do not recommend buying it. The value for the price simply isn't there and many of the features are only available on the most expensive plans.