Compared with VidDay
A montage is lots of pieces. A story is one thing.
VidDay and How We Saw It both gather from a group through one link. The difference is what happens to the pieces afterwards: stacked in sequence, or woven into something that reads as a whole.
What VidDay does
VidDay is a group video gift maker. One organiser shares a link, invitees record video or upload photos from any device, and the organiser arranges the clips, adds music and picks a theme. Their line is "Everyone adds video messages with one link. You give one unforgettable surprise video."
It is free to start, with paid tiers and an option for their specialists to help with the edit. It is built for surprises and for playing on a TV at a party.
If what you want is the moment the recipient watches it, this is the shape of product that does that.
Checked against their own site on 13 October 2026. They may have changed things since, and prices in particular move. Check with them before deciding.
What How We Saw It does instead
In a montage, every clip stays its own clip. They sit next to each other in whatever order the organiser chose, and the organiser is the one doing the assembling.
We ask a different question and do the assembling for you. You set the sections, people write their version of each, and the accounts are brought together into a single story that runs in order and reads as one piece, with everyone's name still on their own words.
Nobody has to learn an editor, and nobody has to spend an evening dragging clips about at midnight before a birthday.
Side by side.
| VidDay | How We Saw It | |
|---|---|---|
| What is collected | Clips and photos | Written accounts, or spoken and written up |
| Who assembles it | The organiser, in an editor | We do, from what people sent |
| Shape of the result | A sequence of clips with music | One story in sections |
| Built for | A surprise, played on the day | A record, read then and later |
| Effort on the organiser | Editing and ordering | Writing the sections and sending the link |
| Printed option | Keepsakes such as a video book | A printed book of the story |
Which one you actually want.
Use VidDay instead if
- The point is the surprise, and the reaction in the room.
- You want faces and voices rather than words on a page.
- You are happy to do the edit, or to pay for help with it.
- The occasion is a present for one person more than a record of a shared event.
Use How We Saw It instead if
- You want the event itself recorded, from everybody who was in it.
- You do not want to spend an evening editing anything.
- You want something that is still easy to open in ten years.
- You want to read the bits you missed, not watch people say hello.
Nothing stops you doing both for the same occasion. A montage for the night, a collection for the record.
Questions.
- Do I have to edit anything?
- No. You write the sections and send the link. Putting the accounts together into one story is the part we do.
- What if people would rather talk than write?
- They can record their memory and it is written up for them. The original recording is kept either way.
- Can we show it at the party?
- You can read from it, and people often do in speeches. If you want something playing on a screen, a montage tool is the better fit and we would point you at one.
Clips make a montage. Accounts make a story.
If you want the occasion itself kept properly, start by asking the people who were at it.
Start a collection