Considerations for former cielo24 customers & the best alternative for transcription & captioning

Rev officially acquired cielo24 and closed its standalone transcription services on September 30, 2025. Many relied on cielo24 for its ease of upload, multilingual support, captions and transcripts. Now that the transition is fully underway, it’s important to understand what these changes mean.

If you are a former cielo24 customer, you should take this time to evaluate what’s important in a transcription and captioning provider. For example, live captioning is one of today’s most popular needs, and real-time captions simply aren’t offered by Rev. Plus, if you’re interested in solutions like localization, audio description and the ability to scale accessibility efforts (on top of simple transcription and captioning), then transitioning to Rev might not be your best bet.

This acquisition also presents an opportunity for non cielo24 customers to question whether their existing accessibility and localization workflows still work well for their needs. We’ll explore what to consider when switching platforms, highlight a key consideration for Panopto users, and explain why Verbit may stand out as your best cielo24 alternative. Plus, you’ll understand how you can best migrate to another transcription and captioning platform with minimal disruption.

First, what happened to cielo 24?

cielo24 had built a following among organizations seeking cost-effective transcription and captioning solutions, but its services have now been absorbed into Rev’s ecosystem. Former cielo24 customers might see business continuity as their top priority. However, they might not be familiar with how Rev or other alternatives stack up as the reliable, data-secure transcription and captioning platform they’re seeking. If you were a cielo24 user, this transition may have you searching for a new home for your captions and transcripts. The cielo24 acquisition presents an opportunity to move to a more advanced, enterprise-grade transcription and accessibility platform that offers everything cielo24 did and more.

Why Verbit may be the ideal transcription alternative for former cielo24 customers

With so many options on the market, it’s not just about finding an automated transcription service — it’s about benefiting from a transcription and captioning platform that is flexible and can be customized to meet your specific needs.

Verbit offers the robust, enterprise transcription software and infrastructure that cielo24 customers may have always wanted, but they may not have had. Verbit offers a complete speech-to-text solution, a live captioning enterprise package and an accessibility platform trusted by leading organizations in the legal, education, media, corporate, and government sectors. Here are some of the standout features offered by Verbit, but that you shouldn’t skip out on no matter which provider you switch to.

1. Enterprise Grade Accuracy & AI Innovation

Verbit’s hybrid AI + human QA workflow ensures accuracy rates that consistently reach up to 99% — even in complex, noisy settings. Our AI transcription services are powered by domain-trained models optimized for specialized industries to handle anything from legal proceedings to academic lectures with ease. For example, Verbit has a “Legal ASR” engine which has been prepped and trained for the legal industry to offer effective legal transcription services and legal-tech solutions. This level of customization and prep is not something cielo24 was able to offer. For organizations previously relying on cielo24’s automated-only output, Verbit’s layered approach delivers measurable quality gains while maintaining speed and affordability.

2. All-in-One Transcription and Captioning Platform

Former cielo24 customers will appreciate Verbit’s unified platform experience — a centralized space to manage transcription, captioning, translation, and accessibility workflows. Plus, an opportunity to also receive audio description – both standard and extended audio description, live captioning support and other technologies that they previously missed out on.

With Verbit, you can:

• Upload or record live sessions directly within the platform
• Monitor progress in real time with transparent job tracking
• Edit, review, and download transcripts or captions in multiple formats
• Configure permissions for different users across your organization

This means you get a single, easy-to-use platform for every transcription and captioning need — without juggling separate tools or services.

3. Secure and Compliant Transcription by Design

Data security was a concern for many cielo24 users, especially in the education and legal sectors. Verbit was designed for security-first transcription — offering flexible data residency options (US or EU), configurable retention policies, and compliance with the world’s most stringent standards.

Verbit meets or exceeds:

• SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certification
• GDPR and HIPAA compliance
• WCAG 2.1 AA, ADA Title II, and Section 508 accessibility requirements

Your captioning and transcription partner of choice should be able to protect your sensitive audio, video, and transcript data while maintaining a full chain of custody control. Verbit’s team prides itself in offering a data-secure speech-to-text solution and in serving as an accessibility compliance transcription provider that leading corporations, universities and media companies can rely on.

4. Powerful Integrations and APIs for Enterprise Workflows

Where cielo24 often fell short was in platform flexibility. Now that it’s a part of Rev, it’s worth noting that Rev doesn’t support direct integrations into Panopto and other popular video hosting platforms that many of today’s organizations rely on. Rev users can leverage only 8 integrations and few API capabilities. Instead, Verbit’s open API and deep integrations make it easy to embed transcription and captioning directly into your existing environment. Easy integrations into Panopto, Zoom, Kaltura, YuJa, Vimeo, YouTube, and most internal learning management systems (LMS) are supported.

Users can:

• Automate uploads and job tracking
• Integrate with media management and content delivery systems
• Customize transcripts by providing guidelines on formatting and templates
• Schedule recurring services such as live captioning sessions or post-production transcription

The platform is designed to scale and grow with your team rather than limit your workflow.

5. Real-Time Accessibility with Captivate^TM

For organizations that relied on cielo24 for live or on-demand captioning, Verbit’s proprietary automatic speech recognition solution, Captivate™, takes accessibility to a new level. With Captivate, you can receive instant, real-time captions and meeting minutes for courses, depositions, hearings, conferences, and events — all through the same platform interface you use for post-production transcription. Users also benefit with access to Verbit’s AI-powered Gen.V™ insights. The technology can be used to turn raw transcripts into actionable intelligence and help teams work more efficiently. With it, you can automatically generate summaries, keywords, and highlights you can share so you and your team members don’t need to sift through entire recordings or transcripts.

6. Multilingual Captioning and Localization

Verbit supports 50+ languages, making it the ultimate multilingual captioning solution for organizations. Verbit’s captioning localization services and dubbing capabilities are used by corporations, educational institutions and media companies to help them reach greater audiences with their content and experiences.

An effective translation and captioning localization provider should offer both a translation engine and access to human linguists when needed to maintain your tone, capture nuances, and account for regional context — ensuring accessibility that feels native, not automated.

7. Seamless Migration with Human Assistance for Former cielo24 Users

Migrating from cielo24 to Verbit is straightforward. With Rev, support is only email and article based. Verbit instead offers a dedicated onboarding team that will craft a custom plan for your needs and budget and help you import your existing media. You can work with our team to set up preferred templates and configure integrations to troubleshoot on-the-spot, so you don’t lose productivity with the switch. In fact, many former cielo24 customers have found Verbit’s user interface, analytics, and real-time tracking to be an upgrade. Your team can be up and running with a tech savvy, scalable platform that’s made to be customized to your needs.

8. Accessibility and Compliance You Can Trust

You don’t want to switch to just another captioning provider. What you want is a true accessibility technology partner. Make sure whoever you switch to can adhere to global accessibility standards to help you maintain compliance effortlessly. From educational institutions meeting ADA Title II requirements to broadcasters meeting FCC caption quality standards, Verbit provides verified accessibility captioning solutions trusted by industry leaders worldwide.

9. Verbit vs cielo24 and Rev

While Rev’s acquisition of cielo24 may seem like a consolidation win, the two companies’ models differ significantly. Rev focuses heavily on freelance-driven transcription, while Verbit emphasizes enterprise-grade automation, security, and platform scalability.

Here’s how Verbit compares to Rev and cielo24:

Feature	cielo24	Rev	Verbit
Accuracy	~90–95% automated	96%+ AI-only	Up to 99% hybrid AI + human QA for all content
Platform Usability	Limited, outdated UI	Moderate	Modern unified dashboard
Security Compliance	Partial (SOC2)	Basic SOC2	SOC2, ISO, GDPR, HIPAA
Live Captioning	Basic	Limited to meetings and mobile-only recording	Full Captivate™ platform for meetings, lectures, and events via both mobile and desktop
Audio Description	Limited offering	Not offered	Standard and extended audio descriptions
Integrations	Few	Limited, only for recorded content	Extensive for both live and recorded content (Zoom, Kaltura, LMS, APIs)
Translation Support	Few	17+, human only	50+ languages, with machine translation and human options
Enterprise Readiness	Low	Medium	High (legal, education, media)

A future proof platform for your speech-to-text needs

If you were a cielo24 customer and are now looking for a new secure transcription platform, Verbit can be a great option for you. Your workflow should allow for greater automation, accuracy, and scalability, and Verbit’s built a comprehensive transcription and captioning platform that does just that. It empowers professionals to manage all speech-to-text, translation, and accessibility workflows in one place.

With Verbit, you’re not just replacing what cielo24 offered — you’re upgrading to a future-proof, enterprise-ready solution built by a team that continues to innovate. Plus, you’ll have options to experiment with more technologies like audio description and accurate live captioning to boot. Connect with us here to get a demo of the Verbit platform to see how we can optimize your captioning and transcription workflows.