2025 The State of Meeting Recordings

What we learned

1. Standalone solutions are losing competitive ground



Only 15% of SaaS users want standalone meeting tools. 67% would switch to competitors within six months for better meeting features. Integrated software experiences create ease of use and richer context for AI that standalone tools may find harder to match.


2. AI sophistication drives differentiation

78% of SaaS users want AI capabilities beyond automation, with 45% expecting real-time meeting assistance and 33% demanding autonomous workflows. Companies can’t compete on recording and transcription capabilities alone, but will have to build AI features that transform that data into meeting intelligence.


3. Companies are already starting to build meeting intelligence features today



Close to half of our respondents are building products that benefit from meeting data. 89% of these respondents already have AI-powered meeting features on their roadmap, with 41% of these companies actively building meeting features now. 


4. Compliance creates competitive advantages, especially for tools serving regulated industries.



41% of SaaS users cite privacy and security as the biggest adoption barrier, yet many users want to see meeting recording capabilities integrated into AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. This contradiction signals a lack of understanding on how AI meeting recorders may impact organizational compliance. Solutions with proper consent mechanisms will capture market share for sectors that need compliant software. 


5. The opportunity to use APIs to unlock the most value for AI-driven platforms 



The barrier to entry for software development is lower than its ever been, so integrations will play a big role in helping software platforms get the data they need to add valuable context to AI products. Product builders who want to build integrated AI meeting solutions can use APIs to create cohesive SaaS experiences, build on top of hyper-specialized and verticalized platforms, and compete with speed to market.

Meetings aren’t that productive, and employees are doing something about it.

In the early 2020s, we were all grappling at the idea of how much time we actually spent in meetings. In 2022, there were 60% more remote meetings per employee than two years prior. 

And in 2025? That number has jumped up even more.


Although these respondents are actively using meeting tools and seeing efficiency gains from it, they’re not locked in to the tools they use. 46% of these users want their organizations to adopt more AI-powered meeting software. They are also open to switching to a different software that better meets their needs. 79% of current users of meeting recording tools would switch to a different work software if it offered better integrated meeting recording features.

Meeting recording and transcription isn’t new, but most respondents wouldn’t describe the market as mature or oversaturated either. SaaS users are still seeing rapid growth in adoption across industries — and as we’ll explore throughout the rest of this report, there’s still growing demand for a bigger variety of meeting recording software experiences.

But it does mean that being just a meeting recorder and transcription tool isn’t enough.

^{*Quotes in this report are sourced from conversations on our Platform Builders podcast}

If you’re building software to help users get more out of their meetings, your focus is going to be on building experiences rather than functionality. SaaS users expect meeting recordings and transcriptions to become assistants and note-takers that blend easily into everyday work.

They want software that is simple to use, exciting to work with, and become more valuable over time. These are the tools you can’t imagine working without, the ones that leave you in a frenzy if an outage keeps you locked out all day. 

The products building these user experiences are the ones that use meeting recording and transcription data to contextualize customer problems with more speed, accuracy, and depth.

If you’re building software around customer data, then this is a call to look at conversational data as an important piece of the puzzle. Standalone meeting tools are seen as nice-to-haves, but meeting recording and transcription files are viewed as a critical data engine when they’re integrated into existing work platforms. 

Meeting intelligence is a feature worth churning for.

The interest in AI-powered meeting features doesn’t just stop at an “I’ll try it today.” 

SaaS users are willing to abandon their existing tools for competitors that have better integrated meeting features. There’s strong urgency for platform builders to look at meeting intelligence as a value add to their current product suite. 

Rather than being disconnected and static note-takers, integrated meeting recorders help users build an “AI second brain” that closes the loop on all kinds of data. When users think where they want meeting data to live, they gravitate toward tools they already use daily.

• Project management tools with meeting data become execution engines that turn conversational context into tangible deliverables. 
• Customer relationship management systems become strategic partners that help you understand the complete nuances of every account. 
• Customer support and success platforms become the center of customer intelligence within an organization. 

AI and integrations go hand in hand.

In an era of AI-native software, the value of integrations become even more important. Intelligent workflows become even more valuable for users when AI capabilities are distributed across everyday work software and processes.

The combination of AI sophistication and integration breadth creates multiple defensive moats:

Workflow lock-in

Users gravitate toward platforms that eliminate context switching between applications. Once meeting intelligence starts becoming an extension of everyday tasks, users will be more resistant to return to manual processes across multiple disconnected tools. 

Data network effects

Integrated meeting recording helps teams capture more context across different data sources and communication channels. AI recommendations become more accurate and valuable if meeting recordings are also tied to historical context and activities flowing into the rest of your tech stack. 

Multi-platform stickiness

When meeting intelligence integrates across multiple tools in a customer’s tech stack, the decision to switch to a new tool becomes exponentially more complex. Customers must evaluate replacement not just for meeting recording, but for the entire interconnected workflow ecosystem, significantly raising the bar for competitive displacement.

The urgency for product builders

At Nylas, we’re seeing an arms race between two groups of companies: 

• Existing platforms that want to add AI functionality to their product
• AI-native platforms that are entering the market with functionality built around AI

The companies in the latter group are seeing explosive growth that’s hard to match. As John from Standard Metrics observes, ‘”the wave of AI native companies are growing incredibly fast, with unbelievable early product market fit that can scale to millions, tens of millions of dollars in revenue seemingly overnight.’” 

These companies start with AI-first architectures and user experiences, while existing platforms face the challenge of retrofitting AI capabilities into legacy systems.

This new SaaS reality only adds to the urgency of AI development, and is a contributing factor to why almost 9 out of 10 of SaaS tools with meeting recording potential are thinking about AI features now. 

A good chunk of these companies have moved past the planning phase.

Out of the 90% companies with AI-powered meeting features on their roadmap, 41% of companies are actively building meeting features right now.

Four primary drivers create sustained competitive pressure beyond initial hype cycles. 


• AI strategy and differentiation: Companies building meeting capabilities to establish competitive moats and premium positioning.
• Customer requests: Market pull from existing customers demanding meeting intelligence features
• Competitive pressure: Defensive development to match competitor capabilities and prevent customer churn
• Regulatory requirements: Compliance-driven development in regulated industries requiring meeting documentation


External market forces are driving AI feature development.


Meeting AI development has shifted from offensive strategy to defensive necessity. 
The combination of active competitor development, committed budgets, and rapid customer switching creates immediate pressure. 

Product teams can no longer treat meeting features as future roadmap items. Competitors are shipping now, customers will switch quickly, and the technical complexity of catching up increases with every development cycle delay.