FOR FREELANCE EDITORS
Deliver more edits without buying more subscriptions.
One purchase, no per-seat billing, no cloud queue between you and the render. Keep the whole margin on every job.
THE PAIN
- Monthly tool costs eat a junior editor's margin
- Cloud renders queue exactly when a deadline lands
- Client footage under NDA cannot be uploaded anywhere
THE WORKFLOW
Import the client footage
Cut, grade and caption with the depth toolset
Export the master and the social cutdowns
FROM YOUR PHONE
Review and rough-cut on the iPad between jobs, then finish on the Mac. The project moves as a .zella file in either direction.
Zella for iPhone & iPad →WHEN THIS OUTGROWS THE FREE TIER
Client work is where the depth toolset earns its keep - keyframes with real curves, luma scopes, Color Match across shots, feathered masks and speed ramps - plus 4K and ProRes delivery. This is the professional tier doing professional work.
Everything else here is free forever: the complete editor, all the AI, unlimited recording, and watermark-free export up to 2 minutes at 1080p. Pro is $89 once and covers Mac, iPhone and iPad on a single purchase. See pricing →
Freelance margins get eaten by two things nobody bills for: the subscription stack you carry whether or not you booked work that month, and the hours spent on the mechanical parts of an edit that a client would never pay a premium for.
Zella attacks both. It is a one-time purchase, so a quiet month costs nothing. And the mechanical layer - cutting silences, removing filler words, transcribing, captioning, reframing to a second aspect - is one pass rather than an afternoon.
It exports MOV at high quality, so it can also just be the front of your pipeline: do the tedious pass in Zella, then finish in whatever you already use.
WHAT YOU ACTUALLY SHIP
A rough cut in one pass
Silences and filler words gone before you open the timeline, so billable time starts at the interesting part.
Client social cutdowns
Clip Series pulls captioned vertical shorts out of a long edit, each starting and ending on a whole sentence.
Burned-in captions in a house style
Ten presets on Mac, or your own font, size, colour and position saved as a template for the next job.
A hand-off master
MOV at the highest quality, or ProRes 4444 with alpha when the client needs a cutout to composite.
THE HONEST ANSWERS
This will not replace my NLE.
It will not, and it should not try. Zella has no multicam, no node-based colour, no audio bus routing. What it replaces is the two hours before the interesting work starts. Export MOV and finish where you already are.
Can I use it on client work commercially?
Yes. There is no separate commercial licence and no per-seat billing. One purchase, used on whatever you are paid to make.
What happens to my projects if the company disappears?
A fair question for a one-person product. There is no licence server to phone home and no kill switch, so the app does not stop working if the website does. Projects are files on your disk, and exports are ordinary MP4, MOV, GIF and M4A.
FREQUENTLY ASKED
Is there a commercial licence for client work?
No separate licence is needed. A Zella Pro purchase covers commercial use, with no per-seat or per-project billing.
Can Zella replace Premiere or Final Cut?
For a full professional NLE workflow, no. It is strongest as the pass before that: cutting, captioning, reframing and cleanup, then MOV export into your existing editor.
Does it export ProRes?
Yes, ProRes 4444 with an alpha channel on Mac, as part of Pro. On iPhone and iPad the transparent export is HEVC with alpha.
Is it a subscription?
No. Pro is $89 once and Founder is $299 once, both covering Mac, iPhone and iPad.
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