I use Butter for teaching English. I used zoom for the three covid years but still don't find it intuitive.
The one function that was keeping me on Zoom was the ability to share system audio. The Mac version of Butter doesn't support system audio. I think PC version does. I often play audio and video on my computer to test student's listening abilities so audio quality is very important. Without expecting usable results, I tested a lesson just using speakers and mic in a hybrid lesson (some students remote, some in-class) with a Butter Chat. The online students all preferred the butter experience over zoom. One of the students had some popping with his audio but it went away when he switched from Safari to the Butter App. I don't know what caused it since there was no problem with the safari app in an earlier lesson. Hmm...
I used Butter in a hybrid grammar lesson (junior high school kids) as well. I had the in-class students login with their smartphones so they could visit the different breakout rooms that I made. I put conversation activities and flashcards in different rooms. The kids loved it.
I had problems with the back side of the flashcards showing up blank on the students' devices. I only tested it once. I'm hoping it will be fixed soon. It's a young app so bugs can be expected.
I love the agenda feature. It lets me make the lesson plan right within butter, making the lesson plan and all he tools (timers, flashcards, polls (aka quizzes) at my finger tips instead of juggling a bunch of different apps.
The price is reasonable enough to purchase and keep my zoom subscription (about $200 a year) but I took the plunge and canceled it.
By the way, it works with OBS virtual camera.
The iPhone app doesn't support the shared notes at the moment. I think support said it was a future feature. 🤞
There is no iPad app but Mobile Safari worked GREAT on 1st gen iPad Pro 11 and iPad Air 2. On iPad mini 6, the iPhone app was really hard to use because of screen dimensions and the room link in mobile safari kept sending me to the Butter website.
But pasting the room link in Chrome (set to "request desktop version") worked fine! yeah!
After each use, there's a chance to give feedback and report bugs. Support has always gotten back in a timely manner. The YouTube tutorials are straightforward and helpful too soooooo, yeah. Great deal! Oh, and it's fun!
Wishlist:
- still would be nice to have system audio sharing, just in case.
- ability to stream a second camera (with zoom, i have one cam on teacher and one on classroom).
- ability to share multiple windows. (as of now can only share screen or a single app window).