Developer: Archery Inc
Price: Free (IAP)
Size: 94.1 MB
Version: 1.28.1
Platform: iPhone & iPad
Mojo is a video editor that makes professional-looking animated content for use in social media “stories,” fleeting full-screen posts that are deleted after 24 hours. Stories are probably best known from Instagram, but you’ll find the same kind of thing on Facebook, Snapchat, and others.
Stories are designed as a way to show your friends and followers what you’re up to, without cluttering your main feed. They’re great for topical content and throwaway messages, and are increasingly used as promotional tools. Instagram even pops up “sponsored” posts (read: ads) between your friends’ stories.
Which is why it’s no surprise that Mojo is heavily geared towards business users. Almost every type of business is catered for here: whether you run a restaurant, an online store, or even a blog, there are plenty of templates to experiment with. Moji can very quickly turn even a single image and a few words into something you might pay a motion designer a pretty penny to knock up.
There are a bunch of themed templates to explore, from those designed for documenting fashion shoots to tech-orientated fare that displays your video on an iPhone screen. The templates are easy to customize with your own content, and the range of text effects, color palettes, and backgrounds is great – and a cut above similar apps we’ve played around with. Mojo makes it actively difficult to produce something that looks bad.
The quality is pretty consistent, too. Overall the animations are slick and the minimal graphics are tasteful, if a little on the corporate side. But therein lies the problem for most people: everything looks like an ad. It’s almost too professional, losing the rough-edges charm of DIY Instagram stories.
That said, a handful of effects – such as those in the Mirror, Video, and Classic sections – are well tailored to use by individuals looking to spruce up their stories. These are some of the very few that are suitable for standalone posts, without a call to action or reference to a wider business. Anyone who routinely makes text posts to their social media stories, or likes to share inspirational quotes, will find a lot to like here.
You get a reasonable chunk of content entirely free, though the majority of templates are locked behind IAP – and annoyingly there’s no way to filter for just the free ones. But if you’re a light user of the app and can handle a small “made with Mojo” watermark there’s no real need to upgrade.
If you do run a business, though, $20/£20 per year isn’t a big outlay for the extra functionality offered with a Pro subscription. For that price, you unlock the full range of templates, all text styles, and the ability to design for square and landscape formats in addition to portrait. You can also further customize the output with your own fonts and logos.
So our recommendation really depends on what you want out of an app like this. We think it’s of most use to self-employed people running small-scale ventures. Mojo can help you make great-looking content to promote your business with very little outlay of time or money. And really, almost anyone who posts regular content to social networks could find something to enjoy here, and it’s a free download – so why not experiment?