Several users express frustration with Fireflies.ai's transcription accuracy, particularly in challenging audio conditions or when multiple speakers talk simultaneously. The platform struggles with proper speaker identification, leading to confusion about who said what during meetings. Users also report that the AI-generated summaries sometimes miss crucial details or misinterpret key points, making the output unreliable for important business decisions.

Many reviews highlight significant limitations in Fireflies.ai's integration capabilities and workflow automation features. Users find it difficult to seamlessly connect the platform with their existing tools and systems, requiring manual workarounds that defeat the purpose of automation. The lack of robust automation options means users still need to manually process meeting outcomes, creating additional work rather than reducing it.

Cost concerns and usability issues frequently appear in negative reviews of Fireflies.ai. Users complain about the pricing structure not delivering sufficient value, especially when basic features don't work as expected. The platform's interface can be confusing for new users, and the setup process often requires technical expertise that many teams lack, leading to adoption challenges across organizations.

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Circleback addresses these common pain points through several key improvements. While Fireflies.ai users struggle with transcription accuracy, Circleback provides technically superior transcripts with over 95% accuracy and precise speaker identification across 100+ languages. The platform's advanced automation engine eliminates the integration limitations that frustrate Fireflies.ai users, offering seamless connections to popular tools like HubSpot, Salesforce, Linear, and Slack with customizable workflows that require no coding expertise. Unlike the reliability issues reported with Fireflies.ai, Circleback's structured approach to meeting capture and processing ensures that action items are automatically identified and assigned, while its powerful search functionality lets users instantly retrieve key details from their entire meeting history without manual verification.

Fireflies.ai offers a straightforward, cloud-based meeting assistant that joins calls as a bot participant to record and transcribe discussions. Users appreciate its simplicity and quick setup, with accurate transcription across multiple languages and platforms. The tool delivers summaries and action items within minutes, making it valuable for team knowledge sharing and sales analysis.

The platform's strengths include excellent ease of use, good transcription quality even in non-English languages, and helpful integrations with CRM and project management tools. Its free tier makes it accessible to budget-conscious users, while the mobile app enables in-person meeting recording. The AskFred chatbot feature allows users to query meeting content naturally.

However, Fireflies.ai has notable limitations in its AI capabilities and automation features. Users report that summaries can be too high-level and sometimes lose important phrasing or tone from the original discussion. Transcription accuracy drops with heavy accents or technical jargon, and speaker identification can be unreliable in challenging audio conditions.

Compared to Circleback, Fireflies.ai falls short in several key areas. It lacks a dedicated desktop app, relying instead on web interfaces and bot participants that may not work in all meeting environments. The automation engine is limited to basic CRM logging and task creation, without the sophisticated custom workflow capabilities that Circleback offers for complex business processes.

Why users switch away from Fireflies.ai

Users often switch away from Fireflies.ai because the AI-generated summaries lack the depth and nuance they need. While the tool produces summaries quickly, they tend to be high-level overviews that miss important details, lose the original tone of conversations, and don't capture the specific phrasing that might be crucial for certain business contexts. This limitation becomes particularly problematic for users who need detailed, accurate meeting records rather than just basic overviews.

Transcription accuracy issues drive many users to look for alternatives, especially when dealing with diverse speaking patterns or specialized terminology. The system struggles with heavy accents, technical jargon, and industry-specific language, often misidentifying speakers or completely missing slang and colloquialisms. For teams working in technical fields or international environments, these accuracy problems can make meeting records unreliable and force them to spend time correcting transcripts.

The limitations of the free plan push users toward paid alternatives when they realize core features are locked behind paywalls. Essential capabilities like video recording are only available on higher-tier plans, and the free version restricts monthly meeting credits and summary generation. Users who initially adopt Fireflies.ai for its free offering often find themselves needing to upgrade sooner than expected, leading them to explore other tools that offer more generous free tiers or better value at similar price points.

FAQs

Does Fireflies.ai work for in-person meetings? Yes, Fireflies.ai can handle in-person meetings through its mobile app, which allows you to record meetings and voice notes directly. However, this requires you to manually start recording rather than having the automated bot functionality available for virtual meetings.

Does Fireflies.ai require a meeting bot to join the meeting? Yes, for virtual meetings, Fireflies.ai sends a bot participant named "Fred" that joins your meeting to record and transcribe the discussion. This bot appears as an additional participant in your meeting.

What do users say about the quality of transcriptions? Users report generally good transcription quality, including for some non-English languages like Dutch. However, accuracy drops noticeably with heavy accents, technical jargon, and slang terms. Several users have experienced issues with misidentified speakers, which can make transcripts confusing to follow.

Does this tool help a user follow up with action items from the meeting? How so? Yes, Fireflies.ai generates bullet-point action items and summaries within minutes after a call ends. It can automatically log notes to CRM systems and create tasks in tools like Asana. However, users note that the summaries tend to be high-level and sometimes lose the original phrasing or tone of important discussions.

Does this tool integrate with software like Hubspot, Salesforce, or Linear? Yes, Fireflies.ai offers native integrations with HubSpot and Salesforce, along with dozens of other tools through direct connections and Zapier. The tool can automatically log meeting notes to CRM contacts and deals as part of its automation features.

About Circleback

Circleback directly addresses the main problems that frustrate Fireflies.ai users through several key improvements.

Transcription Accuracy and Speaker Identification

While Fireflies.ai users frequently complain about poor transcription quality in challenging audio conditions and unreliable speaker identification, Circleback delivers over 95% transcription accuracy with precise speaker identification across 100+ languages. Users report that Fireflies.ai struggles particularly with heavy accents, technical jargon, and multiple speakers talking simultaneously. Circleback's technically superior transcription engine handles these scenarios more effectively, reducing the need for manual corrections and verification.

Reliable AI-Generated Summaries

Fireflies.ai users often find that AI summaries miss crucial details, misinterpret key points, or provide only high-level overviews that lose important context and tone. Circleback's structured approach to meeting capture ensures that summaries maintain the necessary detail and nuance for business decisions. The platform automatically identifies and assigns action items with clear accountability, eliminating the reliability issues that make Fireflies.ai output unsuitable for important business use.

Integration and Automation Capabilities

One of the most significant limitations users report with Fireflies.ai is poor integration capabilities and basic automation features that require manual workarounds. Circleback addresses this through a powerful automation engine that seamlessly connects with popular tools like HubSpot, Salesforce, Linear, and Slack. Users can create custom workflows without coding expertise, automatically routing action items and meeting outcomes to the appropriate systems. This eliminates the manual processing that defeats the purpose of automation in Fireflies.ai.

Setup and Usability

Fireflies.ai users often struggle with a confusing interface and setup process that requires technical expertise, creating adoption challenges across organizations. Circleback offers a more intuitive experience with dedicated desktop apps for Mac and Windows, removing the need for bot participants in meetings. The platform's botless capture approach works across virtually any meeting format, whether online or in-person, providing consistent functionality without the technical hurdles.

Search and Retrieval

While Fireflies.ai provides basic search functionality, users report difficulty retrieving specific meeting details when needed. Circleback includes AI-powered search that lets users instantly find information across their entire meeting history. Users can ask natural language questions and receive answers with references to exact meeting moments, complete with speaker attribution and the ability to jump directly to relevant clips.

Meeting Coverage

Fireflies.ai relies on bot participants for virtual meetings, which doesn't work in all environments and can be disruptive. Circleback's approach works for any meeting type - virtual meetings through the desktop app, in-person meetings through the mobile app, or imported audio files. This flexibility ensures consistent meeting capture regardless of format or platform.

Value and Reliability

Users switching from Fireflies.ai often cite concerns about pricing structure not delivering sufficient value when basic features don't work as expected. While Circleback operates at a higher price point, users report that the superior accuracy, reliable automation, and comprehensive feature set justify the investment by actually reducing workload rather than creating additional manual tasks.

The combination of technical superiority in transcription, robust automation capabilities, and reliable output makes Circleback a solution for teams who have found Fireflies.ai's limitations too restrictive for their business needs.