BoardBreeze vs Otter.ai for Board Meetings: General Transcription vs Board-Specific Minutes

Otter.ai is one of the most popular meeting transcription tools on the market. It's fast, affordable, and works well for business meetings, lectures, and interviews. Millions of people use it.

But when a board clerk uses Otter.ai for board meeting minutes, they quickly discover a problem: Otter gives you a transcript, not minutes.

A transcript and board meeting minutes are fundamentally different documents. A transcript is everything that was said. Board minutes are a curated legal record of what was decided — motions, votes, action items, attendance, and procedural compliance.

I'm Grace Esteban, founder of BoardBreeze and Executive Assistant to the Chancellor at City College of San Francisco. I've used general transcription tools for board meetings. Here's why I built something different.

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Quick Comparison

Feature	BoardBreeze	Otter.ai
Starting Price	$29.99/month	Free (basic) / $16.99/month (Pro)
Built For	Board meetings specifically	General meetings, lectures, interviews
Output	Formatted board minutes	Raw transcript with summary
Motion/Second/Vote Tracking	Automatic	No
Parliamentary Procedure	Robert's Rules aware	No
Brown Act Compliance	Yes	No
Board Minutes Templates	Yes	No
Action Item Extraction	Board-specific (assigned, deadlined)	Generic action items
Minutes Assistant Chatbot	Yes	OtterPilot chat
Audio Upload	Yes	Yes
Live Recording	Yes (in-browser)	Yes (joins Zoom/Teams/Meet)
Max Meeting Duration	12 hours	4 hours (Business plan)
Speaker Identification	Yes	Yes
Integrations	Upload-based (any source)	Zoom, Teams, Google Meet
Free Trial	30 days, no credit card	Free tier available

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The Core Problem: Transcripts Are Not Minutes

Here's what Otter.ai gives you after a board meeting:

"Okay so I think we should move forward with the contract. I move that we approve the ABC Construction contract for 1.2 million. I'll second that. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. Great, so next item on the agenda..."

Here's what board minutes should look like:

Motion: Director Garcia moved to approve the ABC Construction contract in the amount of $1,200,000.

Second: Director Thompson

Vote: Motion carried unanimously (7-0)

The difference isn't just formatting. It's the difference between a raw recording of conversation and a legal document that meets compliance requirements. Board minutes must:

• Record the exact wording of motions
• Identify who moved and who seconded
• Document the vote method and result
• Track attendance and quorum
• Note closed session entries and exits
• Exclude inappropriate content (verbatim dialogue, personal opinions, sidebar conversations)

Otter.ai doesn't know any of this. It's a general-purpose transcription tool. It gives you accurate words, but you still have to spend hours transforming that transcript into proper minutes.

BoardBreeze was built to do that transformation automatically.

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What Otter.ai Does Well

Otter.ai is an excellent product for its intended use case:

Real-time transcription with integrations. Otter joins your Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet calls automatically. For standard business meetings, sales calls, and team standups, this is convenient and effective.

Free tier. Otter offers a genuinely useful free plan. If you just need basic transcription for short meetings, it's hard to beat free.

Summary and action items. OtterPilot generates meeting summaries and identifies action items. For general business meetings, this is often all you need.

Wide platform support. Otter integrates with calendars, Salesforce, HubSpot, and Slack. It fits neatly into a standard business workflow.

Price point. At $16.99/month for the Pro plan, Otter is affordable for individual professionals.

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Where Otter.ai Falls Short for Board Meetings

No parliamentary procedure awareness. Otter doesn't recognize motions, seconds, or formal votes. It can't distinguish between casual discussion and a formal motion that changes organizational policy.

No board minutes formatting. There's no template that structures output as official minutes. You get a transcript with AI summary — not a document ready for board approval.

No compliance checking. Otter doesn't know about Brown Act requirements, open meeting laws, or Robert's Rules of Order. If your minutes need to demonstrate compliance, you're on your own.

4-hour meeting limit. On the Business plan, Otter handles meetings up to 4 hours. Many board meetings — especially school boards, hospitals, and public bodies — run 5-7+ hours. BoardBreeze handles meetings up to 12 hours.

No offline upload workflow. Otter is designed around live meeting attendance. If your board meeting is in person and you record it on a separate device, uploading to Otter is possible but isn't the primary workflow. BoardBreeze is built around the upload-first workflow that most board clerks use.

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The Time Difference

Here's a realistic comparison of the end-to-end workflow for producing board minutes from a 3-hour meeting:

Using Otter.ai:

1. Record meeting or have Otter join the call (~3 hours)
2. Review Otter transcript for accuracy (~30 minutes)
3. Open a Word document or minutes template (~5 minutes)
4. Manually extract motions, seconds, votes from transcript (~45 minutes)
5. Format into proper minutes structure (~30 minutes)
6. Add attendance, quorum, call to order, adjournment (~15 minutes)
7. Review for compliance (~15 minutes)
8. Total post-meeting work: ~2 hours 20 minutes

Using BoardBreeze:

1. Upload recording (~2 minutes for a 3-hour file)
2. AI processes and generates formatted minutes (~4 minutes)
3. Review AI-generated minutes, make edits (~20 minutes)
4. Total post-meeting work: ~26 minutes

That's roughly 2 hours saved per meeting. If your board meets monthly, that's 24 hours per year — three full workdays.

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When Otter.ai Is the Right Choice

Choose Otter.ai if:

• Your meetings are general business meetings, not formal board meetings with parliamentary procedure
• You primarily need a transcript, not formatted minutes
• Your meetings are under 4 hours
• You want free or very low-cost basic transcription
• Your workflow is Zoom/Teams/Google Meet based and you want automatic live transcription
• You don't have compliance requirements for your meeting records
• You're comfortable manually reformatting transcripts into minutes

Otter.ai is one of the best general transcription tools available. For everyday business meetings, it's excellent.

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When BoardBreeze Is the Right Choice

Choose BoardBreeze if:

• You're producing official board meeting minutes for a governing body
• You need motions, seconds, and votes automatically identified and formatted
• Your minutes must meet compliance requirements (Brown Act, Robert's Rules, open meeting laws)
• Your meetings regularly run 4-7+ hours
• You upload recordings rather than joining live calls
• You want a Minutes Assistant chatbot to help you reference meeting content
• You need board-specific templates, not generic meeting summaries
• You're a board clerk or executive assistant responsible for official governance documentation

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Can You Use Both?

Some organizations use Otter.ai for day-to-day team meetings and BoardBreeze specifically for formal board meetings. This is a reasonable approach — use the right tool for each type of meeting.

The mistake is using a general transcription tool for board meetings and spending hours reformatting the output. Your time is worth more than the cost difference between a $16.99 transcript and a $29.99 set of formatted minutes.

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Try It Yourself

Upload a recording from your last board meeting to BoardBreeze and compare the output to what you'd get from Otter.ai. The 30-day free trial requires no credit card.

If your current workflow involves transcribing a meeting and then spending hours reformatting it into minutes, you'll see the difference immediately.

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Questions? Email me at grace@appboardbreeze.com — I personally respond to every message.

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