Butter Motion vs Motion Array and Envato Elements
The client wants a lower third on the interview by seven. You have two honest ways to get one. Find something a designer already built and bend it toward your cut, or describe what you want and have it built for this shot.
Both work. They fail differently, and the failure is the interesting part.
Everything below about Motion Array and Envato Elements was read on their own pages on 2 September 2026. Plans move, so open the cards yourself before you pay. One caveat on numbers: Motion Array served us euro prices because the machine we read it from sits in Georgia, and your region may show a different currency.
What the subscription actually buys
Motion Array sells four things. Video Templates starts at €15.99 a month and covers video templates, presets and motion graphics. AI Voiceover starts at €10.99 and covers voiceovers only. Everything starts at €24.99 and adds footage, music, sound effects, graphics, photos, LUTs and the editing plugins. Above those sit Teams at 2 to 7 seats, and a Business plan for agencies and companies over 50 employees.
The feature table is where the shape of the deal shows. Video Templates gives you "200K+ assets" and about 3 000 new ones a month. Everything gives you the full library and about 50 000 new assets a month. Every individual plan is one seat, and the FAQ is direct about it: unlimited downloads, one user, no automated downloading tools.
Envato Elements runs on a different axis. Core is from $16.50 a month with unlimited downloads of "29+ million creative assets" and 20 AI credits. Plus is from $39 with 200 AI credits and three parallel AI generations. Ultimate is from $168 with 1 000 credits and ten parallel generations. Enterprise is a phone call.
Both have AI, and it is worth being precise about what kind. Envato generates images, video from stills and prompts, music, voice, sound effects, icons and illustrations, charged in credits with the cost shown before you generate. Motion Array's own AI product is voiceover, and the other AI tools in its navigation link out to Artlist for images, video, voice and music. Neither one generates a motion graphic that lands on your timeline. The libraries are libraries, and their AI extends the library.
| Butter Motion | Motion Array | Envato Elements | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | A clip generated for your prompt | A finished template from a library | A finished template from a library |
| Entry price | $12 a month, Pro | €15.99 a month, Video Templates | $16.50 a month, Core |
| Library size | None, nothing is pre-made | 200K+ assets on Video Templates | 29+ million assets |
| Motion graphics AI | Yes, that is the product | Voiceover only | Images, video, music, voice, icons |
| Inside Premiere | Panel with preview and render | Extension that browses and imports | Its own extension was retired in August 2025 |
| After you cancel | The rendered files stay yours | Cannot use downloads in new projects | Registered uses stay covered |
The template arrives at ninety percent
Downloading is quick. The hour after it is not.
A template has a designer's typeface in it, a designer's accent colour, a designer's timing and a designer's frame. Your interview is 25fps, the template was cut at 30. The name box is built for two words and your subject has a hyphenated surname and a job title that runs to five. The blue is close to the client's blue, and close is worse than wrong: you catch it in the grade, the client catches it in the review.
So you open it and start pushing. Some of that pushing is allowed and some is not, and which is which was decided by somebody you will never meet. That is the format working as designed: they package a look, you get the controls they chose to expose.
Butter Motion sits on the other side of that line. You describe the scene, watch a live preview before anything renders, then open the customization controls and set the exact hex, retype the line, swap the font. Those controls are free for subscribers, and they rewrite the composition from your values instead of building a new clip. If the shape of the thing is wrong rather than its colour, the first tweak on every generation is free and edits what you already have.
The frame is yours too. Aspect ratio, resolution and frame rate are chips under the prompt: 16:9, 9:16 or 1:1, 720p through 4K, 24 to 60fps, 3 to 20 seconds. Set them to the sequence and nothing needs conforming. None of them change the price: a 20 second 4K generation costs the same as a 3 second 720p one. The rules are in Duration, format and resolution.
The other editors have the same template
Two hundred thousand assets sounds enormous until you filter to vertical lower thirds with a clean sans and no glitch, and end up with eleven candidates that you have already seen in other people's work. A logo sting that trends on a stock site turns up in three of your competitor's videos within a quarter.
For a lot of jobs this does not matter. Corporate explainer, internal training, a YouTube channel about lawnmowers: nobody runs a reverse image search on your title card.
It matters when the graphic is the brand, when the client has a design system, or when you are pitching. A generation is made for the prompt you typed. That is not the same as unique, but it was assembled for your scene rather than the median scene.
What you keep when you stop paying
The part editors skip and then regret. Here it is in their own words.
Motion Array's FAQ says videos created and published during an active subscription are covered forever, and then: "if you cancel your paid subscription, you can't use your downloaded assets in new projects." Cancelling leaves a free account with access to free assets.
Envato registers a licence per use. Each download gives you a licence for a single specified project, and using the same item again means creating a new licence from your downloads page. If you unsubscribe you can no longer use items, but "any existing uses that you registered are still covered."
A Butter Motion render is an ordinary file. Solid clips come back as MP4 in H.264, transparent ones as MOV in ProRes 4444 with a real alpha channel, and they sit in a _ButterMotion folder next to your .prproj. Archive the project and the graphics archive with it. Three years later the plates open without a login. See Rendering to the timeline.
Where the libraries win, plainly
We are one small thing. They are enormous, and there are days when enormous is what you need.
- You need more than graphics. Footage, music, sound effects, LUTs, stock photos, 50-plus editing plugins on Motion Array's paid tiers. We make motion graphics and nothing else.
- You want to see it before you commit. Browsing a library is free and instant. A generation costs credits, takes minutes, and cannot be previewed before it exists.
- The look is genuinely conventional. If the brief is a clean lower third in a common style, someone has already built a better one than a first prompt will produce.
- You do not edit in Premiere. Envato's Premiere category also filters by After Effects, Apple Motion, Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve. Our panel is Premiere only.
- Your machine is weak. Rendering happens on your own hardware, and that is a real cost. Downloading a finished MP4 is not.
- You want the round trip removed for free. Motion Array's Adobe extension browses and imports assets inside Premiere, After Effects and Premiere Rush, and it comes with the plan.
- The volume is high and the stakes are low. Unlimited downloads beats metered credits when you need forty things this week and none of them need to be special.
What a generation costs, since we are comparing prices
Credits, priced by how hard the model plans: 7 on Flash, 10 on Balance, 15 on Ultra. That is the whole price. Length, resolution, transparency and 3D do not add to it, and a failed generation refunds itself. Pro is $12 a month for 500 credits and 10 cloud preset slots, Studio is $39 for 2 000 credits and 50 slots, both with everything unlocked, and paying annually costs ten months. There is no free tier. See Pro and Studio and How credits work.
Presets are the piece that makes this look less like a vending machine. Save a generation you liked, pull it into a different project later, and a look survives the job it was built for. Saving and using presets has the mechanics.
The short version
Pay a library if you need a lot of everything and the graphics can be conventional. Pay for generation if the graphics are the deliverable, if the client's colour and font are non-negotiable, and if you are tired of spending forty minutes rebuilding somebody else's idea of a lower third.
Plenty of editors should do both. A stock subscription for footage and music, and one tool that takes graphics seriously.