Coming from Frame.io: your review workflow, translated

Most of your habits transfer directly. Here is what the vocabulary changes to, and the one structural difference that shows up on the invoice.

Frame.io and HoldFast solve the same problem in a similar shape, so most of your habits transfer directly. The vocabulary differs in a few places, and the cost structure differs in one place that matters more the larger your own team gets. Your Workspaces (the version 4 name for what used to be Teams) correspond to a HoldFast workspace, and projects are projects in both.

Version stacks become versions on an asset

In Frame.io you stack versions under one item. HoldFast does the same thing, with two rules worth learning on day one:

• Identity is the filename. The label a reviewer sees is the name of the file you uploaded, not a number HoldFast invented. If your edit suite calls it Spot_60_v4_GRADE, that is what appears.
• Revisions are versions, alternatives are separate assets. A fix to the same cut becomes a new version on that asset. A genuinely different treatment, a cutdown, or a second concept becomes its own asset, because you want to show those next to each other rather than bury one under the other.

Two switches govern the rest: which version is active (what plays when someone opens the link) and which versions reviewers are allowed to browse. If you use the Show all versions toggle on a Frame.io share, this is the same instinct: you decide what reviewers may see. See How versions work and Add a new version.

Share links become review links

A review link is the equivalent of a share link: one address, your branding, one or many cuts behind it. Gate it with a password, an expiry date, or an email capture, and turn it off later without touching the asset. The gates come with any paid plan here; on Frame.io, the invite-only Secure share sits in the enterprise tier. Comments are timecoded, reviewers can draw on the frame, and replies thread. See How to send a video for review.

Approvals attach to the version

An approval records the version it was given on. A later upload does not inherit it, so a sign-off keeps pointing at the exact cut somebody watched. See Collect approvals on a cut.

The seat math

This is the structural difference, and it deserves ten minutes with a calculator.

Frame.io prices by the member: every editor, producer, and assistant working inside the account is a monthly line item, and inviting a client directly into a project, even with comment-only access, makes that client a paid seat too. The free path for outsiders is the share link, and it is genuinely free, so from the client's side of the glass the two tools look similar.

The difference is on your side of it. A HoldFast team plan is one flat price with a ceiling on teammates, not a meter: your fifth member costs what your first did, and nobody you send work to is ever counted, whatever you need them to do. So count the people who log in and work, multiply by what a per-member tool charges for each of them, and compare that with one flat plan. A growing team crosses over fast; a two-person shop may not cross over at all. Do the sum honestly. See Plans and limits for what a HoldFast plan covers.

What is changing on the Adobe side

For context, because it drives most of the questions we get: Frame.io accounts are being consolidated into the Adobe Admin Console, version 4 became mandatory for all users starting October 27, 2025, and remaining legacy customers were moved on June 1, 2026.

If that is what put you in an evaluating mood, evaluate on the workflow rather than the announcement. Run one real project through both, with a real client, and see which set of notes you would rather read on a Friday afternoon.