Croogloo and CineLog get compared because both send the call sheet to the crew with a record of who opened it, both hold the script and its revisions for the production, and both keep the crew’s contacts in one place. But Croogloo is a production office’s distribution desk, built for coordinators on union shows, and CineLog is the tool that writes the script, builds the schedule and makes the call sheet in the first place. So the overlap is the last step of the job. What I usually like to do is pick on the shape of the production instead of the feature list, because a series office sending sides, time reports and a daily production report to a hundred people and a crew of 25 shooting one script in twelve days lose things in completely different places. So if you got here by searching for a Croogloo alternative, or for apps like Croogloo, this is the long answer.
One thing before we start. Everything in here was checked on November 2, 2026. The CineLog side against the app itself, version 1.5.6. The Croogloo side against their site, their pricing page, their sign-up form and all of their help center, 148 articles. Croogloo’s About and Services pages were unfinished placeholder text on that day, so nothing here comes from them. Both tools ship changes, so read every claim as correct on that date and check again before you decide.
Short summary
CineLog is the pick when the documents have to be made before they’re sent. When somebody writes and revises the script in the tool, with locked pages and colored revised pages. When the breakdown numbers the cast and lands on a stripboard. When the call sheet is built from the schedule day, with the weather, the sun times and the hospital on it, and sent to each person with a status that includes confirmed, which Croogloo’s doesn’t. When the crew needs native apps and offline. And when the price is a flat plan a two-week shoot can pay, instead of a kit per production that starts at a quote form.
Croogloo is a production office platform sold as three kits. The Side Kit parses the script PDF and cuts the sides, by scene, character or location, in shooting order, with a call sheet attached and a watermark on every page. The Report Kit adds daily time reports from the crew’s phones, weekly timesheets in payroll format and a grid you paste into the daily production report. The Distribution Kit adds the email and text distribution itself, with lists, departments, templates, scheduled sends, per-recipient watermarks and a tracking status for every email. It’s TPN-certified and it names Netflix, A24 and CBS shows among its credits.
Those two paragraphs are the article. Everything below is the reason for it.
Let’s put a real production on the table
So we’re not talking in the abstract, let’s invent one. Let’s call it Harbor. It’s a scripted feature, about 90 pages, twelve shooting days, a crew of 25. Four locations, and two of them are out of town where phones drop to one bar. Six people need to change things in the plan. That’s the director, the first AD, the DP, the producer, the script supervisor and the production designer. The other nineteen need to get a call sheet every night and open it in the morning. We’ll come back to Harbor in every section, because the numbers only mean something on a real crew.
When CineLog is the pick
| Production shape | Why CineLog |
|---|---|
| A scripted shoot of two to twenty days, like Harbor | The script, the breakdown, the board, the shot list and the call sheet are made in one project, then sent from it. Croogloo distributes documents made elsewhere. |
| A production that makes its own revisions | Locked scene numbers and pages, A-pages, OMITTED scenes, colors and a revised-pages-only PDF. Croogloo labels an uploaded PDF with a version and a colour. |
| A call sheet that has to be confirmed by morning | A personal PDF per person with delivered, opened, confirmed and bounced. Croogloo’s statuses stop at opened. |
| A crew on native apps, with or without signal | macOS, Windows, iOS and Android apps with the project on the device, offline for up to seven days. Croogloo is a web app for the office and a web page for the crew, with no documented offline mode. |
| A price on a page | Flat plans with their limits published. Croogloo’s kits are priced per production and every sign-up goes through a quote form. |
Head to head
Prices are in US dollars as shown, checked November 2, 2026. Croogloo’s page names no currency.
| Croogloo | CineLog | |
|---|---|---|
| Script | PDF upload with a version, a colour and an episode number, parsed for sides, no editor, no locks, no revision marks | Editor with locked pages and revision colors, imports .fdx, Fountain, PDF, RTF, text with a diff on re-import |
| Breakdown | Scenes, characters and locations parsed from the PDF, for sides | Tagged from the script text into twelve categories, cast numbered for you |
| Sides | Yes, by scene, character or location, shooting order, 1-up or 2-up, with the call sheet attached | No |
| Stripboard | No | Yes, with day breaks, a boneyard, scene splits and a board PDF |
| Shot list and storyboards | No, photos with comments and approvals | Shot list per production day, several frames per shot |
| Call sheets | Uploaded documents, first attachment on a distribution, one help line mentions draft call sheets from a schedule PDF | Built from the schedule day with weather, sun times, hospital and address lookup |
| Sending | Email with lists, departments, templates, scheduled send and a two-minute undo, SMS on the Distribution Kit | A personal PDF per person by email |
| Tracking | Sent, received, opened, bounced, deferred, dropped, with a status report after the send | Delivered, opened, confirmed, bounced, per person |
| Time reports | Daily crew time reports, weekly timesheets, a DPR grid, on the Report Kit | No |
| Contacts | Import and export, categories, security groups, intake form, cast linked to agents | Cast and crew directory with roles and permissions |
| AV script | No | Yes, with a client review link |
| Works offline | Not documented | Yes, every tool, up to seven days |
| Native apps | Browser for the office, a web app for the crew, no store app | macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, plus the browser |
| Price | Side Kit $19 a month, Report Kit $99, Distribution Kit $999, per production, through a quote form, trials of one and five days | Free plan, then $15, $40 or $90 a month, collaborators free |
Six things I compare, in order
There are six things I compare when I look at tools like these, and those are the script and its revisions, the breakdown and the schedule, the shot list and the storyboards, the call sheet, where you can actually use the thing, and who pays. I go in that order because that’s the order a scripted production moves in. With Croogloo, the fourth section is its home ground.
The script and its revisions
The first thing is the script, because on a scripted production the script is where every other document starts.
Croogloo receives the script as a PDF, a text one, not a scan, and you give it a version, a colour and an episode number when you upload it, then parse it so the sides know the scenes, the characters and the locations. A later version gets uploaded, labelled and parsed again, and the sides come from the latest versions with a filter for older drafts. Distribution puts the recipient’s name on every page as a watermark. What Croogloo doesn’t do is edit the script, lock a page, or mark a changed line, and it doesn’t claim to. The colour is a label on the file.
CineLog has a full editor, and it imports .fdx, Fountain, PDF, RTF and plain text. The part I lean on is what happens on the second import, because a scripted production gets new pages every week. CineLog shows the new draft as a diff against what you already have, scene by scene, and you accept what changed. It doesn’t wipe your breakdown and your shot list to make room for the new file. And once the script is locked, it does the real production thing. A new scene between 12 and 13 becomes 12A, a new page after 16 becomes 16A, and a cut scene prints as OMITTED and keeps its number for good. Every revision round gets its color, the changed lines get their asterisks in the margin, and you can export only the revised pages on that color, because that’s what goes out to the crew on a Tuesday night.
So for Harbor, where the script gets locked about two weeks before day one and then revised every few days, CineLog makes the pink pages and sends them. Croogloo files the pink pages somebody else made, cuts the sides from them and sends them.
The breakdown and the schedule
Now that the script is in, the next thing is the breakdown and the schedule, and this is where Croogloo hands off.
Croogloo’s breakdown is the parse that feeds the sides: scenes, characters and locations sorted into interior, exterior and other. There’s no element tagging and no stripboard, and nothing on its site or in its help center builds a schedule. One line in one help article says a shooting schedule PDF can be uploaded to generate draft call sheets, with no how-to behind it, and Croogloo’s own “DooD” is a distribution setting, start, hold and finish dates per contact that turn their emails on and off, not a cast report.
CineLog does the breakdown by selecting text in the script and picking one of twelve categories, and it marks the page with the underline, the circle, the asterisk and the box that people know from paper breakdowns. The thing I like most is what happens with cast. CineLog tags every character on every line they speak, gives each one a numbered talent slot, and that number sits on the strip, in the shot list’s cast column and in the cast grid on the call sheet. You tag once. It shows up everywhere. The stripboard has day breaks, a boneyard for the scenes you haven’t placed yet, the standard strip colors, and it lets you split a scene across two days. A finished day flows straight into that day’s call sheet, and the board exports as a PDF. What CineLog doesn’t print yet is the day out of days report, and it doesn’t cut sides.
For Harbor, twelve days and 25 people, the AD builds the board in CineLog and the day lands on the sheet by itself. With Croogloo, the AD builds the board somewhere else and uploads the result.
Shot lists and storyboards
Now that the days are laid out, the next thing is the shot list, and this one is short.
Croogloo has no shot list and no storyboards. The nearest thing is Photos, with unlimited storage, where the crew can share, comment on and approve production stills, which is a good feature for a wardrobe or a location department and isn’t a shot list.
CineLog runs two shot lists off the same shots, a linear one in script order and one per production day, with seventeen default columns, your own columns on top, and your own dropdown values for shot type, angle, lens and movement. You can populate the first pass of the list from the script and then reorder by drag, whole scenes at a time. The Cast & Crew column shows the cast by the same numbers the schedule uses, so one look tells you who’s in the shot. Each shot holds several storyboard frames, and the shot list PDF prints the frames next to the rows. What CineLog doesn’t have is a drawing tool. You bring the frames in as images, from a sketch, a photo or a previs render.
For Harbor, the DP wants the shot list on an iPad at the location scout, in tomorrow’s order, and the scout has no signal. That’s CineLog.
Call sheets
The next thing is the call sheet, and this is the document the whole crew judges the tool by, because it’s the only part nineteen of our 25 people will ever see. This is also Croogloo’s home ground, so let’s give it its due.
Croogloo distributes the call sheet the way a production office does it. The sheet is uploaded as a document, it goes out as the first attachment on the day’s distribution, and the sides can be merged onto it. The distribution has lists and departments, email templates, a scheduled send, a dailies list, an outbox that holds the send for two minutes in case you catch a mistake, and SMS alone or alongside the email on the Distribution Kit. Every recipient gets their name as a watermark, attachments can go as links that allow viewing, downloading or printing and expire when you say, and for every email you see sent, received, opened, bounced, deferred or dropped, with a status report emailed fifteen to twenty minutes after the send and a separate alert for bounces. On the Report Kit, the crew submit their daily time reports from a phone, the office gets weekly timesheets in the payroll’s format, and a grid pastes into the production report. What Croogloo doesn’t do is build the sheet, and it doesn’t claim to. There’s no builder, no weather, no sun times, no hospital field, and no confirmed status. Opened is where its tracking ends.
CineLog’s call sheet pulls the day from the stripboard and the shot list, so the schedule block is a live copy of the day and not a re-typed one, and the cast grid carries the numbers the breakdown gave the cast. It fills the weather and the sunrise and sunset from the location and the date, it carries the nearest hospital and the parking you saved on each location, and it autocompletes the addresses. It sends a personal PDF to each person by email, and for every person you see delivered, opened, confirmed or bounced. And the night before day five, the sheet for day five starts from what day four already knew.
So Croogloo is the stronger distribution desk, with SMS and the time reports, and CineLog is the only one of the two that makes the sheet and asks the crew to confirm it. For Harbor, nineteen people get a sheet every night. On CineLog the AD builds it from the board and knows by seven who confirmed. On Croogloo the coordinator uploads it and knows by seven who opened it.
Where you can actually use it
Now that we’ve gone through the documents, the next thing is where you can open them, and this is the one people skip until day three.
Croogloo is a web app. The office signs in at its admin site, best in Chrome or Firefox by their own note, with Safari users told to try another browser, and the crew open a separate web app on their phones for the sheets, the time reports and the directory. There’s no app on either store today. A William F. White-branded app existed in 2016 and a 2018 Android app is gone from Google Play. Offline isn’t documented anywhere, and the troubleshooting advice is to check the connection.
CineLog is a native app on macOS, Windows, iOS and Android, and it also runs in a browser at app.cinelog.com. Every device keeps a local copy of the project, so the shot list, the script and the call sheets open with no signal at all, and you can change them. You can work offline for up to seven days after you’ve signed in, and when the connection comes back, your changes and everyone else’s merge in the background. The people you invite get view or edit rights per tool.
For me, for example, this is the one that decides it, because I’ve never been on a location where the signal was good in every room. On Harbor, two of the four locations are out of town. The DP scouts them with the shot list open on an iPad. The AD walks the stone-walled house with the schedule open on a phone and moves tomorrow’s first scene to the afternoon, right there. Croogloo is a web page in the office. CineLog is the project in the AD’s pocket.
Pricing, and who pays for the crew
And the last thing is the money, and the key here isn’t the first number on the pricing page. It’s what the number covers and how you get to pay it.
Croogloo prices per production, per kit. The Side Kit is $19 a month for the parsing, the sides, the watermark and the templates. The Report Kit is $99 a month and adds the time reports, the timesheets and the DPR grid. The Distribution Kit is $999 a month and adds the distribution itself, with the tracking, the reports and SMS. Every sign-up and every quote goes through one Google form that asks for the production’s start and wrap dates and the kit, and the account launches within 48 hours. The kit expires on the wrap date. Trials are one day for the Side Kit and five for the others, and discounts for smaller productions are by quote. Nothing says what a crew member pays, which on a tool built this way means nothing.
CineLog has a free plan with one project, every tool, offline mode, and two collaborators. Filmmaker is $15 a month with three projects and twenty collaborators. Production Company is $40 with ten projects and fifty collaborators. Studio is $90 with thirty projects and a hundred collaborators. There are no seats. The people you invite make a free account and get view or edit rights on the project, based on what you give them, and one subscription unlocks the app on every platform.
So let’s put Harbor on it. Six editors, nineteen readers, one project.
| Tool | Plan for Harbor | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| Croogloo | The Distribution Kit, to send the sheet with tracking, plus whatever makes the sheet and the board | $999, through a quote form |
| CineLog | Production Company, all 25 on the project | $40 |
That’s not a comparison of two prices. It’s a comparison of two buyers. Croogloo is priced for a production office on a series with a payroll behind it. CineLog is priced for the production that is its own office.
What neither of them does
A quick word on what both leave out, because it’s the reason every production I’ve been on still had a spreadsheet open.
The budget. Neither has one.
Confirmations by text. Croogloo sends SMS without a confirm, and CineLog confirms by email without SMS.
Post. Both stop at wrap. Review, approval and delivery are a separate tool and a separate bill.
A quick exercise before you pick
So here’s a quick exercise before you move on to a trial.
First, figure out whether the production has an office. If a coordinator is sending sides, time reports and a daily production report to a hundred people under a studio’s watermark rules, that’s the job Croogloo was built for. If the AD is the office, read on.
Second, write down where each document comes from. The script, the board, the shot list, the sheet. If every one of them is made in another tool and only sent in this one, you’re paying for the sending and for the other tools. On CineLog the documents are made and sent in the same project.
Third, check the signal at each location before you sign up for anything. Stand in the room where you’ll shoot, open a web page on your phone, and see what happens.
The bottom line
Croogloo is a production office’s distribution desk, with sides, time reports, SMS and per-recipient watermarks that CineLog doesn’t have, priced per production through a quote. CineLog is the pick for the scripted shoot with a real crew, because it makes the script, the board, the shot list and the call sheet and then sends them, with a confirmation on every name, on every device the crew owns, at a price on a page. That’s Croogloo vs CineLog.
Questions people ask
Is CineLog an alternative to Croogloo?
For a scripted shoot that makes its own documents, yes. CineLog writes and locks the script, builds the schedule and the call sheet, and sends the sheet per person with tracking that includes confirmed. What CineLog doesn’t do is cut sides, collect time reports, send SMS, or watermark every page per recipient. Those are Croogloo’s.
Which one is cheaper for a crew of 25?
CineLog is $40 a month on Production Company with everyone on the project. Croogloo’s Distribution Kit is $999 a month per production, and the Side Kit alone is $19, both through a quote form.
Which one works offline on set?
CineLog, for editing, on every device, up to seven days. Croogloo documents no offline mode.
Does Croogloo make call sheets?
It distributes them as uploaded documents, as the first attachment on the day’s send, with the sides merged on. One help line mentions draft call sheets from a schedule PDF, with no how-to. CineLog builds the sheet from the schedule day with the weather, the sun times and the hospital.
Which one tracks who opened the call sheet?
Both. Croogloo shows sent, received, opened, bounced, deferred and dropped per email, with a status report after the send. CineLog shows delivered, opened, confirmed or bounced per person, and the confirmed is the one the AD wants.
Can I bring my script in from .fdx or Fountain?
Into CineLog, yes, with PDF, RTF and text as well, and re-imports show as a diff. Croogloo takes the script as a text PDF, labels it with a version and a colour, and parses it for sides.
Which one handles colored revision pages?
CineLog. It locks scene numbers and pages, gives you A-pages and OMITTED scenes, colors every revision round and exports the revised pages only. Croogloo labels an uploaded PDF with its colour and watermarks it on the way out.
Do my collaborators need to pay?
On CineLog, no. They make a free account and get the rights you give them. On Croogloo, the kit is priced per production and nothing on its pages says what a crew member pays.
Which one runs as a real app on a phone or tablet?
CineLog is native on iOS and Android with the whole project on the device. Croogloo’s crew open a web app on the phone for sheets, time reports and the directory, and there’s no store app.
Can I switch from Croogloo to CineLog?
Yes. Export your contacts from Croogloo as a spreadsheet and import them into CineLog’s Cast and Crew with the column mapping, then bring the script in as .fdx, Fountain or PDF. The breakdown is tagged on the page with the cast done for you, and the call sheets from then on are built in CineLog and sent from it.
To recap
To recap, in this article we talked about picking on production shape instead of feature count, we walked six things in order, the script and its revisions, the breakdown and the schedule, the shot list and the storyboards, the call sheet, where you can use it, and who pays, and we put a twelve-day, 25-person feature on both. Croogloo is the production office’s distribution desk, by the kit, by the production. CineLog makes the documents and sends them, with the whole crew on it for one price, on any device, with or without a signal.
If you want to see the CineLog chain for yourself, the Free plan is one project with every tool, and you make the account inside the app after you download it. So put your own Harbor on it, and then move on to the part that matters, which is the shoot.