Toonly vs Doodly: Which Voomly Tool Fits Your Video — and When Neither Does

Toonly and Doodly are the two best-known video tools in the Voomly family, and because they now ship in the same Voomly Cloud bundle, most buyers are not really choosing between two subscriptions — they are choosing which tool to spend their production time in. The confusing part is that both are drag-and-drop editors from the same company with near-identical pricing, so the marketing pages can read interchangeably. The tools themselves are not interchangeable at all.

The short version: Doodly makes whiteboard "hand-drawing-on-a-board" videos, Toonly makes flat cartoon explainer videos with animated characters, and both assemble videos from preset asset libraries rather than generating anything new. Which one you should open depends entirely on the kind of video you are making — and there is a third category of tool worth knowing about if neither model fits.

What Doodly is built for

Doodly was created purely for whiteboard animation: the familiar format where a drawn hand sketches images and text onto a white (or black, green, or glass) board while a voiceover explains something. You pick images from Doodly's library or upload your own, place them on a timeline, and the software animates a hand drawing each element in sequence, synced to your narration.

The whiteboard format has a specific persuasion job. It mimics someone explaining an idea on a board in front of you, which is why it became the default for sales letters, course intros, product pitches, and "explain a complicated thing simply" videos. The visual style is deliberately minimal — line art, one element appearing at a time — so the viewer's attention stays on the argument being narrated rather than the visuals themselves.

Doodly's constraint is the same as its strength: everything looks like a whiteboard video. If the format suits your message, that is fine. If you need characters who move, emote, and carry a story, a sketching hand cannot do that.

What Toonly is built for

Toonly is a cartoon explainer builder. Instead of a drawing hand, you get a library of pre-made cartoon characters with preset animations — walking, talking, pointing, waving — plus props, backgrounds, and premade scenes. You drag a character into a scene, choose an animation, add a background and props, layer in a voiceover, and export a finished 2D cartoon video.

Compared with Doodly, Toonly's output is richer: full-color scenes, characters with expressions, animated actions. That makes it a better fit for story-driven explainers, animated marketing videos, and content where a character needs to represent the customer or the brand. As of 2026, Toonly is no longer sold standalone — it lives inside Voomly Cloud alongside Doodly, Talkia (text-to-speech), and People Builder, with the Standard tier including roughly 30 characters and the Enterprise tier expanding that library substantially. We covered the bundle structure in more detail in our Toonly alternatives comparison.

Toonly's constraint mirrors Doodly's: everything is assembled from the same shared library that every other subscriber uses. Two creators on the same plan can produce videos with recognizably identical character art and poses. You get speed and predictability; you give up visual originality.

Pricing: effectively the same decision

Because both tools sell through Voomly Cloud, the pricing question mostly disappears. The Standard bundle runs around $49/month and Enterprise around $79/month (annual billing discounts both), and either way you get access to Doodly and Toonly together, plus the rest of the suite. Voomly also lists single-tool cloud plans, but the bundle is the mainline offer — so in practice, subscribing to one usually means having both.

That changes the real question from "which should I buy?" to "which should I use for this video?" — a much easier decision.

Doodly vs Toonly: the actual decision rule

• Choose Doodly when the video is an argument: a sales pitch, a course lesson, a concept explanation where minimal visuals and a narrated line of reasoning do the work. Whiteboard style signals "listen to this explanation."
• Choose Toonly when the video is a story: a customer scenario, a character-driven explainer, a marketing video where someone on screen needs to experience the problem and the solution. Cartoon style signals "watch what happens."
• Production time is similar in both — you assemble scenes manually either way — but Toonly scenes take longer to compose because there are more elements (character, animation choice, props, background) per beat.

If your channel or business needs both formats, the bundle pricing makes carrying both tools painless. The harder case is when neither model fits.

The third option: generating scenes instead of assembling them

Both Toonly and Doodly are assembly tools: the visual vocabulary is fixed, and your job is arranging it. That is exactly right for predictable, on-brand explainers on a deadline. It is exactly wrong when the value of your content depends on looking like nothing else in the feed.

CartoonMakerAI works from the opposite direction. You describe the scene — character, setting, mood, action — and the system generates original animated video from that prompt in one of eight visual styles, from a classic Saturday-morning cel-shaded cartoon to claymation, watercolor, and noir comic. Longer videos are built by splitting the script into scene-sized beats and chaining clips so the character and setting stay consistent from scene to scene, then assembling the sequence automatically.

The trade-offs run in the opposite direction from Toonly and Doodly, too. Generation takes real render time and credits, and iterating means re-prompting rather than nudging an asset two pixels left — so it rewards a clear brief over trial-and-error. But the output is built for your prompt specifically: an original character no other subscriber has, in a style you chose for the audience rather than inherited from a library. If that is the deciding factor for your channel, start with the AI cartoon video maker workflow, and see how the prompt-based tools stack up more broadly in our AI video generator comparison.

Which should you actually pick?

Pragmatically:

1. Sales pages, course content, concept explainers → Doodly. The whiteboard format was made for narrated persuasion.
2. Character-driven marketing and story explainers, and you value speed over originality → Toonly. Known assets, predictable output, no render queue.
3. A channel or brand whose identity depends on original characters and a distinctive look → prompt-based generation like CartoonMakerAI. Assembly tools cannot produce assets that do not exist in their library.

Since Voomly Cloud offers a trial and CartoonMakerAI has a free tier (30 one-time credits, watermarked), the cheapest way to decide is to produce the same 30-second script in each model and compare the results against your actual audience — not against the demo videos on anyone's pricing page.

Frequently asked questions

Are Toonly and Doodly sold separately or together?

As of 2026, both are primarily sold through the Voomly Cloud bundle (Standard around $49/month, Enterprise around $79/month), which includes Doodly, Toonly, Talkia, People Builder, and the Voomly video hosting platform. Single-tool cloud plans exist, but the bundle is the mainline offer, so most subscribers have access to both tools.

Can Doodly make color cartoon videos like Toonly?

Doodly includes some color image options, but its core format is whiteboard-style sketch animation — elements drawn onto a board by an animated hand. It does not have Toonly's animated character system. If you need characters that walk, talk, and emote, that is Toonly's territory.

Can I use my own images or characters in Toonly or Doodly?

Both tools let you upload your own images to use alongside their libraries. However, uploaded static images do not gain the preset animations that built-in assets have — a custom character in Toonly will not automatically walk or talk the way library characters do.

Is Toonly or Doodly better for YouTube?

It depends on the format of your channel. Narrated educational or persuasion content suits Doodly's whiteboard style; story-driven or character-led content suits Toonly. For a channel whose appeal depends on a unique visual identity, note that both tools draw from shared libraries — every subscriber has the same characters — which is where prompt-generated video differentiates.

How is CartoonMakerAI different from both?

Toonly and Doodly assemble videos from preset asset libraries; CartoonMakerAI generates original animated scenes from a written prompt in a chosen visual style, with scene chaining keeping characters consistent across a longer video. Assembly is faster and more predictable; generation produces visuals no shared library contains. They solve different problems.

Do all three support commercial use?

Toonly and Doodly's paid Voomly plans generally permit commercial use of the videos you create — verify the current bundle terms for your tier. CartoonMakerAI includes commercial use on its Creator ($49/month) and Pro ($99/month) plans.