The direct answer
How do you approve a final cut online?
The client sets the state themselves, against the version they watched.
Approval is not a message about a film. It is a state on a specific cut, set by the person who watched that cut, carrying their name and the date. Here is what that mechanism does, what an emailed yes cannot do, what the client has to install or sign up for, and where this stops being enough and you need a contract instead.
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Updated September 2026
The short answer
The client opens a link, watches the cut, marks it approved,
and the approval sticks to that version.
That is the whole mechanism. There is no account to make, no file to download and no form to sign. The client clicks the link you sent, the cut plays, and an approval control sits on the page next to it. Setting it writes a record: this version, this name, this moment.
0
Accounts the client makes
The share link is itself the authentication. No password unless you set one, and no seat consumed.
Per version
Where the approval lives
Not on the film, not in a thread. On the exact cut that was open.
3
States a film can be in
Reviewing, changes requested, or approved. One of the three, never ambiguous.
Every plan
Where the room is available
Including the free Starter plan, which holds 5 GB and one film at a time.
The distinction worth holding onto is between a message about an approval and an approval. A message is a piece of prose that refers to a film. An approval is a state on a version, set by a person, that the software can still answer questions about in a year. Everything else on this page follows from that difference.
Why the usual way fails
An email that says “looks good”
is not an approval of anything in particular.
Nobody is being careless when they accept a yes by email. It is the fastest thing available and it feels like a decision. It stops being one the moment somebody has to reconstruct what was decided, and that moment always arrives with a deadline attached.
Three pieces of information go missing. The first is which cut. A thread names a file at best, and a file name is not a version; two people replying to two forwarded copies produce approvals that look identical and are not. The second is who. The address that replied may be an assistant, a producer or the person whose opinion actually settles it, and the thread cannot tell them apart. The third is what happened afterwards, because a later reply asking for one more change sits in the same thread at the same weight as the yes did.
The specific failure that costs money is the version question. You sent V2 on Tuesday and V4 on Thursday. The reply on Friday says the film is great. Nothing in that sentence tells you which of the two they had open, and if V3 was where you fixed the client’s own note, the difference is the entire job.
Both columns describe what the record can answer later, not how convincing it felt at the time. Neither column is a legal instrument; the difference between them is precision about the file, the person and the moment, which is what a dispute about a wrong version actually turns on.
What the client actually does
Four clicks on their side,
and the last one is the approval.
Written out from the reviewer’s point of view rather than yours, because the reviewer is the person whose patience decides whether any of this works.
They open the link you sent
Nothing precedes this. The share link is the authentication, so there is no signup wall, no invitation to accept and no password prompt unless you set one on the film yourself. The link can be revoked, and expiry is checked on every load, so access ends when you decide it does rather than when a courier's clock runs out.
They watch the cut in the browser
The player streams the exact bytes you uploaded. Nothing is re-encoded on the way in or out, so the reaction you are collecting is a reaction to your export rather than to somebody's compression of it. Browser-decodable codecs stream: H.264, HEVC and AV1.
They leave notes, or they do not
A note is stored against the film with a timecode in seconds, so opening one seeks the player to that frame. They can draw on the image and the drawing is saved with the note. Notes thread into replies, carry a done flag and group into rounds, which is how a round closes rather than fizzles out.
They mark the version approved
The approval is written against that version with their name on it, and the film's state becomes approved. You see it without asking. If they change their mind and post a new note, the approval on that cut is revoked and the film returns to changes requested.
The part that surprises people
How the state works
One approval per version,
and one of three states on the film.
The model is deliberately small, because a status system with nine states is a status system nobody updates. One film carries several versions. Each version can carry an approval. The film itself reports one of three states.
Reviewing
The default. A cut is up, the link is out, and nobody has committed either way yet. Notes may be arriving; none of them have settled the question.
Changes requested
Somebody has asked for something. This is also where an approved film lands the moment a new note is posted on the approved cut, which is the honest behaviour rather than the flattering one.
Approved
A specific version is signed off, by name, at a recorded moment. The film reports it, and the record stays attached to that version as later cuts stack above it.
Revocation is worth dwelling on, because it is the rule that makes the rest of it trustworthy. If an approval could survive a fresh objection, then “approved” would mean “approved at some point, possibly before the argument started”, which is exactly the ambiguity the email thread already gives you for free. A new note on an approved cut takes the approval down. If the client raises something and you fix it, the approval is asked for again, on the version that contains the fix.
Because approval is attached to a version rather than to the film, the version stack is the history. V2 approved, V3 under review, V4 approved is a sequence you can read months later without reconstructing anything, and the link you gave the client on day one is still the same link. There is more on running that comparison properly in comparing two versions before the client approves.
Honest context
No account is not a unique trick.
Most tools in this category do it.
It would be easy to present account-free reviewing as something only we do. It is not, and a page that pretended otherwise would be wasting the one thing it is for.
Frame.io states on its pricing page that you can securely share assets with anyone outside your Frame.io account for free via Share links, which do not require them to sign up or log in. Filestage advertises unlimited reviewers and says plainly that they do not need to make an account to give feedback. Vimeo’s review links likewise reach reviewers, in its own words, even those without a Vimeo account or a team seat, though its help centre gates the feature itself to a Standard, Advanced, Pro, Business, Premium or Enterprise plan.
So the question to ask a shortlist is not whether the client needs an account. It is what the tool records when the client says yes, and what tier that recording sits behind. Ask whether the approval names a version, whether it names a person, whether a later objection takes it back, and whether all of that is available on the plan you are actually on. Here the review room, versions and per-version approval are on every plan including the free Starter plan, which holds 5 GB and one film at a time. The broader shortlist exercise is in the guide to choosing review and approval software.
Where this stops
An approval is a record,
and it is not a signature.
Readers searching this question are often really asking a second one: will this hold up if the client denies it later. The honest answer needs to be given without hedging.
What the approval is: a record that a named person marked a specific version approved at a specific moment, stored beside that version, revoked automatically if a new note lands on it. That is genuinely useful. It settles which cut went out, it settles who had seen it, and it settles it in a place both sides can look at rather than in one party’s mailbox.
What the approval is not: a signature, a contract, or a legal sign-off. It does not carry an identity check, it does not create an obligation, and it is not designed to be produced as an executed document. Nothing about a review room turns a click into a covenant, and any tool in this category telling you otherwise is selling you something it cannot deliver.
If what you need is an enforceable acceptance, meaning a milestone that triggers a payment, a sign-off that closes a scope, or a document you would want in front of a lawyer, then you need a contract and an e-signature tool. Use both: the contract governs what acceptance means and what it obliges, and the approval record supplies the factual detail the contract refers to, which version was accepted and when. They do different jobs and neither substitutes for the other.
Three questions that settle which one you need
Does money move on the yes?
If the approval releases a payment or closes a scope, the operative document is the contract. The approval record is supporting detail inside it, not a replacement for it.
Is the risk a dispute, or a mix-up?
Most of the pain in post is a mix-up: the wrong cut shipped, the note that was already fixed, the stakeholder who never saw V3. A version-anchored record solves that class of problem completely and the legal one not at all.
Who has to be convinced later?
If the answer is your client and you, a recorded approval is enough and is faster than anything else. If the answer is a third party assessing an obligation, you are outside what a review room does.
The short version
Ask for a state,
not a sentence you have to interpret.
Send one link. Let the client watch the cut and set the approval themselves, on the version they had open, with their name on it. Accept that a new note takes that approval back, because that is what makes the rest of it worth having. Keep using email for the relationship, and stop asking email to remember which of four cuts somebody meant. And when the yes has to be enforceable rather than merely accurate, write it into a contract and sign it properly, because a review room was never going to do that part. What happens after the approval, meaning what actually ships and in what shape, is set out in the deliverables checklist.
Questions
Frequently asked
Does the client need an account to approve a cut?
No. The share link is itself the authentication: no account, no password unless you set one, no invitation to accept, and no installation. A reviewer never consumes a seat, and seats are a separate mechanism reviewers never touch. This is true on every plan, including the free Starter plan.
What exactly is stored when a cut is approved?
The approval is recorded against one version, with a name attached and the moment it was set. The film's own state then reads as approved rather than reviewing or changes requested. It is a record of a decision on a specific cut, which is precisely the thing an email thread cannot produce six months later.
Is an online approval legally binding?
No, and nobody should tell you otherwise. It is a record of who marked which version approved and when. It is not a signature, not a contract and not a legal sign-off. If you need an enforceable document, you need a contract and an e-signature tool. The approval record is evidence of what happened; the contract is what makes it owed.
What happens if the client approves and then asks for one more change?
Posting a new note on an approved cut revokes that approval. The film goes back to changes requested, and the approval no longer stands on a version that is being argued with. That is deliberate: an approval that survives a fresh objection is a worse record than no approval at all.
Can two versions carry different approvals?
Yes. Approval lives on the version, not on the film, so V2 can be approved while V3 is still under review. The film's overall state is one of three: reviewing, changes requested, or approved. The link the client uses does not change as versions stack up.
Can I still get the yes in writing?
Of course, and you should when the money depends on it. The point of the recorded approval is that it answers a different question: which file, watched by whom, on what date. Keep the email for the commercial relationship and keep the recorded approval for the version history. They are not competing records.
Does the client have to watch the whole cut before approving?
Nothing forces them to, here or anywhere else. What the record can tell you is which version was open when they set the state, which is more than a thread can tell you. If it matters that a specific stakeholder saw a specific change, put that change in its own version and ask for the approval on it.
Put one cut in front of one client and watch what happens
Versions, timecoded notes and per-version approval are on every plan, the free Starter plan included. The client needs no account and never takes a seat.
Sources
- 1.Frame.io pricing (fetched 8 September 2026: "You can securely share assets with anyone outside your Frame.io account for free via Share links, which don't require them to sign up or log in.")
- 2.Filestage pricing (fetched 8 September 2026: "Unlimited reviewers" and "They don't need to make an account to give feedback.")
- 3.Vimeo: how to use and manage video review links (fetched 8 September 2026: "This feature requires a Standard, Advanced, Pro, Business, Premium, or Enterprise plan." Reviewers can include "even those without a Vimeo account or a team seat.")
- 4.uncompressed.io: the client review room (product page; share-link access, versions, timecoded notes and per-version approval verified in product code, 8 September 2026)