13 Best Webinar Hosting Providers For 2022 (Compared)

Demio is younger than a few other platforms here, but it is no less impressive. It targets marketers and offers plenty of features that cater to them.

Here’s what they are.

Demio Features

Demio lets you create both live and automated webinars, and the automated ones keep all the same features.

The platform also lets you upload videos and play them during live events. This opens up possibilities for doing hybrid events.

Video Streaming

The webinar system runs on its own streaming engine. The advantage might not be immediately apparent, but it is significant.

Many other solutions run on YouTube Live technology. Although this enables streaming high-resolution video, it adds about 15-30 seconds of delay and might introduce compression artifacts into the video.

Demio, on the other hand, has pretty much no delay, which makes doing live webinars way easier.

The webinar platform also lets you upload things like presentations and video files directly. Demio handles video upload and conversion itself, instead of relying on a third-party service. This lets you show high-resolution content during live webinars without having a super-fast internet connection.

Scheduling

Demio includes similar scheduling tools to advanced automated platforms like EverWebinar. You can set up one-time webinars, webinars that take place a limited number of times, or recurring webinars. You can also choose the frequency of recurring webinars and even block out specific days or holidays.

There’s also an option to record a live webinar and make it available on-demand. This makes the video available on the landing page. Unfortunately, it means you can’t use some features like polling.

Another thing to keep in mind is that attendees see the time of the webinar based on your time zone. I’m getting a bit nitpicky here, but lacking time zone conversion makes the platform feel a bit clunky.

Marketing and Analytics

Demio targets marketers. That’s why you get tons of features that help you boost conversions and analyze customer behavior.

You can use the webinar hosting solution to set up a landing page as the start of your sales funnel. You can only choose from a handful of templates, though.

They are somewhat customizable, so you can collect custom info about registrants from the get-go. Still, the templates are minimalistic. If you want something flashier, you should set up your own landing page and integrate the signup form.

You can also set up your own branding on all pages. The options here are somewhat limited, though, and you can only customize some of the sections.

During the webinar, you can engage your audience with things like interactive polls. You can even give one of the attendees the spotlight during the webinar. The chatbox is pretty useful too, and it lets you react to comments with emojis or mention other participants.

One thing to point out is Demio is somewhat limited when it comes to managing live chat messages. If you have someone moderating the chat, you can have them pick questions for the Q&A manually, but it’s tough to do on your own.

You can also share downloadable materials with participants. Once you feel your audience is ready, you can send them coupons, launch offers, or link to the page you want them to visit.

One thing to remember is to specify where Demio should redirect attendees to after the webinar. Otherwise, it will point them to its own webinar hosting site.

The analytics provides real-time tracking of attendee activity. Afterward, you can see how many participants were active at each point of the webinar. You can also export reports on individual participant activity.

Demio Integrations

Demio works with various email marketing software like AWeber, MailChimp, and Infusionsoft. That’s about it for default integrations, but you can use Zapier to connect the platform to a range of other apps.

It is a bit of a pain that you have to use Zapier to set up things like paid webinars. It still works well, but having a native integration would be easier.

You can also use the API to connect Demio to a custom app.

Ease of Use

The webinar hosting service is relatively easy to use. You are presented with a clean layout from the start, and the software does a decent job of walking you through the setup.

Everything happens in the browser, so you and your attendees can enjoy the no-download webinar system. This makes everything feel more natural and is just easier.

During the webinar, you’ll have the same view as the attendees, so you’ll be aware of what they’re seeing. It might seem like an obvious feature, but not all services are designed this way.

You can change the size of the webcam feed, but this only affects things on your end. The only way to really prioritize one window (for instance, the webcam video) is to switch off the others. This should be fine, but it’s a bit bothersome.

Overall, Demio is one of the more straightforward platforms out there.

Demio Support

Demio’s support is pretty decent.

It is available 24/7 via email and live chat, and the agents tend to get back to you in only a minute or two. The agents are a bit quick to link to the knowledge base in chat, but email support can handle even the tough questions.

You can also get one-on-one onboarding if you need it. This is excellent if you’re a complete beginner to webinar services.

The knowledge base has quite a few useful guides on using the platform. Most tutorials either use videos or photos to explain exactly what to do, which makes them much easier to follow.

Price Overview

Demio has three pricing plans:

• Starter—50 attendees, $34/month
• Growth—150 attendees, $69/month
• Business—500 attendees, $163/month

The rates apply if you go for an annual subscription. They are slightly higher if you pay month to month.

The plans are geared toward small to medium-sized webinars, and they’ll be enough for the majority of users. If you need something more high-powered, though, you can talk to the sales team about designing a custom plan.

The starter plan does limit the features as well, though. It only lets you do live events and lacks white labeling features.

The pricing is fair across the board, though.

Demio User Reviews and Reputation

Many Demio users are impressed with how easy to use and intuitive the webinar hosting software is. Some also praise it for handling both live events and webinar automation equally well.

A few reviews out there list incompatibility with the Safari web browser as one of the disadvantages. However, an update did introduce support for Safari 12.1 and above, making these are no longer valid.

For the most part, though, Demio is a popular solution.

Verdict

Demio is a mid-range online webinar platform that’s packed with features. At the same time, it has astonishingly few flaws. It’s excellent if you want to easily host a small or mid-sized webinar and push some sales.

ClickMeeting is a versatile platform with a promising feature list. Here’s how it performs in actuality.

ClickMeeting Features

ClickMeeting lets you host both live and automated events, though the latter is reserved for higher-tier plans. You can also make the webinars available for on-demand viewing.

One unique deployment model of ClickMeeting is parallel events. They are paid a bit extra, but ClickMeeting is one of the very few webinar solutions that will let you do two live webinars at the same time, so it’s worth it.

Accessibility

ClickMeeting goes a long way in making the platform accessible to anyone.

ClickMeeting is a no-download webinar tech, for the most part. You only need to download an app for screen sharing. The screen sharing app works fine now, but it has a reputation for breaking, so you should test it out before use.

This might not be necessary, though, as you can upload both video and slides directly into the platform.

Users might not even need a computer, though. You can set up either a regular or toll-free number and let attendees dial-in by phone.

The platform also includes time zone conversion and supports multiple languages. The live chat also has an automatic translation feature. All are excellent tools if you’re presenting to an international audience.

You can also embed the event into your own website or stream it directly to YouTube or Facebook. That way, the attendees don’t even have to go to the webinar page.

Promotion and Engagement

ClickMeeting includes a massive toolkit for helping you spread the word about your webinar.

For starters, you can set up custom landing pages with your own branding. The rest of the webinar can be white-labeled, too, so you’ll appear more professional. The webinar software is connected to Unsplash, so you can pick an image for your pages.

You can set up custom rules for emailing and SMS invitations. There’s also a range of options for sending follow-up emails. You can also prepare your waiting room and a thank-you page.

During the webinar, you can engage attendees with polls or use tools like the whiteboard. Surveys are pretty customizable, and you can set up multiple-choice questions, open-ended ones, or even include images into the survey.

One unique feature is letting users take control of your desktop—fantastic if you’re teaching them how to use a piece of software.

Once the attendees are ready, you can present them with a custom call-to-action and get those juicy conversions.

Analytics

The webinar technology includes rather advanced analytics tools. You can view stats on the numbers of attendees, their locations, behavior, etc.

The attendees can also rate your webinar and even give written feedback. You can also generate reports based on this for further analysis.

ClickMeeting Integrations

ClickMeeting comes with several possible integrations.

Some of the more usual ones include emailing software like GetResponse. You can also invite users directly from Slack, which is useful for doing webinars in a corporate setting.

You can also integrate a Facebook pixel and run analytics on the attendees.

PayPal can let you charge attendees.

DropBox is there if you want to record webinars and upload them immediately.

One cool integration is Moodle. This is a learning platform, so it’s definitely worth looking into if you want to use your webinar for teaching classes.

Of course, the API is available, so you can integrate a custom app with ClickMeeting.

Ease of Use

ClickMeeting has a lot of features, but managing all the webinar tools is pretty easy nonetheless. You can do everything, from running an impromptu meeting to automating a full event, with little effort. All the options are laid out clearly.

It’s even easier to make the recorded webinars available for on-demand viewing. The attendees will even see all the polls that were included.

One thing many platforms overlook but ClickMeeting does well is answering chat questions. Picking Q&A mode displays all the questions asked in the chat. You can single out individual ones so all attendees can see what you’re answering.

This makes handling the Q&A portion of your webinar much more intuitive. ClickMeeting is one of the best webinar solutions here.

ClickMeeting Support

ClickMeeting’s support is pretty decent, though it is only available 14h on weekdays and 8h during weekends. You can contact it through live chat and email, which is pretty standard.

The knowledge base is more extensive than most out there. You get answers to the most frequently asked questions as well as plenty of videos and a few complete ebooks. These can help you learn everything from using the platform to designing a successful webinar. They are an excellent resource for both beginners and intermediate users.

Price Overview

ClickMeeting’s pricing is somewhat complicated. The price for hosting webinars depends on the number of attendees, which can be from 10 to 1,000, and the features you go for.

To give you an idea, getting 1GB file storage and 6GB video storage would cost you $35/month for 50 attendees. This deal would only let you do live webinars.

Going for automated webinars with the same attendee cap would cost you $45/month and get you about double the storage.

It’s a rather complex pricing model, so you should really check out the pricing calculator on ClickMeeting’s website. The price is fair across the board, though, and the model lets you choose from a broad range of plans.

You can also use the free webinar service to test out the features for a month and see how many attendees you can expect.

ClickMeeting User Reviews and Reputation

Many user reviews praise ClickMeeting for being straightforward but powerful. Most also like the reasonable pricing.

Some users helpfully point out that ClickMeeting gives a lot of options to attendees. This is a positive, of course, but non-technical people in your audience might be confused by the options. In such cases, it pays off to have a moderator who can help attendees in chat without disrupting the webinar.

Verdict

ClickMeeting has lots of useful features and integrations that make it one of the overall best webinar platforms of 2022. It does pretty much everything well, though it has a few kinks. Plus, customizable pricing plans make it nearly impossible to overpay.

WebinarJam is a product of Genesis Digital and a sister platform to EverWebinar. It has been one of the top providers ever since its launch, about seven years ago.

Here’s how well it does the job.

WebinarJam Features

WebinarJam is a tool for organizing live webinars. If you’re looking to set up automated webinars, you can look into the EverWebinar review below. The solution is developed by the same company, and you can get both bundled at a reduced cost.

One thing to point out about WebinarJam is that it transcodes video before sending it to the attendees (YouTube videos go through the same upload and conversion process). This makes it easier to stream the video, but you may lose some quality, especially if you have a lot of changes frame-to-frame.

This shouldn’t affect your event in most cases, as webinars aren’t exactly action-packed. Still, if you’d prefer a platform that streams video in native quality, you can look into Zoom.

Engagement

WebinarJam has the viewer engagement features you’d expect from a decent webinar platform. You can draw on the screen and create annotations. You can also send your attendees interactive elements like polls and quizzes.

One thing to point out is that WebinarJam audio and video have a slight lag, but things like polls are displayed immediately. You should wait a couple of seconds after mentioning the poll to send it out, or you might just confuse the attendees.

You can communicate with the audience either in the chat room or through private chat. Audience members can also raise their hands if they want to present for a while. The platform makes it easy for either you or another moderator to manage the attendees.

Marketing Tools

This is where WebinarJam really shines.

You can leverage your existing email list and send one-click signup links (registrants don’t even have to leave the email inbox). This is about the shortest registration process possible, which makes for an ideal webinar hosting option for broadening your reach.

As for getting fresh attendees, WebinarJam lets you design a sleek landing page through its range of templates. If you want a truly customized start to your sales funnel, though, an integration can get you even better results.

On the other end of the funnel, you can present attendees with calls to action during the webinar. You can also display limited offer countdown timers or the number of products left, which can add urgency. You have a lot of options here, though, so be careful not to go overboard and scare off potential customers.

You also get access to pretty awesome analytics tools. These let you track viewer engagement, but also determine who your best customers are and who’s the most likely to purchase your products. This way, you can get the most out of your webinar technology.

Transition to EverWebinar

WebinarJam lets you record webinars, but you can’t schedule automated ones. For this, you have to use EverWebinar. It is made by the same company, and it works seamlessly with WebinarJam.

The software is meant to simulate live webinars. You can get pretty much all the benefits of WebinarJam, plus a few more. You’ll also get a discount if you purchase both platforms, which ends up being quite a deal.

WebinarJam Integrations

For starters, WebinarJam plays well with email integrations. You can send custom emails based on attendee behavior, as well as various types of downloadable content, all from the dashboard.

You can directly connect to ten different autoresponders, including MailChimp and AWeber. I say directly, because WebinarJam integrates with 1,400+ other apps through Zapier, including other emailing and SMS services.

Other notable integrations include YouTube and Facebook Live. You can stream your webinar both through WebinarJam and those sites.

You can also work with PowerPoint and Keynote files directly from the software.

All in all, it’s a webinar system with no shortage of handy integrations.

Ease of Use

It’s fairly simple to set up a webinar. The software takes you through all the initial steps.

There are a lot of options to go through, though, simply because WebinarJam is so feature-packed. The setup page does a decent job of presenting all the options clearly, but you should be ready to dedicate some time to the setup.

Alternatively, you can opt for the “Express Configuration” option. This is essentially the same, but the software will preconfigure a lot of the functions for you. You can use it to set up a quick conference and waste no time.

The interface is sleek and intuitive, so presenting feels comfortable from the get-go. The platform also makes it easy for moderators to manage everything, which is essential once you have a few hundred, or even thousand, attendees.

All in all, WebinarJam is one of the best webinar software in terms of ease of use.

WebinarJam Support

Genesis Digital, the company behind WebinarJam, maintains a unified knowledge base for all its products. You can find helpful guides on using the software, as well as resolving common issues.

The site doesn’t state this, but signing up also gives you access to 7+ hours of training material. Watching this can help you start off on the right foot.

As for the support team, you can contact it via live chat and email ticket. The support tends to answer all queries promptly, so no complaints here.

One thing to keep in mind is you might not receive an email notification every time the support updates your ticket. You should check if you’ve received an answer, even if there’s nothing in your email inbox.

Price Overview

WebinarJam has three pricing plans:

• Basic—500 attendees, three presenters, $479/year
• Pro—1,000 attendees, four presenters, $783/year
• Premium—5,000 attendees, six presenters, $997/year

The annual price is more than reasonable for the number of attendees. Many webinar providers would charge you twice or thrice as more. Plus, you get support for multiple presenters across the board, which is excellent.

The solution is meant for larger webinars, though. You can find a cheaper option if you plan on having 50-200 attendees.

EverWebinar offers you separate pricing plans and is cheaper than WebinarJam. You can get an even further $200 discount if you purchase the other webinar platform through your WebinarJam account.

WebinarJam User Reviews and Reputation

A lot of users like WebinarJam for how powerful it is. Many marketers and workshop hosts also praise how easy it is to do an online seminar.

A negative remark that’s worth pointing out is that there’s quite a bit of lag between the webinar broadcasters and the attendees.

It’s a fair complaint and one that extends way beyond WebinarJam. Pretty much any platform that uses YouTube Live’s engine has this issue. If you’re looking for a host with its own streaming engine and no lag time, check out the Demio review above.

Verdict

WebinarJam might just be the best webinar platform for doing live events, though it’s more suitable for somewhat larger audiences. Plus, you can get a brilliant deal if you combine it with EverWebinar, which I’ll cover below.

EverWebinar is another service by Genesis Digital. It is a bit younger than WebinarJam but no less powerful.

Here’s why it made it into these webinar software reviews.

EverWebinar Features

Unlike WebinarJam, EverWebinar is used for setting up automated webinars. This means you can take your time to produce a webinar and then use it many times over for continual value.

The solution comes with a bunch of features also included in WebinarJam. To name a few prominent ones, you get powerful marketing tools, an advanced emailing system, and viewer engagement boosting tools.

The platform focuses on a different kind of webinar, though, so there are a few new things too.

Advanced Scheduling

Since the platform specializes in automated webinar hosting, you can set up a webinar at essentially any time of the day. You have a fantastic scheduling system to make this easy.

You can set up a one-time webinar, or make it a recurring event. In the latter case, you can set up monthly, weekly, or daily webinars, and even block out specific dates or holidays.

The system can even detect the potential attendee’s time zone difference. It can let them attend the webinar at a different time, which can give you an attendance boost with an international audience.

There’s even an option to let a user attend just-in-time webinars. The software essentially sets up a webinar to begin a few minutes after someone registers.

It’s a marketing gimmick, but it’s bound to make some users feel incredibly lucky that they signed up at the right time. A nice touch is you can block this option if someone registers at night to avoid looking suspicious. In such cases, the software will schedule a webinar for the next morning, so you get a similar effect.

And this keys into the next point.

Simulated Live Webinars

One of the main selling points of EverWebinar is simulating live webinars. You can use the webinar hosting service to make automated events seem as if they were happening live.

This doesn’t stop at just playing a pre-recorded video. You can also do things like show attendees a live chat with pre-configured chat lines. You can make this easier by importing lines from a previous webinar.

Another option is displaying active offers like you would with a live webinar or having your audience take polls. They can even see preset poll results.

The platform can also simulate realistic attendance numbers. The app will grow the number of attendees till a custom peak moment, then gradually scale it down.

It’s all meant to simulate the engagement of a live event while retaining the value of repeating the same event. The morality of tricking attendees is to be debated, but the webinar platform is undeniably powerful.

One thing to point out is that EverWebinar actually embeds the pre-recorded video into the page, though the player simulates live streaming. This means the simulation is not really perfect, and technically savvy attendees might poke around the page to see what’s going on.

Still, the options are impressive.

Integration with WebinarJam

Using WebinarJam for live webinars and EverWebinar for automated ones gets you numerous benefits.

You can create a webinar and do it live with WebinarJam. Once it’s done, it takes just a few clicks to transfer the video together with live chat data and all the stats to EverWebinar. The whole process takes all of a few minutes, and you just have to set up the webinar schedule.

That way, every awesome live webinar you do will be a gift that keeps on giving.

EverWebinar Integrations

Much like WebinarJam, EverWebinar integrates with various other platforms.

You can set up payment integrations. The software also plays well with email services. That means you can not only send out custom emails based on attendee behavior but also forward behavioral tags to autoresponders like Infusionsoft or Active Campaign.

The webinar hosting solution also integrates with Google Analytics, and you can set up Facebook tracking pixels. All the standard integrations, all in all.

Ease of Use

The platform is pretty easy to use across the board. You do have to pre-record a webinar, but that’s the reality with any automated platform.

The software does a decent job of taking you through all the steps of setting up the scheduling and all the other options.

One particularly useful option for added user-friendliness is using WebinarJam. You can skip the entire process of recording a webinar and setting up most of the simulation tools. You only have to upload the data from a live webinar and set up the scheduling.

It’s one of the best webinar tools for quickly setting up an automated event.

EverWebinar Support

Genesis Digital has a unified knowledge base for its products. You can find helpful advice for setting everything up and getting around common issues.

Signing up for EverWebinar also gets you a stack of learning materials. The support will walk you through setting up your first webinar, so you’ll have no problems setting up shop.

The support is available through live chat and email tickets. It provides decent help, but it is only available during working hours. This puts EverWebinar at something of a disadvantage against a few other webinar platforms.

Pricing Overview

EverWebinar lets you create unlimited webinars and use the full features across the board. The only difference in price comes down to the length of your subscription.

You can make three annual payments of $199. Paying for the full year costs $497. You get the best deal of $799 by prepaying for two years, though.

You can get a discount on EverWebinar if you’re already using WebinarJam, as well. This makes for an excellent bundled deal.

It’s a pretty fair deal even by itself, though. Plus, you get a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can try out the platform without risk.

EverWebinar User Reviews and Reputation

Understandably, numerous EverWebinar clients are thrilled about the possibility of simulating live webinars. Many also love it that it’s relatively easy to set up recurring webinars and make passive income through the platform.

Some users do complain about the support not being available most of the time.

Some would also like more freedom in choosing webinar times. The platform only lets you schedule webinars at quarter and half-hours, which should be fine for most users.

All in all, most users have positive things to say about the platform, though there are a few legitimate complaints.

Verdict

EverWebinar is one of the best webinar solutions for simulating live events, as well as a powerful automated platform in its own right. If you get it bundled with WebinarJam, you can get incredible bang for your buck.

Zoom gained traction as a conference tool with flawless audio and HD video. Today, it offers webinar features but keeps much of the functionality that once made it popular.

Here’s what’s included.

Zoom Features

Zoom is both a webinar platform and a vendor-hosted web conferencing tool in one. It lets you host live webinars, but it also has features that let you do online meetings. Here’s how it works.

Conferencing Features

Zoom is a primarily conferencing software. If you just go for the free version of the app, the default option will be setting up online peer-level web meetings.

That means you can have a crowd of users join from their computers or phones and all talk at the same time. All attendees can stream HD video and audio feeds, and you can have up to 25 simultaneous feeds (though you can have more people participating).

This also means you get fantastic collaboration features. You can move participants to separate rooms (up to 50 rooms), so they can work in smaller groups. There are also useful tools like keyboard/mouse control. Of course, you have the tools to manage the participants and maintain an orderly meeting.

These features might not be part of traditional webinar apps, but they can be awesome if you want to set up a coaching webinar or hold a class online. Other webinar providers just don’t have the collaboration mechanisms of Zoom.

Webinar Tools

Webinar Tools are available as an add-on.

Hosting a webinar changes the meeting a bit in that all the attendees start muted with their cameras switched off. They can only participate once you give them the spotlight.

The addon also gets you other traditional tools like Q&A features, PayPal integration, and analytics.

It’s worth pointing out the addon starts at $40/month, which is a bit too much. It’s more worthwhile to stick with the web conferencing features and just mute other participants. There are better ways to get the same tools.

What’s Missing

Zoom does include a lot of features you wouldn’t consider typical webinar tools. However, you do miss out on some you might expect.

For instance, you have no good way to make recorded webinars available out of the app. You can record a webinar, but it’s more convenient to upload it elsewhere.

Another thing is that you can’t really display a call-to-action. This makes the platform less than ideal for sales.

The bottom line is the solution has pretty awesome features if you want to set up an online class. It’s not among the top webinar platforms for guiding potential customers through a sales funnel, though.

Zoom Integrations

Zoom lets you start and join a meeting from various other software. These include Salesforce, Skype, Outlook, Workplace, and Google Calendar.

You can also share files directly from numerous cloud storage platforms, including big ones like OneDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox.

Another option is to use Google, Facebook, or Microsoft credentials to log into the platform.

You can also take advantage of marketing integrations like Pardot and Marketo, though Zoom isn’t perfect for marketing.

Finally, Zoom uses Zapier to connect to a host of other apps, so you’ll have no shortage of useful integrations.

Ease of Use

Zoom’s online webinar hosting is relatively easy to use but a bit more accessible for attendees.

Attendees don’t have to download an app, though they’ll be prompted to do so. You will have to download the app to do the webinar, though.

However, Zoom has similar problems to GoToWebinar. The app interface is sort of clunky. Also, you can’t really know what the attendees see since you get a different view.

One redeeming feature is that Zoom supports using multiple monitors. This is helpful if you want to use one monitor for the actual webinar and the other to read your notes.

Zoom is easy to use, though it’s not one of the most intuitive webinar hosting services.

Zoom Support

The support you get depends on your plan.

Free plan users can only reach tech support via email ticket. Users of the first paid tier can also use live chat. Higher tiers get phone support in addition to this.

The support tends to be helpful, but it is limited for free-tier users.

The knowledge base is surprisingly extensive. There are lots of helpful articles, and you can attend a range of training webinars. It is extremely helpful for beginners to learn their way around hosting a webinar.

Price Overview

Zoom has four plans:

• Basic—100 attendees, 40-minute time limit, free
• Pro—100 attendees, $14.99/month per host
• Business—300 attendees, $19.99/month per host (10 hosts minimum)
• Enterprise—500 attendees, $19.99/month per host (50 hosts minimum)

The plans are also slightly different in the features. However, most users do fine with either free webinar hosting or the Pro plan (if you need to host longer events). Coincidentally, the two smaller plans actually get you the best deals.

Zoom User Reviews and Reputation

Zoom is well-liked among its users. Many like the easy to use platform and the unique combo of webinar and conferencing deployment models.

Similarly to ClickMeeting, Zoom puts a lot of control in the hands of the audience. Some users complain that it can be tough to ensure all attendees have a grip on the features. It’s a fair point and something to keep in mind.

Verdict

Zoom offers awesome value if you go for one of the 100-attendee plans. The platform is best for doing classes or coaching sessions, which usually stay under 100 attendees anyway. If you need something with a bit more punch, though, you should check out our other webinar platform reviews above.

Zoho is a provider of cloud-based SaaS tools. Its Meetings software has gone through many changes over the years, and now offers several tiers that let you host a fully-fledged webinar.

Here’s what it can do.

Zoho Webinar Features

The platform was initially meant as a software for peer-level web meetings, so you can still only do live webinars. You do have the option to record webinars, though. You can store up to 25 and make them available on-demand.

Accessibility

Zoho Webinar makes both hosting webinars and attending them pretty straightforward.

On the host’s side, you can do everything from the browser. Zoho does let you use a Chrome or Firefox extension to leverage a browser’s screen sharing capabilities. This is much easier than downloading an entire app to share your screen.

You can also pick between sharing your entire screen or just the window of an application, which is a nice touch.

If you prefer, you can phone in via VoIP and use your mobile device’s microphone, which is handy.

Attendees, on the other hand, can access all the features from the browser. There are also an Android and an iOS app for mobile users. Also, there’s an option to use VoIP to phone in, or you can set up a toll-free number for an extra $20/month.

Zoho offers one of the best webinar platforms in terms of easy accessibility.

Engagement

Zoho includes plentiful features to help you engage attendees.

For starters, you can set up polls. You can either prepare a poll beforehand or set up an one on the go. There is no option to ask open-ended questions, though.

The platform also has a handy Q&A tab. Attendees can ask questions that are laid out clearly for you to preview. You can either reply via private message or let everyone see the question before you address it.

The attendees can also raise a hand, and you can let them take the stage.

Unfortunately, Zoho’s webinar technology is designed for meetings and company seminars rather than marketing. That means you miss out on some salesy features like limited-time offers.

Follow-up

Zoho Webinar also gives you excellent features for following up with attendees and improving future webinars.

You can send out automated emails after the event. Another option is to make the recording available to those who registered but didn’t attend.

Zoho also throws advanced analytics features into the mix. You can generate reports based on registrants’ location, time of registration, attendance, poll and Q&A activity, and many other factors.

You can leverage these to get much better results out of your webinar platform. The tools are particularly potent when used with Zoho’s integrations.

Zoho Webinar Integrations

Speaking of, you can combine Zoho Webinar with other Zoho’s services.

One notable integration is with Zoho Campaigns, which is a powerful emailing software. The two platforms play well with each other and make it fairly easy to communicate with webinar registrants. That said, Zoho Webinar doesn’t really support other emailing integrations, which makes things sort of complicated if you’re using another service.

You can also connect the webinar hosting with Zoho CRM, which is another awesome piece of software. If you’re using webinars for marketing, Zoho CRM can help you get the most out of them. Still, there’s the same problem of not allowing any other CRM tools.

And that’s about it for the important integrations. Zoho Webinar is a decent platform, but it falls a bit short here, especially if you want to do things like charge for webinars.

Ease of Use

Zoho Webinar makes it a breeze to set everything up.

The web app interface is clean and, once you begin the webinar, you’ll see all the options organized into neat tabs. You can reach anything you need in just a few clicks.

One thing to point out is the software will only prompt you to download the browser extension once you attempt to share your screen. It’s best to do this before you create a webinar so you don’t overlook it.

Zoho Webinar Support

Zoho’s support is available 24h per day, but only on workdays. Plus, there’s no dedicated phone line for just the webinar software. Your best bet is to email the support if you need any help.

The knowledge base is decent, though. Zoho’s team also does frequent webinars on using the platform. They are a helpful resource if you’re just getting started.

Price Overview

Zoho offers four pricing plans that let you set up a webinar. They are based on the number of attendees:

• 25 Attendees—$19/month/host
• 50 Attendees—$29/month/host
• 100 Attendees—$39/month/host
• 250 Attendees—$79/month/host

The webinar hosting software is geared towards small and medium-sized webinars. Since the price increases the more hosts you have, it’s definitely way more affordable to just have one presenter. If multiple presenter support is a must for you, you can find a more budget-friendly solution.

Zoho Webinar User Reviews and Reputation

As you’d expect, most users praise Zoho Webinar for its extensive collaboration mechanisms and the straightforwardness of setting up online meetings. Many users absolutely love that you can have simultaneous webcam feeds, which is something many webinar solutions can’t do.

Some users would like it if the platform worked with more mainstream services, especially email marketing tools. Zoho does offer integrations with its own software to compensate for this, but it’s a fair point.

Other than that, it’s mostly positive reviews.

Verdict

Zoho Webinar is a decent webinar host if you want to set up corporate training or customer onboarding events. You can get a particularly lucrative deal for smaller events with just one presenter. If you want something more robust with added sales potential, though, you might want to look into a solution like WebinarJam

GoToWebinar is a widely used platform. It caters to all types of audiences and offers a broad range of tools.

Here’s what they are.

GoToWebinar Features

GoToWebinar lets you run both live and automated webinars. You can record a live webinar feed and use the recording later.

There is also an option to simulate live webinars, though you can get the advanced features of the top webinar platforms like EverWebinar.

Content Editing and Webinar Management

GoToWebinar has decent features that let you prepare a webinar. It’s pretty easy to pre-record a video in-app or use one of your pre-loaded videos. The platform even includes a video editing tool, which is useful for preparing automated webinars.

It does lack a few important features, like displaying PowerPoint presentations directly from the app. For such things, you’ll have to share your screen.

If you do a live webinar, you can use handy features like the highlighting tools.

GoToWebinar supports a range of file formats that you can make available for download. Videos are only available for download with some plans, though.

Managing everything yourself can get a tad overwhelming at times. You can have co-hosts to help you out and also have someone manage all the attendees, though, which is a great help.

White Labelling

The webinar hosting software is fully white-label, so you can set up your own custom colors, registration page, and logo. This makes you seem more professional to the attendees, which is always a plus.

Attendee Engagement

GoToWebinar has pretty decent tools to engage your audience. For starters, you can create polls and quizzes, which are standard features. You also get decent analytics tools and keep an eye on what your audience is doing, even during the webinar. This helps you work towards getting the most engagement.

One pretty cool feature is letting an audience member turn on their mic or webcam. It’s an extra step that can make live webinars feel extra personal.

You can also give out certificates to people who attended. It’s a cool way to add a bit of extra value for the attendees.

Reliability

Not a feature per se, but it should be mentioned that GoToWebinar is immensely effective when it comes to scaling to a massive number of attendees.

Many webinar solutions boast both being able to handle a bunch of people and having shiny, advanced tools. However, once you try to give a thousand users the full experience, things start to break.

GoToWebinar has no such problems. You can easily host thousands of attendees, though the features could be flashier.

GoToWebinar Integrations

GoToWebinar has many integrations. For starters, the platform works well with popular emailing software like MailChimp and AWeber. You can send out both reminders and follow-up emails.

You can also integrate it with tools like Google Analytics and social media like Facebook. This lets you gather data for both overall visitors and ad performance.

One missing feature is a payment system. If you want to collect payments, you’ll have to set up your own system, which makes the platform less than ideal for paid webinars.

The webinar host lets you use the API to integrate custom software yourself, though, which is useful for larger companies.

You can also use a range of other integrations. These include CRM software like Hubspot and SalesForce. You can also use Leadpages, Oracle/Eloqua, and Marketo, which can all help you with lead generation.

All in all, you get decent tools that can help you get the most out of the platform.

Ease of Use

The platform makes it relatively straightforward to set up a webinar. Just keep in mind you should schedule bigger events well in advance.

This is because everyone who attends has to confirm their attendance before the webinar starts. You can run impromptu webinars, but these limit the number of attendees to 200.

It’s fairly easy to use the platform. All the options are laid out clearly, so everyone can find them easily.

One complaint is that the attendees have to download the desktop app if you’re on the smallest plan. This extra step is bound to lower your turnout rate, which is the price you pay when you host free webinars.

Another thing is that you might not see the same layout as your attendees. The recorded webinar might also look different from the live version. This can make it more difficult to organize everything if you’re unfamiliar with all the layouts. Your best bet is to keep an eye on what your audience is telling you and make changes if they can’t see everything.

GoToWebinar Support

GoToWebinar has a decent knowledge base that covers all the most common questions and issues.

You can only contact the support by phone. This can be annoying, especially with international webinar hosting platforms. Even worse, you have to schedule the call with the support in advance. The help center also forces you to scroll through the knowledge base to do so.

As for the quality of the support, it’s good enough. You can get proper assistance, but it’s a bit difficult to reach the support team.

Price Overview

GoToWebinar offers three plans:

• Starter—100 attendees, $89/month
• Pro—500 attendees, $199/month
• Plus—1,000 attendees, $429/month

The pricing applies if you pay annually. If you pay month-to-month, the price is 25% higher.

The starter plan is sort of limited, though, as it forces the attendees to download the app. It also doesn’t let you design custom URLs, give out certificates, and share video files for download. You need to go with one of the larger plans to take advantage of those features.

GoToWebinar User Reviews and Reputation

This one could go both ways.

Long-term users like the reliability of the platform and that everything works smoothly.

On the other hand, many users are noticing that GoToWebinar is somewhat struggling to keep up with the leading solutions. GoToWebiar is still a respectable platform, but it could use a bit of a feature upgrade.

Verdict

GoToWebinar is a decent platform across the board. It does pretty much everything well, although it lacks a few advanced features, and the overall price is a bit high. The reliability makes it worth it, though.

WebinarNinja advertises as an all-in-one webinar solution. Its goal is to make doing a webinar as easy as one-two-three for everyone.

Here’s how it goes about achieving this:

WebinarNinja Features

WebinarNinja can handle both live and automated webinars. There is also a hybrid event option, but this is reserved for higher-tier plans. Lower-end plans only let you upload videos for automated events, not include them in live ones.

The webinar hosting provider does have a video tool that might seem like a handy way to do a hybrid event. However, this actually just displays a YouTube video to your viewers. The feature is pretty clunky, and it’s hardly a replacement for uploading a video directly to the platform.

Proprietary Streaming Engine

A few users did also complain about video quality. WebinarNinja does have somewhat poorer webinar broadcasting than a few other services, especially ones with a proprietary streaming engine like Demio.

On the flipside, live streaming has practically no delay. You’re trading a bit of quality for convenience.

There are a few other handy options available. The online webinar platform lets you do private webinars. You can also set up a paid event and accept payments through Stripe. Another feature is to co-host a webinar. The options are extensive.

Engagement Tools

WebinarNinja has rather decent engagement features.

You can do polls and calls-to-action. You can also use a rather convenient Q&A feature. This makes it easy to find questions, but it also lets you attach a timestamp to each one. That way, users watching the recording can easily find an answer to each question.

You can also share screens or display a presentation directly from the webinar website. This can make your event much more engaging, and screen sharing is particularly handy for doing a software demonstration.

After the webinar is over, you can inspect comprehensive analytics. You can use the data to improve future webinars. WebinarNinja also has its own set of marketing tools, so you can play around with options and maximize attendance.

You can also take advantage of decent white-labeling. You can set up branded URLs, custom webinar pages, embeddable registration forms, and even branded thank-you and replay pages. You’ll be promoting your own business and not the webinar technology.

Advanced Scheduling

Automated webinars also add quite sophisticated scheduling tools.

You can set up one-time webinars or recurring events. You can also block out specific times, like weekends or holidays.

You can also pick how many future webinars you want to list on the sign-up page. This is a really nice touch, and it can potentially get you a small conversion boost.

If you don’t want to bother with scheduling, you can just make your webinars available for on-demand viewing. This is an excellent option if you turn a live webinar into an automated event and want everyone to see it.

All in all, WebinarNinja is one of the best webinar software of 2022 in terms of features. The majority of them are included in all the plans, which is also an advantage over many providers.

WebinarNinja Integrations

The minds behind WebinarNinja make a pretty bold claim that the platform integrates with everything.

For starters, it has native integrations for various email marketing services like MailChimp and AWeber. You can also connect it to lead generation software like ClickFunnels and Leadpages.

Aside from that, WebinarNinja handles integrations with Zapier. This adds 2,000+ other apps you can connect to. So, yes, WebinarNinja technically does integrate with everything.

Joking aside, Zapier is a nice addition and a popular one among webinar hosts. Connecting email marketing and lead generation tools is always useful when hosting webinars.

Ease of Use

WebinarNinja is reasonably straightforward.

It sports no-download webinar tech, so you can just do everything from the comfort of your web browser. Plus, the proprietary streaming engine ensures attendees can easily participate across devices and operating systems.

The main webinar room also looks very clean. You can fully focus on your presentation without struggling with stream appearance or using the features.

The webinar system also lets you switch between different stream layouts. That way, you can emphasize the section of the stream that you want users focused on. The feature can make your job a whole lot easier, and very few platforms get this right.

All things taken into account, WebinarNinja is one of the easier platforms to get the hang of.

WebinarNinja Support

You can reach WebinarNinja’s support team through live chat or email.

The support team provides solid assistance. They usually resolve issues relatively quickly.

The response times are kind of erratic, though. You might have to wait a few minutes if the support is swamped with requests.

The knowledge base also contains many guides helpfully divided into 10 categories. You can find info on things like managing a webinar or adjusting the webinar hosting service settings.

All in all, WebinarNinja support is decent, albeit sometimes a bit slow.

Price Overview

WebinarNinja has four plans:

• Starter—100 attendees, $39/month
• Pro—300 attendees, $79/month
• Plus—500 attendees, $129/month
• Power—1000 attendees, $199/month

The pricing applies if you go for an annual subscription. The price is 25% higher if you decide to pay monthly.

The attendee limit applies only to live webinars. There are no restrictions on how many people can view your pre-recorded events.

Most features are available across the board. You can do both live and automated events on the Starter plan. Many solutions reserve prerecorded events for higher-tier plans, so WebinarNinja gets the points for a fair pricing model.

The Pro plan and above let you create webinar series and summits. You also have to be on the Pro plan to use Facebook ad tracking.

The only real difference between the Plus and the Power tiers is the number of live attendees they allow. They are also the only plans that allow hybrid webinars, which is a shame if you need hybrid events for a smaller audience.

The pricing is competitive, though the deals would be more attractive if you could host hybrid events on lower-end plans as well.

WebinarNinja User Reviews and Reputation

WebinarNinja user reviews generally lean to the positive. Most customers praise the webinar hosting platform for being very easy to use and letting you create a webinar within minutes.

Most complaints are about the bugginess in some of the features. There’s not much to say here – WebinarNinja definitely has a few features to fix, but nothing major.

It’s reassuring to see WebinarNinja’s team address each review, be it positive or negative. It’s a good signal that the provider listens to feedback and looks to improve.

Verdict

WebinarNinja has a solid offer, especially when you factor in the affordable pricing. It offers access to plenty of robust tools, is highly extensible, and lets you handle both live and automated events with one solution. It’s one of the best webinar platforms, even though it has a few minor issues to sort out.

CrowdCast is a solution that favors ease of use and scalability. It is strongly influenced by social media, and one of the main ideas behind it is building an online community.

This is what the culture means for CrowdCast’s customers:

CrowdCast Features

CrowdCast mainly focuses on live events. You can make recordings available after the fact, but that’s about it for pre-recorded webinars.

A Webinar Tool and a Social Website

CrowdCast takes a bit of a unique approach. Instead of being a full-on webinar solution, it’s something of a social media platform as well.

Your webinars are hosted on CrowdCast’s website and are discoverable on its pages or through its search tools. Other people using CrowdCast can easily find your events. You can think of it as something like the YouTube or Twitch of webinar websites.

The community itself is the advantage. Users can randomly find your events, even though you wouldn’t necessarily reach them otherwise. And, the bigger the platform becomes, the more potential your webinars have for growth.

Now, this obviously isn’t ideal for everyone. Company training webinars or other private events won’t benefit from CrowdCast’s structure. Things like marketing events or paid workshops, on the other hand, can absolutely blow up in popularity.

This does have its drawbacks. You can’t really embed the webinar on your own website or customize the appearance of the webinar platform. In essence, it’s better to start building your popularity on CrowdCast than try to integrate it into an existing sales funnel.

Tons of Payment Options

Speaking of paid webinars, CrowdCast has a ton of functions for accepting payments from your attendees.

Aside from the obvious charging for attendance, you can let registrants pay what they want. This includes setting a top and bottom limit on payments. You can earn a bit from every attendee, but potentially get more if they really appreciate your content.

You can also accept donations during events, much like Twitch streamers. This is a popular mode of earning through live streams, so it’s nice that CrowdCast has it.

If you have a Patreon page, you can create exclusive events for patrons. This is an excellent option for creators who already have a Patreon audience (or intend to build one).

It all amounts to more ways to earn money than pretty much any other online webinar platform.

Viewer Engagement

You can also use all the engagement tools you get with a standard webinar platform. This covers chat, Q&A, polls, calls-to-action, etc.

These are a bit hit-and-miss, though. Live chat takes up way too much space on the webinar page, while the CTA isn’t obvious enough. You might have to point out where the audience members should click.

All in all, CrowdCast has a unique but robust feature offer, making it one of the best webinar platforms in its niche.

CrowdCast Integrations

CrowdCast integrates ConvertKit and Drip for emailing. The former is more geared towards creators while the latter leans towards commerce. Both are decent email marketing tools, and they can help you get hundreds of viewers.

Stripe is CrowdCast’s go-to payment method. It is one of the most popular processors, so this is fine.

The software can also connect to Patreon. You can find more details covered above.

For everything else, you can use Zapier. This lets you connect to a bunch of other software.

Ease of Use

CrowdCast has a unique offer, so it’s as appropriate to compare it to webinar websites as it is to live streaming services.

The solution is geared towards content creators more than your traditional webinar crowd. It’s very easy to set up an event, integrate the solution with your social media. Also, the whole thing won’t overwhelm you with options.

It’s also very straightforward to have multiple presenters in one stream. This is a huge deal since CrowdCast puts a massive focus on the community. Cooperating with other webinar hosts will likely be the key to driving more traffic, and CrowdCast lets you handle it without a hitch.

All in all, CrowdCast makes it easy for beginners to get started.

CrowdCast Support

You can reach CrowdCast support via email and live chat. You can always easily access chat in the bottom left corner of the website, which is a nice detail.

The support does its best to resolve every issue, but it just feels like the team is spread too thin. It usually takes hours for someone to get back to you.

Once you do get through to the support, you can expect a reasonable level of service.

Price Overview

You’ll find four pricing plans on the webinar website:

• Starter—50 attendees, 5h/month, $20/month
• Lite—100 attendees, 10h/month, $34/month
• Pro—250 attendees, 20h/month, $62/month
• Business—1,000 attendees, 40h/month, $139/month

A nice feature is that you don’t have to upgrade your plan if you go over the attendee limit. Instead, CrowdCast can charge you $0.15 per additional attendee, which isn’t too bad.

The pricing applies if you go for annual payments. You can pay month-to-month, but you would miss out on the 30% discount.

Keep in mind the Starter and Lite plans limit streams to 2h. The Starter plan also imposes a 5% transaction fee, which is a bit annoying. The percentage goes down as you scale up, but you can’t completely waive it.

The overall pricing is reasonable, though. CrowdCast makes it affordable to start, and the system scales very naturally, as promised.

CrowdCast User Reviews and Reputation

Many webinar service reviews praise CrowdCast for being incredibly user-friendly. It’s a fair point—the solution is one of the most straightforward in the industry.

Some clients complain about this or that bug. The tech team does its best to keep everything in tip-top shape, but the tool does have an occasional problem. That said, there were no major issues during testing, so these are more one-off occurrences.

Still, CrowdCast user reviews lean heavily to the positive.

Verdict

CrowdCast is a fresh mix of a social website and a webinar platform. It’s excellent for spreading the word about your events, earning through webinars, and just building your brand identity and following. If you want a unique solution with unique advantages, CrowdCast is a webinar site that’s definitely worth checking out.

Stealth Seminar is a popular solution with ten years in the industry. The main idea behind the platform is to automate as many functions as possible, so you can get recurring income with as little maintenance as possible.

Stealth Seminar Features

Although most Stealth Seminar features are geared toward automated webinars, you can also do live and hybrid events.

Streaming Engine

The platform encodes the videos into multiple formats for you. This leads to top-of-the-line performance across devices and operating systems, whichever type of event you go for. This beats systems like EverWebinar that work poorly on mobile and have other issues.

Engagement Tools

The webinar host comes with a bunch of viewer engagement and marketing options.

You can do polls and CTAs to engage the audience and push them towards conversion. You can even use various elements (like a limited-time offer) to simulate scarcity. This works particularly well because Stealth Seminar lets you display the timer anywhere on the page. You can make the call-to-action apparent but non-obtrusive, ensuring maximum effectiveness.

You can also get real-time tracking for attendees, do A/B testing, simulate attendee numbers, and a whole bunch more. It all serves to get you maximum effectiveness out of your events.

Simulated Live Streaming

One of the main selling points of the online webinar platform is simulating live events. You can upload a video (or use a live webinar recording) and set up the chat and attendee simulation to make it look like a live event.

When done right, this can get you recurring value combined with the engagement of a live webinar. It takes some effort to set up the system, but you can run the same webinar for months or years with minimal effort.

Stealth Seminar has the edge over most competing webinar sites like EverWebinar. This is because it actually encodes the video and simulates streaming in real-time instead of just embedding the video into the page. Attendees will be much less likely to suspect you aren’t doing a live event.

Of course, you can enjoy very advanced scheduling options. You can run any number of webinars at any time you like.

The simulated events can completely mimic real ones. You can use all the features like CTAs and even have chat display preset lines. You can’t really have the presenter answer real attendee questions. Still, you can have someone address questions in chat and make the experience even more realistic.

Bottom line—Stealth Seminar handles both live and automated events splendidly and even has the edge over the best webinar software like EverWebinar.

Stealth Seminar Integrations

Stealth Seminar integrates with a bunch of emailing and CRM apps. You can connect to MailChimp, AWeber, HubSpot, Drip, ActiveCampaign, etc. It does lack native support for a few popular apps like SalesForce, but most of the big ones are supported.

Aside from that, Stealth Seminar includes a Zapier plugin, but this is still in beta. This can work, but you need to ask the support to let you use it.

Stealth Seminar runs pretty standard integrations to most other webinar websites, all in all.

Ease of Use

Stealth Seminar is pretty easy to get the hang of.

It’s very easy to set up the whole video feed and all the interactive elements. It might take a bit of time to explore all the options. Still, once you set up your preference, you’ll only have to occasionally fine-tune the details.

The solution has helpful templates for everything, including registration pages, countdown pages, and, of course, the main event page. You can do a bit of tinkering to get a unique look, and you’re good to go.

All in all, the webinar hosting site is fairly beginner-friendly.

Stealth Seminar Support

The Stealth Seminar team is available 24/7 via phone, email, and live chat. The website even helpfully displays the chat in the lower right corner at all times, making it easy to quickly contact the support. They do have Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s off, but this shouldn’t be that much of an issue.

The support does a solid job. The agents tend to get back to you relatively quickly, and they efficiently resolve issues with the platform and provide general guidance. No end of customers praises the support team, and with good reason.

The provider also offers a bunch of downloadable materials, including a video series on how to host a webinar. You get everything you need to set up effective DIY events.

Price Overview

Stealth Seminar has several pricing plans:

• Starter, 150 attendees—$58.29/month
• Growth, 300 attendees—$112.50/month
• Growth, 500 attendees—$183.33/month
• Power, up to 50,000 attendees—Quoted plan

You can also take advantage of a 30-day free trial.

The pricing applies if you go for the annual deal. You can pay monthly, but this is 20% more expensive and tacks on a $30 setup fee on the Starter plan.

Even with the discounted annual prices, Stealth Seminar is among the more premium solutions. If you’re looking for something more affordable, you can check some of our other webinar platform reviews above.

Stealth Seminar User Reviews and Reputation

Most Stealth Seminar user reviews praise the platform for being incredibly user-friendly. The platform makes it straightforward for beginners to get started, and the support is there to help you along the way.

There’s little in terms of bad reviews, but a few users did point out the UI isn’t the most attractive. Stealth Seminar is a bit rough around the edges, but this doesn’t make it any less effective.

Verdict

Stealth Seminar has some of the best webinar tools and is even the top platform for evergreen events. Plus, you get excellent support. Still, the pricing is a bit much compared to the competition. You should weigh the additional features and see if they are worth the extra money for your particular project.

BigMarker is one of the fastest-developing solutions out there. Some of its customers include giants like Samsung and Fuji. Let’s see what it can do for you and your business.

BigMarker Features

BigMarker can handle both live and automated events.

Various Webinar Types

The categorizes different event types. You get common deployment models like on-demand videos, evergreen webinars, or live streams to YouTube.

A webinar series is a popular feature now. It basically lets users register once for a whole array of webinars.

A 24/7 webinar is a relatively uncommon type which opens an always-on meeting room. Attendees can go in at any time. This is more suitable for web conferencing than actually hosting webinars, though.

Each type of event gets its own tab in the user interface. This simplifies the process of setting up a webinar. You won’t have to worry about tools you don’t need cluttering up the interface.

There are a lot of options. You should be ready to dedicate a few hours to exploring everything and configuring the event correctly.

Engagement Tools

The platform also has rather decent viewer engagement features.

You can do polls, use a whiteboard, annotation tools, etc. The chat also allows private messaging and has a solid Q&A option. You also get screen sharing and handout tools and a whole lot more.

The webinar platform features two ways to present CTAs, but neither is ideal. The issue is that, when an attendee closes the call-to-action, they can’t reopen it. This just means you miss out on converting users who become interested in the offer after closing the CTA.

Design Options

Other than the CTA issues, BigMarker actually has rather decent capabilities to design a full sales funnel.

You can begin with the robust landing page options. You get 15 excellent templates to start with, and these are highly customizable.

The customization options for the rest of the pages are also excellent. You can go as deep as redesigning the video player’s appearance and adding your own branding to it. Put simply, BigMarker allows some of the most professional-looking designs out there.

You can also track how your webinars perform according to user behavior. You can get an overview of the analytics or export data into a different CRM system. This helps you work your way towards the perfect results.

All in all, the webinar hosting features are decent, though the CTA design could be improved.

BigMarker Integrations

For starters, BigMarker integrates with most of the major emailing services. This includes MailChimp, ConstantContact, Drip, Keap, etc.

One issue is that BigMarker, unlike most software, doesn’t let you export attendee data to your mailing tool. Instead, it takes email contacts from your mailing list and lets you use BigMarker to send out emails.

This is just silly. There is no reason to use BigMarker for emailing if you already pay for an email marketing service. Also, you lose the option to customize email campaigns according to webinar data, which is arguably one of the most impactful features you can get. Emailing integrations just don’t work, plain and simple.

Moving on, BigMarker also integrates with Instapage and Unbounce, which are solid landing page builders. Although these are useful, you might not need them, since the webinar website has pretty darn impressive landing page options of its own.

You can also use a bunch of other integrations, including:

• Slack for online collaborative services
• Dropbox for storage
• Stripe and Authorize.net for payment processing
• Facebook Live and YouTube Live for webinar broadcasting

… and a lot more.

If something you need isn’t on the integration list, BigMarker can connect to a bunch of other apps via Zapier.

All in all, it’s a decent integration offer, but it can’t really make up for inadequate emailing tools.

Ease of Use

Just separating webinar types into multiple tabs gives you an easier start with BigMarker. You can focus on the features relevant to your type of event and not worry about anything extra.

The dashboard has one of the best-designed layouts among webinar hosting services. Even though there are many options to go through, you likely won’t have trouble navigating the interface.

The main webinar room also has a lot of options, but everything is pretty obvious to find. You also get pretty much the same view as your audience, so you won’t have to guess what everyone is seeing.

The solution is fairly beginner-friendly.

BigMarker Support

BigMarker support is available via phone, chat, and email. Keep in mind that the chat can be a bit buggy. It might be best to use the other channels.

The support provides decent assistance. They have no issues answering any and all questions, and they know their webinar solution well.

If you need a bit of extra help, you can purchase additional services. This covers things like professional marketing consulting, webinar moderator services, integration, and custom feature development.

These cost $250-500/month. It might seem pricey, but you’re usually getting a better deal than if you hired a third-party expert. Most clients don’t really use these, but it is excellent to have them as an option down the road.

Price Overview

BigMarker has three paid plans:

• Starter—1 presenter, 100 attendees, $79/month
• Elite—2 presenters, 500 attendees, $159/month
• Summit—4 presenters, 1,000 attendees, $299/month

BigMarker also runs a quoted plan, but this is more for enterprise-grade projects and reselling webinar tools.

The prices apply if you pay annually. You can pay monthly, but the plans would cost you $20, $30, or $100 more, respectively.

The pricing is reasonable overall. The month-to-month cost on the Summit plan is a bit high, though, so it’s your best bet to pay annually if you can.

BigMarker User Reviews and Reputation

BigMarker has customer satisfaction of around 97-98%, which is impressive. Many users praise the platform for being very easy to get the hang of. Also, numerous clients love the hands-on support team.

A few user-generated webinar services reviews did mention that BigMarker bandwidth requirements are a bit high. This is a common issue with the no-download webinar system architecture.

As long as you have an upload speed of around 10-15Mbps, though, you should have no issues streaming in full quality. BigMarker has a bandwidth checker tool, so you can test if the solution works for you in advance.

Verdict

BigMarker is an excellent solution with two significant flaws. It’s a shame since both the call-to-action tool and the emailing integrations are an easy fix. BigMarker would score much higher in our webinar platform reviews if the issues were fixed.

LiveStorm is a webinar and vendor-hosted web conferencing solution bunched in one. It boasts a simple software, straightforward pricing, and excellent support.

This is how it delivers:

LiveStorm Features

LiveStorm can do both live and automated events. There’s no limit on recording storage, so the platform records live events automatically for you. You can easily make these available on-demand to registrants who didn’t attend or just turn them into automated events for recurring value.

The webinar system also lets you do paid or private events. You have decent options for sending out invites and reminders and letting users phone in through VoIP.

Design Features

LiveStorm features attractive designs. The webinar window and related pages all look excellent and can be easily customized with your own branding.

The layouts also make sense, and the interactive elements won’t interrupt the presentation. One small complaint is that the call-to-action design could be a bit better. The attendees tend to just close the CTA window and forget about it, which is problematic for your conversion rate. It’s not a dramatic issue, but it’s something to be improved.

You also get a customizable form building tool. You can include these forms anywhere by simply pasting the code.

Engagement Features

The webinar provider has decent viewer engagement tools. You can set up polls, CTAs, chat in real-time, and use a solid Q&A tool. Attendees can choose to send questions privately or publicly. Audience members can even upvote public questions to push the most relevant ones to the top.

You can have multiple presenters. You can also invite attendees to present, which is an excellent feature for workshops or product demonstrations. Your attendees will love having the chance to try their hand at whatever the webinar is about.

You can also use solid slide show and screen sharing tools. You can let attendees see your entire screen or just a specific app—handy for software product demonstrations.

Advanced Analytics

Finally, you can get access to and export extensive analytics data. This goes deep into the nitty-gritty of audience stats, and you can even see data on individual attendees.

You can see stats on when your attendance peaked and when most attendees left the webinar. All in all, you get a bunch of data to help you make future webinars more effective.

In essence, LiveStorm offers solid features and gives you all the necessary building blocks to create a webinar effectively.

LiveStorm Integrations

LiveStorm sports integrations with most of the big emailing and CRM solutions. This covers MailChimp, HubSpot, Drip, Mailjet, and a bunch more.

It also integrates with live streaming services like YouTube Live and Twitch. That way, you can stream your webinar across multiple channels and make it more accessible to potential attendees.

Finally, the service integrates with Google Ads and Facebook Ads. This lets you track how your ad campaigns perform so you can get the most out of them.

If you want to connect LiveStorm to something else, you can do it through Zapier. You can connect to your favorite apps and build your own workflows.

Ease of Use

It’s easy to get started with LiveStorm. The whole webinar hosting software is browser-based, so neither you nor the attendees have to download anything.

From there, navigating the interface feels pretty intuitive. Admittedly, there is a bit of a learning curve to doing a live event and using all the interactive elements. You should do a trial run before your first real event to be safe.

Other than that, there are no complaints to speak of.

LiveStorm Support

LiveStorm support in English, French, and Spanish. Multilingual support is always a plus.

The support is available through email and chat, though only during business hours (10:00 am – 6:30 pm CET, Monday through Friday). It would be better if LiveStorm had 24/7 support since most of the competition does offer it.

A few users did also complain about the support not being the most responsive. These do seem like a one-off occurrence more than a common trend, though.

Once you do get through, the support is rather friendly. The agents take their time to listen and understand each problem or question. They usually resolve everything without a hitch.

You also get access to a decent number of learning materials. There are plentiful resources to help you learn how to do webinars.

Price Overview

LiveStorm offers both webinar and web conferencing tools, so only two pricing plans are actually for webinar hosting.

• Webinar Basic—10 registrants, 20 minutes limit, $0/month
• Webinar Premium—100 registrants, 4h limit, $99/month (+$99 for up to 250 attendees, + $209 for 1,000 attendees)

The pricing applies if you pay annually. The Premium plan would cost you $10 more with monthly payments.

You read that right; you can do 20-minute webinars with up to 10 attendees for free indefinitely. This gives you space to start small and test out the platform for as long as you need. You might not get express support on the free plan, though, but this is kind of a given.

The pricing is above average on the Webinar Premium plan. Webinar providers like Demio have much more affordable pricing for similar plans.

LiveStorm User Reviews and Reputation

LiveStorm gets plenty of praise for having robust features and being relatively easy to handle. The solution is respectable, so there’s little surprise there.

A few users did complain about the landing page customization being stiff and lacking branding options. It’s true LiveStorm could include more design options and potentially improve webinar sign-up rates that way.

Other than that, LiveStorm gets positive user reviews all the way.

Verdict

LiveStorm has decent features and integrations, and it works excellently for doing both live and pre-recorded webinars. Plus, you can indefinitely host free webinars with up to 10 attendees. That said, the Premium plan is a bit costly for the attendee limit, and LiveStorm doesn’t even include 24/7 support. You do get excellent tools, but the paid plan could be a bit more affordable.

EasyWebinar is a solution focused on being easy enough for everyone to use while having robust features. It claims it will easily get you maximum conversions.

So, let’s get into the facts and see how the platform performs.

EasyWebinar Features

EasyWebinar is a two-in-one webinar technology that lets you do both live and automated events.

Proprietary Streaming Engine

The platform follows the lead of the top hosts like Demio and WebinarJam and runs its own streaming engine. Many companies have embraced this trend. It’s a welcome shift since it lets you avoid the lag of YouTube Live’s engine.

One limitation is that you can’t upload a video directly to the platform. You can only record a live event and run it as an automated webinar afterward. This makes it challenging to create a really high-quality recording and capitalize on the higher production value.

An alternative is to upload a recording to a cloud storage service and play it from there. This entails paying a bit extra for storage, though.

Attendee Engagement

The webinar hosting site engagement features are a bit hit-and-miss.

On the one hand, you can run multiple presenters, give audience members the spotlight, share screens (in HD), and a lot more. These are all potent tools to make your events more impactful.

You can also view and export comprehensive analytics data that can help you make future events more engaging. The stats go so in-depth that you can even view info on individual attendees.

On the other hand, EasyWebinar lacks a few standard features. While the company mentions interactive elements like polling and Q&A tools, these are entirely absent. Advertising them is completely misleading, and it doesn’t do EasyWebinar any favors.

Scheduling Options

The webinar hosting service offers quite advanced features for scheduling automated events.

For starters, there are the standard tools for customizing the frequency of webinars, blocking out specific dates, etc.

You can also simulate live events. EasyWebinar even simulates live streaming the recordings, so your attendees will feel like they are actually attending a live event.

You can also set up just-in-time webinars. This will let users attend a webinar mere minutes after signing up, making them feel lucky to have signed up at the right time.

You can also do the opposite, however, and set a waiting period before a webinar is open for newcomers. This simulates demand for your events, and makes attendees more eager to… well, attend.

All in all, EasyWebinar is solid for both live and automated events, though a few standard webinar tools are missing.

EasyWebinar Integrations

EasyWebinar can connect to various emailing services, including big ones like MailChimp, AWeber, and Active Campaign. This easily lets you invite users who are already subscribed to your newsletter and get an attendance boost.

EasyWebinar is also connected to various payment gateways. This covers services like PayPal, Stripe, and Braintree. You can easily charge for attendance or sell products.

Speaking of selling, EasyWebinar can also connect to various services for selling products. This includes shopping cart software like SamCart and the up-and-coming ThriveCart.

If you need something more, EasyWebinar also integrates Zapier. This lets you connect it to numerous other collaborative services and other apps.

Ease of Use

As the name suggests, EasyWebinar makes webinar hosting an easy endeavor.

The designs aren’t that flashy, but it’s relatively easy to set up an event and an accompanying sales funnel. You just need to click around a bit and fill out a few text fields, and you’re good to go.

When you get into the actual event, you get pretty much the same view as the attendees (plus a few admin options). You’ll always know what your audience is seeing, and it is easy to manage all the interactive elements.

All in all, the platform makes it fairly easy to run an effective webinar.

EasyWebinar Support

EasyWebinar’s support is available 24/7 via phone, email, and live chat.

The webinar host support is rather sloppy, however. The wait times on live chat are 20 minutes on a good day, and sometimes you get left hanging for hours.

The provider does have respectable resources on setting up a webinar and using the platform. You can even attend webinars on the topic of doing webinars and marketing products effectively.

Still, it hardly compensates for the lacking support.

Price Overview

For starters, EasyWebinar offers a 14-day free trial. You can host a webinar for free and see if the platform works for you.

EasyWebinar does require your credit card info, however. Make sure to cancel the plan before your free trial is up if you don’t want to be charged for the next month.

The platform has three plans:

• Personal—100 attendees, $59/month
• Pro—500 attendees, $90/month
• Enterprise—2000 attendees, $349/month

The pricing applies if you go for annual payments. Going for month-to-month payments, the plans would cost you $78/month, $129/month, or $499/month.

The webinar service pricing is a bit clunky. The gaps between the plans are pretty huge, making scaling difficult. Plus, the monthly deals are kind of pricey. All things considered, the pricing model could do with a revamp.

EasyWebinar User Reviews and Reputation

Many users like EasyWebinar for its accessibility and effectiveness. Even beginners can set everything up with little difficulty.

Most complaints are about EasyWebinar missing this or that feature. To be fair, the solution does lack tools the competitors offer, including some rather common ones like polling.

To make matters worse, EasyWebinar advertises some of the missing features, which is simply misleading.

The webinar software reviews are mostly positive, though.

Verdict

EasyWebinar has some solid qualities. It has an excellent streaming engine, highly sophisticated scheduling, and decent integrations. That said, it does lack a few common viewer engagement tools, and the support is kind of slow. When you take pricing into account, it amounts to about average value for money.