Want to nurture your leads down the sales funnel via a webinar? We’re here to help select the right webinar platforms.
Who hasn’t experienced the dread of an unstable internet connection during a call?
You’ve also probably dealt with audio issues, software bugs and many more when going digital with your clients.
It’s easy to understand the need for a stable and reliable webinar platform.
But don’t worry. I'm here and I have your back! 😜
I’ve tested the most popular webinar platforms and selected the best ones.
But first, why are webinars so trendy?
Table of Contents
The Popularity of Webinars Explained
Top 20 Webinar Platforms for 2020
---The Top 10 Webinar Platforms for Startups and Individuals in 2020
---The 5 Enterprise Webinar Platforms of 2020
------ GoToTraining by LogMeIn
---The 5 Alternative Webinar Platforms of 2020
It’s a busy and exciting time for industry professionals. The WHOLE WORLD is wide open to new opportunities.
The catch?
You have to invest time in your online presence. 😲
Building sales funnels, writing blog content, connecting on LinkedIn has become a full-time job for many.
It’s true. ✔
Providing value to many with your experience is a profitable endeavor. But as the tasks start piling up, finding new ways to share your expertise is a must.
In fact, I have a few great tips on how to build up a LinkedIn community right here!
BUT, HERE comes the webinar! 😎
A natural evolution of the seminar, webinars are taking over the world by storm. They are a quick and easy way to engage with your leads directly while providing evergreen content for your business.
According to the latest webinar stats for 2020, more than 61% of marketers use webinars to promote their content.
On average, they have experienced a whooping 19% conversion rate. But the stats don’t end there.
The stats are more than obvious. Webinars are not just a fad. They are the next wave in the transformation of digital content.
It’s similar to how the individuals and businesses that became early adopters of social media benefited the most.
The next digital marketing transformation is happening right now. You don’t want to miss out! 🤓
The stats are more than obvious, but their webinars have more than one benefit and use.
But it can be a hassle to choose one of the many webinar platforms. (Some call it the paradox of choice).
You still need to consider factors, such as stability, functionality (recording, storage), features (Q&A, scheduling), customer experience and more.
You already know that we’re here to help you select THE right platform for your specific case, so without further adieu, let’s get started!
You know the saying from 10 years back that goes -- there’s an app for that? Well in 2020, we can confidently say that there’s a SaaS Platform for ANYTHING.
It’s true! 🤷♂️
In fact, there are more than 29 active webinar platform startups and services. Most of them are founded in the last 2-3 years.
When I started out with our research, I was set on using strict criteria to compare the top 20 webinar platforms. And I still am.
I check out and review the following:
However, I also kept our feet firmly on the ground, understanding that the differences or perceived drawbacks of some platforms might be a blessing in disguise for some specific use cases.
That’s why I tried to do our best to review and analyze the best use case scenarios for the top 20 webinar platforms. I’ll try to address the niche-specific cases as I go down the list.
Let’s jump into the reviews.
I’ll start the list with the best webinar software tools in the game for startups and individuals.
These are the perfect-case, does-it-all solutions that you need to keep in mind when selecting your platform of choice.
One of the most popular webinar tools on the market is GoToWebinar. With a full suite of creator tools, GoToWebinar easily integrates with the biggest and most popular CRM systems.
This makes it a perfect tool for a digital-first approach. The reporting feature of GoToWebinar allows you to track your attendee data.
You are easily able to update your branding to make your registration page shine. If you need to change the webinar date or details on the go, GoToWebinar has the option to automatically address all registered participants.
On the visitor-side, you have the option for adding pools, surveys, up to 5 handouts and YouTube videos, which you can play during your webinar session.
It’s a definitive webinar tool that’s perfectly easy to use.
However, the pricing can be on the more expensive side, especially if you are just starting out. Plus, while as you scale, you will be required to pay a premium based on your number of participants.
Pros
Another popular webinar tool is EasyWebinar. The tool has a suite of different integrations and does everything that a webinar platform should do.
One of the best things about EasyWebinar is the fact that its EasyCast system allows you to easily stream your webinars across multiple platforms.
If you have a following and an audience on YouTube, or just want to share your webinar via Facebook Live, EasyWebinar lets you do this with ease.
The platform is easy to get into, but it’s obvious that the creators are pushing the boundaries of what webinars can be.
The backbones of the platform allow you to further automate your webinars and sessions.
The pricing is fairly competitive, but you’d often have to pay a premium for simple things, such as branding customization.
Competing with industry behemoths, ClickMeeting has decided to take a different approach towards its pricing.
In fact, the tool has an extremely powerful and affordable startup package. The pricing scales up as you go. It’s perfect if you are just starting out.
The features available on the platform allow you to easily customize the waiting room experience of your customers.
ClickMeeting further goes above and beyond to make it possible to automate, track, schedule and run your webinar events.
The user interface is fairly intuitive, making the platform fairly obvious for someone who’s used a range of different tools before.
However, for someone who’s just starting out in the digital space, everything can be just a bit too much.
Where the platform truly shines is in its ease of automation. With just a few clicks in a dedicated tab, you will be able to automate your follow-up actions, event publishing, Vod Management and more.
EverWebinar is touted as the world’s most powerful webinar platform. However, from what I’ve seen, I have to say I'm on the fence about this statement.
YES, the platform can be considered “the most powerful” in ONE specific case.
Particularly, the platform is great for automating a flow of previously recorded webinars that you’d want to set up in a funnel flow for your audience.
If that’s the thing you need, you should look no further than EverWebinar.
On the other hand, if you are looking for a webinar platform to actively engage with your customers and easily record and stream LIVE webinars, EverWebinar might not be the right thing for you.
Coming from the established video conferencing professionals at Zoho, Zoho Webinar is a decent webinar platform.
Added as a feature to their existing Zoho Meeting software, Zoho Webinar is one of the cheapest and simplest options on the market.
Build on the shoulders of live video stability, this platform is great for internal webinars and ad-hoc webinar-based meetings.
It’s one of the few platforms that I tested that allows you to get from registration to a LIVE webinar session in LITERARY SECONDS.
In addition, the web-based software on the platform seems to be fairly lightweight.
All being said, the fact that Zoho Webinar is an extension of Zoho Meeting is obvious. It’s a side product that gets the job done, but isn’t necessarily filled with different features.
Livestorm.co is one of those software tools that just work. In fact, during our review I didn’t find anything particularly wrong with the tool.
It’s a stable platform that’s easy to get into and has an intuitive user interface. You are able to setup a company (or a brand) page in seconds, enter the information about your webinar and just hit the “Start” button.
The branding options allow you to easily customize the platform to fit your branding. The added E-Mail funnel automation makes it simple to set up pre-registration and follow-up email automation.
The customer experience is also fairly engaged, with a chat and a Q&A option.
The drawback? The analytics and data you get from your webinars is as simple as attendee/registration and average attendance rate.
WebinarNinja is one of the most powerful all-in-one webinar solutions available on the market today.
It’s everything you can ask for in a webinar platform. Automations? High-Converting Landing Pages? Engaging Attendee Experiences? WebinarNinja has it all.
It’s one of the most trusted platforms on the market for a reason.
Establishing themselves as the true leaders of the webinar, WebinarNinja also has a unique feature called the Webinar Finder.
It allows you to promote your webinar to a wider audience.
The pricing of the platform is also fairly competitive.
The platform also doesn’t stop at the live webinar feature. You are further able to create webinar series, a hybrid that includes both recorded and live videos, and on-demand webinars.
It’s a perfect tool for those who truly want to step up their webinar game.
BigMaker is one of the biggest and most powerful webinar platforms in the world. It’s in an in-between zone where they market to startups and individuals, yet seem to be mostly an enterprise solution.
Trusted by companies such as Microsoft, Panasonic, HootSuite, the United Nations and PBS, you can truly rest assured that you are in safe hands.
This of course does come with its own downsides.
The positive is a fully capable webinar platform with white label support and dozens of integrations and features.
The downside is that you are looking at an expensive price tag for an array of features that might not fit your use case scenario.
Webinar Jam is a webinar platform from the creators of EverWebinar that is focused on live webinars.
It’s an extremely powerful tool, but it has similar weaknesses to its on-demand webinar sibling.
The user interface is almost one-to-one with the addition of a few options for the live tab.
Everything on the platform is fairly intuitive. You are able to submit your own landing page designs or choose one from a variety of high-converting pages.
The notifications and integrations are also relatively feature-filled and straightforward to use.
Overall, Webinar Jam is one of the best platforms for webinar marketing available. However, it’s still a platform build primarily for marketers and a digital-first crowd.
Demio is a perfect webinar platform build specifically for webinar marketing.
It allows you to set-up your webinars in a similar manner to WebinarNinja (live, on-demand, hybrid or automated).
The tool is fairly powerful and comes from a growing startup company. It has a great attendee experience both on PC/Mac and mobile.
The only major downside is that it’s attendee count maxes out at 500.
Some webinar platforms are built from the ground-up to serve an enterprise customer base. Whether for education, NGOs or big companies, these are the top 5 Enterprise webinar platforms of 2020.
Cisco Webex Events is an extension of the already powerful Cisco Webex online conference software.
The platform is best suited for one-time events and digital webinar conferences for a bigger audience.
It’s everything you would expect from an enterprise tool when it comes to convenience and stability.
However, it’s fairly limited in its webinar marketing features.
If there’s one tool that can be called a true industry-leader in webinar technology, it’s ON24.
Build from the ground up to be a dedicated enterprise solution, ON24 has a suite of webinar and webcast products that simply can’t compare to others.
From interactive and detailed content insights and intelligence to a engagement-first approach to the delivery of video content, ON24 has everything you might need from a webinar digital experience platform.
Adobe Connect is a highly powerful webinar tool that is tailored for enterprise use.
It’s positioned as a hybrid between a virtual classroom software and a webinar manager for enterprise businesses.
Adobe Connect has all the power to help you build fully-featured digital learning experiences.
Created by the providers of remote-access software bohemet LogMeIn, GoToTraining is a dedicated webinar platform for online training.
If you want to use webinars as a primary source of education.
It’s perfect for online training within your company. It’s also a great tool for educators.
It’s use is extremely limited and niche compared to other all-in-one webinar marketing platforms, but it’s the best at what it does.
BlueJeans Events is a standalone video hosting software that allows you to create highly interactive webinars at the enterprise level.
Part of BlueJeans suite of video conferencing software tool, BlueJeans events is a highly-powerful software focused on webinars with a small attendee count.
The platform is specifically built for one-time meetings and webinars. It’s built with the primary purpose of online conferences at a smaller scale.
There are a limited number of webinar platforms available on the market today.
These are the “it needs tweaking, but it works for me” solutions that can help you shine.
They primarily serve as an alternative to your usual webinar software, but are tools you can still use for webinars in specific scenarios.
If you’re in the digital marketing space, you’ve probably heard of or used Zoom at some point in time.
A video conferencing solution, Zoom has free to use and paid options. It’s extremely limited in webinar capabilities, but it’s definitely a better choice compared to Google HangOuts.
With Zoom, you can even import your email contact list, right into the invitation panel.
Don't know how to build your email list? I have a few tips ready to go!
Another useful video conferencing and IM tool that can become your to-go-to webinar service is Skype for Business.
Skype for Business allows you to schedule a meeting that’s similar to a webinar with up to 250 attendees.
A relatively new player in the webinar space, ezTalks Webinar is attempting to be a disruptive webinar platform.
With a mobile-first approach and an array of features, it’s built on top of the already successful ezTalks conferencing solution.
joinMe is a video conferencing tool that is built with ease and simplicity in mind.
It provides you with the opportunity to quickly go live and share your link with attendees in a quick and rapid manner.
It’s not a perfect webinar option, as it’s limited to 50 attendees, but if it fits your funnel well and if you need a quick and rapid tool for a webinar-based meeting, joinMe might be a good choice.
Especially if you have a few high-ticket LinkedIn Clients, this platform might be the right choice to build a webinar and connect directly with them.
WorkCast is a powerful webinar platform that can help you in the creation of big virtual events and provides an amazing user experience.
Well, that pretty much rounds up the list of the biggest webinar platforms for 2020. I hope you found it useful.
And if you don't know how to drive leads to your webinar, check out this simple LinkedIn Hack to Drive traffic to your posts.
Featured Image by Mateuz Dach, Pexels.com