In this day and age, many marketers and businesses are moving into the field of webinars. This has been amplified by the coronavirus pandemic and many more people working from home. Webinars can be a great way of selling, training people, and marketing products without having to travel or organize big meetings or presentations. You may be considering webinars for any of these reasons, and we fully understand why. We have researched many webinar platforms and dug deep into their features, pricing, and more. Read on to find out everything we have learned.
What is a Webinar?
A webinar, simply put, is an online presentation. It can be delivered by one speaker or a group of speakers, and by using a webinar platform they are able to speak to many online participants all at once. During the webinar, people can interact and engage with the speaker(s) by asking questions, engaging with interactive features, or answering polls. They are, in many ways, more interactive than a traditional meeting or seminar. The other benefit of using online webinars is that they can be saved as videos and used again for training purposes or just rewatched for interest. So, let’s take a look at a few webinar platforms.
WebinarJam
Our first, and favorite webinar platform is WebinarJam. WebinarJam has been popular for years with businesses, creators, salespeople, and even educational facilities. The first reason for this is that it’s an entirely web-based platform that can be accessed from any browser. It does not require the speaker or the audience to download software to participate in the conference. This is a real benefit to speakers as it makes their talk easily accessible for all potential clients, students, or customers. It can even be used easily on a mobile web browser. It also has the ability to let you create a slideshow to run alongside your presentation in real-time.
WebinarJam is packed with other features and abilities, too. It allows audience members to participate in an online chat, whilst also offering private one-to-one chat boxes. You can add sticky announcements or headers to the screen, or ask your audience to respond to sets of questions. There is also a whiteboard feature. This is great for enhancing slides with highlights, drawing graphics in real-time, or amending mistakes you may have made. This really adds a layer of personalization and warmth to presentations. WebinarJam has a few price points, the most basic of which comes in at $499 a year. This is a steal when you consider just how many people you can reach for that price.
Livestorm
Livestorm is another popular webinar platform used by businesses and marketers worldwide. It is not web-based like WebinarJam but instead requires downloadable software. That being said, the software itself is widely regarded as easy to use for both creators and audience members. It has a plethora of extra features, just like other providers. The most impressive of these is module-based online training programs. Very useful for those in education, or people selling online courses. Livestorm, however, is more expensive than it’s counterparts. The most basic model comes in at $99 a month, more than double that of WebinarJam’s most basic package. Many say it is worth it, but we don’t really see enough of a difference for it to be priced so highly.
ClickMeeting
For a more budget, but still an effective tool, many have turned to ClickMeeting. This software starts at a friendly $25 a month but is definitely a little more basic than its rivals. There are still plenty of extremely useful features, however. Our favorite of which is the ability (on some price plans) to live-stream your webinars to youtube as well as your own platform. For its price point, the user interface is actually very well designed and extremely user-friendly. It is also excellent at handling very large audiences without any issues. We think that ClickMeeting is an extremely good product for its price, and the fact it has very flexible pricing options means it may be more suitable for smaller organizations or businesses. All three of these top webinar platforms include the ability to see analytics about who has participated, how well retained viewers were, and more.
So, these are three of the top webinar platforms we believe you should be checking out, no matter what size your business is. There is truly a tool here for everyone, so if you’re thinking of starting out in the world of webinars, start with one of these. We hope that you find a platform suited to your needs, and create some great content.
