Last updated on April 17th, 2023 at 07:07 pm
Webinars have become an increasingly popular way to develop and grow an engaged community for a business. They provide a wealth of benefits to entrepreneurs, making them increasingly appealing for everyone from startup to large international business.
If you’re interested in hosting webinars, then finding the right webinar software will come into play. During a webinar, you’ll host an online-only event that attendees can engage with, letting you gain real-time feedback from people interested in your product or service.
With webinars, you can make this a reality. However, a simple Google search for “best webinar platform” gives you countless options, each claiming they’re the best. How do you tell them apart? Which one’s right for you?
It’s worth diving into what these are, what they offer, and what features they have to figure out what the best webinar software is for your specific needs. Usability, features, price, and similar factors all play a role in this.
Let’s dive into the top seven webinar platforms.
Benefits Of Holding Webinars
Before deep-diving into this, you could wonder why you should even host a webinar. Are they a waste of time? Would time be better spent chasing down leads, speaking to customers, and generating sales? Not necessarily.
A webinar – an amalgamation of ‘web’ and ‘seminar’ – boasts multiple benefits for business owners. The key features of holding a successful webinar – and using the best webinar software you can get – being:
- Increase Product or Service Understanding – Compared to standard ads and marketing materials, webinars add context to your offer. You can deep dive into the problems your company addresses while detailing how your products or services work. This has the added benefit of helping drive traffic to a landing page by using various key features.
- Nurture Quality Leads – Webinars let you focus on high-quality leads. They’ll be attended by potential customers interested in what you offer. You’ll have access to their contact information when they sign up, giving you a way to nurture quality leads for your business. In fact, 95% of webinar platform users agree that this is a key driver or their lead generation and marketing efforts.
- High Close Rates – Webinars close at 55% on average according to Noisy Little Monkey. Why? Because they allow you to educate your audience and build relationships of trust with high-quality leads through the feel of a one-on-one meeting, but at scale. These leads are much more likely to do business with you because you’ve given them direction around a problem they were seeking to understand.
- Cost-Effective – While webinar platforms cost some money, it is normally a flat rate and the product can be used as often as you’d like with no additional fees. The best webinar software lets you use key features at a relatively low price. Some will even offer a 14 day free trial with many of their key features being available (though, in some cases the 14 day free trial could be limited. You could host a live webinar, but not host on-demand webinars, for example).
Webinars can be an effective sales and marketing tool, helping you develop an engaged and interested customer base and further expand your business.
With the flexibility of being either an automated webinar or live webinar that ties directly into your sales funnel, webinars can be a vital tool in a marketer’s and entrepreneur’s toolkit. When you take full advantage of the webinar software and its key features, you’ll see more and more people on your landing page, entering your funnel, and becoming customers in no time.
What Are Webinar Platforms?
Now that you know the benefits of webinars, you’ll likely want to dive into hosting a few of your own. You’ll need a high-quality webinar platform to do this, but choosing the best webinar software can be difficult.
As you’d expect, webinar tools allow you to conduct a webinar quickly and easily while letting you interact with attendees. You can see them as somewhat of a blend between audio and video conferencing tools, with added features for audience engagement, screen sharing, an analytics dashboard, and so much more.
They connect people to a central figure – you or your business – while making this figure the focus. To be considered a webinar platform, the software must:
- Allow for one or more presenters
- Offer a space for multiple attendees (in some cases thousands) in your webinar room
- Offer screen sharing
- Have the ability to include various presentation forms in your live webinar with audience engagement at the center
- Include a registration page and lead-capturing features
- Offer audience analytics and tracking, such as visits to a landing page
- Have key features that let you host live webinar and automated webinars
Countless platforms meet these criteria – all with varying degrees of effectiveness – making the choice of the best webinar software relatively complicated. If you’re diving into the webinar world, you’ll want to make sure you’re choosing the best webinar platform for you and your company.
It’s worth looking into what the best webinar software platforms are. Seven of these stand head and shoulders above their competition, thanks to their pricing, usability, and the features they offer.
7 Best Webinars Platforms 2022: Compared
1. WebinarNinja
When the team over at AppSumo use a tool, I tend to give it a second look. And I’m glad I did with WebinarNinja. It specializes in helping brands and marketers optimize the marketing journey. The marketing features make this one of my favorite tools available.
Outside of hosting webinars, the marketing tools let you better track and customize the journey through email marketing, landing page optimization, audio and video hosting, and audience engagement features, each allowing you to understand a prospect’s position in the sales funnel. The robust feature set should help you to focus on the most high-quality leads.
Further, their customer support is en fuego. The speed of the live chat is one of the better offerings on the list. When you’re new to the webinar game, having a dependable customer support team is one of the first things you should look for when comparing webinar tools.
Price:
$29 to $199 a month with incremental costs based upon the number of attendees.
Pros:
- Multiple webinar types to choose from
- Features focused on email marketing ensures effective drip campaigns
- Integration with Zapier, allowing connecions with over 1,000 apps
- In-depth analytics reports
- Easy to set up and use
Cons:
- Native integrations may not be super relevant to your business
2. WorkCast
WorkCast’s branding boasts that the platform is geared specifically toward marketers, so it needs to have quite a few features to back this up. Thankfully, the features align with the hype and you shouldn’t have a problem developing an engaged and active community with ease.
One of the standout features is the integration list, with WorkCast working with HubSpot and multiple other CRMs and marketing tools. You’ll have no problem following-up with your attendees after the fact.
There also aren’t any plugins or downloads needed for you or your attendees. Simply sign in, get your webinar ready, and you’re ready to go.
The key features of this webinar software make this one of the more notable and recommended software platforms of 2022, especially for on-demand webinars. The ability to drive attendees to your landing page through these is great, and the customer support team makes sure you’re ready to go when you need to be.
Its customer service, coupled with its automated webinars and other features, make this the third best webinar software.
Price:
From £333 to £1,695 a month
Pros:
- HubSpot and similar integrations with marketing tools
- Excellent customer service
- No plugins or downloads needed
- Easy to set up webinars
- Easy to follow up with attendees
Cons:
- Presenter chat isn’t too intuitive
3. LiveWebinar
Versatility is the name of the game when it comes to LiveWebinar, which offers more power than you’d expect for its low price. The webinar platform streams straight from your browser, so nobody needs to worry about any downloads or setting up any other specialized webinar software. There also shouldn’t be a problem working with mobile devices.
The features LiveWebinar includes lets you create a truly custom webinar from the design you use to even the fonts and window color. The built-in whiteboard – one of the webinar software’s key features – lets you illustrate your presentation with ease, while polls and surveys let you keep your audience engaged. Since you can integrate platforms like MailChimp into this, you can advertise to your existing audience with ease.
A live chat function makes this webinar tool helpful with communicating with your audience when video conferencing, with other key features helping with the process. Your live webinar should be more engaging than you’d think. It’s the third best webinar software because of this.
Price:
$11.99 to $95.20 a month
Pros:
- Can be used straight from a browser, even with a live chat
- Various customization features
- MailChimp and similar integrations
- Ads can be embedded into the webinar
- Polls and surveys – key features with this webinar software -increase engagement during video conferencing and help drive attendees to a landing page
Cons:
- Relatively low maximum number of attendees
4. Demio
With an intuitive interface and sleek design, Demio is one of the more appealing webinar platforms available. You can create live or on-demand webinars with ease, and you shouldn’t have a problem figuring out how to use the software’s features with ease.
Getting your audience engaged is also a breeze, as Demio lets you provide guests with microphone and camera access to communicate during the webinar. Polls and surveys, calls-to-action, and similar features help you maximize this engagement, letting you extend your reach after the webinar ends.
It could be considered the best webinar software in that specific way.
Price:
$34 to $69 a month
Pros:
- Easy to use interface with live and on-demand webinars
- Offers a lot of customization
- Can be integrated with multiple CRMs, marketing tools, and other software
- Polls and surveys, among similar features, are geared toward increasing engagement and help increase landing page views
- Two-way communication and live chat functionality when video conferencing
Cons:
- Integration software with some marketing tools can be buggy
5. WebinarGeek
WebinarGeek works great for smart marketing campaigns, which its features are designed to compliment. It lets you create either live or on-demand webinars, as well as a combination of the two. It’s also relatively low-priced, making it a great option if you’re advertising on a budget.
WebinarGeek is also more friendly for non-tech savvy audiences, as there aren’t any applications to install. It’s a simple sign-in procedure, so your attendees can simply login and start watching. The customer service is also great here. While you shouldn’t have any issues with the webinar platform, there’s a solid team in place to help with anything.
The webinar tool also features a live chat functionality, with this being one of the key features on offer. The webinar software makes this live chat easy and intuitive to use, with on-demand webinars even benefitting from this.
Price:
€19 per month
Pros:
- Great for non-tech savvy audiences
- More affordable than other options
- Simple to log into and use
- Easy to understand interface
- Lets you insert videos from YouTube
Cons:
- Can’t upload videos during presentation
6. Accelevents
Accelevents focuses on developing a community for your webinars, letting you get much more engagement both during and after the event. It lets you build and manage your community much more easily than some of the other options, with the userface being relatively intuitive.
You can live-stream your event to up to 100,000 people with a relatively low-cost, making this one of the more cost-effective options to choose from. You’ll have a greater number of attendees than you’d expect, even if you’re hosting an automated webinar. The in-depth analytics is also a standout here, with this being more comprehensive than some alternatives.
You’ll have no problem following up with some of the more engaged attendees to maximize your conversion rate. It’ll also let you determine how your webinars perform on a real-time basis, letting you adjust accordingly.
The live chat function during video conferencing helps this webinar tool stand out even further. Customer support is also quite effective, which helps this stand out from other webinar tools. The customer support team should get back to you quickly, which helps when you’re setting up the webinar tool.
Price:
$500 to $5,000 per event
Pros:
- Intuitive interface
- Easy to follow-up with attendees and use a live chat
- Comprehensive feature list
- Live-stream to extremely large audiences
- In-depth analytics
Cons:
- Mobile app lacks various features
- More expensive than similar products with similar features
7. WebinarJam
WebinarJam offers a host of features and benefits, which explains why it’s been popular since its release. It focuses mainly on small businesses, giving them what they need to grow with their webinars. As a result, you’ll find quite a few things to take advantage of when you’re using this.
Some of the more useful of these are the customizable templates the webinar platform offers. From waiting pages to follow-up emails, these are easy to change and implement your branding into. There’s also an automatic recording function, so you wouldn’t need to worry about releasing this following the event.
The only limitation here is it only allows for up to six presenters. If you’re planning on more than this, you’ll need to choose one of the top options. Outside of that, WebinarJam can be an easy to use option.
The customer support is a bit of a disappointment, however, with other webinar tools being much better with this. If you’re looking for a great service, a different webinar tool could be better recommended.
Price:
$37 – 379 a month
Pros:
- Pop-ups encourage a large number of attendees to buy products during the webinar
- Offers two-way communication with live chat
- Compatible with all major web browsers and devices
- Automatic recording, and lets you develop an automated webinar
- Easy to use, with training videos being available
Cons:
- Customer support can be unresponsive
How To Host A Successful Webinar
Now you know what the best webinar platforms are, you’ll likely want to dive into hosting a webinar of your own. Hold up a minute. Do you even know what your webinar is about and how you can create and advertise it?
If you want your webinar to be successful, you’ll need to follow a few specific steps. Choosing the right webinar software is just the start, and you’ll have to put a bit of work into it. With a bit of prep work, you should make sure your webinar goes off without a hitch.
The most vital steps to hosting a successful webinar are:
- Pick a topic that’s relevant to your business and that’ll motivate people to attend. Google Question Hub can be a great way to find ideas for this.
- Choose a date and time that works well for potential attendees in different time zones.
- Develop a theme surrounding your webinar and develop your branding accordingly. A relevant hashtag for social media could also be recommended.
- Send out your invitations to email lists and other subscribers while also advertising it on your social media platforms.
- Build content around your topic and theme. Go beyond having a simple presentation around this, and include video content and pictures. Handouts and polls and surveys can also be useful, as the help increase visits to a landing page, among other benefits.
- Do a practice run to make sure the presenters know how to use the webinar platform you choose and are comfortable making their presentations.
- With everything done, it’s time to host your webinar. With enough effort put in, this should go off without a hitch. Make sure to record this. You can end up using this on social media and other platforms, and a decent webinar software platform lets you do this easily. An automated webinar can even let you do this before the fact.
- After the live webinar, it’s worth following up with attendees, asking if they have any questions or feedback. With the best webinar software, you’ll have engagement features that can help with this.
- Finally, it’s time to make the recording of your webinar available for anyone who might be interested but weren’t able to attend. It’ll maximize the number of leads and potential conversions you’ll get. You should share this on social media and other areas to help with this. With the best webinar software platform, you can even do this straight away. It’ll make your webinar marketing more effective, and could even increase your social media engagement rate.
While that might seem like a lot of work, the benefits of throwing a webinar drastically outweigh the effort you’ll put into it. Think of the end goal and the conversions you’ll see because of the event.
The more effort you put into making your webinar as successful as possible, the better it’ll be, leading to more results for your company. Using the right webinar platform is vital to that.
Best Webinars Platforms 2022: Wrapping Up
Webinars are an effective way to develop an engaged audience while developing quality leads for your business. While they take effort to put together effectively, the best webinars platforms make that easy.
The breadth of options can make this relatively difficult to choose between, especially if you’re new to the webinar world. Choosing the right one depends on you and your company’s needs, with budget, features, and multiple other factors playing a role in the decision.
It doesn’t need to be a difficult choice, however. Each of the above can be considered some of the best webinar platforms to choose from, with each offering multiple advantages and covering a wide variety of needs.
It’s worth spending time comparing them and giving them a try. It could even be worth giving a few of them a test drive to see what works well for you.
