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Webinar Hosting Reviews: Pros and cons of GoToWebinar, Livestream, and OnStream Webinars

By Sydni Craig-Hart

Which webinar platform is right for you?Creating and marketing a great webinar is tough. Choosing a webinar hosting platform shouldn’t be.

That’s why we’ve researched the top-selling webinar hosting platforms on the Internet and compiled this handy list of pros and cons for each.

We reviewed each application and evaluated the following:

  • Cost and value for the money
  • User-friendliness
  • Tech support and tutorials
  • Video streaming options
  • Integration with social media and other websites
  • Webinar marketing assistance

While researching the best webinar hosting platforms, we looked at GoToWebinar, Onstream Webinars, Livestream, Google Hangouts + LeadPages, Adobe Connect, ClickWebinar, and MegaMeeting.

And the winners are….     

Livestream ($49)

Livestream is a platform for broadcasting live events, but that doesn’t mean it’s only good for rock concerts. Because the application was created to broadcast live streaming video, it’s an amazing way to create and host video-based educational webinars.

Pros

  • Embed directly into your website – Livestream allows you to host your webinar from your own website. When attending the webinar directly on your site, attendees are much more likely to engage with your brand by opting into your email list, downloading your lead magnet, etc.
  • Built in community – Livestream has an active social community that interacts with and ‘follows’ each other. When you choose Livestream to host your webinar, you’re likely to connect with other Livestream members and gain new followers (and new customers).
  • Mobile broadcasting – Livestream makes it easy for your audience to attend the webinar from their smartphone, tablet, laptop, or TV.
  • Low-cost option – Livestream offers a freemium version, and its basic membership starts at just $49/month.

Cons

  • No audience engagement features like quizzes or polls
  • You can’t embed video onto your website unless you purchase the premium
    membership for $399/month.
  • No ability to connect with Youtube or social networks (except Facebook)
  • The freemium version limits your webinar to 50 attendees

GoToWebinar ($99)

GoToWebinar is perhaps the most well-known webinar hosting platform out there, and for good reason. It’s incredible ease-of-use and stellar customer support makes it the go-to option for first-timers and experienced webinar producers alike.

Pros

  • User-friendly – It’s extremely simple to set up GoToWebinar. If you have any questions, their tutorials can walk you through each step of the set-up process.
  • Email functionality – GoToWebinar can send email invitations to attendees right from the application. Alternatively, you can send GoToWebinar email invites through your regular email program. This flexibility enhances the marketing process and makes it easy to connect with potential guests.
  • Real time screen sharing – GoToWebinar now lets you share your screen in real time, which makes it simple to present a PowerPoint, screen capture, or live video stream.
  • Annotation feature – Circle or point out important words, phrases or images within your presentation with GoToWebinar’s super-handy annotation tool.

Cons

  • Requires you (and your attendees) to download software before using the program
  • Requires the use of Java
  • Does not work with smartphones or tablets
  • No internal payment option, which makes it difficult to use GoToWebinar for paid or subscription-based presentations
  • Cannot host the webinar directly from your website

Onstream Webinars ($149)

Onstream is the crème de la crème of webinar hosting platforms. Its powerful functionality is only paralleled by its customization features. With Onstream, you really can make the webinar look and feel like “yours.”

Pros

  • Presentation choices – Customize each webinar based on the number of attendees and the type of program being presented. Onstream Webinars has a variety of different layouts and dashboards to choose from, which further allows you to change the look and feel of your webinar presentation screen.
  • Complete customization – Onstream is perhaps the most video-friendly webinar hosting platform. It allows you to adjust the quality of your video, including the frame rate, aspect ratio, and keyframe. You can also choose to share video from a webcam, computer screen, or streaming Internet video.
  • Tabs feature – When you’re hosting a webinar, there’s a lot of different presentation aspects that need to be managed simultaneously. Onstream makes it easy to toggle between your slides, video screen, workspace, and documents by clicking on different tabs within the application.
  • Interactive features – Onstream lets you take audience polls and send quizzes during the webinar to increase engagement and further qualify your leads.

Cons

  • Less expensive than GoToWebinar – BUT you only get up to 50 attendees at $49/month

The Verdict

Livestream, GoToWebinar, and Onstream are all strong choices for your webinar hosting platform.

GoToWebinar gets our vote for first-timers thanks to its user-friendly interface and great customer service.

As you grow, become more experienced, and attract more attendees to your webinars, Onstream is a great choice for next-level webinar marketing.

Do you need help getting started with your first webinar? Are unsure about the topic of your webinar or which platform you should use?

Visit us online or call 510.601.0470 to schedule your Clarity Call and we’ll work together to create your webinar revenue plan!

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: Smart Simple Marketing, Sydni Craig-Hart, Webinar Hosting Platforms, Webinar Marketing, webinars



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Sydni Craig-Hart

Is your organization looking to gain market share and deepen loyalty with small businesses, women or minorities? Sydni Craig-Hart is CEO of Smart Simple Marketing and a 4th generation entrepreneur. Since 2006, her team, having worked with over 8,000 small business in 79 different industries, has been helping companies to drive engagement with sought-after, growing market segments. If you want to increase the value of existing-customer spend, recapture marketing investments, grow customer lifetime value or decrease attrition, contact Sydni to discover how her team is doing this for companies like Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and more.

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Comments

  1. Sue Painter says

    October 30, 2014 at 8:51 PM

    Personally, I dislike Go To Webinar. I hate having to download the software each and every time and it WILL NOT work on my MacBookPro at all.

  2. Vitali says

    September 17, 2015 at 4:03 AM

    Hello there,

    I work for ClickMeeting a,company that provides a webinar services. It is entirely cloud based, it is user friendly and has everything you and your attendees may need from a webinar, well, except the breakout rooms- but, we are working on that as well.

    If you’d like to test the platform, please sign up for a free trial, we do not require credit cards and you are under no obligation to purchase. Plain and simple free use for 30 days. The plus, if you ask us nicely and state your good intentions we do have extras up in our sleeves to give.

    Take care and good day!

  3. Xenia says

    January 24, 2016 at 9:05 AM

    I used GotoWebinar because it is one of the more popular webinar platforms. But some time ago I changed it to the platform http://etutorium.pl, because:
    1. it no needs any download applications
    2. allows to conduct onlain testing and evaluate answers
    This points is important to me and my auditory

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