Webinars used to be rare and relatively difficult to host. With the creation of webinar software platforms, this is no longer true.
Webinars and online meetings have quickly become a normal part of our lives – both personally and professionally. Because of this, webinars have become one of the best ways to engage an audience, get leads, and sell stuff online.
Here’s the catch: hosting webinars can quickly turn from exciting and profitable to anxiety-inducing technical messes.
I’m sure you’ve experienced randomly getting kicked out of a meeting, forgetting to click the record button, or a slow internet connection causing your audio and video to lag.
Here are a few questions to keep in mind as you choose the best webinar software platform for your business:
- Will you pitch and sell products during your webinars?
- How easy is it for your attendees to join the webinar?
- How many hosts and presenters do you need?
- Is the audio and video high quality, or even HD?
- How many attendees do you plan to have?
Asking yourself these questions will enable you to choose the best platform for you and your needs.
Choosing the best webinar software can get tricky. Don’t worry, I’m here to help.
I’ve tested, ranked, and reviewed 30+ webinar tools – and curated a list of the 7 best webinar software platforms.
These reviews are based on ease-of-use, features, effectiveness, pricing, support, and more.
Let’s get started.
The Top 7 Webinar Platforms
The best webinar software enables you to easily invite, run, and record webinars, even without technical skills. The right platform gives you all of the tools you need to market and host webinars with no headaches.
Here are my top choices for the best webinar software in 2020.
Webinar Ninja
Best overall webinar software (Starts at $39/month).
WebinarNinja is an all-in-one webinar solution. It gives you everything you need to run your webinars, and is trusted by world-renowned companies like Printful, Podia, AppSumo, Baremetrics, and thousands more.
WebinarNinja does all the work, without you having to go through any complicated technical process. With their platform, you can create your webinar in seconds, and start getting sign-ups for your webinar immediately.
With WebinarNinja, there are four different types of webinars you can create:
- Live: Present live and interact with your audience
- Automated: Recorded webinars offered on certain times or on-demand
- Hybrid: Combine the interaction of live with recorded video
- Series: Run multiple sessions for courses, workshops, or summits
Key Features
- Create a webinar in 10 seconds flat.
- Lightning fast chat with zero latency (and emojis 🤯)
- High-converting, custom registration landing pages.
- Built-in email marketing automations and drip campaigns
- Stats tracking. Export your registrant data, chat, questions and polls
Pricing Plans
All plans in WebinarNinja come with a 14-day free trial.
They have four pricing plans to choose from:
- The Starter Plan is $39/month. It includes unlimited live and automated webinars, and is perfect for users with 100 webinar attendees.
- The Pro Plan is $79/month. It’s perfect for up to 300 webinar attendees, and can create webinar series and summits.
- The Plus Plan is $129/month. It’s perfect for up to 500 webinar attendees, and can create webinar series, summits, and hybrid webinars.
- The Power Plan is $199/month. It’s perfect for power users who want up to 1,000 webinar attendees, and all the features WebinarNinja has to offer.
All of the plans include the main features with the ability to upgrade your account at any time.
Plus, every membership comes with a 14-day free trial. Pay nothing now, cancel anytime.
WebinarNinja
An excellent webinar hosting choice that’s simple, effective, and easy to use.
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Demio
Best ease-of-use webinar software (Starts at $34/month).
Demio provides a simple, no-download webinar experience for your audience, as well as all the marketing tools you need to generate better results.
Demio really is the easiest webinar platform for both you and your attendees. You’ll get higher attendance rates on your webinars with frictionless joining.
Demio enables you to create five different types of webinars:
- Live: A standard live presentation with real-time, HD streaming
- Automated: Events on autopilot with a completely pre-recorded presentation and other simulated elements
- Hybrid: A combination of live streamed and pre-recorded videos
- Series: Keep people registered across a group of live, scheduled sessions
- On-Demand: A completely pre-recorded presentation that can be viewed instantly at any time of the day
Key Features
- 25x faster for attendees to join in the browser
- Interactive polls with detailed stats
- In-webinar launch offers and CTA’s
- Private or public chat
- Automatically streamed and recorded in HD
- Drive more results after your event with flexible replay pages
- Measure how effective your webinars are through in-depth, actionable insights
- Easily integrates with your favorite email marketing platform
- Create a beautiful registration process, market your event, and capture registrations
Pricing Plans
All Demio plans come with a 14-day free trial.
They have three pricing plans to choose from:
- The Starter Plan is $34/month and is ideal for small businesses getting started with webinars. It comes with all of the standard features, plus live webinars with up to 50 attendees.
- The Growth Plan is $79/month. It’s their most popular package with more tools, automated events, and custom branding.
- The Business Plan is $163/month. Perfect for growing companies needing a bigger room size, team access, and dedicated support.
All of the plans include standard features like unlimited sessions and registrations, unlimited storage, 24/7 support, room engagement tools, detailed stats and insights, advanced event management, and more.
If you are ready to run more effective webinars with less work, then give Demio a try – risk free.
Try out Demio and get a free 14-day trial.
Demio
A simple, no-download webinar experience with a rich set of options and features.
Get Your 14-Day Free Trial of Demio TodayIf you click on this link, we will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
WebinarJam
Best for selling (Starts at $499/year).
WebinarJam is a robust webinar marketing platform designed for people who know that they are ready to go all-in on webinars.
With over 50,000 users worldwide, WebinarJam has been a leader in the webinar software space for nearly five years.
Plus, WebinarJam includes powerful marketing features, like customizable pages, SMS alerts to improve attendance, and the ability to host private or paid webinars built into the platform.
Key Features
- Host up to 5000 (500 with the Basic Plan) people in one presentation
- All Devices in high definition, 30 FPS, high-quality video and audio
- Chat and run Q&As in real time – with private and live chats
- Perfect HD replays of your webinars are automatically recorded
- Flexible scheduling – immediate broadcasting, scheduled, scheduled series, and always on. Everything you need to time your webinars just right
- Attendee spotlight. Bring people from the audience onto your live webinar
- Page builder. Maximize your registration with their professionally designed pages
- Complete email & SMS system, built-in
- Active offers. Convert your webinars into fully fledged money-making events with live offer displays
- Browser-based solution. No downloads. No hassles.
- Drawing board. Enrich your presentations by hand-writing directly on top of your slides – live
- Connects with your autoresponder or CRM of choice
- Offer free or paid webinars
Pricing Plans
They have three pricing plans to choose from – yearly pricing only:
- The Basic Plan is $499/month and is ideal for getting started with WebinarJam. It comes with all of the standard features, plus unlimited webinars with up to 500 attendees.
- The Professional Plan is $699/year. It’s their most popular package with up to 2,000 attendees, always-on webinars, and the PANIC Button.
- The Enterprise Plan is $999/year. This gives you every feature that WebinarJam has to offer — including the ultra powerful Control Center.
All of the plans include standard features like unlimited webinars and registrations, room engagement tools, page builders, detailed stats and insights, email and SMS marketing, and more.
If you are ready to step up your webinar game, then start with WebinarJam.
Try WebinarJam today.
WebinarJam
A robust, pro-level webinar software with a full suite of sales and marketing features.
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GoToWebinar
Best for enterprise companies (Starts at $104/month)
GoToWebinar is one of the original companies in the webinar software space.
Although they are no longer known as innovators in the market, they are one of the most consistent and reliable service providers around. They host nearly 3,000,000 webinars a year and have 50,000+ customers.
If you value professionalism and consistency over marketing focused and slick, then this is a great choice. With GoToWebinar you know what you are going to get every single time you start a new meeting or webinar.
If your primary goal is marketing and sales during your webinars, then this is not for you. You’ll definitely want to stick with Webinar Ninja or WebinarJam.
Key Features
- Set up one-time live events, series, or on-demand webinars
- Easily customizable to match your branding
- Accept payments upon registration of webinars
- Custom registration pages
- Engage your audience with slide-in questions and live results.
- Channel pages for easy, on-demand webinars
- Simple integration with your favorite CRM or marketing platform
- Generate reports on who attended, how interested they were, what questions they asked and answered
- Host up to 1,000 attendees (on their regular plans)
Pricing Tiers
They have three price plans to choose from – with Enterprise pricing available upon request.
- The Starter Plan is $104/month and is perfect for hosting smaller meetings with up to 100 attendees. All basic features are included.
- The Pro Plan is $239/month. It’s their most popular package with up to 500 attendees. All basic features plus a custom URL, built-in video editor, transcripts, and much more.
- The Plus Plan is $539/year. For companies with large scale webinar needs of up to 1,000 attendees. All basic features plus the upgraded features included with the Pro Plan.
All of the plans include basic features like reporting and analytics, room engagement tools, custom branding, accept payments, email and SMS marketing, and more.
GoToWebinar is professional quality, but not slick. The software tends to feel a bit clunky and dated at times, but it’s solid and you know you’ll get the same results every time you use it.
Try out GoToWebinar and get a free 7-day trial.
GoToWebinar
Hold consistent, professional webinars with GoToWebinar.
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GetResponse
Best for built-in email marketing
Note: GetResponse is only a valid option for webinars if you are either just starting and don’t have an email list yet, or you are willing to move your email list to GetResponse. Because they are mainly an email marketing platform, the pricing just doesn’t make sense if you aren’t using them also for your email.
GetResponse is an all-in-one marketing platform. From email marketing to marketing automation, landing page builder, and webinar software.
The stand out feature of GetRespone is their FREE app that enables you to host webinars from your mobile device. Depending on your needs, the mobility feature can be extremely useful.
Ultimately GetResponse is email marketing software. But it also enables you to host webinars – not as an afterthought, but with a main focus on email marketing automation.
Key Features
- Built-in email marketing tools
- Ready-made webinar funnel templates
- Free app for hosting webinars from your mobile device
- Drag and drop page builder for custom landing pages
- Easy set-up, no installation required
- Get room for up to 1,000 live attendees
- Store up to 20 hours of recorded webinar content
- One-click Facebook Pixel integration
- Easily offer free or paid webinar funnels
Pricing Tiers
They have four price plans to choose from – but only Plus, Professional, and Max offer the webinar feature.
Yes, GetResponse is a great email marketing and webinar platform. The only problem is their pricing is confusing as hell – this is because it all depends on the number of email subscribers you have on your list.
If it’s an email and webinar platform you need, then there’s no better one-stop shop than GetResponse.
Try any plan free for 30 days. No credit card required.
GetResponse
Building an email list? GetResponse integrates webinar features with email marketing for a great all-in-one solution.
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Zoom
Better for meetings than webinars.
2020 is the year of many things to many people, but 2020 is definitely the year Zoom broke into the mainstream. With most people working from home and isolating, there are very few of us who have not been on at least one Zoom call.
I’ll admit, Zoom is excellent at video calls. But we’re talking webinars, and in this capacity, it is definitely lacking.
Zoom lacks the marketing and sales features of Webinar Ninja, and the professionalism of GoToWebinar. But it does have ubiquity on its side, and therefore the confidence of you and your audience in the reliability of Zoom.
Key Features
- 100 interactive video panelists, 49 viewable on screen at one time
- Full HD video and audio
- Screen Sharing from panelists (even videos with audio)
- Engage up to 50,000 attendees
- Stream your events across Facebook Live, YouTube Live, and more
- On-demand and recurring webinar options
- Complete host controls
- Excellent reporting and analytics
- Q&A with the ability to like and up-vote questions
- Pre and post-webinar reminder emails
- Recordings and transcripts
Pricing Plans
Zoom may win in the simplicity of pricing category. All plans include all the features, including up to 100 active video panelists, screen sharing, live Q&A, in-webinar chat, HD recordings, and much more.
With Zoom, you only pay for how many attendees you are planning to host.
Starting at just $40/month for 100 attendees, and working all the way up to 10,000 attendees for the whopping price of $6,490/month, Zoom has all webinar size options covered. There are also fairly substantial discounts for yearly pricing.
If you want to learn more about Zoom video webinars, then check out their full features list here.
Zoom
Use Zoom to host meetings and small groups.
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Zoho Webinar
Part of a much larger software platform.
Zoho Meeting is a webinar platform developed to train and engage large audiences.
Influence, educate, and engage your global audience using Zoho Meeting’s webinar platform by conducting online classes and employee onboarding, marketing your products and services, and much more.
The biggest benefit of Zoho Meeting is their incredibly cost-effective pricing. You can get started for as little as $15/month, which is significantly lower than all the other choices in this list of best webinar platforms.
Key Features
- Customizable registration forms
- Easily join webinars from iOS and Android
- One-click webinar recording and cloud storage
- Custom branding
- Screen/Application sharing
- In-depth analytics and reports
- Reminder emails to all attendees
- International dial-in numbers
- Q&A, Polling, and Raise Hand
Pricing Plans
As mentioned, Zoho is a massive suite of software tools, and webinars are just one small piece of it. But if you are only looking for webinar software right now, then Zoho does make it easy and cost effective for you to get started.
The first thing you may notice is that there are Zoho Meetings and Zoho Webinars. The difference is that Meetings are just for that, internal meetings with clients and team members. While Webinars is for, well, webinars with general attendees.
All Webinar pricing plans include all pro features, and you simply choose according to how many attendees you need on your live webinars. Zoho makes it dead simple to switch your plan at any time, so I recommend starting small and upgrading as you need it.
If you are ready to give Zoho a try, then sign up for a 14-day free trial and give it a test run before committing.
Zoho Meeting
Zoho Meeting is part of a suite of business tools, including office software and more.
Get Started with Zoho Meeting TodayIf you click on this link, we will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Webinar Prices
Webinar pricing varies from platform to platform, but you can expect to pay more per month as you require more attendees during your live webinars.
If you’re planning to use webinars in your marketing and sales processes, then it’s worth spending the money to get the features that will enable you to do just that – it’s an investment, not an expense. I recommend you start with WebinarNinja, because it’s simply the best option around.
On the other hand, if you are looking to do small meetings with your team, something as easy and cheap as Zoom is a great option.
Webinar Platform Comparison
No two webinar platforms are created equal. Some are easy to use for you and your attendees, and others are 100% made to help you sell your products or services during your webinars.
Because we all have different needs and wants, let’s walk through a few simple comparisons to enable you to make the right decision for you.
WebinarJam vs Zoom
Comparing WebinarJam to Zoom is like comparing a Ferrari to a Honda Civic. WebinarJam is a slick, polished, and sales-focused webinar platform that will enable you to scale your business with webinars. While Zoom is the ubiquitous webinar tool that everyone knows – it has some rabid fans, but most people only use it because it’s free or cheap.
If you are looking to do webinars in any serious way, then WebinarJam is a better solution than Zoom.
WebinarJam
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GoToWebinar vs Zoom
Making a comparison between GoToWebinar and Zoom is difficult because the similarities are more prevalent than the differences. Both platforms have a much more corporate feel than a lot of other webinar tools on the market.
Despite the similarities, if it’s a corporate look and feel you are going for with your webinars, then I’d recommend starting with GoToWebinar.
GoToWebinar
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Best Webinar Platform for 2020
Webinar Platform | Recommended For | |
---|---|---|
WebinarNinja | Best overall | Try WebinarNinja |
Demio | Best for ease-of-use | Try Demio |
WebinarJam | Best for selling | Try WebinarJam |
GoToWebinar | Best for enterprise companies | Try GoToWebinar |
Zoho | Best pricing | Try Zoho |
What is Webinar Software?
A webinar is a meeting, conference, or seminar that takes place online and is attended by an audience. The word webinar is simply a combination of the two words web and seminar.
Webinar software is the tool that enables you to host a webinar and talk to thousands of attendees from your laptop. You can use these tools to make your webinars interactive, engaging, and accessible – with little more than the press of a couple of buttons.
The best part of these tools is that they enable anyone to create a customizable, scalable, and profitable presentation to thousands of people – not limited by geography.
There are countless webinar software options available, including WebinarNinja and Demio, to name a few. There are also some free webinar platform options like Google Hangouts, so no matter how tight your budget may be, you can still get started hosting webinars online.
FAQ
Webinar costs vary from platform to platform, but you can expect to pay more per month as you require more attendees during your live webinars.
Webinar cost can be free or you can pay $500+ per month, depending on your needs, requirements, and budget.
What is a Webinar Meeting?
A webinar meeting is a meeting, conference, or seminar that takes place online and is attended by an audience. The word webinar is simply a combination of the two words web and seminar.
What is a Live Webinar?
A live webinar is a webinar event that is hosted and attended live by the webinar host and attendees. A live webinar allows you to present live, and it also enables your audience to engage with the hosts and presenters via live chat and Q&A sessions.
Webinars can also be pre-recorded and streamed on-demand by your attendees. As the webinar host, you can use any combination of live and pre-recorded content, depending on your audience and needs.