Best Webinar Software

A webinar is a seminar held digitally and attended by remote participants using the internet. It can accommodate worldwide audiences and is more interactive and cost-efficient than the physical seminar. It is a popular marketing tool widely used for demand generation strategies. It is also a sophisticated tool for training and educational activities. 

Webinar software or an online webinar platform is essential for hosting a webinar. Webinar software provides a hassle-free hosting of webinars by efficiently managing all webinar activities under one roof. Marketers and trainers are continually searching for the best webinar platforms to connect directly with the target audience and establish credibility for their brands. With a plethora of webinar software platforms available in the market, it can be confusing to choose and deploy the best webinar software for one’s business needs. Therefore, this buyer's guide for webinar software intends to be a helpful resource and guidance tool for those looking to find robust webinar software. This guide details all essential aspects, features, functionalities, and factors one needs to know before investing in a webinar solution.

A webinar is a digital web event hosted to connect with the target audience. Marketers and webinar hosts identify and segregate the webinar attendees through demographic and marketing research. A lot of factors such as gender, age, location, profession, professional profile, etc. are analyzed to find and invite the most suitable target audience and prospective clients to the webinar.  

The key terminology used with a webinar:

a. Webinar room

A webinar room is a web page where the online webinar is held. It has a screen where presenters and attendees can collaborate and see each other virtually.

It consists of:

• Main window to host webinar content
• Grid view of participants and presenters
• Text chat screen
• Video chat screen
• Editing tools

b. On-demand webinar

An on-demand webinar is a pre-recorded webinar broadcast to audiences who sign up willingly to attend it. Attending a pre-recorded webinar is a practical solution for the people who have missed the opportunity to join a live webinar. Such webinars are edited to remove the technical issues and unwanted content of the actual webinar. Due to edits and cuts, on-demand webinars are comparatively of shorter duration than live ones. It makes busier people prefer the on-demand webinar over the live webinars. 

c. Webinar Landing page

A webinar landing page is a web page where the audience visits to sign up and register for the webinar. This page is crucial in webinar marketing as it is where the audience gets the first glimpse of what the webinar offers. The headline of this page showcases the unique selling proposition of the brand and tells the audience why they should attend it. This page displays the pictures of the speakers along with their credentials. It also has testimonials and reviews from the people who have attended the webinar previously. 

d. Webinar Polls

Webinar polls are polls and surveys conducted during the webinar where audiences are given multiple-choice questions, and responses are gathered. Polls help webinar hosts and presenters better understand their audience and align content with the audience's needs. 

e. Webinar Hosting

Webinar hosting means hosting and managing a webinar online. Using many online tools software applications, and internet connections, marketers and trainers deliver a webinar to targeted audiences. The creation, distribution, and storage of the webinar and related files is primarily done on the webinar host's system. A computer system, headsets, HD cam, internet connection, and an online webinar platform are required to host a webinar.

f. Paid Webinar

Paid webinars are webinars where attendees pay to participate. These types of webinars are hosted by experts, renowned professionals, and popular bloggers who can expect the audience to pay for learning valuable skills or in-depth information about some topic.

g. Webinar timeline

A webinar timeline is a set of activities that start around eight weeks before hosting the webinar and continue even after the webinar is over. It is a timeline that lists down all activities that need to be completed before and after the webinar in a sequential manner. Check out a standard timeline format here.

h. Screen Sharing

Screen Sharing means sharing the webinar screen with the attendees. The host or presenters choose what elements from their main screen are shared with the attendees. Webinar hosts and presenters can choose to share the complete screen or partial screen with the attendees. 

i. Webinar Script

Webinar script is the detailed script of the webinar that guides the presenters, hosts, and guest speakers to conduct the webinar without missing any important information. 

• Providing Training: Webinars are used to provide training and assistance for services. Training is the top webinar usage, with 46% of total webinars conducted for training purposes.  Webinars are also used to demonstrate newly launched products and services. Such upkeep webinars help in customer onboarding. 
• Attract new Prospective clients: Webinars provide brands an opportunity to give an educational tour of new schemes, products, or services to potential clients.  Live webinars allow brands to engage their target audience in meaningful discussions. Webinars also provide brands an opportunity to answer customer queries. It also helps brands to generate and convert leads. 
• Disseminate new ideas: Webinars give a human touch to your brand and provide an opportunity to disseminate new ideas to your clients. Using case studies, reports, group discussions, and presentations, companies can deliver valuable insights to the audience about their industry, products, and services. 
• Attain measured goals: Some webinars are conducted to attain measurable goals. For instance, the goal of a webinar may be to increase customers’ brand awareness by 10% by the end of the year. For this, companies may decide to conduct one webinar per month for the whole year. 
• Influence audience: Sometimes, influencers, renowned presenters, and subject matter experts are called in by the webinar hosts to share the expert advice that the masses trust. The audience can interact with the esteemed guest speakers and experts to clear doubts. 
• Presenting a research finding: Many scientists and academic researchers present their findings and research analysis with fellow researchers, seniors, or approving authorities or research bodies via webinar. 

In a nutshell, webinars are conducted with a variety of purposes-Product demos, knowledge sharing, lead generation, conducting online courses, monetizing expertise, onboarding, training, etc. 

Slideshow

Slides are an important element of a webinar, and multiple slides are used to present different parts of a webinar. 

• The title slide contains the name of the presenters, the title of the webinar, and the brand name and logo. 
• The objective slide displays the agenda of the webinar in four to five points.
• Subject slides contain a description of the main topic. 
• Call to action slides encourage the audience to ask questions and interact with the presenters. 

Video

Webinar presenters live stream pre-recorded videos or other video content as supplementary material to share with the audience. 

Text Chat

Live text chat with attendees for solving questions and replying to their comments makes the webinar alive and interactive. 

Whiteboard

Virtual whiteboards are used to write and draw by the presenters. While most of the content in a webinar is pre-recorded or available in slides and digital form, presenters also use virtual whiteboards to explain certain concepts in detail. 

Polls/MCQs/Quizzes

Webinar presenters use polls, multiple-choice questions, and quizzes during the session as interactive material to better gauge the audience's engagement with the overall presentation.

Marketing the webinar

Promoting the webinar on channels such as online social media, client networks, emails, websites, etc. is a huge challenge. 

Time management

Delivering the webinar within the scheduled time is crucial not only to retain the effectiveness but also to show respect to attendees' valuable time. Time management is also required to adhere to the timeline of the webinar. Keeping the optimal interval between the invitation date, the last date to enroll and register, and the actual webinar date is also a challenge. 

Technical issues while broadcasting:

During the live webinar, technical glitches may arise. Sound distortion, video getting blurred, poor internet connectivity, slow document upload, server issues, etc. may reduce the overall effectiveness of your webinar. Dealing with these issues is a challenge. 

Measuring the performance of the webinar

Attendance bounce rate is a common issue that most webinar hosts face. There is a considerable gap sometimes in the number of people who register for the webinar and those who actually attend it. Measuring key performance metrics such as audience engagement level, attendance score, lead conversion rate, audience satisfaction level are difficult tasks. 

Keeping the audience hooked

Creating high-quality content, simulative videos, GIFs, and a sound presentation is crucial not only for the success of the webinar but also for maintaining your brand image. Keeping the audience engaged and interested in the webinar, and delivering compelling content is a great challenge.

Monetizing the Webinar

The most critical challenge for marketers and experts is to monetize the webinar. 

• For marketers, it means generating leads that can be converted into sales. 
• For experts who deliver paid webinars, the challenge is to find a sufficient number of registrations to cover the costs involved in delivering webinars and earning profits on top of it. 

Webinar software is a set of tools and applications designed to assist webinar hosts and presenters in creating, organizing, and managing their webinar activity. 

Webinar software has complete tools to create, schedule, present, engage, and analyze the webinars. It takes care of the complete timeline of the webinar, right from inviting participants to the webinar event, engaging hundreds of attendees on a single screen, allowing multiple presenters and co-hosts to deliver the webinar till the final feedback analysis of the overall event. 

Webinar software comes with various deployment models: Cloud-based, Web-based, On-premise, and Free and Open source Webinar software. 

Webinar software is a one-stop solution for conducting engaging webinars. Follow the below steps to create an effective webinar using the webinar software:

Registration Page:

Create a customized registration form with your brand’s name and logo using the inbuilt registration form templates of the webinar software. Add the names of the host, co-hosts, presenters, keynote speakers, and their credentials on the registration page. You can set rules, pre-requisites, and moderator policies to avoid spammers, unwanted audience members, unqualified registrants joining your webinar. 

Invitations:

A webinar software integrates with your CRM software, social media handle, and web pages to fetch you a comprehensive lead list. Send email invites with the embedded registration links to the prospective clients, target audience, and contacts. Webinar software will send automated confirmation emails and thank you notes to those who have registered. Webinar software will also generate automated email notifications, reminders, and updates about your webinar.  

Webinar login and attendance:

The attendee module will automatically enable the registered and verified participants to join your live webinar using the login and password provided to them. It will take attendance automatically.

Presentation:

With the presentation module and features of the webinar software, you or your presenters can deliver compelling content using tools such as slide shows, videos, screen sharing, replay, whiteboards, etc. Engage your audience with more tools such as Polls, quizzes, surveys.

Reporting:

After the webinar is over, you can generate reports to analyze the effectiveness of your webinar with reports and analysis about attendance, registration to attendance ratio, poll results, feedback analysis, lead conversion rate, average screen time of all participants, attendees who left the webinar early, etc.

The pandemic situation in  2020 has increased the demand for virtual and remote technology. The current workplace is quick in adopting webinar technology to mitigate the ill effects of the pandemic-led downturn and to seek new opportunities in remote and distant locations. No wonder even in these economic uncertainties created by COVID 19, webinar software is poised to grow at a rate of 7.6%  year on year till 2023 and attain an $800 million market valuation. Let us discuss the benefits of Webinar software in detail:

• Webinar software increases revenue and sales by increasing the registrations and attendance of the webinar through a smooth registration process and automated reminders for webinars. Companies have reported significant increases in their revenue, webinar registration, and average attendees after implementing the webinar software solution. 
• Webinar software’s reporting and analytics are useful for inbound marketing purposes.  It allows sales and marketing people to analyze consumer behavior by closely monitoring the attendee's interactions with the brand's content. 
• Webinar software speeds up work by allowing team members, partners, clients to collaborate and discuss in one virtual room. 
• Pre-recorded webinars, also known as simulated live webinars, offer more benefits than live presentations. A number of people can watch your pre-recorded webinar with automated, on-demand features of the webinar software.  
• Its live-streaming feature on social media helps brands, especially small businesses, to reach wider audiences, boost content visibility, and generate more leads. 
• The interactive web technology enables corporate enterprises and educational institutions to provide training and learning opportunities to a vast number of people with significantly lower costs. It helps teachers, educators, trainers to virtually reach their students and learners situated in distant locations. 
• Webinars help to deliver personalized marketing and sales experiences for key accounts or audience segments. An interactive platform webinar drive quality engagement with specific accounts. Webinar software helps in identifying, differentiating, interacting, and converting leads into customers through personalized marketing strategies. With data-driven technology, webinar software empowers marketing and sales to adopt personalized approaches towards their target audience.  A personalized approach leads to higher customer satisfaction and better lead conversion rates. 
• Webinars help in providing virtual assistance in the field of healthcare, education, science, and technology. Webinars are great tools to reach your audience and provide assistance to your existing customers remotely.

Webinar software is a useful resource for almost all industries for lead generation. According to the Big Book of Webinar Stats, the software and technology industry accounts for 29%, financial services 14%, Education 11%, Consulting 10%, and Healthcare 7% of the total 250000 webinars analyzed in the research. With the increase of average global mobile internet speed from 26.92 Mbps in 2019 to 30.89 Mbps in 2020, the webinar software is getting more traction from the education sector. Teachers conduct webinars and allow students to attend them on mobile devices. Trainers, coaches, online education providers, consultants, marketers, salespeople, researchers are the most frequent users of the webinar software. 

Webinar platforms for small businesses come with functionalities designed to cater to the needs of small-sized businesses. Small business owners can also focus on webinars to increase their brand awareness and credibility.

• A webinar is conducted with specific learning goals or targeting the audience with a specific purpose. It is different from an online web meeting or web conference as the goal for online meetings is mostly to discuss plans, management activities, and everyday business issues. 
• The webinar allows its participants and the host opportunities for interaction, but the communication is mostly from the presenter to the audience. Unlike webinars, online meetings offer more opportunities for interaction to all participants. In this perspective, a webinar is also different from a webcast, or online video broadcast as the person or groups hosting the broadcast do it with one-way communication. Even if comments and queries are allowed, it is mostly in the aftermath of the upload. 
• Webinars can accommodate a large number of audiences. The number of people interacting in the meeting is often limited.

Whatever you are doing is targeted towards your audience. Keep your audience and their needs in mind while selecting the best webinar software for your business. You should carefully match your needs with the features and functionalities provided by the webinar platform. Consider the following factors about the webinar creation software you are planning to purchase:

• Does it provide all essential features as required for your webinar?
• Can online webinar software work smoothly with normal internet connectivity?
• Is the system scalable to accommodate more features or accommodate more attendees if more people join the webinar than expected? 
• Is the webinar system capable of hosting from all devices such as desktops, laptops, tablets, mobile phones? 
• Can the webinar software integrate with external third-party software such as Mailchimp, CRM, Dropbox, etc., or not?
• Whether the software provides robust encryption to prevent any security breach while the webinar is on?  
• Is the software user-friendly, sophisticated, and easy to use?
• Does the software vendor provide reliable, 24/7 customer support?
• Does the webinar software ensure regulatory compliance for protecting attendee data?
• Whether customization, online training, automatic updates, and free upgrades available?
• Does the webinar software provider provide a free version or free trial/ live demo of its functionalities?

Registration

This feature of the webinar creation software creates a registration link that can be embedded on your website or social media pages or email to allow leads to register for your webinar. It also sends customized emails to the contact list with links to the registration page. 

Page Builder

With the inbuilt page builder and custom templates, you can create beautiful and responsive landing pages for registration. 

Address book

Keep records and contact lists of the target audience stored. Send emails and SMS directly to this address list, or you can filter this address book to send emails to selected recipients. 

Notifications and alerts

This feature allows you to send reminders and alerts before days, hours, or minutes before the webinar goes live. You can schedule the timings for alerts and choose to send them via SMS, email, or both. 

Scheduling webinar

With the scheduling feature of the webinar system, webinar hosts can schedule webinars with options to recurring schedule, always-on, immediate scheduling and date and time schedule, etc.  

Multi-host functionality

This feature of the webinar tool allows multiple hosts or co-hosts to use the webinar's hosting services. It also allows multiple presenters on a single screen. For better understanding and visuals, most webinar software keeps this number limited to a maximum of 6 presenters on screen at one time.

Webinar waiting room

On the webinar event day, many attendees would sign in and join the webinar prior to the scheduled time. This feature of the webinar service keeps the attendees engaged until the webinar starts.  In the waiting mode, attendees can be provided with the agenda, brief about your company and products, and what to expect from the webinar documents to read.

Presentation Module

This module has features such as screen sharing, video and audio play, slide show, audio mode, mute mode, text chat, whiteboard, etc.

Text chat

Live chat with options to highlight comments, moderation capabilities before the comment becomes available to all, private comment option, etc. is possible with the webinar software. 

Switch modes

Presenters deliver the webinar in speaker mode while attendees watch it in attendee mode. With the switch-mode feature, you can add attendees to the presenter mode so that even the attendees can share their screens. Once their part is done, you can put them back in the attendee mode.

Drawing Board

Apart from the presentations, you can add a personal touch to your webinar by drawing mind maps, annotative notes, and marking points on the presentation using a drawing board. 

Polls and surveys

You can conduct live polls and real-time surveys with immediate results to understand your audience better. 

Live reboot

If due to any technical issue you lose connectivity to the webinar, or your webcam becomes unresponsive, and you lose connection to the webinar room, then the live reboot button of the webinar software can create a new webinar room within 10-15 seconds and transfer all your attendees to the new webinar page. It will resume its broadcast from where you left, so you don't have to repeat any recent activity. 

Social Media broadcasting

With this feature, you can live stream your webinar on social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. 

Multiple device compatibility

With webinar software, you can host a webinar from the device of your preference. If you are not at your desk at the scheduled time, then you can start the webinar on your phone. 

Sales and offers

With this feature, you can offer products or services at discounted prices right from within the webinar room. You can put buying pop-ups in the side window. 

Webinar automation

This feature puts the webinar on auto-pilot mode. Once the pre-recorded webinar is embedded in your website, visitors can register and attend the webinar without any manual hosting. 

Webinar Recording

This feature of the webinar presentation software can record the live webinar in a high-quality video format for future reuse. 

Webinar Analytics:

Insights into your webinars' performance are essential to strategize the future course of action for your business and make subsequent improvements in webinars. With this feature, you can map the performance of your webinar based on key metrics analysis and automated reports. 

Access Control

Admins can grant access to selected people and retain billing and payment controls if required for paid webinars. 

Integrations:

The Webinar system integrates with third-party software solutions to enhance its productivity and efficiency. Most webinar solutions can integrate with CRM software, email software, sales, and marketing software to provide a host of added benefits. Let us analyze the third-party integrations in detail:

Third-party software integrations increase the robustness, functionality, and capabilities of webinar software. 

For instance:

• Integration of webinar app with CRM software such as Hubspot, or Salesforce helps to capture lead records and contact details in one place. It makes it easy to filter the target audience. 
• Integration with email marketing software such as MailChimp helps in sending bulk emails for the invitation. 
• An integration with landing page builder software such as InstaPage can help to create customized landing pages.
• With social media integration, users can host live webinars on major social media platforms such as Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter. 
• Webinar hosts can also reap the benefits of analytics for making sound decisions by integrating the webinar software with analytical tools such as Google Analytics and Heap. 

The costs of the webinar system depend on a large number of factors such as:

• The number of presenters and attendees you want onboard
• Features and functions it offers
• Whether it can work on multiple devices or not
• Quality of service offered 
• Integrations it offers
• User interface and experience

These variations can change the cost factor and estimations of the webinar software significantly.  

The enterprise version of Jet Webinar will cost you $397 a month, which has the capacity to accommodate 2000 live attendees, while the basic version is available for $63 with a maximum limit of 100 attendees. ClickMeeting webinar solution will cost you $279 a month for the Automated version with full functionality and 1000 attendees. You can get its basic version for $25 for 25attendees. Bigmarker's webinar software will cost $159 for its Elite plan (500 attendees) and $79 for the basic plan (100 attendees). Free webinar software such as myownconference comes with a lifelong free version for 20 attendees.  If you need open source webinar software, you can opt for OpenMeeting. For other online webinar software or webinar hosting platforms such as WebinarJam, On24, C-Meeting, Jitsi, Mconf, Mikogo, you need to contact the vendor for detailed pricing. You can get the list and all information from the GoodFirms Webinar Software Page.

Scouring through tons of webinar platforms for finding the best one for your purpose can be a daunting task. GoodFirms can make your search for webinar software simple and hassle-free.  Goodfirms is an IT market research and review company that treasures the list and reviews of the best performing IT companies worldwide. The detailed survey, analysis, and research conducted by GoodFirms provide buying assistance to B2B IT service seekers. 

With a huge directory of more than 9000 categorized IT services and products, more than 15000 reviews, and more than 700 extensive research and surveys in one place, GoodFirms provide software aspirants a one-stop place to find the best IT solutions. The readers of this buyer's guide for webinar software are advised to go through the list of thoroughly researched webinar tools and apply filters based on pricing, features, deployment, devices, business size, etc. to find the best webinar platform for their business.