Just like a seminar, a webinar is hosted on the web using the best webinar software. It’s the best way to demonstrate your project and to directly communicate with your audience. Considered as one of the best online collaboration tools, webinar software platforms from the top providers these days are enriched with raft of functionalities and features. Webinar software for small businesses is used by online store owners, digital marketers, entrepreneurs, employees, online tutors and technology professionals.
Webinars are great for every business. One of the key benefits of hosting a webinar is the communication opportunity with hundreds of people around the world. You can sell without selling hard, engage with people and capture new leads.
Some people think about hosting a webinar has become an obsolete method and creating an online course is more effective.
Well, I don’t agree!
There is nothing to prove, we all have seen how important these tools are during the COVID-19 pandemic, right?
If you create the highest quality, most audience-focused webinar, qualifying new leads and getting high conversion rates is guaranteed.
The challenging part is how to choose a webinar software tool that offers good audio quality and transcriptions. Furthermore, it should have recording features and can handle large numbers of virtual attendees.
Let’s get started!
1. What is a Webinar Software?
Let’s just learn the basics first. Have you ever attended a seminar before like during your graduation? Where one or few persons address to a large gathering of people. They get feedback from the audience, learn about their opinions and answer to their questions.
Now just move that stuff over the web and that’s a webinar.
A webinar is an online:
- Lecture
- Presentation
- Educational video
- A product demo
- Video podcast
- Coaching class
- Live event
- Company meeting
- Product promotion
- Video workshop
and more…
The software that runs all of that over the internet is a webinar software. A webinar tool is used to transmit our audio, video, files and documents online with attendees.
2. What Features should we look in a Webinar Software for Small Business?
Web and video conferencing platforms provide a lot of new exciting features. You can record all those lectures or presentations and publish it to YouTube. This way, your audience can watch it later by downloading the videos. More importantly, you can make money from YouTube via uploading the webinar trainings or sessions.
Here are some of the features you should check before buying a webinar software:
- Instant screen sharing
- Maximum no. of attendees
- Integration with other apps
- Live chat
- Polls
- Branding
- Calendar scheduling
- Email invites/reminders
- Waiting rooms
- Recording/pre-recording
- Automatic recording
- Facebook and Youtube lives
- Security
- Customer support
And not to mention, don’t forget to check the costs and affordability before choosing a webinar software.
3. What is the Best Webinar Software for a Small Business?
So, we’ve gone through the features above a webinar software must have. Above all, I am highly concerned about security as we all have witnessed security issues with a famous online web conferencing platform.
There have been many cases where un-authorized people interrupted into the ongoing meetings and shared illegal material. Just like WhatsApp, the users want to have end-to-end encryption in their communication. So, the best webinar software takes care of your privacy concerns. Furthermore, it is highly secure and not a single un-authorized person can interrupt or interfere in your personal video meetings. Additionally, it also makes it easy to record and share the video lectures or presentations.
So, let’s check out the best webinar software programs currently hot in the market.
It’s No.1 and the best webinar software which offers a great user experience to you and your attendees. It is incredibly easy to use, beautiful having a visually pleasing design. More importantly, you can upload video files directly to it. It is a clean and highly customizable meetings and video conferencing tool.
Demio is a no-download webinar software, it does not require an app to be downloaded.
Demio allows you to create lucrative registration pages for each event. You can also check out every event’s analytics.
Demio Features:
- Simple, neat and user-friendly design
- Excellent customer service and easy configuration
- Provides excellent communication environment
- No. of options to maintain control of the room
- Works like a charm in the web browser
- Set your chat from public to private and allow anonymity for questions
- Split screen presentation mode
- It can be integrated with G-suite and other marketing platforms
- Unlimited sessions, registrations and storage
Demio Pricing:
Demio has 3 pricing plans if paid annually:
- Starter at $34/month
- Growth at $69/month
- Business at $163/month
Lastly, Demio is a complete virtual training platform. If you want to give it a try, Demio offers a 14-day trial of it’s Growth plan.
GoToWebinar is a professional webinar software suitable for meetings of any kind. The high quality video and sound features sets it apart from the rest. GoToWeinbar is a robust and a reliable tool having a number of great features to engage your audience.
GoToWebinar is a complete webinar solution that connects you with your attendees through one link click.
GoToWebinar Features:
- Create custom registration pages, add questions to sort out relevant audience
- No interruptions, you can mass mute while presentation
- Integrates with the CRM of your choice
- Simple and easy to use interface to setup webinars
- Create and customize multiple webinar sessions
- Have additional tools like surveys, polls and handouts
- An ideal platform for remote conferencing
- Recording and pre-recording facility for your webinars
- Easy for organizer to run the whole online meeting with hundreds of attendees
GoToWebinar Pricing:
There are 4 pricing plans depending upon the number of participants and add-ons.
- Lite at $49/mo
- Standard at $99/mo
- Pro at $199/mo
- Enterprise at $399/mo
If you want to try, sign up without any credit card for a trial period of one week to explore and unlock all the top-notch features.
Livestorm is a browser based webinar software that lets professionals organize online events easily. It is a highly stable platform and people love it’s working capability through a web browser. Livestorm has multiple customization options. Also, you can attach files from Dropbox or Google Drive during the chat if you want to share the documents with your attendees.
Livestorm needs no additional software, open the web browser and you are good to go.
Livestorm Features:
- Custom registration pages
- Reasonable yearly price
- Excellent customer service
- Multi hosts and screen sharing features
- Host unlimited HD quality webinars
- Add up to 6 guest hosts at the same time (price varies)
- Supports multiple languages
- 1000 attendees can join the webinar at the same time
- Integrates with Slack, Intercom and Hubspot
- Free plan to learn more about Livestorm (no credit card)
Livestorm Pricing:
There are 3 pricing plans.
- Basic is free with limited features
- Premium at €89/month
- Enterprise— you need to contact sales
Zoho is one-stop shop for all the marketing professionals. It has many other apps like books, invoicing, inventory and subscriptions. So you can integrate each app within the Zoho environment which sets it apart from the rest. Zoho meeting is secure online meeting and webinar platform. With Zoho webinar, you can send email invitations, set reminders and add scheduled calls via mobile apps.
Zoho meeting is a highly secure video conferencing solution. It is quick and easy tool which lets you to join a meeting with a single click. Every meeting can be recorded.
Zoho has 45 apps and webinar is just one part, you can integrate each app.
Zoho Features:
- It’s a modern webinar tool that runs from your web browser
- As a presenter, you can mute all the participants
- Extensions available for chrome and Firefox browsers
- Record, replay and share facility
- Unmatched audio and video quality
- Highly stable webinar tool with no interruptions
- Chat function for users with no microphones
- Adjustable bandwidth option for limited bandwidth connections
and much more…
Zoho Pricing:
Zoho is highly affordable webinar software for small businesses. It has 4 packages starting from 25 to 250 attendees.
- 25 attendees at $15
- 50 attendees at $23
- 100 attendees for $31
- 250 attendees for $63
The price of each package is billed annually and local taxes will be charged too.
Wanna try Zoho? It’s 14-day free trial is available without any credit card requirement.
Zoom— a popular web, video conferencing, and webinar software gained immense reputation during the COVID-19 pandemic. It has great audience participation tools and the video quality is consistent. With Zoom, you can instantly start a meeting and manage the participants with it’s user-friendly interface. Another superb feature is having Collaboration-Enabled Conference Rooms which makes Zoom stand out from the crowd.
Zoom has over 22K 5 star reviews on G2.
Zoom is too easy to control and navigate. A person who has never used any app online can simply download Zoom and use it right away. As a host, you have the full control to add or remove people. Additionally, you can schedule meetings or you can start them quickly.
Zoom offers a free plan to host up to 100 participants.
Now let’s talk about Zoom’s features.
Zoom Features:
- Up to 1,000 video participants & 10,000 viewers.
- Polling, whiteboarding and multi-sharing.
- TLS, AES and End-to-End Encryption.
- Language interpretation feature.
- Color filters and funny animal stickers.
- Send code snippets, text, voice messages and images to groups.
- Flexible registration controls.
- Live Q&A and chat features.
- Monetize your webinars with PayPal.
- Ticket, live chat and phone support for premium accounts.
Zoom Pricing:
You can buy Zoom at $400/year/license for 100 attendees. The price increases with the increasing number of attendees. For more details on plans and pricing, check out here.
Hi, I am Faisal Rehman.
