Transcription
Listen, I already tried every webinar platform, so you don't have to. So if you're curious about which one I think is world-class and 10 times better than the rest, keep watching.
Today, I'm going to be ranking every single webinar hosting platform that I have ever tried. And for the criteria of today's ranking, I am going to be ranking these webinar hosting platforms based on how I use webinars within my business. So typically, I use webinars whenever I want to sell high-ticket offers. So this is going to be things that may cost a little bit more than the the typical one-off workshop that I do, or um, low-ticket items, digital products, ebooks, and things like that. So if I have something that has a premium or high-ticket price point, typically I will sell it on a webinar.
And so I'm going to actually rank all of the different platforms that I have used based on the usability of it, how easy it is for you to actually set up a webinar from scratch, whether you have tech skills or not. I am fairly tech-savvy, but I know a lot of my clients are not as always tech-savvy as I am. So I will be considering that in my ranking. I'm also going to be judging based on the price point, and I'm also going to be talking about the overall user experience that it provides for your webinar attendees, as well as some other things, just overall my brand perception and other criteria as we go along. So as we talk about some of these things, I will mention specific features or lack thereof for why I am giving the rankings that I am giving.
So you can see all the different webinar platforms that we're going to be ranking today down at the bottom: Zoom, Live Webinar, GoTo Webinar, Webinar Kit, Webex, Expertise TV, and Webinar Jam. And I do want to mention before we get started, Webinar Jam and Ever Webinar are the same thing. So pretty much Webinar Jam is for live webinars, Ever Webinar is for evergreen webinars. So I'm going to just use Webinar Jam for both of them. I consider them to be the same thing, even though technically they are two separate products, but you can get them in a bundle. Okay, all right.
So let's go ahead. I'm going to do these in the order that I have them, and it's no particular order. They just randomly I put the logos in here this way. I'm going to start with Zoom first, and then we'll continue down the line until we get to the last one.
So when it comes to Zoom, I use Zoom primarily for meetings. They do have a webinar plugin that is an additional fee that you can get to host your own webinars through Zoom. And I personally do not like Zoom's webinar platform because it doesn't really have robust landing pages where you can actually create registration pages, thank you pages, um, give people a lot of details and information about your upcoming webinars, like the learning objectives, a description, and all of that stuff, right? So pretty much when it comes to using the webinar plugin for Zoom, it's pretty much still going to be set up similar to how it would for a standard virtual meeting. So when someone goes to sign up for the webinar, there's a very basic page there where people can opt in. They can enter their name, email, I think maybe phone number, and you can add a couple couple other fields, but it's very generic and straightforward. It's like, this meeting starts at this time, at this date, and this is a topic, right? It doesn't really give you the flexibility to create a customized registration page that can increase your conversions like you have with some of the other webinar platforms that we're going to talk about later on in this video.
Um, another reason why I really don't love Zoom's plugin for webinars is it really kind of has a limited capacity when it comes to a lot of the other bells and whistles that you see with different platforms as far as how your audience can actually interact with you and engage with you throughout the webinar. So specifically, later on, when I talk about Webinar Jam, I'm going to talk about some of the features as far as sparking engagement with polls and surveys and adding your PowerPoint slides. There's just a lot more bells and whistles that can help keep your attendees engaged, as well as help you to convert your attendees if you are actually going to be selling something on your webinar. For me, I only use Zoom for meetings because I feel like that's what it is best at. Okay. Um, even though you do have the capability for for the webinar um plugin, at the price point, I don't know the exact price point off the top of my head for the plugin, it is um a pretty hefty fee. But if you're going to pay that much for the webinar plugin on Zoom, you can definitely get a better tool in some of the other webinar platforms that we're going to talk about.
So for Zoom, when it comes to meetings, I'm going to rate it as just okay. It's not great, but it's not the worst thing. If you already have Zoom, or if you have maybe a free trial to try out the webinar platform, then, you know, it's worth using. But just know that because of how it's structured, you may miss out on potential sales. You may have people who don't stay for your entire webinar because Zoom is literally designed for um, more so for virtual meetings where there's like back and forth collaboration and interaction versus you having a presentation style where you're the only person talking, or maybe you have a panel, but the audience isn't and isn't talking and engaging directly back in a conversation. Most likely, they're only engaging in the chat. Okay. So we're going to go with okay.
Now, next up, we're going to talk about Live Webinar. Listen, so with Live Webinar, I have to be totally honest, I forgot that I even tried this um webinar platform. So quick story time, right? A couple months ago, I was working with a client who was setting up a webinar and was going to use Live Webinar. And she tried to add me to her webinar in Live Webinar's platform. I feel like I'm saying webinar so much. And so when she tried to add me using my email address, she was like, "Hey Emy, I can't add you because it's saying that you already have an account." And I was like, "Huh? That's weird. Like, I don't ever remember using Live Webinar, right?" And so I went to my email and I was like, "Let me just check my email, see if I have like the email notification where it says like, you know, you created an account or signed up or whatever." So I go to my email and not only do I see where I was given access to Live Webinar, but I came across um, an email chain where at one point, I, I don't remember the year, I want to say maybe 2019, 2020, um, Web Live Webinar actually reached out to me to review their webinar platform on my YouTube channel. In full transparency, I ended up not even doing the collaboration because they did give me like a one-year free access to the platform so I could go um check it out. And so as I was actually setting up a webinar to do my video, it was so challenging every step of the way. I had questions. The, you couldn't really create registration pages. It was more so very similar to Zoom, where it's more so designed for meetings than actual webinars where you're doing a presentation, there's one main speaker, and everyone else is just kind of in the audience and listening.
So I ended up sending them an email and saying, "Hey, um, this needs to be fixed, this needs to be fixed, I have a question about this, I can't do this." And so basically, I had this long list of questions or like issues that I noticed with their platform. And so I ended up not doing the collaboration, obviously, because typically when brands reach out to you, they want you to talk about how amazing their platform is. And I'm that type of person, like I'm never going to do anything just for a check. If I don't believe in something, I'm not going to um promote it to my audience, right? Because I don't want to promote something to you guys that I don't feel is going to be beneficial for you. Anytime there's some type of collaboration or partnership, it needs to be a win-win situation between me and that brand. But if I'm presenting something to my audience, it also needs to be a win for you guys as well. So I ended up not doing the collaboration. And in my last email that I sent to the rep from Live Webinar, you guys, and I have to put a screenshot of it, I literally told them, like, your name is misleading. This should not be called Live Webinar, it should be called Live Meeting because this is made more so for like team meetings and collaborations than um, a webinar platform. And so that was my last communication with them.
So when it came to actually creating the webinar itself, it was not very user-friendly. It took me a long time to go through the process of creating um, a very generic, basic registration page that was most likely not going to be optimized for conversions. And then the webinar itself, the platform was okay, but again, I felt like it was more so for team meetings and collaborations than for um, a webinar platform where you are one main speaker and you're going to be speaking to one to many in um, kind of like a teaching type of environment. So for those reasons, I am going to rank Live Webinar as absolute trash. Just like I mentioned in my email to them, this should be called Live Meetings, not Live Webinar. All right, let's go to the next um webinar platform, which is going to be GoTo Webinar.
I have not used this in a really long time, but how I first started using GoTo Webinar, this is like probably a decade ago um, maybe long, well, probably a decade. But I actually became familiar with GoTo Webinar because when I worked as an IT, a health IT interface developer, we used GoTo Webinar and also Webex, you know, Cisco, right? For most of our team meetings and definitely whenever we would have like those all-hands-on-deck training sessions or those required meetings that everyone has to be at. That is pretty much how I use both GoTo Webinar and Webex. So I'm going to, I guess I'm going to do Webex next since I'm already kind of talking about it.
So overall for GoTo Webinar, when it comes to setting up your webinar, it is fairly easy to set up. It is a little bit more complex than some of the other tools we're going to talk about, but it is a whole lot easier than Live Webinar was. Um, when it comes to bells and whistles, I would rate it kind of probably in the middle. It has some webinar capabilities that are cool as far as polls and things like that, but it's still kind of limited when it comes to some of the other like more futuristic features and bells and whistles that um, newer webinar hosting platforms have. But with GoTo Webinar, it has been around for years. It's one of those, it's like, it's tried and true. They're, they're like, "We've been here for a while, we don't have to keep up with with these other new new people in the game. Like, we ain't new to this, we're true to this, right?" So I'm going to rate GoTo Webinar as okay. But there are tools that are better, but um, there's tools that are a lot worse, right? So we're going to go ahead, go middle of the road with GoTo Webinar.
And I'm going to skip Webinar Kit and come back to it since I already kind of talked about Webex. Um, it's very similar to GoTo Webinar, kind of. If you watch my um, email service provider ranking video, I talked about how even though I did all the email hosting platforms that I have used, I talked about how Mailchimp and MailerLite, I would consider to be direct competitors because they're both very economically priced. They're for people who are trying to grow their business with email marketing but are on a bootstrap budget. The features are very similar. And the same thing is going to be true when it comes to GoTo Webinar versus Webex. And so I'm going to drop Webex as okay. You know, there's tools that are better and worse. Um, I would consider Webex to be a direct competitor to GoTo Webinar. It's very similar. Again, it's, it's um, often used in a lot of big organizations or companies where they have a lot of those all-hands-on-deck meetings, they have a lot of inter-department meetings where you have maybe the head of HR, the head of IT, the head of the lab, or whatever, and everyone has to come together for like weekly meetings or periodically for meetings like that. Um, I think it is more more so a meeting platform for teams and collaborations than webinars. But the webinar feature, if you want to do a one-to-many presentation, is pretty decent, I must say. It is decent.
All right, let's go back to Webinar Kit. Webinar Kit, Webinar Kit, Webinar Kit. So um, a lot of you, if you're watching this webinar platform rating video and you found my channel specifically from webinars, it is probably because of the videos that I have previously done on Webinar Kit. I did an initial Webinar Kit review when I first bought Webinar Kit that had a one-time deal that was going on. I talked about my experience with that, and then I did a one-year update for what I thought about Webinar Kit based on, you know, new features and things that they had implemented over the time from the last time I did my review. And then I also did a comparison video where I compared Webinar Kit to Webinar Jam. So I will leave those in the description if you want to check out any of those videos.
So with Webinar Kit, Webinar Kit is interesting. So if one thing that I will say that I like about Webinar Kit is that if you are on a bootstrap budget and you know that one of the best marketing strategies and channels for you to be able to grow your business is going to be with webinars, then Webinar Kit is a great way to get started without having to pay a huge price tag for a webinar platform. But with Webinar Kit, there are some limitations that um, I don't particularly love about it. One of the main things for me, and maybe this has gotten better, but when I was using Webinar Kit, one thing that I hated was it was not always reliable. There was often times when webinars would be down because these servers were down at Webinar Kit. And it used to happen like when I first started using them, it would happen like very frequently. And then over time, it didn't happen as much. So I don't know if they bought new servers or what um, but then also there were a lot of limitations as far as how emails are sent out when someone registers for your email, how it actually integrates with other third-party tools. Let's say if um, you use a different email service provider. So someone signs up for your webinar through Webinar Kit, but you're sending email reminders from, like myself, I use ConvertKit. Um, there was a couple of issues with that. But over time, I will say that of of all the platforms, as far as usability and really growing and scaling their products, I can say that Webinar Kit has come a long way since I first started using it. I have personally had um, some conversations with one of the co-founders and told them about things that I thought could make the platform better, and they have heard me, implemented a lot of those. So I will say that it has came a long way, and they continuously have roadmaps for how they plan to um, improve the platform, and I really appreciate that about Webinar Kit.
So I am going to rank Webinar Kit as um, so I don't want to go just okay because I do feel like it is better than the other tools. And I don't want to go all in on pretty good because it is decent. Is it? It gets the job done, but there are some limitations. So maybe we're going to go um, on the line. Can I give it a 3.5? Can I give Webinar Kit a 3.5? Let's go 3.5. We're going to go 3.5, and we're going to put Webinar Kit halfway between okay and pretty good. Okay. All right.
So let's go to Expertise TV. Listen, so this is another platform that reached out to me for a brand partnership, and I also declined it. And a funny story about this is they reached out to me, it's probably been maybe a year or so now since they reached out. And when the lady reached out, was like, "This sounds so familiar. Like, what? Like, I think I've used this before." And so when I actually went and looked back at my email, it was funny because I signed up for Expertise TV, I want to say, oh my gosh, I don't even remember what year it was, it was probably like 2016, 17, 18. And they had this like a $38 one-time lifetime deal. And I remember whatever date that was that I bought it, I went up and tried, I went into Expertise TV and I tried to set up a webinar. And then immediately, you know how it is, like you get that one-time fee, it's always too good to be true. So I ended up having to actually upgrade and pay another one-time fee to access the actual webinar plugin. And even when I did that, it's still like a like version of their webinar platform. So in order to actually have more features and bells and whistles, I would have had to upgrade again to get um, additional features unlocked within Expertise. And I ended up not even actually, I started making a um, tutorial for how to use Expertise TV before they even reached out to me. And it was just so confusing, so hard to do that I never even made my YouTube video for the channel, obviously. And then I never even successfully set up a webinar. So I didn't feel like the platform was very user-friendly. Um, I felt like the whole one-time fee, granted it was only $38, right? I'm okay with an upsell for $99 or whatever. But after that, you, you still telling me I got to upsell and buy something else to to unlock customization? That's too much. Just say it's $4.99 one-time fee and stop making me have to upgrade after every step in the process. That's just unhinged in my opinion.
So it wasn't that easy to set up. There was continuous upsells every step of the process that I did not like. And you, in order to do your webinars on Expertise TV, it's really not user-friendly for you if you're a service provider, you're a coach, um, you're a, you're a course creator, you're a consultant. So basically, with you using Expertise TV, you're driving traffic and promotion towards their platform versus you really building your own thing, say if you had your own um, website or whatever. So I don't recommend using Expertise TV at all um, unless you are a coach where you only want to host your coaching, sell your coaching packages, and host your meetings and your workshops, your webinars, everything within Expertise TV. And even then, the functionality is not user-friendly for you on the back end as far as setting these things up. And it's not user-friendly, in my opinion, to your end users, your webinar attendees, your coaching clients either. So in my opinion, it's not the best platform for anybody. And we're also going to rank Expertise TV down here as absolute trash, honey. And we're gonna put this at zero because this is trash, trash. Okay, this is absolute trash, trash. Do not recommend.
All right, so now let's get to the last platform that we have when it comes to hosting your webinars. And honestly, this is my favorite platform, but I still don't recommend it. And I know you're like, Emy, what? How's it your favorite platform but you don't recommend it? So when it comes to Webinar Jam, the pros about Webinar Jam is the fact that Webinar Jam and Ever Webinar are very, very, very easy to set up. It's easy for you to add your title, your description. You could create custom landing pages, registration pages, thank you pages, all within the app itself. You can also um, easily plug in if you want to create your own sales pages, registration pages on your own website and just redirect there, you can do that as well. You can send emails directly from Webinar Jam or Ever Webinar, or you can seamlessly integrate with your third-party email marketing service provider. And all the years that I have used Webinar Jam, I started using them, I want to say like 2015, 2016. I have never had any downtime. I have never had any any technical issues. Um, it's really easy to set up. It provides a great experience for you on the back end, as well as for the user experience for your webinar attendees. When it comes to keeping your attendees engaged, it has some of the best features. It has polls, you can add presentations, you can add videos, you can um, invite other presenters. There's a lot of things you could do within your webinar to really maximize your time with your audience, especially if you're using webinars to sell um, a high-ticket offer at the end. I do feel like Webinar Jam was created with online service providers in mind. So they really have a lot of things that really cater to people who sell services and who sell products and services through webinars.
Now, I know you're like, if you're saying all that, why would you say you don't recommend it? The only cons that I have for Webinar Jam is more so just a personal thing for me. As a person of color, as a woman in business, I am very intentional about supporting platforms that support people who look like me. And one thing that I have actually contacted Webinar Jam about is the lack of diversity that they have in their marketing. Um, typically, you don't see a lot of people of color. You don't even see a lot of women. And a lot of their marketing is gorilla-style marketing that is targeted towards cis white men. And you mostly see cis white men in their marketing, in their case studies, in their testimonials. But one thing I will say is, I don't know exactly when I sent that email to them, it was probably over a year ago at this point, for sure. But I did notice um, one time I was in their Facebook group, and I did see that they had a couple of people of color on their staff that were a part of the success community and they're answering questions and things like that. So that was good to see. I don't know if they implemented those things because of the um, communication that I sent to them. I never got a response back to to my email, but I do know that they received my feedback. And I don't know if them adding that diversity was a result of that, or if it was just natural, or what. But I can say that I have started to see at least on their team, more people of color and women as well.
But overall, I am going to rank Webinar Jam and Ever Webinar as a 4.5. I'm not going to push it all the way up into world-class because of my personal reasons. I feel like it can have more diversity in its marketing and its messaging. And then also, the whole card situation, don't be changing my expiration date on on no card, okay? But overall, I do feel like it is a good platform that is out there. Of all the platforms that I have personally tried, it is tried and true. It is the best. It is the one that has brought me the most leads, generated the most sales. It is the one that is most consistent. The registration pages are optimized for conversion. The webinar platform itself is optimized for you to get conversions. And like I said, I feel like they really understand the online entrepreneur. Um, they understand how a lot of online entrepreneurs leverage webinars for sales, and they really cater to that audience.
So there you have it. That is my tier ranking of every single webinar hosting platform that I have ever tried. Let me know down in the comments below this video, do you agree with my rankings? Have you tried any of these webinar platforms? How would you rank them? What would you rate as the top webinar platform? What do you think is the worst? Let me know all the tea down in the comments below this video. As always, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for stopping by my internet home. Make sure you like, comment, and subscribe, and turn on those notifications so you can be the first one notified anytime I upload another tier ranking video just like this. Bye y'all.