10 Best Virtual Event Platforms in 2023
Virtual events have become an essential part of today's digital landscape. They are an effective way to share knowledge, connect with your audience, foster community, and grow your brand. But with so many virtual event platforms available in the market, it can be challenging to find the right virtual event tool for your needs. That's why we've compiled a list of the ten best webinar platforms for your next online event or webinar experience.
Welcome's Virtual Event Platform
Welcome's virtual event platform is the ONLY end-to-end virtual event and content creation platform. Create and customize registration landing pages; host live virtual events, and engage your audience with interactive polls, Q&A, and more.
With Welcome’s browser-based virtual event platform you can host virtual events with up to 20,000 attendees --making it the ideal solution for virtual events, large or small. Not only that, Welcome has built-in content creation tools so you can turn your on-demand virtual event recording into branded video clips in an instant.
Welcome also boasts powerful integrations with Hubspot, Marketo, Salesforce, and more. These integrations work in real-time so that your marketing and sales team can get information in and out of their CRM or marketing platform instantly. Welcome is ideal for marketing teams, event marketers, and demand generation leaders looking to generate pipeline and grow revenue.
Pricing is based on the number of attendees for your virtual event. You can learn more about pricing here
Some additional virtual event features:
- Interactive calls-to-action
- Live Q&A submission and voting
- Stage Kit- enhance your virtual event with branded overlay templates instead of slides
- Instant on-demand recordings available to your registrants
- Welcome Studio and Green-room for panelists to prepare before going on live video
- Automated email reminders to reduce the load on your email marketing team
- Custom in virtual event landing page
- Stream to additional platforms (e.g. Youtube)
- Mobile streaming and mobile chat
Zoom Webinar
Zoom Webinar is one of the most popular and reliable virtual event platforms in the market. As a well known video conferencing and online meeting tool, it offers excellent video and audio quality, screen sharing, breakout rooms, and recording options. You can host webinars with up to 1,000 attendees.
Where Zoom Webinar can tend to fall short is its engagement functionality and ability to brand the event. It’s quite limited when it comes to putting your brand in the best light possible. Instead of a great virtual experience, it tends to feel like a large online meeting.
Zoom Webinar is ideal for small businesses that need to have very basic virtual gatherings and aren’t trying to drive pipeline or revenue.
Pricing requires you already have a zoom meeting license and is based on the number of users and attendee cap limits.
On24
ON24 is a webinar and virtual event platform that offers a comprehensive suite of tools and features for hosting successful online events. It allows businesses to engage with their target audience through live and on-demand webinars, virtual events, and multimedia experiences. ON24 offers features such as live chat, polls, surveys, and personalized content recommendations, as well as analytics and reporting tools to track attendee engagement and measure the success of your events.
The platform integrates with popular marketing automation and CRM systems, making it easy to capture and follow up with leads generated from your virtual events. Overall, ON24 is a reliable and scalable solution for businesses of all sizes looking to leverage the power of webinars for their marketing and communication needs.
While On24 has all the capabilities of a robust virtual events platform, the user interface and user experience are extremely dated. It’s best suited for users who want to host simulive/on-demand webinars, and nothing else.
Pricing requires you to talk to sales and their pricing structure is unknown.
Adobe Connect
Adobe Connect is a platform that allows you to host virtual events with up to 1,500 attendees. It comes with a range of features such as breakout rooms, polls, and screen sharing. You can also customize the branding and registration of your event.
Adobe Connect has all of your required features- custom layouts, persistent rooms, shared templates, and a backstage. It’s also an ideal choice as an e-learning solution enabling schools and instructors to track on-demand learning progress.
Adobe Connect has a 30-day free trial; pricing is unknown.
Goldcast
Goldcast Event Software is a B2B marketing solution that helps scale virtual event programs with customizable registration pages, branded email cadences, and powerful engagement tools. The platform offers a fully branded experience, making it a top revenue-generating channel for B2B brands.
While Goldcast does work well for some marketing use cases, the overall design and branding ability can leave things feeling flat when you want to host a polished event that lets your brand shine. Furthermore, it lacks many audience engagement features such as on-stage interactive polls and clickable CTAs.
Pricing requires you to talk to sales and their pricing structure is unknown.
Livestorm
Livestorm is an all-in-one virtual events platform that offers a range of features such as polls, Q&A, and live chat. You can host live and automated webinars with up to 1,000 attendees and customize the registration and branding of your event.
Livestorm is great for people tight on a budget and may care less about branding capabilities or audience engagement features.
They offer a free plan which is great for anyone holding small amounts of virtual events with a small number of attendees.
Additional pricing starts at $88 per month, billed annually per user. Business and Enterprise pricing requires you to speak with sales.
BigMarker
BigMarker is a comprehensive platform that offers a range of features such as polls, Q&A, and screen sharing. You can host live and automated virtual events with up to 1,000 attendees and customize the branding and registration of your event.
Big Marker is well suited for basic virtual event needs but doesn’t hold up to the top five webinar solutions listed above. For conference-style virtual events it may be worth considering, but for someone with a webinar program, the features lean too heavily towards hosting virtual conferences, and not enough interactive features for live webinars.
Pricing requires you to talk to sales.
GoToWebinar
GoTo Webinar is an all-in-one virtual event platform that offers customizable modes, interactive features, analytics, integrations, and flexible pricing to host virtual events of all sizes. It is secure, simple to manage, and can accommodate up to 3,000 attendees.
The platform offers advanced features such as HD video, custom registration forms, and semi-interactive polls. Similar to Adobe Connect, it also provides certificates of completion for educational users or continuing education use cases, making it an ideal choice for educational providers.
Pricing: A free trial is available with no commitment or credit card required. Pricing starts at $49 per user per month, up to $399 per user per month ($4788 per user per year).
ClickMeeting
ClickMeeting is a user-friendly platform that offers a range of features such as polls, Q&A, and screen sharing. You can host live and automated virtual events with up to 1,000 attendees and customize the branding and registration of your event.
ClickMeeting is similar to Zoom Webinar in that it’s a meeting platform first and a virtual event platform second. While you can host live webinars and on-demand webinars, ClickMeeting feels like a large meeting, not a webinar experience, and is suited more to run large product demos and online courses.
ClickMeeting does have a free plan (30 day free trial) and then starts at $25 per user per month. As you require more features, like marketing integrations, live streaming, and branding services, you’ll need to talk to their sales team to learn about pricing.
StreamYard
StreamYard is a powerful live streaming platform that allows you to host virtual events, interviews, and other live events. It comes with a range of features such as branding, screen sharing, and live chat. You can also broadcast your event to multiple social media platforms simultaneously.
While you technically could use StreamYard to piece together a virtual event experience, it’s far from the best webinar platform or webinar solution as it's more of a broadcasting platform than anything else.
StreamYard has a free version, and its paid version starts at $20 per user per month.
So what is the best virtual event software or best webinar platform?
Ultimately, this decision will depend on your specific needs. Welcome is the best virtual event solution for anyone trying to drive pipeline and reduce content creation costs. If you need something very simple and have very little budget, Zoom Webinar would likely be the best choice. Check out the virtual event platforms above and make the best choice based on your needs - whether that is integrations with your marketing tools like Hubspot and Marketo, enhanced branding features, or based on the number of attendees you expect to host.
