7 Best Webinar Platforms for Creators and Businesses in 2023

Nerves, poor internet connection, and webinar platform malfunctions are just a few issues you may face while hosting a webinar.

Fortunately, most problems are avoidable if you create great content and prepare well. The rest will depend on the software and services you use. Among these is the webinar platform you choose.

If you use an excellent platform, your webinar will stream better, you’ll better engage your audience, and you’ll convert more attendees into customers.

To help you find the right platform, I’ve made a list of the best choices. If you pick one of these, the only problem you’ll need to worry about is your dog barking in the middle of the webinar.

The best webinar platforms

What makes a great webinar software?

There are so many wonderful webinar platforms. But which one is best for your business? Here are the essential features of a first-rate webinar platform.

Top-quality streaming: The primary thing a webinar platform should offer is top-quality streaming. Webinars are a lot like websites. If your content takes too long to load, people will abandon it. Webinar attendees might be more forgiving than website visitors since they set aside time in advance. But if your webinar’s video starts buffering or if the quality is grainy, people will leave.

Evergreen webinar option: Some companies with big content marketing teams have a couple of people who focus on webinars. They come up with fresh content and run webinars every week. But what if you’re a solopreneur or have a small content marketing team and don’t have the time? Use webinar software with an evergreen option. It’ll let you run a live webinar, but after you finish, you can use the recording as an evergreen webinar.

Real-time chat: One of the reasons why people attend webinars is because they can communicate with you in real-time. This makes chat a crucial component of the webinar. Hosts and attendees can send questions and answers and share links. Some webinar software with on-demand features also have a special feature where attendees can type questions. You receive alerts about these questions via email or the app, and your support team can answer them.

Integrations: If you already have marketing software like Mailchimp for email automation and landing pages, you might prefer using the integration to transfer data. So it would be better to pick software that integrates with the tools you already use. Integrations with connector apps like Zapier and Hubspot Operations Hub will also help.

Ease of use and accessibility: The webinar software should be easy to use both for you and your attendees. You might be able to get used to it with practice, but your attendees will probably be using it for the first time. They need to get the hang of it immediately, if you want them to stick around. Accessibility is another critical necessity. The software should have apps for all devices or at least a browser version.

Built-in marketing tools: Your webinar is not just a video, it’s a vital marketing funnel. So, to generate the most sales, your chosen platform should include marketing tools. On the front end, you have high-converting landing pages and email reminders to attract maximum attendees. On the backend, you have sales pages and follow-up emails to promote the offer after the webinar and get more sales.

Some top webinar software offer all the features required to build a webinar funnel that complements your other marketing funnels. You can pick an all-inclusive webinar platform if you don’t already have tools for creating landing pages and automating emails. If you already have these tools, you can instead pick a webinar software that integrates with them.

Best webinar software for a highly engaging webinar

1. LiveWebinar [Comes with whiteboarding tools]

LiveWebinar is a cloud-based webinar solution for businesses big and small. You can use it to run free and paid webinars and stream your meetings live to various social media platforms.

Besides, you get to customize your video conferences to fit your own brand. Other features include screen sharing, live recording, whiteboard for illustrating ideas or taking notes. It also comes with engagement analysis to help you improve your next webinar.

Running your webinar with a team? You can invite participants via a shareable link and assign roles to them. There’s no need to download anything because LiveWebinar works on all browsers and devices.

LiveWebinar also integrates with most email marketing tools like MailChimp, ConvertKit, SendFox, and more to help you grow your email list.

Pricing: LiveWebinar starts free with limited features. The Pro and Business Plans start at $17.99 and $143 per month. For a limited time, you can get LiveWebinar starting from a $99 one-time payment at AppSumo.

2. Livestorm [No-download webinar experience]

Have you ever made time for a webinar and clicked on the link on time, only to realize that you’ll be late because you have to install the software?

It can be frustrating because you miss the introduction. Your attendees face the same situation. This is why an alternative webinar solution like Livestorm—where you don’t have to install any software—is a good option.

The host, moderators, and co-hosts can present the webinar directly on a browser. Your attendees can also view the webinar and interact back through chat with the browser.

It’ll ensure that more people show up on time and convert, as the first few minutes of the webinar matter a lot. This is where you introduce yourself and inform attendees about the contents of the webinar. It’s vital when a cold audience is attending, and they have no idea who you are and why your opinions matter.

Livestorm has all the other tools required to run webinars, such as landing pages, email automation, on-demand webinars, analytics, and integrations. There’s also an interactive live chat where you can post questions and polls. This tool will also work for presenting live demos for SaaS products.

The main drawback with Livestorm is that there’s no software. The quality of your stream will highly depend on your internet connection’s speed.

Another con is the price. You can only have 100 live attendees and one host with the Premium plan. You have to pay $109 to bump it up to 250 live attendees. You also have to pay the same amount for every extra host you add. It can get expensive if you have a lot of co-hosts.

Pricing: The Premium plan costs $109 per month. You can only have 100 attendees and one host on this. To add more, you have to pay extra. There are also free and enterprise plans.

3. GetResponse [Complete online marketing suite]

Most of the top webinar platforms offer extra marketing features for building the funnel. But they’re very basic. You can’t customize the landing pages or segment your email list like you can with tools like ClickFunnels.

If you already have advanced marketing software, it might be better to set up the funnel with them and look for a webinar platform that integrates with these tools. But if you don’t have one, you can use GetResponse.

With GetResponse, you can run unlimited recorded and live webinars and host up to 1,000 attendees. In addition, it’s got several tools to promote your webinar. You can also use these for other marketing purposes such as growing your email list, running ads, and building funnels.

These tools include:

Landing pages: GetResponse has 180 templates and a landing page builder for creating webinar registration pages, squeeze pages, and sales pages.

Email automation: You can write emails from scratch or use the 220 templates to send autoresponders or broadcasts. You can also segment subscribers and score leads.

Ad automation: It has a social ads creator for creating ad images and videos for Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn. There’s also ad automation to run ads directly on the platform.

Conversion funnels: There are 40 funnel templates to quickly build a funnel for your webinar and other marketing campaigns.

There are also other tools such as live chat, push notifications, web forms, surveys, and order forms.

Pricing: The Plus and Professional plans cost $49 and $99 per month, with a 30-day trial. The $15 Basic plan is for email marketing and doesn’t include webinars. You also have a custom Max plan that allows up to 1,000 attendees.

4. ClickMeeting [Best for paid webinars]

Most people run free webinars where they deliver value upfront and promote an offer at the end. But this isn’t the only webinar funnel. There’s another less frequently used option where you can sell a live workshop or funnel using a tool like ClickMeeting.

To access the webinar, attendees have to pay in advance. ClickMeeting offers a PayPal and PayU integration to accept payments directly on the registration page.

Another powerful feature from ClickMeeting is that up to 10,000 viewers can watch the live webinar. This makes it perfect for running free or paid virtual conferences.

On top of these, it has various features for running live and on-demand webinars and building the funnel around them.

While presenting the webinar, you can share your screen, a live video of you through the webcam, or use the whiteboard. You can also share a call to action in the live chat that promotes your offer.

Pricing: The Live and Automated plans start at $30 and $45 per month, with a 30-day trial. Pricing increases as the number of attendees increases. There’s also an Enterprise plan for running virtual events.

5. Crowdcast [Stream to multiple channels]

Crowdcast is an excellent option if you want to stream your webinar on multiple channels simultaneously. You can run the webinar directly on the platform, and people can attend it via the browser. But at the same time, you can embed the player on your website or stream it on other social networks like Facebook Live, YouTube, Twitch, and LinkedIn.

This helps you reach a large number of attendees at the same time. However, you can’t collect email addresses and other contact details of people who join you via other platforms.

It has a feature called the RTMP studio that allows you to stream your video on extra platforms such as ecamm, Wirecast, Switcher Studio, and LiveU.

There’s also a Patreon integration you can use to host interviews, live streams, and Q&As. You can either present your screens or invite patrons for a face-to-face conversation.

Crowdcast has other features such as landing pages, chat for Q&A and voting, paid events, and analytics. Attendees can also follow you to receive push notifications or email updates about upcoming events.

The main con with Crowdcast is that it integrates with four tools only. These are Drip, ConvertKit, Stripe, and Patreon. To integrate with other tools you’ll need Zapier.

Pricing: The Starter, Lite, Pro, and Business plans cost $29, $49, $89, and $189 per month, with a two-week trial. There are also custom plans for hosting 1,000+ attendees.

6. Livestream [Run large scale live events]

Livestream, from Vimeo, is the ideal tool for streaming large-scale live events as an unlimited number of people can attend your webinar. You can stream the video on Livestream itself or on social networks like Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and LinkedIn.

Livestream also offers monetization options. These include ads, transactional sales, and pay-per-view.

In addition, it has other features such as video templates, stock photos and videos, password protection, chat, polls, analytics, and social stats. But it lacks features like landing pages and automation that are necessary for building the funnel.

Pricing: The Premium plan costs $75 per month, billed annually. There’s also an Enterprise plan.

7. Google Meet [Run free webinars]

Google Meet allows you to run free webinars with up to 100 participants. The webinars can last 60 minutes with the free plan. If you upgrade to the paid version, you can invite more participants and run longer webinars.

You also have other features such as polls, Q&A, breakout rooms, dial-in phone numbers, intelligent noise cancellation, attendance reports, and your videos are recorded and saved to Google Drive.

Just like Livestream, however, it lacks the features required to build the webinar funnel.

You might also want to check YouTube Live, another tool from Google, as you can also stream to unlimited participants.

Pricing: You get Google Meet with Google Workspace Essentials, which costs $8 per active user/month. Other options are the Free plan and Google Workspace Enterprise plan.

What do you think is the best webinar platform?

There’s no doubt that webinars are a high-converting marketing channel. But not all of them will attract hundreds of registrants and generate thousands of dollars in sales.

True, the quality of the content will make a massive difference. But your choice of webinar platform will also go a long way. So, pick a platform that helps you make the best presentation. The ones listed above are some of the best; you can’t go wrong with any of them.

If you want to get top-tier marketing software for running a webinar and promoting it, you should check out the AppSumo store. We have several lifetime and annual deals on some of the best marketing software.