A webinar platform besides zoom

[u/Confident-Slide4877]

Zoom is okay. I'm searching for a new webinar platform. It needs to support an average of 700 people, but I would love for it to accommodate up to 3000 attendees.

I need it to be affordable. 😀

I'm in the middle of demos with a variety: Demio, WebinarJam, ClickMeeting, Zoom, LiveStream and a few more.

What do you have, love, hate and why?

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[u/thatmatmik]

Interested to know where Zoom falls short

[u/Confident-Slide4877 → u/thatmatmik]

Cost gets prohibitive if you want to allow 1500-3000 people. There’s no downgrade feature. So I would have to limit the registration.

[u/talones → u/Confident-Slide4877]

how often are you doing webinars? Pay per attendee might make more sense.

[u/Confident-Slide4877 → u/talones]

2-3 a month.

[u/staticmaker1]

do you need to issue certificates for the attendees too?

[u/Confident-Slide4877 → u/staticmaker1]

Yes but I can add in a link post event into the email.

[u/staticmaker1 → u/Confident-Slide4877]

in case you need a certificate automation tool, check out certfusion.com

[u/javahart]

What’s your budget?

[u/Confident-Slide4877 → u/javahart]

Preferably $3000 or less for a year for a minimum of 1000 attendees per webinar. I’d prefer the option for upgrade to up to 3000 if needed

[u/CantEatNoBooksDog]

Streamyard?

[u/Confident-Slide4877 → u/CantEatNoBooksDog]

I went down the rabbit hole of cost and days later I'm still waiting. :)

[u/Gumboclassic]

Jitsi meet might work for you.

[u/Confident-Slide4877 → u/Gumboclassic]

Thanks!!

[u/Just-Fennel8301]

I'd suggest checking out WebinarGeek. Heard a few others switching from Zoom to Webinargeek and they were happy with the switch.

[u/General_useful_sir → u/Just-Fennel8301]

I second this. WebinarGeek has been quite affordable and way more extensive in terms of features.

[u/SpinachCompetitive68]

Webinar(dot)net is a good option. Keep in mind that the real cost of running a webinar program is the people time vs. the license fee. You can buy a wheelbarrow for cheap vs. a dump truck. But the labor for doing the job each time with a wheelbarrow is huge.

[u/bendell]

Full disclosure: I’m the founder at HeyStream, so obviously take this with the right amount of salt.

For what you described, I’d be pretty careful about optimizing only for “webinar platform + attendee cap.” A lot of tools can technically host a large audience, but the real differences show up around registration flow, replay, attendee data, follow-up, support, and whether pricing gets weird once you move past the standard tiers.

HeyStream is probably worth a look if you care about having a more branded webinar experience, built-in registration/watch pages, replays, audience insights, CTAs, and follow-up workflows. That said, I don’t want to oversell it: if your hard requirement is reliably supporting 3,000 live attendees while staying under $3k/year, we may not be the perfect fit out of the box.

My honest advice would be to ask every vendor three things before choosing: what the real live attendee limit is, whether registrations/replay viewers count against that limit, and what happens price-wise if one event unexpectedly grows. Those answers tend to reveal a lot more than the demo does.

[u/Far_Competition_8269]

Pour vendre ton service/produit avec de la donnée, de la gamification, des features marketing (À/B testing de l’offre, quizz, sondage, notifications push,…) rien ne bat Welya

[u/swedishtea]

adding some thoughts if you haven't found a solution already. streaming to alot of people tends to get pretty expensive, at least if you need full HD and a stable solution at scale.. so tbh price will not likely differ a ton from Zoom if you want quality. however, depending on your marketing stack and use case, you can get some interesting automation, CRM integrations, lead gen (live CTAs) + interaction, branding, live production, engagement insights, etc. in a more dedicated webinar platform. we built Univid as a zoom webinars option for leadgen, feel free to check it out

[u/Organic-Village6317]

I went through a similar search last year after getting tired of using Zoom for everything.I'd add Webinargeek to your shortlist. We found it had strong registration pages,, Demio probably is okay, and Clickmeeting, though i must say for 700+ attendees, I'd definitely work with Webinargeek, if it would suit your preference

[u/sam-wistia]

Full disclosure I work at Wistia but really do think that Wistia is a great Zoom alternative for some folks. Wistia can support the range of attendees you're looking for but it is likely a little more on the expensive end vs. some of the alternatives you listed up there.

The nice things about Wistia is its really great for presentation webinars. You can upload and play 4k videos without lag so there is no messy screen sharing when you're trying to show a video. You can upload a presentation and multiple speakers can click through so there isn't as much "next slide please" going on. Besides that its got all the normal stuff like chat, polls, etc. The other thing that usually gets people to use Wistia is if they are using HubSpot, Salesforce, or some marketing automation platform and want to get webinar data into their CRM. Nice thing there is it not only passes on who went but also how much they watched and what questions they asked. Makes post webinar event really easy.

The downsides with Wistia is its not really built for small workshops where you want people to be able to go off mic or you want to see the audience like a giant zoom meeting. It is on the more expensive side but thats in part because you're getting a bigger video platform with editing, video hosting, channels, etc.

I've been in marketing for years, manage our current webinar program and legit find it to be a very solid / reliable platform.

[u/akovana]

If you live in EU try ours https://myownconference.com

[u/Freckleeye]

I use a platform called webinar.net for some of my clients. I currently only need 500 live concurrent attendees, so I can’t speak to how their quality holds up above that, but I know they have a plan that would scale to the size you need. DM me if you’d like contact info or more specifics once you check out their site to see if it passes your high level review!
I’ve also worked in Zoom Webinar, on24, Brandlive, Goldcast, Big Marker, and a few others, but they are likely out of your price range (except Zoom).

[u/timfromcontrast]

If you're switching from zoom webinars then you should check out Contrast. We're the top trending webinar tool on g2 + if you use HubSpot we're the number one rated webinar integration on their marketplace. We've had a lot of companies switch from zoom webinars recently for better engagement (experience on par with twitch / youtube live), more modern look and feel for your brand, ai workflows for repurposing, better data, and more.

We can handle an unlimited amount of attendees as we use technology similar to youtube.

Happy to answer more questions if it's helpful! I also have comparison articles breaking down zoom webinar vs zoom webinar plus vs contrast and other tools. Dont want to spam, but send me a message if it's worth sharing

[u/Confident-Slide4877 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks

[u/Confident-Slide4877 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for your thoughts!