Recommend an SME webinar service please

54and56

Hi all,

I offer a niche professional service and would like to develop my marketing via informative 30 minute lunchtime type presentations on the general topic via online webinar.

Having participated in webinars as an attendee and undertaken my own research as a prospective webinar host I think my main criteria are:-

- No requirement for attendees to download and install any software. Preferably the webinar will simply run via browser (Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox etc) without the need for any special plugins but at most downloading and installing a plugin would be ok in my opinion.
- Interactive with attendees (polling/Q&A session etc)
- Customised branding (use my brand not the service providers brand on the webinar)
- Needs to be commercially viable for small webinar audiences of 5-10 attendees at a time.
- Reminders sent to those who have registered.
- Monitoring and Evaluation capabilities etc.

Any suggestions as to what service works well for an SME with the above requirements? There seems to be so many providers its hard to differentiate them all. I've short-listed Webex, myownconference, onstream, meetingburner, mikogo and clickwebinar but I'd like to get input or recommendations from people with actual experience.

Thanks.

Graham

We've been using Webex for a long time now, they're pretty much the goto provider.

http://Zoom.us might be worth a look, they're doing some fairly interesting stuff recently and they have a specific webinar offering. Slightly cheaper than Webex.

You can probably get a free trial with most of the providers, a test webinar with friends/coleagues/family is great practice for you and a good test of the technology.

54and56

Graham wrote: »

a test webinar with friends/coleagues/family is great practice for you and a good test of the technology.

Great advice, thanks Graham. I'm well used to giving presentations to groups of people but not having anyone in front of me to judge reactions and get interactions from will probably be a bit weird all right and might throw me a little unless I do a test run.

Webex does seem to be the "hoover" of the sector but I'll have a look at Zoom.

protelos

Agreed with the above, webex seems to be everywhere! You could check out Webinar Ninja too for a bit more choice, listened to the guys podcast for a while and he talks a good game. But then again he is selling it.

54and56

protelos wrote: »

You could check out Webinar Ninja too for a bit more choice, listened to the guys podcast for a while and he talks a good game. But then again he is selling it.

Looks very good and has a lot of helpful content and training but I'm surprised at the pricing model. The entry level plan is 4 times the cost of Webex. It looks like Webinar Ninja is aimed at larger broadcasts e.g. the entry level package is for up to 200 attendees whereas the Webex entry level package is for up to 8 attendees. Although probably too expensive it will be a god source of general info about setting up and running a webinar so thanks, I appreciate it.

WicklowTiger

Je_suis_Jean wrote: »

Hi all,

I offer a niche professional service and would like to develop my marketing via informative 30 minute lunchtime type presentations on the general topic via online webinar.

Having participated in webinars as an attendee and undertaken my own research as a prospective webinar host I think my main criteria are:-

- No requirement for attendees to download and install any software. Preferably the webinar will simply run via browser (Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox etc) without the need for any special plugins but at most downloading and installing a plugin would be ok in my opinion.
- Interactive with attendees (polling/Q&A session etc)
- Customised branding (use my brand not the service providers brand on the webinar)
- Needs to be commercially viable for small webinar audiences of 5-10 attendees at a time.
- Reminders sent to those who have registered.
- Monitoring and Evaluation capabilities etc.

Any suggestions as to what service works well for an SME with the above requirements? There seems to be so many providers its hard to differentiate them all. I've short-listed Webex, myownconference, onstream, meetingburner, mikogo and clickwebinar but I'd like to get input or recommendations from people with actual experience.

Thanks.

Just wondering what you went with/how you found it. We've been using Click Meeting for a couple of years, it does the job but I think there's probably better (probably more expensive) options out there. Audio delay in particular has been an issue for us (even using the dial in conference from a landline)