What is the best Webinar platform out there?

I've tried Infinite Conferencing & BrightTalk. Here's my take on pros & cons:
Infinite Conferencing:

Pros
• Great customer service
• Nice web platform – more flexibility than Bright Talk. For example, I can chat to reply to questions while a presenter continues speaking. This is helpful for the inevitable questions that don’t need to be addressed by the speaker to all attendees. I can also reply to just one individual.
• We have the options of gathering registrants in any format. Either Infinite can host the registration page for us, or we can on our site (which enables us to have the data import directly into Salesforce.com). This is a distinct advantage. This also means we are free to request as much or as little info as we like.

Cons:
• Audio available through the phone only. I did receive 2 or 3 complaints from attendees about this. I believe they are looking to have audio through the computer in the future, but it's not available yet.
• The lists provided to me are separate for attendees and registrants. This means I must manually de-dupe the 2 lists in excel in order to make a notation in one field as to whether or not they attended.
• Many additional charges. While the web conferencing feature isn’t expensive, there is a per-minute, per-user fee for the phone. This makes costs unpredictable. We also opted to pay additional fees for the operator-attended recording. I later discovered that having the recording in a .FLV file was yet another fee. (Once we have the .FLV file, we upload to our site.)
• Some technical glitches. We had several people, including presenters, report difficulty dialing in to the conference last time. Although the Web portion has always worked wonderfully.

BrightTalk
Pros:
• Their “Enterprise Platform” is one flat fee. No extra, unpredictable charges. Prices are available here: http://www.brighttalk.com/create/channel
• They have many registered users and therefore they provide another platform for us to distribute our content. If people search BrightTalk for other marketing related webcasts, they can find our content & subscribe to our channel.
• Nicer looking, cleaner interface
• Audio through the computer (although I’d prefer a platform that offers me both, so participants can chose between phone & computer audio.)
• Automated recording, no extra charge
• Once members register, they are logged into the system & need not enter their info again to register for subsequent presentations or attend a webcast
• Automated emails to remind registrants in advance of the webcast

Cons:
• Users must register with the BrightTalk corporation and accept their terms of use. We don’t like forcing attendees to register with another company to access our content
• LONG registration form. We asked if we could cut it down and they did so for us, however they had never done this before and the registration form began failing! They are working on resolving this issue, but it is unproven. Since, at the time the problems were discovered, we had already sent an email blast driving our base towards the registration page, we opted to simply have them use their default, long registration page, rather than risk continued technical difficulties.
• Since users must register with BrightTalk, I must export the leads and import them into SalesForce.
• No chat options! We must answer questions via audio, which prohibits us from helping one individual who may have technical difficulties
• & finally, a 'con' that has me looking for another platform: I can't get an exported video file of my recorded webcast!! That means I can't post it on my own website (without requiring registration), or my Youtube channel, or syndicate elsewhere. It's locked into BrightTalk.

Those that I have attended have generally being using the gotomeeting platform. the webinars using this have worked well. I have experience with configuring and hosting webinars using the dimdim.com interface, a free solution with similar features, although not as sophisticated on the features and administration portion. Having said that, its free and worth using for a testing platform.

I'm not super familiar with the various platforms to provide a recommendation, but B2B just hosted a seminar on what to look for in a web hosting platform. So you might want to check that out. Things to consider that have not been mentioned in the above posts would be viral capabilities (can attendees share it and post it and send it easily), how many people can access the phone/audio and quality of audio, chat functionality, and flexibility (can you post downloads, show screencasts, stream video).

Hi Karen,

I think it's important to ask yourself what you're using webinars for? If you're looking for a platform that was designed with marketing in mind, I'd recommend BrightTALK™—yes I am incredibly biased and yes I am in sales—for your marketing programs. Other platforms like GoToWebinar/GoToMeeting and WebEx were designed for screen sharing—not large scale online events. ON24 provides great services but they are in my opinion over priced. I think Megan made some valuable points already so I'll fill in some gaps she left out. With BrightTALK, you have the ability to embed the platform anywhere on the web. The entire experience takes place on the platform from registration until the end of your presentation, so you'll never have to send anyone off your site to register (and as Megan said, your audience will only have to register once). There are many benefits to one time registration. My favorite however, is that all your audience's information is captured into a user profile allowing the ability to track viewing history throughout the life of your license. With other platforms, you'll only have the ability to see viewing history on a per webcast basis—meaning you won't be able to determine how many viewings or interactions a subscriber has had with throughout the content viewing history. If you'd like to learn more or discuss the shortfalls Megan mentioned, please feel free to reach out to me at lmclaughlin@brighttalk.com.

Cheers,
Liam

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Hi Karen,

Webinars are a very valuable tool - especially for small businesses with limited budgets. A few key things to look for when selecting a Web conferencing tool are ease of use (for both organizers and attendees), cost, security and reliability. GoToWebinar is a very simple and cost effective Webinar solution. Set up of events is completed in 3 easy steps and flat fee pricing makes for no surprises (read: no hidden costs that pop up at the end of the month.) If you would like to chat about what you are looking for in a tool, or would like a free demo or trial of GoToWebinar, you can contact the GoToMeeting Corporate team at: 800-372-6207 or gotomeeting@citrixonline.com. Also on Twitter at: @gotowebinar. I am also on Twitter @kelley_smith if you want connect.

Best,
Kelley