Zoom Whiteboard Tutorial (Step-by-Step Guide)
Jake Lizarraga
From its limited entry-level subscription to a lack of live chat during on-demand webinars, there are various reasons why someone might be looking to switch away from Demio. Regardless of what those are, we'll be comparing the 8 best Demio alternatives to help you find the right tool.
Because Demio is a hybrid webinar platform — i.e. it supports both live and automated webinars — we'll be segmenting the list of alternatives accordingly. Even if you're only doing live webinar hosting, we'd still recommend looking at the automated webinar alternatives to Demio.
Here are the top five Demio alternatives for live webinars:
Here are the top three Demio alternatives for automated webinars:
Are you still hosting webinars live? There's nothing wrong with hosting one-time events live but if you adopt the same approach for recurring webinars you'll end up spending countless hours, getting lower attendance rates, and actually making it less convenient for people to watch your presentation.
If you're curious about how automated webinars perform better than live webinars while taking less time, watch our on-demand demo or skip to this section!
Let's dive in!
8 best Demio alternatives (live and automated)
Demio alternatives for live webinars
Starting off with the live webinar platforms, we'll be going over the features, reviews, and pricing for each product. This will help you see if the platform can cater to your needs and fit into your budget while getting a feel for the overall customer sentiment on review sites.
If you're looking for automated webinar platforms then click here to skip to the next section!
Zoom
Most people think of video conferences when they hear Zoom. However, the platform supports webinars in addition to its video conferencing capabilities (but at an additional cost). Certain Zoom features from virtual meetings have even made their way into webinars such as breakout rooms.
You can also live stream your Zoom Webinars to YouTube/Facebook, poll attendees, run Q&As, and send automatic post-webinar surveys. Finally, Zoom App Marketplace is home to thousands of integrations with 350+ available for webinars such as HubSpot, Pardot, PayPal, Jotform, Zapier, and more.
Zoom reviews
Zoom Webinars has a rating of 4.5 on G2 and 4.7 on Capterra.
Zoom pricing
Zoom Webinars only has one plan which starts at $79/month for 500 participants. However, the price more than quadruples to $340/month once you exceed 500 participants and continues to increase as your audience grows. As such, you could end up paying thousands of dollars per month down the line.
Webex
Like Zoom, Webex supports both meetings and webinars. This makes the platform ideal for internal events so that employees can attend webinars on the same software they use for meetings. Webex is also equipped for large-scale webinars as it's able to handle 100,000 concurrent attendees.
Webex's AI capabilities let you automatically remove the host's background and recognize the speaker's voice to filter out background noise. It also supports real-time closed captioning for 100+ languages. Lastly, Webex supports hand-raising, reactions, polls, and Q&As to help hosts engage their audience.
Webex pricing
Webex Webinars is priced on a quote basis and doesn't list prices publicly on its website.
Webex reviews
Webex Webinars has a rating of 4.4 on G2 and 4.4 on Capterra.
Livestorm
Livestorm is a full-suite video engagement platform for businesses hosting live events and having virtual meetings. In addition to being a potential Demio alternative for live webinars, it's also a solid alternative to Zoom for those looking for a webinar platform that supports online meetings.
Livestorm's event management features let you customize registration forms or schedule emails to be sent out before and after the event. Other features found in this virtual events platform include polls, Q&As, and granular attendee analytics.
Livestorm pricing
There are three Livestorm plans to choose from:
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Pro. Starts at $99/month for 100 attendees and a four-hour time limit.
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Business. Uses quote-based pricing for up to 3,000 attendees and a four-hour time limit.
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Enterprise. Uses quote-based pricing for up to 3,000 attendees and a 12-hour time limit.
Note: Livestorm also offers a free version but this carries strict limitations such as a 20-minute time limit and 30-person attendee cap.
Livestorm reviews
Livestorm has a rating of 4.4 on G2 and 4.7 on Capterra.
WebinarJam
WebinarJam is a live webinar platform that lets you add sidebar offers with a countdown timer, stock counters, and CTA buttons — making it an attractive choice for sales webinars. You can set your webinar chat to public, private, or both depending on what type of event you're hosting.
WebinarJam also lets you convert replays of your live webinars into evergreen webinars on its sister product EverWebinar (if you're subscribed to both platforms). Learn more in our in-depth comparison of EverWebinar vs WebinarJam.
WebinarJam reviews
WebinarJam has a rating of 3.6 on G2 and 4.0 on Capterra.
WebinarJam pricing
There are four WebinarJam plans to choose from:
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Starter. Starts at $49/month for 100 attendees, one host, and a one-hour time limit.
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Basic. Starts at $99/month for 500 attendees, two hosts, and a two-hour time limit.
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Professional. Starts at $299/month for 2,000 attendees, four hosts, and a three-hour time limit.
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Enterprise. Starts at $499/month for 5,000 attendees, six hosts, and a four-hour time limit.
Note: WebinarJam does not offer a free trial, instead only providing a paid trial.
GoTo Webinar
GoTo Webinar costs significantly more than GoTo Meeting but supports more participants on its webinars compared to video calls/meetings. It also contains additional features like remote control access so you can pass keyboard and mouse control to co-presenters during webinars.
Engagement options during the webinar itself include polls, surveys, and Q&As. You can also include a certificate of attendance in your follow-up email that will only be sent to registrants who showed up for the webinar. Last but not least, GoTo Webinar has a video library for saving/managing event recordings.
GoTo Webinar reviews
GoTo Webinar has a rating of 4.2 on G2 and 4.5 on Capterra.
GoTo Webinar pricing
There are four GoTo Webinar plans to choose from:
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Lite. Starts at $59/month for 250 attendees.
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Standard. Starts at $129/month 500 attendees.
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Pro. Starts at $249/month 1,000 attendees.
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Enterprise. Starts at $499/month 3,000 attendees.
Note: On the Standard plan or higher, your subscription includes one license for GoTo Meeting.
Demio alternatives for automated webinars
Thousands of companies have collectively hosted millions of automated webinar sessions on our platform. After analyzing all that data and speaking to our most successful customers, it's clear which three key features determine an automated webinar's success: chat, scheduling, and interactivity.
As such, we'll be using these capabilities as the yardstick with which to measure the three Demio alternatives for automated webinars. To start things off, let us show you how eWebinar works so we can then explore how EverWebinar and EasyWebinar differ.
eWebinar
Watch this one-minute video for a quick overview of how eWebinar works or join our on-demand demo for a more detailed overview!
Why eWebinar is 100% focused on automated webinars
Despite the trend of building hybrid events platforms to handle both live and automated, we genuinely believe that any webinar platform that tries to juggle both will inevitably treat automation as an afterthought.
That's why eWebinar is the only webinar software provider that's 100% dedicated to automated webinars.
The reason we’re all-in on webinar automation is because of the webinar struggles we ourselves faced. During the process of growing our previous SaaS company, we became trapped in a vicious cycle of hosting the same onboarding webinar over and over again.
To escape this "webinar hell", we set out in search of a platform that would let us put our webinars on autopilot without sacrificing the ability to communicate with attendees while providing an engaging experience.
No such platform existed.
The closest thing we could find were pre-recorded webinar platforms with the ability to mimic live webinars. These platforms used a simulated chat that would display fake messages to deceive attendees into thinking the event was happening live — risking the host's credibility in the process.
Fast forward a few years and eWebinar is now the webinar platform we wish we had back then. We've built our software from the ground up to focus exclusively on webinar automation. But that begs the question, is automated-only really better than live or hybrid platforms?
Our customers answer that with a resounding yes (both in their own words as well as their analytics).
How eWebinar lets you engage your audience through live chat and interactions
Where EverWebinar and EasyWebinar both fall short is their lack of any live chat capabilities. These platforms instead opt for a contact box that lets you respond to attendees via email after the webinar has ended.
This takes away your ability to reply to attendees in real time during the webinar itself.
Being able to chat with the host and ask questions during the presentation is what makes engaging webinars effective. Thankfully, eWebinar lets you respond through both live chat and email.
Here's how eWebinar's chat system works:
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Automated welcome messages. Attendees receive a personalized welcome message as soon as they join the webinar. This prompts them to engage early on and ask the host questions. If no one's available to reply to them, an autoresponder will set expectations for response times.
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Instant message notifications. Whenever an attendee sends a message in the webinar chat, you (and any moderators you've assigned) will immediately receive a notification via email, browser notifications, or even Slack alerts if you have the integration active.
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Live chat + email responses. The host can then reply to attendees in real time through the live chat. Any responses sent in chat after the webinar has ended will be automatically forwarded to the email address attendees used to register.
Our chat system was designed to ensure that every question gets answered but audience engagement is about more than just answering questions. That’s why eWebinar also lets you insert 20+ unique interactions to increase watch time by keeping attendees engaged.
Instead of having to manually enter in timestamps for each interaction, you can easily add them in by dragging the playhead to any point of your webinar and choosing which interaction to insert:
If you want to see what these engagement features look like from an attendee's point of view then watch our on-demand demo to experience an interactive automated webinar for yourself!
How eWebinar’s flexible scheduling doubles attendance rates
eWebinar’s flexible scheduling lets you make your webinars available on-demand, automate them on a recurring schedule, or give attendees instant access to replays with the same interactive experience plus additional playback controls.
eWebinar is one of the few webinar platforms that lets you enable all three options at once to make it as convenient as possible to attend. This is why the average attendance rate for automated webinars hosted on eWebinar is 65%.
Many eWebinar customers outperform the average with attendance rates upward of 90%:
Others see even larger gains like Later who 6x'd their attendance after switching to eWebinar:
If you want to experience eWebinar firsthand and see how it'll double your attendance rates, just watch our on-demand demo!
EverWebinar
EverWebinar is the sister product to WebinarJam except for automated instead of live. EverWebinar has some similarities to eWebinar — such as its scheduling options — but takes a different approach when it comes to chat (or the lack thereof).
Like eWebinar, you can choose between a fixed time zone or your registrant's local time zone. Both platforms also support just-in-time webinars which are automatically scheduled to start within a few minutes of a visitor landing on your page.
Here's how EverWebinar's chat system works:
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Simulated chat. EverWebinar's simulated chat makes it look like there are other attendees watching live and sending messages. However, we wouldn't recommend using this feature as it could damage the host's credibility if real attendees find out the messages they're seeing are fake.
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Question box. Enabling the question box lets attendees leave messages in the contact form which are then forwarded to you or an assigned moderator via email. This isn't as effective as a real-time live chat but it at least allows you to capture questions so you can respond later on.
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Disable chat. The third option is to disable chat entirely. We strongly advise against this for the vast majority of use cases. Disabling chat creates a passive viewing experience and leaves attendees with no recourse if they have questions at any point during the webinar.
EverWebinar reviews
EverWebinar has a rating of 3.9 on G2 and 3.9 on Capterra.
EverWebinar pricing
There are three EverWebinar plans to choose from:
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Monthly. The monthly plan starts at $99/month making it the most expensive option overall.
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Yearly. The yearly plan starts at $499/year but you have to pay for the full year upfront.
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Biennial. The biennial plan averages out to $437/year but you'll be locked in for two years.
Note: EverWebinar does not offer a free trial, instead only providing a paid trial.
EasyWebinar
EasyWebinar is a hybrid platform like Demio and lets you host unlimited live webinars but limits the number of automated webinars you can have active based on your plan. EasyWebinar also has a couple of EasyWebinar also has a couple of interactions such as polls and offers.
However, you'll need to manually enter the timestamps for when each one should appear and go away which could take some time. Unlike most platforms, EasyWebinar offers done-for-you services for processes like setting up webinar funnels, payment gateways, and third-party integrations.
Note: You'll need to pay extra for these DFY services on top of your monthly subscription fee.
EasyWebinar pricing
There are three EasyWebinar plans to choose from:
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Standard. Starts at $80/month for 100 attendees, four presenters, and a four-hour time limit.
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Pro. Starts at $197/month for 500 attendees, four presenters, and an eight-hour time limit.
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Enterprise. Uses quote-based pricing for six presenters and a 12-hour time limit.
Note: The Enterprise plan can accommodate up to 500,000 attendees but the cost of your subscription will increase based on maximum capacity.
EasyWebinar reviews
EasyWebinar has a rating of 4.2 on G2 and 4.4 on Capterra.
Conclusion
As you can see, many of the platforms you use to run virtual conferences already support live webinars in the form of add-ons or sister products. Some webinar platforms even try to do both live and automated on a single tool but end up treating automation as an afterthought.
Which Demio alternative you choose will ultimately depend on your budget, tech stack, and whether you'll be automating webinars or hosting every session live. If you do go the automated route, use a platform like eWebinar so you can still engage attendees and chat with them live.
Still on the fence about how interactive automated webinars can really be? Just watch our on-demand demo to see for yourself!
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