Zoom Whiteboard Tutorial (Step-by-Step Guide)
Jake Lizarraga
At eWebinar, one of the most common questions we get about our product is how it stacks up against other automated webinar platforms. Understandably, webinar creators want an in-depth explanation of why they should choose one evergreen webinar tool over another.
We are often asked how eWebinar compares to Stealth Seminar vs EverWebinar — two services that have had their hand in the webinar automation game for years.
While both EverWebinar and Stealth Seminar have qualities that make them a popular choice, their core features are quite similar — making eWebinar a one-of-a-kind choice with unique functionality, particularly in terms of its automation features.
In this article, we will first look at the features that set eWebinar apart from other popular automated webinar platforms. We will then take a deeper dive into EverWebinar and Stealth Seminar to help you understand the sometimes subtle differences between all three services regarding pricing, customer reviews, distinguishing features, and trial options.
NOTE: Since EverWebinar and eWebinar support automated webinars only, we focus only on webinar automation features in this post, though StealthSeminar supports both live and automated webinars.
In this article, we’ll cover:
- The Bottom Line: How eWebinar Stands Out
- Brief Overview of How eWebinar Works
- Detailed Overview of How eWebinar Works (Join a demo)
- What Customers Have to Say About eWebinar
We’ll then share:
The Bottom Line: How eWebinar Stands Out
eWebinar cofounder, Melissa Kwan, was frustrated with the limited capabilities of automated webinar software years before considering building software of her own. In fact, she was actively pushing her peers in the SaaS world to develop a better evergreen webinar tool that reimagined the qualities of live webinars, like interactivity and live chat, in the context of automation.
Fast forward to today, eWebinar does just that.
The four key features that make eWebinar stand out when compared to other evergreen webinar software are:
- Around-the-clock scheduling
- Direct private communication
- Interactive attendee experience
- Great design (form + function)
Below, we will outline these four features and give you insight into why they make eWebinar unique. If you still have questions afterwards, we’ll link you to an article with more information so that you can learn the details.
Feature #1: Around-the-Clock Scheduling
With eWebinar, you can upload a pre-recorded webinar and make recurring sessions available at optimal times of day, regardless of your attendees’ location or time zone. To make things even more convenient, you can offer “just-in-time” sessions, which ensure an on-demand webinar is always available to your customers within moments of visiting the webinar registration page. Lastly, eWebinar allows your customers to register to watch a replay with complete playback functionality, meaning they can pause, rewind, or skip ahead to any point in the video.
Most importantly? eWebinar allows all of the above scheduling features to be enabled simultaneously, which very few other webinar automation tools can do, EverWebinar and Stealth Seminar among them. So while the scheduling features of all three platforms stand out in the larger marketplace of webinar software, they are not really distinguishing features between them.
Feature #2: Direct Private Communication
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It’s common for other evergreen webinar platforms to offer some sort of “live chat” capability, but they require hosts to be there for every session to engage with attendees and answer their questions. This runs counter to the primary reason for using pre-recorded webinar tools, which is to offer your webinars 24/7.
Who can manage chat 24/7?
eWebinar’s competitors generally give webinar hosts two options. Either they can disable chat entirely, or they can include a question box during their webinars and respond to attendee questions later by email.
Some offer a third option, which is you can enable simulated chat and add made-up comments throughout the webinar so it appears more attendees are there, actively engaging in the webinar. Attendees can post real comments in chat during their sessions, but no one is actually there to see or respond to them. Hosts can’t ever answer attendee questions live. The only thing they can do is choose to include their messages in simulated chat for future attendees.
This is where eWebinar differentiates itself most strongly from other platforms. We believe:
- The primary purpose of chat should be direct private communication with attendees as a way to build relationships and close sales.
- Live chat is too valuable to sacrifice entirely while understanding it is not realistic for anyone to be available to chat all the time.
- It is never worth it to deceive attendees with fake chat. Modern consumers are savvy and once trust is broken, it is hardly ever regained.
eWebinar offers genuine live chat communication with notifications of new messages in real-time so that you can jump in immediately and chat with attendees. If you’re not able to chat during a particular session, you have the option to respond later in your own time. Meanwhile, attendees’ expectations are managed by an autoresponder that lets them know they’ve been heard and will hear back from you later by email. We know how important it is to actively engage and communicate with webinar attendees, so we made it easy to respond to every inquiry.
We also support personalized automated welcome messages, multiple chat moderators for sharing the responsibility of replying to chat, and a mobile-friendly chat system so you’re never tied to your computer — all features that are unique to eWebinar.
Feature #3: Interactive Attendee Experience
Traditionally, automated webinars are boring, stale, and one-sided. eWebinar set out to change that by making it possible for you to turn your automated webinar presentations into interactive experiences that engage and excite your audience. Sure, other evergreen webinar tools have a few interactive features, but they are generally limited to the same two or three as every other tool. eWebinar takes interactive webinar automation to new grounds, offering up to 12 unique interactions that include polls, tips, contact forms, handouts, conversion notifications, and special offers (with an optional countdown) that can be used strategically throughout each presentation. (We just launched a new interaction and more are on the way.)
Using eWebinar’s unique interactive features and capabilities, your audience will stay engaged throughout the entire presentation, letting you collect valuable data and information that you can use to better target them for marketing post-webinar.
Feature #4: Great Design (Form + Function)
To make the biggest impact on your audience — and for your own sanity — you need a well-designed product. eWebinar offers that, which we define in two ways:
- Intuitive, user-friendly software
- Fresh, modern look
Other evergreen webinar platforms have a few common design shortcomings that users have had to live with.
Most platforms are tricky to navigate, especially for beginners. Features are hidden behind tabs and subtabs, and sometimes you have to click as many as 60 times just to see all of the options available to you. In tools that combine automated and live features, it’s hard to know exactly which settings are relevant and which can be ignored. It is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to preview your webinars as you create them, meaning you can’t actually see your final presentation until it’s published. The process is frustrating and the learning curve is steep.
eWebinar’s 5-step process for creating automated webinars makes life easy. All options are straightforward, and no features are buried or hidden. In fact, you can see all of your options in just 8 clicks!
Guesswork is taken out of the equation with full preview capabilities as you work through your presentation, saving you valuable time and effort. With our special timeline editor, you can drag the video playhead to where you want to add an interaction, like a poll, question, or tip, and insert it. It’s so easy, it might actually inspire your creativity to make your pre-recorded webinars more interactive and fun for your audience.
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For your attendees, everything about the webinar experience is seamless and straightforward. They won’t need to install anything to join. Instead, they join with a single click from any computer or mobile device. The design is intuitive, modern, and slick, with plenty of customization options to represent your brand. You should be proud of the look and feel of your webinars, and eWebinar makes that a reality.
If you want to learn more about our four differentiating features, check out our detailed post on choosing the best webinar software for automation:
12 Best Automated Webinar Software Platforms — How They Differ
Brief Overview of How eWebinar Works
- Visit eWebinar.com to learn more about our intuitive and unique features
- eWebinar’s pricing plans start at just $99/month with a monthly registrant limit in the thousands
- Read our reviews on Capterra where we have 5 out of 5 stars!
The easiest and quickest way to understand how eWebinar works and what it can do is to watch the 2-minute video above.
eWebinar is a one-of-a-kind automation platform that enables you to create webinars with a rich and interactive attendee experience that will put your sales, lead generation, training, and onboarding on autopilot. You can set your webinars on a recurring schedule to be available to anyone at prime times of the day, regardless of time zone. Or make them available on-demand!
eWebinar lets you take a pre-recorded video and fill it with real-time interactions to create an engaging webinar experience. With our live chat system, viewers can ask questions and get answers in real-time. If no one is available to chat, their expectations are managed for you and you can respond later via email. Attendees are never ignored and always made to feel special.
Detailed Overview of How eWebinar Works (Join a demo)
Interested in a more detailed overview of eWebinar’s features? Register for a 20-minute demo, which you can join on-demand! (Our demos run on eWebinar, so you’ll have the chance to learn about its features while experiencing things from the audience's perspective).
NOTE: It’s worth mentioning that there are some ‘general’ features that eWebinar, EverWebinar, and Stealth Seminar all support in different ways. These include:
- Customizable landing pages and thank you pages
- Notifications like email reminders and follow-ups
- Direct integrations with CRMs and email marketing software like MailChimp + integrations via Zapier
- Registration widgets for use on third-party landing pages like ClickFunnels
- Metrics to track registration and attendance, conversions, conversion rates, etc.
We chose to leave the discussion of these features out of this post. Why? Well, first, because they are ‘standard’ to all webinar automation services. More importantly, however, they aren’t features that make or break a truly great automated webinar experience. Still, once you find software that meets your automation needs, you should also evaluate it with these features in mind. We think you’ll find eWebinar is a standout here too.
What Customers Have to Say About eWebinar
Hear directly from our customers how they benefit from using eWebinar →
eWebinar works for all kinds of businesses and we have lots of different kinds of customers. Notably, there are three types of customers who are our most common:
Solopreneurs, Course Creators, & Coaches
Course creators, solopreneurs, and coaches who tried other automated webinar tools before eWebinar first turned to automated webinars because they were struggling to offer consistent live webinars on their own, which held them back from scaling and growing their business. Unfortunately, they found other software was limited in its functionality and created a low-quality experience for their attendees, which negatively impacted their conversion rates.
Here is what they are saying now after switching to eWebinar:
See more testimonials for course creators and coaches →
SaaS Customer Success Teams
Before SaaS customer support and success teams started using eWebinar, they relied on doing live events to train their customers. They got good results, but they were limited by the number of hours in a day, making it difficult to grow and scale their customer success efforts. The repetition of live webinars and the difficulty of coordinating the different time zones of their users made it mentally exhausting to keep up.
Here is what their experience with eWebinar has been since:
See more testimonials from CS teams →
SaaS Sales Teams
Before eWebinar, sales teams at SaaS companies were forced to do sales demos repeatedly, which was not only time-consuming but inefficient. Attendance was lackluster, with people signing up but not attending, a demoralizing shot to the team. Some sales teams sent out videos of their demos to prospects but got little to no engagement. With so much wasted time and effort, they were losing out on new lead generation opportunities that could have brought them new business.
Here is what SaaS sales teams are saying about what it’s like now with eWebinar:
See more testimonials from sales teams →
Want To Give eWebinar A Try?
Sign up for a free trial today, or join a 20-minute on-demand product demo, to experience the eWebinar difference for yourself.
Overview of EverWebinar & How It Stands Out
- Visit everwebinar.com for a detailed overview of their features
- EverWebinar’s pricing plans start at $99/month with biennial and annual plans also
- Read EverWebinar reviews on Capterra
EverWebinar is one of the pioneers of automated webinar services, offering flexible scheduling capabilities including a recurring schedule that lets you easily reach audiences in different time zones. While it lacks live chat functionality, you can include a question box during your webinars, giving you the ability to respond to attendee questions via email. They also support simulated chat, simulated attendees, and simulated sales notifications. EverWebinar offers 5 in-presentation interactions: polls, surveys, offers, handouts, and announcement banners.
EverWebinar differentiates itself from its competitors in a few other ways:
- They offer their customers a 30-day money-back guarantee instead of a 14-day trial.
- They offer a separate subscription for live webinars to their sister product, WebinarJam, with the ability to export recordings to EverWebinar from it.
- They have a library of registration pages that allow for split testing.
If you are interested in looking at other EverWebinar alternatives, we wrote an entire post on the topic:
PRO TIP: It’s easy for any company, including us, to say their product is beautiful and easy to use, so we encourage you to sign up for our free trial and compare your experience using eWebinar with the trials of other evergreen webinar tools. Great design and usability should speak for themselves.
Overview of Stealth Seminar & How It Stands Out
- Visit stealthseminar.com for a detailed overview of their features
- Stealth Seminar’s starter plan is $69.95/month with 100 simultaneous attendees
- Read Stealth Seminar reviews on Capterra
Stealth Seminar is a well-known offering in the world of automated webinar software. They offer excellent scheduling features, including a recurring schedule in the attendee's time zone, just-in-time sessions, and webinar replays. They offer live chat, but only if you show up for every session to manage it. Alternatively, you can enable a question box and respond to attendee questions post-webinar by email. They also offer simulated chat, simulated attendees, and simulated polls. Stealth Seminar offers two interactive elements you can schedule to appear during your webinar, a poll and a custom interaction you can build with a WYSIWYG editor that also supports custom HTML.
Stealth Seminar differentiates itself from its competitors in a few other ways:
- They offer a 30-day free trial (credit card required) to all new customers.
- They offer registration page templates with split testing.
- They offer SMS reminders to notify registrants of upcoming sessions.
eWebinar offers SMS and WeChat reminders through our integration with Twilio.
Conclusion
We know how challenging it can be to choose the best platform to improve your business, which is why we aim to provide you with the most impactful and relevant information when comparing your options for automated webinar software, including eWebinar, EverWebinar, and Stealth Seminar.
eWebinar’s unique functionality takes webinar automation to a new level, with 24/7 availability and maximum engagement through live chat and a variety of interactive features. To see for yourself, join our 20-minute on-demand product demo. Or sign up for a free trial and join the thousands who are already experiencing the eWebinar difference, including companies like Later, Agorapulse, Gem, CloudStudios, PayKickStart, and BombBomb, and coaches and course creators like Haley Burkhead, Carly Adams, Paul Thomson, Kyshira Moffett, Shayna Oliveira, and more.
It’s so easy to get started.
Begin your 14-day free trial today!
