How to Create a Webinar: Ultimate Guide
Jake Lizarraga
Most hosts struggle to find a webinar platform that will provide a stable viewing experience, help them engage with attendees, and most importantly drive conversions. To help you find the right webinar platform for your needs, we've created an in-depth comparison between three solutions:
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EverWebinar
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WebinarJam
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eWebinar (our own webinar platform)
This guide will cover the key differences between platforms, their main features, and pricing considerations:
Note: We understand you might be worried about us being biased towards our own webinar tool which is why we're not asking you to take our word for it. You can watch our pre-recorded demo to see the software in action for yourself (because we use eWebinar to demo eWebinar).
Let's dive in!
WebinarJam vs EverWebinar vs eWebinar: Platform Overviews and Key Differences
While WebinarJam, EverWebinar, and eWebinar have their respective strengths, not all of them were built for the same use case. In fact, both WebinarJam and EverWebinar come from the same company but they are still two distinct products for different scenarios.
Before we dive into a deeper analysis, let's briefly go over the key differences between each platform at a high level.
eWebinar
eWebinar is a webinar automation platform with a live chat feature, multiple scheduling options, and 20+ interaction types. eWebinar combines the scalability of recorded webinars with the interactivity of live webinars to help you reach more leads without sacrificing engagement or conversions.
eWebinar differentiates itself in a few ways such as:
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Supporting both live chat and post-webinar follow-ups
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Offering a wider variety of interactions than any other pre-recorded webinar platform
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Letting you enable all three scheduling options — on-demand, just-in-time, and replays — at once.
We're going to give you a closer look at eWebinar shortly but let's take a look at the other two tools first.
EverWebinar
EverWebinar is a webinar automation platform from the same company as WebinarJam. EverWebinar differs from WebinarJam in that it lets you host automated webinars rather than live presentations. This makes it possible to run multiple webinars per day without having to attend a single session live.
EverWebinar differentiates itself in a few ways such as:
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Offering customers a 30-day money-back guarantee instead of a 14-day free trial
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Charging a separate subscription for their live webinar sister product WebinarJam (see below)
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Letting you import a webinar from WebinarJam (if you pay for both tools separately)
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Supporting split-testing on registration pages in its library
We'll dive deeper into EverWebinar in the feature and pricing comparison sections.
WebinarJam
WebinarJam is a platform for hosting live webinars. WebinarJam does not support automated webinars and as such you'll need to pay separately for its sister product EverWebinar if you want to extract your webinars from one tool to the other.
WebinarJam differentiates itself in a few ways such as:
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Offering customers a 30-day money-back guarantee instead of a 14-day free trial
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Charging a separate subscription for their live webinar sister product EverWebinar (see above)
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Letting you export a webinar to EverWebinar (if you pay for both tools separately)
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Accommodating up to six hosts and 5,000 attendees on the Enterprise plan
While we'll go over the full pricing comparison in the section below, we think it's worth noting outright that a single month of WebinarJam's enterprise plan costs almost as much as an entire year of EverWebinar.
This is on top of the fact that live events require more effort to run — especially if you're hosting sessions on a regular basis — so you'll essentially be paying more to work harder.
Before you subscribe to WebinarJam (or any other live webinar platform), first consider the types of webinars you plan to do. Sales demos, onboarding, and training presentations are the kinds of webinars you’ll give over and over again.
Automating these types of webinars will save you time and actually convert better than if you were to host live webinars. If you’re not sure that automated webinars are the best fit for your set of goals then feel free to skip to the section on which one you should use.
(We’ll show you later why attendance and conversion rates are higher with evergreen webinars!)
How eWebinar works
Before moving on to the direct feature and pricing comparisons, here's a high-level breakdown of how eWebinar works.
1. Upload your pre-recorded video
There are a few ways to upload your video and turn it into an automated webinar:
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Upload a file of your pre-recorded video.
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Paste in a YouTube link.
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Use our Vimeo or Zoom integration.
eWebinar hosts your video, so you can delete it to save storage space after uploading (unless you're using the Vimeo integration). If you’ve never created pre-recorded webinars then consider checking out our guide on the best practices to follow when recording a webinar.
2. Make your webinar interactive
eWebinar lets you choose from over 20 interactions, like polls and questions, that you can insert anywhere in the video timeline. You'll also be able to send responses from these interactions into your CRM or automate post-webinar email sequences with third-party integrations.
Check out our full guide on How to Make a Webinar Interactive!
We’ll give you the full lowdown on how our interactions work in the feature comparison section!
3. Schedule your automated webinar
Make the webinar available on-demand, set it on a recurring schedule, and let registrants sign up to watch a replay.
You can choose between three scheduling options (or enable all of them at once):
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On-demand webinars
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Recurring webinars
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Webinar replays
Regardless of which scheduling option you select, the chat and interaction features will be the same.
That said, we highly recommend enabling all three scheduling options simultaneously. We've found that increasing attendance rates comes down to making your webinars as convenient as possible to attend (which should be obvious in hindsight).
We'll give you a closer look at our scheduling options, live chat, and interactions in the next section!
4. Set up your landing page and notifications
You can use our high-converting page builder to promote your webinar to registrants. Alternatively, feel free to leverage our many marketing widgets on third-party pages. Combining our webinar platform with the landing page builder of your choice will give you the best of both worlds.
You can also set up multi-channel (email, SMS, or WhatsApp) notifications to remind registrants about the upcoming webinar. For example, you could set it up so all registrants receive a reminder email a day before the webinar and then get a text on their phone 15 minutes before the session starts.
eWebinar also makes following up with attendees easy through post-webinar email sequences. Most webinar platforms only give you a couple of pre-written emails. In contrast, each one of our 15 webinar templates comes with at least six emails in its sequence.
The entire process from upload-to-publish should only take you 10 to 15 minutes.
Once you publish the webinar, you’ll be able to use the live chat to interact with attendees. We’ll go over exactly how the eWebinar live chat works in the feature comparison section below. After publishing, you can use our webinar analytics for measuring performance:
And that's it! You're ready to publish your webinar and start promoting it!
Now that you know how our product works, let's move on to the direct comparison between all three platforms.
EverWebinar vs WebinarJam vs eWebinar: Feature Comparison
To help you figure out which platform offers the best features for your needs, let's do a direct comparison of what each tool has to offer!
eWebinar features
Both our own analytics and the customer interviews we've conducted have come to the same conclusion; customers love our platform for our three main differentiating features: chat, scheduling, and interactions.
Let's take a closer look at the three cornerstones of the automated webinar experience!
Chat
Here's how eWebinar's live chat feature works:
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Personalized greetings. The chat automatically welcomes every attendee by name with a personalized message when they join (so you don't need to be there yourself).
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Chat notifications. Whenever someone sends a message during a webinar, you (or a moderator you assign) will receive notifications through email, browser notifications, or Slack alerts.
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Live responses. eWebinar lets you respond to attendees in real-time through any device with a web browser or Slack application (because our integration lets you reply within Slack channels).
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Automatic responses. If no one is free to respond in a timely manner then an automatic response will let attendees know that their message has been received and set expectations on when you'll reply.
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Post-webinar responses. When attendee messages get a chat response after the webinar has ended, it is automatically sent to their email address.
The system is built to ensure that every chat question receives a timely response — giving the attendee a great first impression of your brand and creating a golden opportunity for you to connect with them at their peak moment of interest.
This stands in stark contrast to WebinarJam which doesn’t even save the chat history — making it impossible for you to reply to attendees after the webinar has ended and costing you countless lost leads that you'll never be able to reach again.
EverWebinar doesn’t have a live chat feature either. Instead, it uses a live chat simulator that makes it seem like there are other attendees sending messages during the webinar.
Note: If a real attendee leaves a message in the fake chat, it doesn’t go anywhere.
However — in addition to being a bit deceptive — it could lead to frustration when real attendees drop questions in the chat only for them to go unanswered. This could make them feel ignored and think that you're giving preferential treatment to the other (fake) attendees.
If you go with EverWebinar, we'd strongly recommend against using the fake chat/attendee features.
In contrast, our chat system is built to maximize simplicity and convenience on both ends.
Attendees join, receive a greeting, message you, and then you get notified so you can reply now or later.
In other words, it's just as interactive and straightforward as a live webinar but without the added challenge of juggling Q&As while trying to give your presentation. After all, pausing to answer questions mid-webinar can break the flow of the presentation and make your CTA less effective.
Scheduling
Here's how eWebinar's scheduling options work:
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On-demand sessions. Enabling on-demand sessions will let leads watch your webinar at their peak moment of interest. You can also select the just-in-time option so visitors see a countdown timer to a session starting within a few minutes of them landing on the page.
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Recurring schedule. Putting your automated webinars on a recurring schedule will keep you from missing out on leads who don't have the time to watch your webinar immediately. By making registrants book a date on their calendars, you still get the commitment that regular videos lack. Plus, you’ve captured the lead and can send them reminders of when to show up.
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Dynamic time zones. eWebinar lets you offer your webinars at the same time of day regardless of which time zone an attendee is in — making it possible to run your webinar at 11 AM sharp in both Los Angeles and London. You can also choose a fixed time zone if you prefer.
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Replay links. Allowing people to register for a replay (with the same chat and interaction features) will give attendees a chance to watch your webinar at their convenience. If you're worried that the replay will linger like a YouTube video in the "watch later" list, you can disable replays.
Other platforms have similar features but eWebinar is one of a small handful of webinar platforms (including EverWebinar) that lets you offer all three availability options simultaneously for the same webinar.
This is why eWebinar's average attendance rate outperforms the industry average for live webinars by over 60%!
It seems obvious in hindsight, but making it convenient for registrants to show up will have a huge impact on your attendance rates.
If you're curious to learn more about eWebinar and how it works, join our on-demand demo. You're "just in time" for a session starting in a few minutes! 😉
Interactions
Interactions — such as polls, quizzes, handouts, etc. — give attendees a way to participate during a webinar and stay engaged longer. We recommend adding interactions every five minutes which would come out to around a dozen total for an hour-long webinar.
Here's how eWebinar's 20+ interactions work:
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Video timeline editor. Our user-friendly timeline editor lets you insert interactions without writing a single line of code or manually entering timestamps. Just drag the playhead to the desired point in your video, click on the plus symbol, and voila!
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Wide interaction variety. We offer the largest selection of interactions out of any webinar platform on the market. This provides the flexibility to design the high-converting webinar that you envision and keeps things from getting stale for attendees.
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Customization. eWebinar lets you own interactions by adding text, emojis, images, and GIFs. This gives your interactions personality and helps align them with the brand. There are also multiple CTA approaches — like a clickable sales offer versus a contact form.
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Engagement data. You'll see the percentage of attendees that interacted with an interaction (say that 10 times fast) or sent chat messages. These interactions let attendees participate which makes them more invested (and likely to respond to CTAs).
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CRM integrations. eWebinar's integrations let you automatically sync customer data through interactions and send it to CRM tools like HubSpot or Salesforce. You can also use our Zapier integration to create marketing automations or link other applications.
Don't mistake interactions for fancy bells and whistles, they are an integral part of increasing your watch time and conversion rates.
Polls, contact forms, and clickable CTA buttons are just a few interactions you could consider adding.
If you'd like to experience these interactions from an attendee's POV then watch our on-demand demo!
Templates
Our webinar templates come with scripts, landing pages, reminder notifications, and follow-up email sequences. There are 15 templates at the time of writing but our standard template is built to minimize the need for editing.
This means that you can just pick a template, upload your video, and publish within minutes!
Be sure to check out our template gallery so you can create webinars faster and streamline the registration process for attendees.
EverWebinar features
EverWebinar lacks a live chat feature but it does let you add question boxes to your automated webinars. This will help you respond to attendee questions through email — which is less effective than replying through chat in real time but better than not being able to reach them at all.
EverWebinar has five interactions to choose from: polls, surveys, handouts, announcements, and special offers.
WebinarJam features
WebinarJam's most unique feature is its control room which can be manned by a moderator. This helps hosts focus on the topic while the moderator responds to attendees. The downside is that you'll need to have someone do that for you and ask them to be present for every live webinar you host.
WebinarJam does offer some interaction features such as chat, polls, and Q&As. The difference is that — if you don't have a separate moderator — you'll need to disrupt the flow of your webinar to react to messages, responses, or questions from attendees because they'll be coming in during a live presentation.
Those planning to host paid webinars will be happy to know that WebinarJam gives hosts the option to charge attendees a fee. This can be enabled in registration settings but WebinarJam doesn't process payments itself — it just redirects attendees to third-party checkout pages.
Should you use automated or live webinar tools?
When choosing between automated webinar platforms like eWebinar or EverWebinar versus live webinar platforms like WebinarJam, there are a few things to bear in mind.
First of all, both live and automated webinars have their uses but it really comes down to what type of presentations you're giving. If the presentations you give are different every time then hosting live events will likely be your best option.
However, any webinar that you're doing over and over again while saying virtually the same things will be a prime candidate for automation.
This includes:
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Sales webinars
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Product demos
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Onboarding/training
When you run recurring webinars on autopilot, you'll be able to drive sales, generate leads, and onboard customers at scale without having to relive the same presentation ad infinitum. The other benefit of offering on-demand webinars is that you'll never have to worry about attendees missing a session.
We even let you automatically email a replay link to any registrant who misses your automated webinar.
The problem with most on-demand webinars is that they're actually just static videos.
Static videos lack the interactivity and two-way communication that make a webinar a webinar.
That's why eWebinar was built from the ground up to combine the scalability of an automated webinar with all the features and interactivity of a live presentation. In summary, an automated webinar will always get you more attendees and conversions so long as it remains interactive.
Want to experience the level of interactivity that our automated webinars have to offer? Join our on-demand demo (we use eWebinar to demo eWebinar) to get the genuine attendee experience!
Webinar software reliability
One last thing to consider when choosing between live and automated webinars is reliability. Automated webinars tend to be far more reliable because they just play the same pre-recorded video over and over again.
This eliminates webinar latency and a whole other host of technical difficulties that could crop up live.
Latency is the reason why a (live) Twitch stream might buffer while a (pre-recorded) YouTube video runs seamlessly even if they're both playing at the same resolution and frame rate.
Using an automated webinar platform like eWebinar or EverWebinar will allow you to avoid these kinds of issues. This ensures you won’t have to execute the (already difficult) task of presenting while juggling other issues like slow internet, power outages, and random glitches.
We call this the Triangle of Technical Difficulties:
EverWebinar vs WebinarJam vs eWebinar: Pricing
EverWebinar and WebinarJam do not offer a free trial, only a 14-day paid trial.
Note: If you can't find the paid trial option, that's because it only pops up when you try to exit the page.
In contrast, eWebinar offers a 14-day free trial with full access to all standard features and subscription add-ons. Trial users will be able to accommodate up to 2,000 webinar registrants which increases to 3,000, 6,000, or 12,000 depending on which paid plan they choose at the end of the period.
Let's take a closer look at the pricing plans of each platform:
eWebinar pricing plans
All eWebinar subscriptions offer access to all standard features, unlimited team seats, and unlimited recurring sessions. This means that the decision of which plan to get mostly comes down to the number of active webinars you want to create and how many registrants will be joining.
eWebinar offers three plans:
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Level 1. Starts at $99/month for one active webinar and 3,000 monthly registrants.
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Level 2. Starts at $199/month for up to five active webinars and 6,000 monthly registrants.
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Level 3. Starts at $299/month for up to 15 active webinars and 12,000 monthly registrants.
Tip: You can get 15% off on your eWebinar subscription by switching to an annual billing schedule.
eWebinar also has add-ons that you can get to increase your capacity by 1,000 registrants, host webinars on a custom domain, or remove all "Powered by eWebinar" branding on your registration pages/webinar rooms.
See our pricing page for more details
EverWebinar pricing plans
EverWebinar doesn't offer monthly billing for subscriptions. Instead, customers need to choose between a yearly or biennial billing schedule.
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Yearly. Starts at $499/year and includes automated webinars, hybrid webinars, just-in-time webinars, and one extra team seat.
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Biennial. Starts at $874/two years and includes the same features as the yearly plan.
Tip: You can get 12.5% off on your EverWebinar subscription by switching to a biennial billing schedule.
WebinarJam pricing plans
Like EverWebinar, WebinarJam doesn't offer monthly billing. This means that all its plans are billed annually.
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Starter. Starts at $39/month for one host, one-hour max duration, and up to 100 attendees.
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Basic. Starts at $79/month for two hosts, two hours max duration, and up to 500 attendees.
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Professional. Starts at $229/month for four hosts, three hours max duration, and up to 2,000 attendees.
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Enterprise. Starts at $379/month for six hosts, four hours max duration, and up to 5,000 attendees.
Note: There are no annual discounts for WebinarJam because subscriptions can only be billed annually.
EverWebinar vs WebinarJam vs eWebinar: Final Verdict
We know how hard it can be to choose a reliable piece of software for any aspect of your business, which is why we set out to arm you with the most helpful information possible when comparing EverWebinar, WebinarJam, and eWebinar.
eWebinar’s unique functionality will let you host unlimited webinars 24/7 while also maximizing engagement with attendees and preserving the ability to chat live with them during your webinars — when it matters most. And when you can’t chat live, they’ll still feel taken care of since you can respond to them later at your earliest convenience.
Sign up today for a free trial of eWebinar, and join the thousands who have been freed from giving the same presentation over and over again, including companies like Later, Agorapulse, Gem, Cloudstudios, PayKickstart, and BombBomb
If you're still on the fence about which webinar platform is right for you then we highly encourage you to experience the eWebinar experience for yourself by attending our demo:
It’s so easy to get started.
Begin your 14-day free trial today!
