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Webinar Services

by Claude Whitacre
16 replies
Guys; I need a webinar service. Nearly every Guru says to use gotowebinar.com

Has anyone used a different service and been happy with them? Thanks troops.
#services #webinar
  • Profile picture of the author bob ross
    instantteleseminar.com is better in my opinion
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  • Profile picture of the author misterme
    Mikogo.com

    I used their trial period. Nice features. Easy to use.
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    • Profile picture of the author Bayo
      What are you looking for in regards to features and functionality?

      Some will allow replays, some will allow you to setup recurring, some will do other things, so knowing what you're looking for and what the priorities are among those items would allow more people to give you feedback.

      Anymeeting is another option to investigate.
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    • Profile picture of the author Claude Whitacre
      Thanks guys. Gotowebinar wants $499 a month for 1,000 people on a webinar.

      I thought it was a little high. A couple years ago, it was only $99 for 1,000 people participating.


      The standard features; a Q&A panel, storage & replay feature. E-mail notification series,

      The recurring feature would be nice.

      Basically, I want to be able to play a scheduled webinar, talk to the participants in a Q&A right after the webinar, have then be able to type in questions, and then have a recorded series of webinars play at set times.

      And 200 participants is what I want as a maximum. I'm going to go after some joint ventures with some Gurus I know. That means 200 actual people logged in, not 200 sign ups.
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      • Profile picture of the author OnlineStoreHelp
        Hopefully someone can answer this, but can't you do this with google hangouts and then just restrict who attends by the invite? I haven't had a chance to really play with it but it hits two areas, social media and your webinar. Thoughts anyone?
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      • Profile picture of the author BrianMcLeod
        Originally Posted by Claude Whitacre View Post

        Thanks guys. Gotowebinar wants $499 a month for 1,000 people on a webinar.

        I thought it was a little high. A couple years ago, it was only $99 for 1,000 people participating.

        The standard features; a Q&A panel, storage & replay feature. E-mail notification series,

        The recurring feature would be nice.

        Basically, I want to be able to play a scheduled webinar, talk to the participants in a Q&A right after the webinar, have then be able to type in questions, and then have a recorded series of webinars play at set times.

        And 200 participants is what I want as a maximum. I'm going to go after some joint ventures with some Gurus I know. That means 200 actual people logged in, not 200 sign ups.
        Claude,

        Couple things to fill in the gaps for you:

        GoToWebinar doesn't give you any storage & replay functionality. When you record a GTW session, it actually writes the video file to your own hard drive during the live webinar, then encodes it after the webinar ends. I record my webinars with Screenflow on the Mac and use GTW's recordings strictly as backups.

        Also, GTW doesn't give you the ability to play a recorded webinar to a live audience - at least not without it being a crap experience. Someone will probably argue with me about this, but ignore them, it will be a disaster of mismatched audio/video and generally just plain sucks. For shame, Citrix.

        Google Hangouts may be a better bet if playing a recorded presentation versus a live one is a big part of the strategy (I suspect it is for you).

        Also, the email backend for GTW is extremely limited (another sucking chest wound for Citrix). You can only personalize a few emails: reminder, thanks for attending, sorry you missed it - that's it. Ideally, you'll be moving registrants onto your email list elsewhere for followup sequences, etc.

        With respect to InstantTeleseminar, it's a war horse that's worked for nearly a decade for doing live calls - but it's not a webinar service. It's a bridge line with instant replay encoding/streaming. However, the presentation function does let you present a powerpoint deck during the call like a webinar.

        The audio replays are instantly available as an MP3 but IT doesn't do video and there's no registration/email backend - you set up a page in the admin dashboard and that's your live streaming page, which becomes the replay page automatically after the cal ends.

        Because it doesn't do "everything" GTW does, IT will never fail you, but you'll have to manage some of what GTW does for you in terms of signups/attendees, etc.

        You may want to check out StealthSeminar - seems like it's the closest to your list of requirements.

        Also, look into MeetingBurner.

        Hope this helps (you can call me if you want more deets).

        Brian
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        Brian McLeod
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  • Profile picture of the author bob ross
    Claude, use instantteleseminar. I've used it for my webinars and it's fantastic. under $100 per month (no contract) and you can have 1000 web participants. Lots of features and everything is replayable afterwards.

    People can call in and talk or use the chat screen as well. I'm really sure not sure why anyone uses gotowebinar instead.
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    • Profile picture of the author Aaron Doud
      Originally Posted by bob ross View Post

      Claude, use instantteleseminar. I've used it for my webinars and it's fantastic. under $100 per month (no contract) and you can have 1000 web participants. Lots of features and everything is replayable afterwards.

      People can call in and talk or use the chat screen as well. I'm really sure not sure why anyone uses gotowebinar instead.
      Their prices are way better. Know anyone who uses them so I could experience it from the attendee side?
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      Aaron Doud - Sales & Success
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    • Profile picture of the author Claude Whitacre
      Originally Posted by bob ross View Post

      Claude, use instantteleseminar. I've used it for my webinars and it's fantastic. under $100 per month (no contract) and you can have 1000 web participants. Lots of features and everything is replayable afterwards.

      People can call in and talk or use the chat screen as well. I'm really sure not sure why anyone uses gotowebinar instead.
      I must admit, I was leaning towards that. But I'm open to further options.

      Wait a minute! was that a subliminal command?
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  • Profile picture of the author Talltom1
    Claude,

    A year or two ago, I was doing my own research on this exact issue. What I found out is that there are one, perhaps two actual vendors of these webinar broadcast services. Everybody else is a reseller.

    Like I said this was a year or two ago, and I haven't kept up to date with any changes in the industry, but if you're aware of this, you might find some interesting nuggets during your own search...

    Tom
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  • Profile picture of the author vndnbrgj
    I would look into Hangouts.
    I heard you can have a ton of attendees, but you need a plugin or something.

    Jason Fladilen(sp?) has a product on this.
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  • Profile picture of the author globalpro
    Claude,

    I have been studying up on webinars for clients to use with their business and started to dig into the Google Hangouts process. There a couple of plugins out now that seem to work very well with setting up the front end (registrations, add to email list, reminders and replays), plus with hangouts you can have the video/replay added to your youtube channel.

    Of course it doesn't hurt that the big G adds to your search results for using them.

    To show how serious they are, here's an article about where G is going with things.

    The Future of Google Hangouts: All HD, Business Version
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  • Profile picture of the author qu4rk
    Claude, Keep us posted on this. I'd like to know what you use. Bob's suggestion for instantteleseminar looks really good. I may try this one out myself for a small project I have. Their prices kill GTW.
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  • Profile picture of the author Voasi
    GTW is still the best. If you're looking for quality, dependability, then GTW is still where it is at.

    Most problems I've heard with EVERY OTHER service out there is the audio and streaming capabilities. GTW actually will match up the viewers computer capabilities fantastically. That is where most other webinar services fail.

    StealthWebinar is cool - but it's not for live webinars, it's for streaming recorded webinars, which is fantastic for scaling up a webinar that you know converts great. Then it's about putting bodies on your "live" recorded webinar.

    As Brian mentioned, GTW sucks with the emailing, so you'll want to use something that captures email addresses into an autoresponder. Leadpages.net (landing pages...awesome stuff) sync's up GTW and AWEBER (plus others) so you sign them up once and they get added to GTW AND your autoresponder service.
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    • Profile picture of the author JohnnyBattles
      Claude,

      Adobe connect is an awesome service depending on the size of your company. You can really engage with your audience but the problem is that an individual license limits you to 25 users. If you have the enterprise edition you could have a bigger audience.

      It would definitely useful for smaller specialized webinars.
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