A webinar is an online seminar or web conference. Webinars allow you to give video presentations to groups of people from your team to your current or prospective customers, investors, etc.
Some companies thrive solely on the extensive use of webinars! Some have been able to transition successfully from hosting in-person events to virtual, like Mitegro who was able to transition from delivering their in-person trade fair to hosting their event online using GoToWebinar.
Do your set up, bring in crowds, deliver your presentation, then review the results.
What is GoToWebinar
GoToWebinar is the webinar software platform used by thousands of customers around the world.
Your audience will be able to attend live webinars for free and you get to experience a easy-to-use webinar system that will let you deliver your presentation from anywhere in the world.
Webinars are a great addition to your business for so many reasons:
- Establishing authority
- Broadening your reach
- Building trust
- Branding opportunity
- Increasing traffic and sales
GoToWebinar is a webinar solution for businesses in every industry from marketing, communications, education, and other fields.
Some of GoToWebinar’s accomplishments:
- Fall 2020 Leader in Software award
- Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice
- 2020 Top Rated Webinar Software
- Capterra Top 20 Webinar Software
They offer a host of features and integrate with tons of tools that you may be using for your business like AWeber, Hubspot, Marketo, Prezi, Unbounce, Zoho, and others.
Let’s get into the key features available in your GoToWebinar plan.
GoToWebinar Key Features
You will enjoy a hassle-free experience with GoToWebinar’s webinar conferencing. Here are some of the best features available from GoToWebinar:
- Event management: the ability to see your webinars scheduled easily and make changes as needed.
- Flexible scheduling: you’ll have the opportunity to set up one-time live events, series, or on-demand experiences.
- Webinar templates: plug-and-play templates that will let you skip steps so you can use settings from past webinars for your new events.
- Branding: the ability to add your branding including brand colors, logos, etc.
- Custom registration: capture the exact information you want with questions you create for your registrants.
- Channel page: easy, on-demand webinars at your fingertips.
- GoToStage: draw in crowds, reach new audiences and generate leads. Check out all the features of GoToStage.
- Engagement dashboard: review engagement including hands raised and time elapsed.
- Polls: poll your audience.
- Surveys: survey your audience.
- Presenter webcams: show your face via webcam and invite panelists to do the same.
- Recording: the ability to record your webinar.
- Pre-recorded events: the ability to pre-record webinars, a huge-time saving benefit.
- Integrations: the ability to integrate with your favorite tools like Marketo, Leadpages, Unbounce, Zapier, etc.
What is GoToStage?
GoToStage helps you drive demand and draw in an audience for your webinars with:
- High quality leads
- Branded experience
- Easy publishing
- Front Page Spotlights
- Personal channel
- Discoverability
Here’s how it works:
1. Upload your past webinars
2. Customize your channel
3. Drive constant demand
Once your webinar is over you can click the “Add to channel” button to send it to your channel then, you’ll have the opportunity to customize your channel:
- Banners
- Logos
- Custom descriptions
Lastly, you can integrate with your CRM to manage lead generation and event creation.
Related: 7 Best Webinar Platforms
How does GoToWebinar reporting work?
There are a bunch of different reports available to help you review the data from your webinars like an attendee report, registration report, survey report, etc.
You’ll be able to view your event analytics, look at the data from your Q&A, session overview, performances and other metrics.
How do you generate a webinar report?
Generating a webinar report will help you get to the data you’re looking to analyze whether its attendance, engagement or other reports.
Here are the steps to generate a webinar report:
1. Login to your account
2. Open the Analytics page by clicking the bar graph icon
3. Click Build Report
4. Choose the report you’re looking for (i.e. sessions overview, registration, performance, etc.)
5. Choose a date range and click the desired sessions
6. Choose your preferred file type and click Email Report or Download to access the materials
GoToWebinar Price
GoToWebinar has four pricing tiers:
- Lite: $59/month
- Standard: $129/month
- Pro: $249/month
- Enterprise: $499/month
The monthly plan pricing is shown above and annual plans are also available. You can save up to 40% if you choose to pay annually instead.
The features and services available in a paid plan will vary based on the plan you pick. All the plans include:
- Registration
- Presentation
- Reporting
The registration page lets you manage your registrants, send email reminders, etc.
The presentation is the delivery of your webinar and built-in features like polls, surveys and other unique features allow your webinar presentations to be interactive, keeping your attendees engaged.
And then every GoToWebinar plan includes robust reporting tracking attendance, feedback and a lot more.
All plans also have a bunch of standard features regardless of the one you choose, such as GoToStage access, GoToMeeting license, and 24/7 phone support among other features. Here’s what each GoToWebinar pricing plan includes.
There is also a 7 day free trial on all plans and you can change your plan at any time.
GoToWebinar Price | The Lite Plan
The Lite plan is good for businesses that will host web conferences not exceeding 100 attendees.
You will get a bunch of built-in tools in this plan including screen sharing, video sharing, full service registration, integrations, and more.
But, you will be lacking video embedding, channel pages, and a few other features like recorded events, transcripts, and certificates. If having access to these key features is important, consider upgrading to a higher tier plan.
GoToWebinar Price | The Standard Plan
In Standard you’ll get up to 250 attendees who can attend your webinars. You get all the features of Lite along with access to one channel page and video embedding.
GoToWebinar Price | The Pro Plan
The Pro Plan gives you everything in Standard with up to 500 attendees. You also get 3 channel pages, and all the premium features:
- Recorded events
- Video editor
- Source tracking
- Transcripts
- Certificates
- Custom channel page URL
GoToWebinar Price | The Enterprise Plan
Then lastly, the highest tier plan is Enterprise with up to 3,000 attendees.
This is a great choice for large or growing businesses that need to hold webinars for large groups. You get all the features of the Pro plan with all the premium features as well and 5 channel pages instead of 3.
What is GoToWebinar Flex?
This flexible payment plan allows you to pay as you go. You only pay for GoToWebinar when you need it.
What is the GoToWebinar price for the flex pay-as-you-go plan?
The price is $19/month billed annually plus an up charge for the number of attendees you need for the plan:
- For up to 500 attendees add $149
- For up to 1,000 attendees add $299
- For up to 3,000 attendees add $499
For example, if you sell digital courses using webinars and you have three launches per year reintroducing your course to the public, it might make sense for you to pay for GoToWebinar for each launch. That means you pay for it for three launch periods instead of for the entire year or an ongoing basis.
Here’s a side-by-side example:
You’ll get enterprise level features included, like:
- CRM integrations
- Simulated Live
- Engagement
- Automated emails
- Ability to accept payments
- Reporting and analytics
You can learn more by visiting the GoToWebinar price page.
GoToWebinar Versus GoToMeeting
You may have heard of GoToMeeting. Here’s the difference between GoToWebinar and GoToMeeting.
GoToWebinar is for your online presentation needs. So, if you need to deliver a web conference, teach a group or communicate with your team over a webinar, GoToWebinar is what you want.
In contrast, GoToMeeting is like an online chat room. It’s good for instant virtual meetings.
Pros and Cons of GoToWebinar
Here are the pros and cons of GoToWebinar:
Pros
- Automated and recorded webinars available
- GoToMeeting and GoToStage are included
- Lots of features and services available
Cons
- Downloading an app is required for attendees to view a webinar
- Landing page customization not available
- Call-to-action options are lacking
GoToWebinar offers a lot. Many features mean that there’s an increased likelihood that all your webinar needs will be met. And, you have your choice of plans to pick from to ensure you can get everything you’re looking for.
The drawback is, unlike some competitors, GoToWebinar will require your attendees to download the GoToWebinar desktop or mobile app in order to participate in the webinar. This can be a pain point for attendees and can lead to lower levels of attendance. That, along with some missing features like the ability to customize the landing page and lack of call-to-actions can be a hangup for users too.
Final Recommendation
What I like about GoToWebinar are the features and products included in your plan.
You get a free GoToMeeting license ($300 savings) along with access to GoToStage and other services you’ll find valuable in your plan. The 24/7 phone support and flexible payment plans are huge benefits as well.
That means GoToWebinar can accommodate the night owl working on their webinar setup at 3am or the early bird who starts their work day at 6:30 in the morning, and every time in between.
Plus, I haven’t seen a webinar company offer a flex plan quite like what GoToWebinar has. It’s a much cheaper alternative than paying on an ongoing basis when you don’t have a need for year round webinars.
But, one of the major sticking points I can’t get around is the download-required setup that a lot of their competitors have abandoned. I don’t know about you but, I can see an excited consumer click the webinar link to start the show and be greeted by a “download button” and decide to just abandon it altogether.
People don’t want to have to download another “thing” to their computer or cell phone. It’s a big hang up and it can bring down your attendance rate and impact your bottom line.
Overall, what do we think?
With everything said, I think the pros outweigh the cons.
GoToWebinar is backed by LogMeIn who offers a huge suite of other amazing tools including GoToConnect, Lastpass, and Grasshopper. I can see them continuing to grow and up their game in the webinar space, delivering an even more valuable experience to users and consumers.
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