Best Platforms For Webinars That Get Real Results

Discover the best webinar platforms that deliver real results. Compare top tools, features & pricing to boost attendance and conversions today.

Are you looking to elevate the effectiveness of your webinars? In this video, we explore the best platforms that deliver real results for your online events. We’ll break down the features, usability, and unique benefits of top tools, ensuring you make an informed choice. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned pro, this guide will help you maximize your webinar impact.

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The Show’s Main Transcript

[00:00:16.920] – Jonathan Denwood

Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 179. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about the best platforms to do webinars. Um, Live webinars seem to be getting popular again: doing live YouTubes, doing all sorts of live events. I think it’s countering the AI slop a bit, but they seem to be getting better. We’re going to be looking at giving you some general advice in the first half of the show, and then in the second half we’ll probably be looking at what we think are some of the better choices for you to use for your webinars. Should be a great show. I’ve got my injured co-host with me, Kurt. He’s managed to hurt his foot, but he’s a trooper. So Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?

[00:01:13.550] -Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, my name is Kurt Von Ahnen, and I run an agency called Manana no Mas and work with the team over at WP-Tonic. How are you?

[00:01:22.580] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s fine. Right. So let’s go straight into it. So what’s your initial thought when I suggested that we should do this topic about webinars? And would you agree that they seem to be starting— well, I don’t think they’re ever gone away. I think they were really popular in the COVID years and then died down a bit afterward, which isn’t that surprising, but I think they’re coming back a bit, and I’ll be interested to get your views on that, Kurt?

[00:01:53.310] -Kurt von Ahnen

I don’t think they ever really went away. I think some of the marketing gurus, the Tony Robbinses of the world, you know, switched channels a little bit, you know? And I think people invented new names for things but didn’t necessarily change the format. And so I’m saying it in a weird way, but the tools are the tools, and I don’t think the tools have really gone away. And you mentioned it in the intro. AI is a mess for a lot of people. And when you create something with yourself on camera talking to people, you can use AI to leverage that content for other things. So you’re still able to expand with AI, but, but it’s— but the source of the content is your own and not AI slop. And it’s very obvious that you created it, which I think gives credence to the content.

[00:02:46.320] – Speaker 4

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[00:04:06.800] – Jonathan Denwood

Yep. So let’s go straight into my list. Why webinars win? Well, I think it’s that personal connection, as Kirk has mentioned. I think it’s obvious it isn’t being done by AI. I think the live webinars are the way to go with this now. Yes, you can do what is called evergreen webinars where you record it and then you play the recording. But I think the real power is in the live webinar. You do have to promote it. Picking the right topic— what’s your thoughts about picking the right topic?

[00:04:44.820] -Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, I’m still looking for the right topic, John. It’s harder than it sounds. I’ve seen people that, you know, for instance, I’m real active in the mountain bike community and I’ve seen some people put together a webinar with, you know, 500 people show up. Um, but you have to get used to the idea that you could try a webinar, you could try and launch one, you might get 1 or 2 people. Don’t put in less effort. You still got to knock it out of the park, do the whole webinar and schedule it again and hope that you have better, better attendance for the next one and grow as you go.

[00:05:19.620] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I think onto the next topic because I think it’s very related. Promote the event.

[00:05:26.520] -Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah.

[00:05:27.820] – Jonathan Denwood

I think you’ve got to really write down a system and use AI to help you do that. Do some research about the best methodologies. What are the recommendations from people that seem to know what they’re talking about? Check them out, try and get a plan of action and get construct— because I’m, I’m bad at this. I’m trying to improve myself, folks. Is, you know, have a methodology to promote your webinar. To be truthful, folks, if you got a good email list, that’s gonna help a lot. But on the other hand, a lot of people using webinars to build their email list. So, use social media, videos, promote it. What do you reckon, Kurt?

[00:06:25.640] -Kurt von Ahnen

Well, you’ve kind of touched on it, Jonathan, and that is the chicken before the egg or however you want to phrase it. You have to understand what your setup is doing. So in some cases you’re using your website or your social media feed to feed people to the webinar because the webinar is your conversion tool to get people to make a purchase of something. The other, the other thing is also true. Your webinar could be, you know, the lead magnet that brings— that you’re directing people to your website and the website does the conversion. And so understanding which of your tools is the proper conversion tool helps with the strategy on how you promote the webinar and how you execute it.

[00:07:12.930] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I think you’re spot on. I think the main thing about this, folks, is that you’re gonna have to have a social media strategy, a YouTube strategy using short video on TikTok, on Instagram. Short videos seems to be the way to go. We actually sell a tool on the WP-Tonic website that helps you produce short-form video using AI, actually. I’ll make sure there’s a link link in the show notes of this on that. It’s about slightly under $500 a month, but it produces a ton of content every month for you automatically. Um, so you got that, but you are gonna have to produce a lot of content. And then you put in the live webinar because then the people book because they want to interact with you. They’ve got questions. Also, you need a good topic and they need to see that they’re going to get some value from it. But the two things, if you don’t do either, the webinar is not going to work. Or I mean the one thing which is the outreach. I think the other goes hand in hand, turn the webinar into content because it’s a great way of turning it into short video.

[00:08:36.850] – Jonathan Denwood

This— there’s quite a few platforms out there that will assist you in doing that. We’re going to be talking about one of them in the second half of the show, but it’s just a great resource to turn into different clips, video clips. What do you reckon, Kurt?

[00:08:53.940] -Kurt von Ahnen

Well, and the webinar is so much more than that, right? So the webinar becomes the shorts that you’re talking about, but there’s tools that can help you make like textual sister content to go with it. So you can convert things to print, doesn’t necessarily have to be be a transcript, it could be a summary. Man, there’s just so many ways to leverage things. You can take a webinar and break it into bite-sized pieces and make a mini course out of a webinar. Well, now you’ve got a lead magnet based off the webinar content that you’ve already made. And so there’s just so many ways that you could— that you can leverage it. But that takes us back to sales. And it’s, you know, if you’re in a business that’s generating revenue, you got to be careful because if you’re not, you can end up in the content creation business instead of in the conversion and selling business. Right. And at the end of the day, we’ve got to convert and sell. So you want to have a strategy when you’re looking at how you convert this content, how you implement this content and what it leads to.

[00:09:55.650] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I think I’m going to drop the next one in the sequence because you’ve already touched the last one, conversion killers.

[00:10:03.520] – Speaker 1

I—

[00:10:03.930] – Jonathan Denwood

it’s a tricky one, but I do agree, you know, um, with you. But it’s finding the balance because you— I think you can also be overselly. Yeah, oversales. Yeah, I’m not going to name that. Well, you’ve named a certain individual, but he’s very— he’s made a fortune out of that. That says he’s proven me wrong. Um, but maybe I’m just going from my own bias, but I think I think I’m a, I’m a Generation X. I’m on the first year Generation X, um, X/Boomer. I’m right on the edge. Um, I think the millennials, and I don’t want— I don’t know what they’re called after millennials, I forgot. Gen Z. Gen Z. I think they’re very much more resistant to over salesy kind of content. Um, it’s finding that right balance because I also agree with Kirk. If you don’t have any kind of calls for action, any way of pushing people a bit further along the conversion funnel and turning them into actual real clients, um, it all becomes just social media, basically. Yeah, I do. It’s finding that happy medium. There’s no— yeah, go on.

[00:11:28.570] -Kurt von Ahnen

I was going to say, in a transparent way, I mean, that was exactly my problem with my agency. I had people that I was friends with, you know, in a networking framework where you would, you know, recommend customers to each other, right? Like peers in the space. And a couple of them reached out to me and said, Kurt, I’ll be honest with you, man, I don’t even know what you sell. I don’t even really know what your services are. And I was like, how can you not know? Like, I thought they were idiots, you know, like, how could you not know? But then I went through the content of the website and I was like, you know what, I’m doing all this, I’m sharing all this information and I’m putting all this free stuff out there, but none of it’s closing people on what we actually do to create revenue. And that’s— and I think learning that school of hard knocks education that I got, I think is why I keep going back to that when we do these conversations, Jonathan, because I don’t want to see other people get in that overly genuine, generous position and mistake generosity for a lack of selling.

[00:12:27.810] – Speaker 1

Yeah.

[00:12:29.180] – Jonathan Denwood

We’re gonna keep this episode a little bit shorter. Kirk, Kirk’s in a little bit of pain. He’s taking a few painkillers. So we’re gonna go for our middle break, folks. And when we come back, we’re gonna be talking about some of the platforms that can help you do these webinar, these live webinars. If you’re finding this content useful and you’re on, you find us on YouTube, leave a comment and we answer those. We will be back in a few moments, folks.

[00:12:57.190] – Speaker 4

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[00:13:34.760] – Speaker 1

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[00:14:12.500] – Jonathan Denwood

We’re coming back, folks. I want to point out WP-Tonic. If you’re looking to have your membership community website built, if you’re looking for it to be maintained, hosted, if you’re looking for SEO services, anything to do with helping you build out a successful membership community-focused website, if you’re a university, individual, a association, a nonprofit, have a look at WP-Tonic and have a look at what we’ve got to offer. So let’s go into the platforms.

[00:14:48.790] -Kurt von Ahnen

Now, you—

[00:14:52.580] – Jonathan Denwood

I’m going to say something and see if Kirk agrees with me. There’s tons and tons. There’s quite a lot of WordPress SaaS, all sorts of platforms to help you do webinars. A lot of them are quite pricey. There’s also some of them, their biggest, their biggest attraction is not, they do the webinar really well, but their sales pitch is they can do other things as well. Other things to assist you to promote the webinar. There’s other ones on this short list. That are just focused on doing the webinar part. So there’s, there’s, there’s different ways, different price points, different attitudes about what a webinar platform should be offering. And you find that with a lot of different segments now, you find that with platforms to host your membership or, or help you host your community. There’s some that are very focused, there’s others that offer a ton of different functionality, but it’s not related to the course so much. What do you reckon about what I’ve just said, Curt?

[00:16:12.620] -Kurt von Ahnen

Makes a lot of sense. And, you know, also keeping in mind that this is the Membership Machine Show, you know, we primarily talk about membership and learning websites. It’s very interesting because when you, when you look at some of the tools that we’ll discuss, there are, there are advantages to using those tools with the other things that we discuss on the show on a regular basis because of the membership tools or the payment gateway tools and things like that. So you don’t always need the most premium version of these tools to find success because a lot of times there’s overlap and you already have these tools in your, you know, course creator arsenal.

[00:16:53.840] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, that’s why you really got to, you got to really write down and think about what you really need. Because otherwise you just see a big list of things the platform can do and you think, oh, it can do all these things, but you already bought lifetime deals. You already bought, you’re already using other products. You don’t need all those, those things that they’re listing basically. Now we’re going to start off with one. But it does the webinar well. Um, but its real pitch is it does a lot of other things as well, and that’s Riverside. Now, for this podcast, I, I was originally using StreamYard, and then I was looking, um, StreamYard got a bit funny with their pricing structures, um, and I looked at alternatives, and one of them was Riverside. Um, I decided in the end to use something called EveMux. EveMux, EveMux, strange name. Uh, um, but I decided on that. But Riverside, it’s a— it really does really great podcast recording, does the video as well, and it depending on which version you choose. And the webinar version, it’s $99 per month, month to month. If you want to get the webinar functionality and the webinar function, function part is basic and it does, but it does the job, scheduling, blah, blah, blah.

[00:18:34.120] – Jonathan Denwood

But the way they pitch it, it’s all the other things that it will cut up the videos into short videos. You can use it for your podcasting. You can use it to do live video with one guest or something. It does a lot of other things, the platform. But if you’re looking for your pure webinar, it’s not probably the best. But if you’re looking for all these other things, it’s probably something you should look at. Do you think I’ve been fair there, Kurt?

[00:19:05.140] -Kurt von Ahnen

Being more than fair because it does. Again, features, right? Especially for people that have a spotty internet connection for streaming, Riverside is one— is one of the first ones I know of that did local recording. And so let’s say that me and Jonathan are making a show together and Jonathan’s internet is wonky, um, during the live broadcast we might see, you know, cutting in and out or the video freezing or whatever, but at the end of the recording, Riverside will take the local recording from each machine, glue it together, and give you, you know, a perfect recording that you can rebroadcast later or share on YouTube or something like that. And so there’s, there’s just a lot of advantages with Riverside. I use Riverside with another show that I do, and, um, it’s easy to sign into. The interface works well. The Shorts, uh, you know, it works pretty quickly. They do a good job. And the Shorts do this kind of the same thing as like an Opus clip would do, right? Like this is your virality score, this is, you know, uh, content you could post with it. You know, this would be the suggested prompt or post to go with the cut.

[00:20:14.920] -Kurt von Ahnen

And so it’s, it’s a pretty cool deal.

[00:20:17.100] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, I’m thinking I may be dropping because I’ve got Descript, and, but Descript doesn’t do live pushouts to social media, um, and I think it’s useful to push these podcasts to social media. Um, yeah. Um, probably not to YouTube because I tend to make it unlisted, um, because I’ve got an edited version and I don’t want two versions up at the same time. Um, but the other social media platforms, um, but Discreet doesn’t. So you really got to look at what they are offering on these platforms. On to the next one, which is a WordPress solution, and that’s WebinarPress. We’ve talked about this before. Single site license, just $197 per year. I put, um, that’s pretty good value. Um, and it, it doesn’t do all the stuff that Riverside does,. But on the other hand, if you want to do webinars, it does it, doesn’t it? Not. And it’s self-hosted. You can host it, but you’ve got— it’s self-hosted, folks, but you’re going to have to have decent hosting. That’s all I’m going to say to you. What do you reckon, Kurt?

[00:21:39.090] -Kurt von Ahnen

This is going to be a weird one for me, Jonathan, because this is the one that made me say what I said earlier in the show. WebinarPress, I have a lot of experience with WebinarPress because I use WebinarPress. I use it in the Mañana No Más website, but I don’t need anything other than the free version because I’m using a LifterLMS-powered website. So membership enrollment is controlled through Lifter. The payment gateway is controlled through Lifter. Access to the webinars that I’m going to give, you know, the content restriction is covered by my website setup already. And so I can use the free version of WebinarPress to host my webinar in my website and still get the benefits and control of all of the other tools that are in my site. And so when I, when I look at it that way, I go, okay, I love WebinarPress because it does. And I don’t use it often. I only use it 2, 3, 4 times a year. It’s not, not a big deal for me. But if, if you want to pay for, you know, the single site license, the $197 per year, that’s where you get to do like recorded webinars and recurring webinars.

[00:22:53.630] -Kurt von Ahnen

If I use the free version, I can only do live webinars. And then I think if I remember correctly, it connects through my YouTube channel. So if I broadcast live through YouTube, I can just put it directly into my WebinarPress. I like it. I think it works well. I think the user interface in the back of a WordPress website feels a little rudimentary, like a little basic in its design and UX. So that might, that might lead you astray to think that it’s a less, a less product than it really is, because I think it could be, I think it could be better designed, you know, for the interface. But it works really, really well. It’s super reliable and I’m a fan.

[00:23:36.210] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. And if you like to say, if you’re using Lyft, which you’re going to be talking about a bit later on, but I forgot. That it works with the free version. Thanks for pointing that out. I forgot about that. Onto the next one, which is kind of the kind of fully hosted SaaS version, but it’s very different to Riverside, and that’s EasyWebinar. And it’s one of the better valued ones because a lot of the more traditional ones are quite expensive. Um, where this one, um, EasyWebinar launches 44, but up to 50 live attendees, and then you got growth, um, for 116 per month for 200. And reality, that covers almost, I would say, 90% of people, um, based on my experience. But I haven’t used it in anger, so I don’t know if you know anything about it.

[00:24:41.630] -Kurt von Ahnen

I don’t have a lot of experience with EasyWebinar. I’ve had a couple of clients that have used it in the past, and what I feel comfortable in saying about it is that everyone I know that tried it bought a package that was more robust than what they needed. There’s always like a fear of missing out with these platforms. And so you’ll look at the pricing page and you’ll think, oh, well, Launch is $40 a month, but, you know, I probably need to do, you know, the Growth plan or the Pro plan or whatever. Don’t— I got to be like really careful how I say this. I want to say this in a way that makes sense. Don’t automatically assume you’re going to have unbridled success. You would rather advertise a webinar that has a capacity for 50 live attendees and have it sell out than pay the extra money for 200 live attendees and have 10 people show up. Like, in a perfect world, you would be able to say, like, legit, like, not lying, sorry, we’re sold out, we’re going to do a repeat event on Friday. Like, if, if you really did have that kind of success, I, I, I would encourage you to stick with the cheaper version.

[00:25:54.020] -Kurt von Ahnen

The other thing to remember is that with this plan, when you The base version is pretty straightforward. The other versions include other tools like CRM tools or automated call to action things or, um, like different email integrations. If you are a fan of our show and you’re already in WordPress and you already have, you know, a CRM and learning tools and all those things, you don’t need that. So I’m very cautious with clients when I talk to my clients because they see things and they get that fear of missing out panic attack where they want to, you know, buy the best, the best package. You don’t need the best package if you have those tools elsewhere.

[00:26:39.760] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. And lastly, but we touched on it, but talking about WebinarPress is that I put it at the bottom because LifterLMS, but I kind of more with Zoom. But the problem with Zoom is Zoom does do webinars, right, folks? And they’ve got an app. That’s the problem. Well, kind of, you know, and you have to pay. Like, I don’t think— I’m pretty sure the webinar add-on doesn’t work with the free version of Zoom. You gotta have to pay for it. Go have the paid version, which is about 150, 170 a year now. Um, and then it’s on top. I can’t remember how much it is on top, but it’s not ridiculous, but it’s expensive. And it uses the Zoom app, which has its pluses and its negatives. You know, most people have Zoom. So some people don’t, especially in the corporate world, they use Teams, they’re forced to use Teams. So if they’re on a corporate machine and they’re not allowed to, and they won’t be allowed to put their own software on, it won’t have Zoom on, on their laptop if they’re— so there’s always pluses and negatives, but I suppose that’s the good thing about WebinarPress is that you’ve got the free version.

[00:28:10.470] – Jonathan Denwood

You can use it with LifterLMS if you don’t want to use— and the other problem, the Zoom folks, um, is that you got, you got to set up an app with Zoom to work with LifterLMS. And it’s not terrible, but both Lifter and WeDo and loads of people provide good, good instructions. But I suppose with WebinarPress, you don’t have to bother with that, do you? Or what do you, what do you reckon?

[00:28:43.810] -Kurt von Ahnen

So there’s very specific reasons that I would use LifterLMS and Zoom or LifterLMS and the new events add-on that they created a couple of months ago that also incorporates Zoom. First off, there’s the Zoom integration for WordPress, which is free, right? So that’s in the repository. You could get that. Now, the setup for that with the apps that Jonathan was talking about, I’ve done it tens of times and it still takes me like an hour to set it up. And when I first did it, it took me like 2.5, 3 hours to set it up. The instructions were very specific and very time-consuming. The setup with LifterLMS and the Events add-on is the opposite. I mean, it’s literally like click this, click that, click the other, 10 minutes later, you know, you’re up and running. You’ve got Zoom in your LifterLMS website. For events. So that works. If you run Zoom in that configuration, your clients have the option of, you know, do you want to open Zoom in the browser or Zoom in the app? So they get a choice of whether they use the app or can be in the browser. From a webinar perspective, though, you do end up in that weird space, right, where it’s like, yeah, if I want to run webinars, I have to be on that commercial plan.

[00:30:03.420] -Kurt von Ahnen

To get webinars and it does something like 1,000 attendees at a time. It’s way overkill for most of the people that we’re going to talk to or the people that we’re going to serve in this show. So, so that makes it a little more difficult.

[00:30:17.590] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. So what, what, how do you think people should make a decision? Well, I, I really don’t know, really. I suppose it’s WordPress. Lifter, you know, LifterLMS with Zoom or WebinarPress is a great combination, isn’t it?

[00:30:37.380] -Kurt von Ahnen

Well, I feel like, you know, and this is just me, this isn’t one of those things like picking your payment gateway, right? So if I was building a LifterLMS website and I use the LifterLMS payment gateway, and then I decide a year later that I want to use WooCommerce, well, that creates a real communication issue inside the website because now you’ve got two different payment gateways working and trying to figure out what’s recurring, what’s not recurring, and it’s kind of a nightmare. But webinars aren’t like that, Jonathan. I mean, I could try it. If I don’t like it, big deal. I’ll just switch and try something different. I like the idea of— and again, this is just me being me— if I already have a WordPress website and I’ve already got membership tools or e-learning tools in that website, I’m going to try WebinarPress and give it a shot. I’m gonna see, I’m gonna see what I can manage on that free version and see if I can get the results that I’m looking for. And if I need to upgrade, you know, $197 for the whole year, that’s peanuts compared to what I’m going to pay in other environments.

[00:31:41.600] -Kurt von Ahnen

So I’m probably going to try that first. If I find it too intensive, too labor-intensive, too, too much of a bother, then I’m probably gonna jump straight to Riverside. Just to be honest with you, if it comes down to convenience, convenience and features, well then I’m going to jump to Riverside, pay all the money and know that, you know, I’ve got to do— like I said earlier, I typically do just 3 or 4 webinars a year. If I was paying Riverside money, I would probably have minimum a monthly webinar cycle that I’d be doing for my business because I’ve got to, I’ve got to optimize the spending. Yeah.

[00:32:20.440] – Jonathan Denwood

Right. I think we finish up. What’s the best way for people to find out more about you, Kurt?

[00:32:25.570] -Kurt von Ahnen

Well, I’m on LinkedIn, so I’m easy to find. I’m the only Kurt Von Ahnen on LinkedIn. And if it’s for business, I’m at Mañana No Más or WP-Tonic.

[00:32:34.670] – Jonathan Denwood

Right. Yeah. We will be back next week with another great show. If you’re looking for a great partner, have a look at Double WP-Tonic, what we’ve got to offer. Like I say, we build, we design, we host, we maintain for universities, colleges, schools, nonprofits, associations, and individuals. We will be back next week with another great topic. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.

[00:33:04.550] – Speaker 1

Thanks for listening to the Membership Machine Show. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss any future episodes and leave a rating to support the show. Until next time.

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