WebinarJam vs Livestorm: Which is the Best?

Are you finding it hard to decide between WebinarJam and Livestorm?

WebinarJam and Livestorm are some of the best webinar platforms to choose from.

However, one has to be better (Think: suitable) than the other. And that’s what this post is all about.

In this post, I’ll walk you through a detailed comparison of both WebinarJam and Livestorm with an in-depth look into their similarities, differences in features, and pricing plans.

What’s WebinarJam?

WebinarJam is a browser-based webinar platform that allows you to host live webinars without having to download any applications.

The webinar platform was developed by Genesis Digital in 2013.

And has since moved up the chain to become one of the best webinar platforms in the industry.

What’s more, WebinarJam has two sister platforms; Kartra and EverWebinar. EverWebinar is yet another popular webinar platform to host evergreen/automated webinars.

WebinarJam is in the good company of two other platforms (EverWebinar and Kartra).

Besides, WebinarJam has its webinar marketplace where professionals and students can buy or attend webinars.

In other words, WebinarJam is shifting from being just a webinar platform to a better place to sell your webinars.

What’s Livestorm?

Not just another webinar platform, Livestorm is also one of the best webinar platforms in the industry that you can choose from.

Similar to WebinarJam, Livestorm is also a browser-based webinar platform.

Although Livestorm is a latecomer in the industry (2016), it is one of the tools that give WebinarJam a run for its money.

Livestorm makes it easy to host both live and automated webinars right from the same dashboard.

Rather than spitting it up here, let’s look at some of the major differences between both tools.

Differences between WebinarJam vs Livestorm

I must admit, that WebinarJam and Livestorm are both competitive tools. While Livestorm is a latecomer into the industry, it’s sure has amazing features.

Let’s dive into the differences.

Difference #1: Webinar Type

To begin with, the very type of webinar you want to host is a deciding factor to know which of the tools is suitable for your business.

There are four different types of webinars you can host:

• Live webinars
• Automated webinars
• Hybrid webinars
• And series webinars

As sad as it hurt, WebinarJam only allows you to host live webinars.

To be exact, you cannot host automated webinars and hybrid webinars. However, there’s a walk around in hosting hybrid webinars.

But, for automated webinars, WebinarJam does not support it.

The only option you have is to integrate WebinarJam with its sister platform, EverWebinar (which allows you to host automated webinars at a cost).

On the contrary, Livestorm allows you to host all types of webinars including automated webinars at no extra cost.

Needless to say, you also get to host live webinars, hybrid webinars, and series webinars.

When it comes to the webinar type, Livestorm takes the lead here.

Winner for Webinar Types – Livestorm

Difference #2: Customizable Pages and Templates

You need a registration page and a thank you page. For WebinarJam, you have a lot of options to choose from.

WebinarJam offers 17 built-in page templates to choose from when setting up your webinar.

Not just that, you have the option of customizing the pages to fit your brand.

In case you would love to signup attendees via your website, WebinarJam allows you to embed the registration form on your website, like what we have below:

That way, you’ll be able to build your registration page via a third-party landing page software.

In essence, your registration page is only subject to your imaginations with the ability to use third-party software to build your registration page.

Besides that, WebinarJam allows you to split-test two landing pages to know which one converts more.

So if you’re finding it hard to choose between two templates, WebinarJam has got you covered.

For Livestorm, it isn’t all that lacking in building a registration page.

However, Livestorm does not have a library of templates to choose from, it provides a basic template to customize to your taste.

In customizing the templates, you can add your business logo, change the text, and also add images to the registration page.

To compensate for the lack of page templates, Livestorm allows you to integrate with third-party landing page builders to create your registration page (which is also present on WebinarJam).

Similar to WebinarJam, Livestorm allows you to embed the registration form on your website. Besides, you can also add custom fields that are not added to the registration form.

While on WebinarJam, you can’t add a custom field to your registration form, they provide you with a basic and neat registration form.

Between, the split-testing feature is conspicuously missing on Livestorm.

On WebinarJam, you have landing page templates like the below to choose from:

But on Livestorm, you have to customize the default template:

As expected, WebinarJam still takes the lead here thanks to its split-testing feature and library of templates.

Winner – WebinarJam

Difference #3: Polls and Surveys

Here’s where WebinarJam shines best.

WebinarJam allows you to survey your registrants at the registration point to know what they’ll be expecting the webinar address.

Also, WebinarJam allows you to survey your audience during the webinar through the polls feature.

Besides, you can pre-configure your polls before the webinar to fit in for you. After pre-configuring your polls, you can turn them on during the webinar. Between, you can only pre-configure when you follow the full-configuration path.

You will have:

And if you choose the express configuration, you can set up your poll in the webinar room.

The interface looks like this:

For Livestorm, you can only create your polls in the webinar room. The webinar platform displays the poll on the right-hand side of the screen where you’ll find the chat tool.

As expected, the result is also displayed on the right-hand side of the screen. However, the feature of surveying your registrants at the point of registration is absent.

Winner – WebinarJam

This was a tight decision. Both tools offer excellent polls and surveys feature. However, we cannot neglect the fact that WebinarJam allows you to pre-configure your polls before the webinar.

Besides, you can also survey your registrants at the point of registration to know what they expect your webinar to address.

Difference #4: Live Chat

WebinarJam offers a live chat feature that allows you as the host to chat with your attendees and moderators.

Also, you can decide to chat with your administrators while leaving your attendees out of the discussion.

This might be useful when you want to discuss private matters.

Besides that, you can turn the chat mode to Q/A mode where all messages are marked as questions. This might be needed during your questions and answers section.

Livestorm isn’t lacking in their live chat feature. Livestorm displays their live chat on the right-hand side of the screen.

When it comes to Live chat, Livestorm is way ahead of WebinarJam.

Livestorm allows the host to protect its attendees by offering various privacy options.

You have the option of disabling the chat feature, make chats private (only the host and moderators can view the chats), and disabling the questions section.

Taking it to the extreme, Livestorm allows you to hide the People’s tab from the attendees’ view, so only the moderators and hosts can see the people’s tab.

I don’t see any reason why you would want to take the privacy to the extreme, except if you don’t want the attendees to connect outside the webinar.

Instead of using that function, a better one is to add the family name of your attendees’ and only showing their first name.

Winner – Livestorm

In a short sentence, Livestorm takes WebinarJam by storm in this section. Offering various privacy options in the chat section, the privacy of your attendees is easier to protect.

Try Livestorm Here

Difference #5: Event Scheduling

When it comes to the event schedule, WebinarJam is certainly lacking in some scheduling options.

And that’s because WebinarJam does not allow you to host automated webinars and only supports live webinars.

However, even at that, WebinarJam still offers three different scheduling to choose from when setting up your webinars.

The three scheduling options are one single session, multiple sessions, and a recurrent series of presentations.

The one single session is a one-time webinar you host.

However, the single session can be done twice while the content is the same, but done just to favor busy attendees.

The multiple session is a mini-series webinar that spans a few days, each day spanning a different episode.

Finally, the recurrent series of presentations is a long time series that lasts for weeks, with each of the weeks spanning a different episode.

For Livestorm, you have more scheduling options. Livestorm supports recurring series, automated webinars (pre-recorded webinar with a live touch), and hybrid webinars.

By clicking on the + new schedule, you can add more sessions to your webinars.

Winner – Livestorm

Difference #6: Live Streaming

For starters, both WebinarJam and Livestorm allow you to stream your webinars to YouTube.

However, Livestorm has taken a step further by enabling you to stream your webinar to other video platforms like Twitch.

Offering an iFrame mode, Livestorm allows you to stream live from third-party platforms by copying the iframe code and pasting it into Livestorm.

By doing this, you can stream live from Facebook to Livestorm. However, you cannot guarantee a real-life experience; what your attendees see might be slower than what you’re seeing or doing.

Winner – Livestorm

Difference #7: Paid Webinars

Paid webinars are on the rise in the marketing industry. If you intend to run a paid webinar, you might not find Livestorm attractive.

Livestorm does not have a feature that allows you to sell your webinars. The only walkaround is to switch off your registration page.

Doing this, you’ll create a third-party sales page to generate links and then add the paid members by yourself.

However, for WebinarJam, you’re in the right hand.

WebinarJam has built-in tools and features that facilitate the easy selling of paid webinars.

You just have to choose the webinar you want to host, free or paid? Just like you have it in the screenshot below:

You don’t have to cut corners to achieve this. Besides, WebinarJam also provides data and analytics for your paid webinars.

Winner – WebinarJam

Try WebinarJam Here

Difference #8: Webinar Analytics

As a marketer, analytics is an important aspect of our process. You want to be able to measure the success of your webinars automatically.

Best of all, if you have an offer you’re selling, or maybe you’re running a paid webinar, you would want to get analytics based on the success of your webinar.

In this part, WebinarJam offers an advanced analytics dashboard that allows you to track the success of your webinar.

WebinarJam starts tracking from the registration page for the webinars until the end of the webinar.

On the registration page, WebinarJam tracks the traffic, the number of registrants, and the signup rate.

During the webinar, WebinarJam tracks the number of live attendees, session length, average time on the live room, user rating, and percentage of attendees that watched the full webinar.

For the replay webinar, WebinarJam also tracks the number of replay webinar attendees, average time on the live room, and the percentage of people that watched the full replay.

For paid webinars or paid offers, you can track the total revenue, number of tickets, number of sales, and earnings per attendee.

On the other hand, Livestorm offers a simple analytics dashboard that tracks basic data about your webinar like the number of polls and questions, etc.

But it does not track sales.

Winner – WebinarJam

Difference #9: Customer Support

From experience, WebinarJam does not have the best customer support unit. There’s no online chatting or chatbox on the site to easily contact their team.

In this advanced tech world, that’s a shortcoming on their own part.

However, I haven’t found any reason to contact them because they have detailed documentation easy to navigate.

With the documentation, you can have almost all your questions answered. But, they not having an online chat is a minus for them.

From verified reviews, WebinarJam has poor customer support.

On the other hand, my experience with Livestorm customer support is satisfactory.

Besides, they have an online chat box to make inquiries and chat online with their customer support.

I had to contact their support team to verify some details. Although I didn’t get a fast response, I got a reply from one of their support after one hour. For me, that’s still fair enough.

Livestorm also wins here.

Winner – Livestorm

Similarities between WebinarJam and Livestorm

Similarity #1: Email Notifications

Both WebinarJam and Livestorm perform well when it comes to email notification.

For Livestorm, you have a lot of options to choose from when it comes to sending emails to your attendees.

Here’s the breakdown of the default Livestorm email series:

To begin with, Livestorm allows you to send your subscribers an email invite to register for your upcoming webinar on Livestorm.

Also immediately after registration, you can set up an automatic email to notify your registrants of a successful registration (this is known as a confirmation email).

An hour before the webinar, you can remind your registrants about the webinar. Likewise, 5 minutes to the webinar, you can remind them of the webinar again.

5 minutes after the webinar, Livestorm will also send your attendees a thank you email for attending the webinar.

At the same time, those that missed the webinar, Livestorm will also send them an automated email.

That’s how the default email series is set. As expected, you have the option of customizing the body of the email and the title of the email.

Besides, if you’re not satisfied with the default email series structure, you can also customize the timing or add more emails to the series.

Just as you figured, WebinarJam also allows you to send email series. The default email series on WebinarJam is four; welcome message, pre-webinar message, last-minute message, and post-webinar message.

Aside from the default email series, WebinarJam allows you to add 10 email notifications before the event and 10 notifications after the event.

To be candid, that’s a massive one and an interesting feature.

Similarity #2: Attendee Spotlight

The attendee spotlight is a feature on WebinarJam that allows you to turn any of the attendees to become a guest speaker.

In essence, you give the attendee the ability to come on Webcam and also use their microphone.

As expected, this feature is also present in Livestorm. Livestorm also allows you to bring any of your attendees to the stage to share their thoughts with other attendees.

Similarity #3: YouTube Live Stream

Streaming to YouTube is a rare feature on webinar platforms. However, WebinarJam and Livestorm have the feature.

With the live streaming feature, you can stream your webinar to YouTube.

However, you won’t be able to use advanced engagement tools on YouTube.

To be exact, polls and surveys won’t work on YouTube streaming. Likewise, the feature to invite an attendee to the stage will be useless also. You won’t be able to do that on YouTube.

Also, there’s a possibility that the real-life experience might not work properly.

That is, what you say or do on your screen might not be what your attendees see at that particular time.

Similarity #4: HD Quality

Both WebinarJam and Livestorm offer good video and audio quality for their webinars. They both promise high definition videos and they really lived up to it.

However, the quality of the video also depends on your environment, internet connection.

If the internet connection is poor, you won’t have a decent experience when using both webinar platforms.

In essence, they both offer decent video quality and that depends on your internet connection.

Comparison of Pricing Plans: WebinarJam vs Livestorm

WebinarJam Pricing Plans

For starters, WebinarJam does NOT offer a free trial, their trial costs $1 for 14-days. This applies to all the plans.

WebinarJam offers three pricing plans to choose from; basic, professional, and enterprise plans.

The Basic plan costs $499 per year offering a 500-attendee room, a maximum of 2 presenters, and 2 hours of maximum webinar duration.

At $699 per year, WebinarJam professional plan offers all the features of the basic plan alongside 2000-attendee room, 4 presenters, 3-hours of maximum duration, Always-On live room, and the panic button.

Lastly, the most expensive plan, the Enterprise plan, costs $999 per year. It includes all the professional plan features alongside a 5000-attendee room, 6 presenters, 4 hours of maximum webinar duration, and the control panel.

Click Here To Try WebinarJam $1 Trial…

Livestorm Pricing Plans

For starters, Livestorm offers a free trial at no extra cost. Besides that, they also have a forever free plan that you can get started with.

They offer three pricing plans; basic, premium, and an enterprise plan.

The basic plan is a forever free plan that offers you a 10-attendee room with a maximum of 20-minutes webinar duration.

The premium plan which comes at €89 per month offers all general features including a maximum of 4-hour webinar duration, 100-attendee room, and unlimited on-demand registrants.

The enterprise plan offers custom pricing and packages which includes support for over 5 hosts, wire transfer payment, multiple workspaces with billing unified, priority support, and many others.

Click Here To Try Livestorm Free Trial…

Pros and Cons of WebinarJam and Livestorm

Pros of WebinarJam

• Offers a library of page templates to choose from
• Allows you to host paid webinars seamlessly
• Provides advanced webinar analytics dashboard
• When compared to Livestorm, it appears affordable in the long run
• WebinarJam can support up to 5000 live attendees

Cons of WebinarJam

• Lacks a free trial (costs $1 for a 14-day trial)
• Poor customer support
• Does not support automated webinars
• Lacks custom live streaming to third-party platforms aside from YouTube

Pros of Livestorm

• Allows you to host both live webinars and automated webinars
• Offers a forever free plan
• Provides satisfactory customer support
• Offers an advanced live chatting tool with more privacy options
• Supports custom live streaming to third-party platforms

Cons of Livestorm

• Livestorm is expensive in the long run
• Cannot support more than 1000 live attendees in the premium plan
• Does not have a built-in solution for paid webinars
• Provides a basic webinar analytics

Conclusion on Livestorm vs WebinarJam

Absolutely, both WebinarJam and Livestorm have their merits and demerits.

It’s a very close comparison of both tools.

However, I recommend that you go for WebinarJam if your goal is to run live webinars. WebinarJam was created for live webinars and it does EXCELLENTLY well.

Besides, WebinarJam offers a more robust feature than Livestorm and it’s also affordable in the long-run.

So, you’ve nothing to lose.

For Livestorm, it’s a very tight comparison is also worth it except for the expensive pricing and small attendee-room.

I only recommend you go for Livestorm if you only need a webinar platform for business meetings. Livestorm is not suitable for large webinars, it’s only best for big organizations.

So, by all means, I recommend WebinarJam as the best webinar platform to go for.

Let me know if you found this WebinarJam vs Livestorm comparison guide helpful in the comment below.