As usual, choosing the best software can be a serious headache especially when there is a large pool of competitive options in the market: WebinarJam and Zoom are no exception!
If choosing the best webinar solution between WebinarJam Vs Zoom is a bit confusing for you – then you’re at the right place.
Hosting webinars to drive leads has now become the trend among marketers according to WyZowl webinar statistics.
And recently, we’ve been reviewing the best webinar solutions for businesses for hosting webinars and meetings.
We started by reviewing the best GotoWebinar alternatives in the market plus many more.
Right here, we’ll be doing a head-head comparison of WebinarJam vs Zoom with a detailed analysis of their features, similarities, differences, and whom they are the best fit for.
My promise to you is that – at the end of this post you will be in a better position to choose nothing but the best platform for your business.
Let’s dive in and put an end to the debate between WebinarJam vs Zoom.
What is WebinarJam?
Without a doubt, WebinarJam is the only Webinar platform that simplifies the entire webinar setup, automation, and online selling process. Advanced, easy to use, and built with the latest technology.
WebinarJam is a webinar hosting platform that allows you to smoothly create and run live and automated webinars.
The Platform was founded by Genesis Digital; the founder of Kartra and EverWebinar. They currently have over 50,000 customers and counting; ultimately, their customers are satisfied.
Launched in 2013, WebinarJam has climbed up the ladder to become one of the best webinar platforms available in the market.
WebinarJam offers amazing features that simplify the marketing of your webinars with ease.
With engagement tools like interactive polls, advanced chat tools; timed offers; there’s a lot of attractive features housed inside the WebinarJam dashboard.
However, WebinarJam is not without glitches and also not the only offer in the market with engagement features.
What is Zoom?
Zoom is an all-in-one solution for hosting meetings and webinars. Founded in 2011 by Eric Yuan, the zoom application has been regarded as a budget platform.
The Zoom software was built with “online calls and meetings” in mind. It was not started off as a webinar platform but has undergone several updates over the years to support webinars.
That said, Zoom offers some amazing features for hosting webinars and improving engagement like a feature to raise hands during a webinar, screen sharing, and a chat tool.
However, it is still lacking in some features just like WebinarJam.
Let’s dive into the features of both webinar platforms.
WebinarJam vs Zoom – Features
Talking of comparison, more emphasis is placed on the features of both software.
Let’s have a detailed look at the features of both WebinarJam and Zoom. Starting with WebinarJam:
Features of WebinarJam
#1: Built-in Templates
WebinarJam has a library of Pre-Built templates that allows you to create a webinar within 5 minutes.
You can customize the built-in templates to suit your needs and brand. Designing your webinar landing page is made easy with the templates.
Created by marketers, definitely, these templates were designed with marketing in mind.
Ultimately, they are optimized to improve the marketing and sales of your webinars.
#2: Custom Registration
Apart from the built-in templates, the other amazing feature that WebinarJam offers is its custom registration form.
The custom registration form allows you to embed WebinarJam registration form into your website and enable your readers to register for your Webinars right from your site.
And with this, you do not need to direct them to WebinarJam in order to register for your webinars.
However, WebinarJam does not support streaming live from your website. Although you can get them to register right from your site, they still have to stream from the WebinarJam platform.
But there’s a walkaround for this.
Here is it:
#3: YouTube Live Broadcast
YouTube live broadcast is the savior. Although you cannot embed a live stream into your website; you can always broadcast live from WebinarJam to YouTube.
With the YouTube live broadcast, you can generate more leads (if this is the goal) from your YouTube channel.
The walk-around for embedding Webinars into your website – is to embed YouTube live video on your WordPress site.
But this does not include the chat and other unique features on the WebinarJam platform that you have access to on the platform.
Also, it’s wise to note that you are limited to the features and bound by YouTube’s policy; if you are embedding a YouTube live stream on your site.
#4: Hybrid Webinars
A hybrid webinar is a mix of both pre-recorded webinars and live webinars. With the hybrid webinar feature, you can play a pre-recorded webinar during a live webinar.
If you’re a solo entrepreneur or you crave perfection in everything you do; then you’ll love this.
Playing a pre-recorded video during a live webinar will give you the time to attend to your attendees’ questions without hiring a helping hand.
Also, your attendees will not be able to identify if you’re streaming live or playing a pre-recording. And here’s the best part: There are other applications of this feature.
With the Hybrid webinar feature, you can replay a previous webinar during your live webinar to entertain your attendees while waiting for you.
Likewise, you can also play a pre-recorded closing after the webinar to get your attendees to feel motivated and take action.
Moreover, another amazing application is what we see on Television and YouTube – having a break during the webinar (while you entertain them with short-ads, rather than a straight-long-boring webinar).
#5: Attendee Spotlight
WebinarJam Attendee spotlight allows you to turn any of your attendees into a presenter. With this feature, you can show a live testimonial from your guest to other attendees.
Playing a pre-recorded interview has always been the norm – and the addition of a live interview will be a game-changer in driving leads.
The attendee spotlight also has many applications as the hybrid webinar feature. You can use this feature to bring recognized experts in the house on stage to share their ideas and strategies.
Although WebinarJam allows not more than 6 presenters on a webinar, the walk-around is using the Attendee spotlight feature.
With this, you can feature more than 10 presenters one after the other.
Also, you can give an attendee the opportunity to ask questions and get live consultation and answers.
#6: Engagement Tools
WebinarJam offers a range of tools that helps you engage your audience.
WebinarJam offers surveys, polls, quizzes, and an advanced chat tool.
You get the option to create a survey that displays after the registration form. Right from registration, the WebinarJam allows you to survey registrants.
With this, you can survey your attendees by asking questions to gauge their needs and expectations.
You have four options for survey questions:
- Poll allowing only one answer
- Poll allowing multiple answers
- Question for a short answer
- Question for a long answer
However, the poll and quizzes options are reserved for the live webinars. You have the option to set up your polls and quizzes and also control when you want it available within the webinars.
The Advanced chat tool is displayed on the right side of the interface during the webinar. The tool enables you to chat with your attendees during the webinar.
Attendees get to ask you questions and drop comments through the chat tool and you get to answer your attendees’ questions.
#7: Product Offers
WebinarJam product-offers feature allows you to sell an offer to your attendees within the webinar.
The truth – Most of the webinars hosted nowadays are done to sell something to the attendees. The WebinarJam team knows this well, they’re experts in hacking what their customers need.
Their Product-offers feature allows your attendees to take action on your offers through the help of a CTA button.
#8: Scheduling & Notification Feature
With the Webinajam scheduling feature, you can run your webinar on your own terms. You can schedule your webinar for a set time or as a recurring series.
Webinar series is an application of the scheduling features. Are you running a webinar series for a set number of days? Maybe a week?
Then with the scheduling feature, you can do a custom scheduling of each webinar throughout the span of the webinar series.
And the best part, WebinarJam sends a notification to your attendees via SMS text and email throughout the webinar series so that they don’t miss the webinar.
Zoom Webinar Features
Zoom is more focused on providing a splendid video conferencing experience for their customers. Most of their features are similar to their Zoom Meeting platform.
Below are the unique features that Zoom provides for a better webinar experience.
Let’s start with this:
#1: Live Streaming
Zoom’s live streaming feature allows you to stream live to Facebook and YouTube.
Also, the Zoom webinar offers a custom live streaming service that allows you to stream live on custom platforms.
Ultimately, you can easily live stream from the Zoom webinar interface to your WordPress site.
As a matter of fact, this is by far the most amazing feature that Zoom offers for a wonderful webinar experience.
#2: Engagement Tools
Zoom webinar offers the necessary engagement tools for your webinars.
To start with, the webinar platform offers an advanced chat tool, polls and a feature to raise hands.
The advanced chat tool enables attendees to drop questions and get answers from the panelists and host. The attendees can also view, comment, and upvote questions.
You have the option to set private and group panelist chat settings for attendees and panelists. With a private chat setting, attendees only get to see their own chats.
And definitely, the group chat allows you to see other members’ chats.
The polling system allows you to create 3-4 polling questions to understand what your registrants are after.
However, the polling system is only limited to the registration page and you have no control over where and when to display the polls.
The Attendee raise-hand feature enables the attendees to virtually raise hands during the webinar.
#3 Advanced Interactive Tool
Definitely, there are always breaks in real-life conferences. During this break, you get to interact with other attendees and attend to other matters that require your attention.
Ultimately, these experiences are not lost in the virtual world. The Zoom network session enables you to interact with other attendees within a period of time.
And during the scheduled break, attendees can do other abandoned tasks.
#4: Administrative Dashboard
The administrative dashboard is designed with tools to help you manage your panelists and team for better coordination.
Right from your dashboard, you can create a production schedule. The production schedule serves as the master plan of the event. It breaks the event into segments and shows the order the event will take place.
It includes a timeline of all of the sessions, the presenters, and when they will come up; when the break will take place, and many more.
Besides, you can create a panelist schedule for the Q/A section which allows you to craft your questions in advance and also include time allotted per answer.
#5 Integration & Marketing Automation
The Zoom webinar platform lacks marketing automation tools within the dashboard, which should be a downside.
However, Zoom compensates for this by supporting integration with popular marketing automation software in the market.
Hubspot, Marketo, Salesforce, Pardot, Google calendar, and WorkPlace are just some of the many software that you can integrate zoom with.
Pardot helps you collect prospect information from attendees of zoom webinars. And with Marketo, you can generate leads from attendees of your webinar.
Similarities of Both WebinarJam and Zoom Webinar
Below are alike features you’re likely to find on both online conferencing/webinar platform:
#1: YouTube Livestream
Both WebinarJam and Zoom allow you to live stream your webinar to YouTube right from your dashboard.
Ultimately, your YouTube subscribers can get the best of you without leaving the YouTube web app.
#2: WebCam and Screen-sharing
They both allow you to use your webcam and also share your screen with your attendees.
With zoom, any of your attendees can share their screen if they are unmuted by the host. While on WebinarJam, you can do the same with the attendee spotlight feature.
#3: Bring Attendee to Stage
Both WebinarJam and Zoom have the feature to bring an attendee to stage. Moreso, the guest gets to speak to the public (everyone) and also share their screen.
On zoom, you need to unmute an attendee in order to bring them to stage. And on WebinarJam, the attendee spotlight feature was designed for this purpose.
#4: Chats and Polls
On both the WebinarJam and Zoom interface, we have the chat section where attendees can drop a comment and ask questions.
Besides, they both come with a poll feature that helps you to survey your registrants by asking them certain questions.
#5 Analytics
To start with, they both have an analytics tool that analyzes the performance of your webinar for you. However, Zoom analytics provides a basic report of your webinar and doesn’t give an in-depth analysis report.
Definitely, it provides a report on the polls, the amount of time your attendees spent on the platform but not as detailed as giving you the report on how many people visited your landing page, and the number of sales generated.
#6 Integration
Zoom integrates so well with popular marketing automation software in the market.
Zoom integrates with Hubspot, Marketo, Salesforce, Google calendar, and many other marketing tools.
Likewise, WebinarJam integrates with Zapier which unlocks a pool of software to integrate on the platform.
#7: Control Center
WebinarJam has a control center from which you can manage your team. Likewise, Zoom provides an administrative dashboard that allows you to create a panelist and also manage your team.
#8: Paid Webinars
You can offer paid webinars on both WebinarJam and Zoom. Zoom allows you to integrate your webinar with PayPal. WebinarJam also allows you to plug in a payment gateway to your webinar dashboard.
WebinarJam vs Zoom – Differences
The most interesting section of this comparison – how both tools contrast against each other:
#1: Built-in Templates
WebinarJam offers a library of Pre-Built landing page templates that makes creating a registration page and landing page easier. This feature is missing on Zoom.
#2: Timed Offers and Polls
With WebinarJam, you can create timed offers with control over when to appear during the live webinar. The timed offer also includes a button for attendees to take action. This feature is missing on Zoom
Although the Zoom platform has a polling feature, it is limited to the registration page. While on WebinarJam, you can create a poll and also schedule it to display during the webinar. This also is missing on Zoom.
#3: Custom Livestream service
The Zoom platform allows you to stream live to NOT only YouTube but to Facebook and other custom platforms.
With the custom live stream service, you can live-stream your webinars to your WordPress site. This feature is missing on WebinarJam.
#4: Evergreen/Automated Webinars
WebinarJam allows you to turn your live webinars to evergreen webinars through the help of the sister platform, EverWebinar.
Moreover, you can also automate your webinars to provide a live-like experience for your attendees while you get a notification whenever you’re asked questions.
However, this feature is missing on the Zoom platform.
#5: App Download
To join or host a webinar you need to download the Zoom mobile app or install the desktop application on your computer.
However, you can use WebinarJam from your chrome browser. WebinarJam does not require any download to use the platform.
Zoom vs WebinarJam Pricing
This part is where we take a look at the complete pricing of both platforms and the features their individual plans give you.
Starting with Zoom:
Zoom Pricing
Zoom webinar pricing starts from $40 per month offering a Max of 100 attendees, and a Max of 1 host. Zoom webinar plans are not sold as a single entity; you need to buy a Zoom meeting plan before you can add the webinar plan (which comes in the form of an add-on).
The lowest-paid Zoom meeting plan costs $14.99 per month, which means the total cost of the Zoom webinar’s basic plan starts from $54.99 per month.
However, Zoom has a free plan which is meant for meetings. The free plan offers you unlimited 1-on-1 meetings and a group meeting of max 100 participants and a limit 40mins per session.
WebinarJam Pricing
WebinarJam offers three pricing plans; basic, professional, and Enterprise plans. All with flexibility. Unlike Zoom.
The basic plan costs $499 per year offering unlimited webinars, a max of 2 hosts, a max of 500 attendees, and 2 hours webinar duration.
With the professional plan ( $699 per year ), you get unlimited webinars, a max of 4 hosts, 2000 attendees, and 3 hours duration.
Finally, the Enterprise plan ( $999 per year) offers unlimited webinars, a maximum of 6 hosts, 5000 attendees, 4 hours max duration, and a control center. You can get start your trial at https://home.webinarjam.com/14-day-trial
Final Thoughts on WebinarJam vs Zoom
Zoom is a platform built exclusively for meetings and not webinars.
Most of the features offered by Zoom are best applicable for meetings. Moreso, the Zoom webinar platform is not a standalone platform but an add-on to be added to a paid zoom meeting plan.
However, WebinarJam is a webinar hosting platform designed from the onset for marketers to host and successfully manage webinars.
Unlike Zoom, WebinarJam has advanced marketing automation tools to help market and convert attendees into leads without having to integrate a custom tool.
In terms of pricing, WebinarJam offers a reasonably cheaper plan, unlike Zoom which costs more with limited features. (Yes! I’ve done the math countless times).
Without a doubt, WebinarJam is the only Webinar platform that simplifies the entire webinar setup, automation, and online selling process. Advanced, easy to use, and built with the latest technology.
Definitely, we cannot compare a full-fledged webinar hosting platform to an add-on. Therefore, WebinarJam wins the medal in the WebinarJam vs Zoom debate.