7 Top-Rated Affordable Webinar Software
As an event manager, you need to find ways to form deeper connections with your customers and engage better with potential leads to bring in more business. One way to achieve this is by hosting webinars.
Webinars are a great way to present your industry expertise, connect with your audience, and show them how you can solve their business problems. Modern webinar software can handle online events, manage attendees, and encourage engagement and interaction among your community through gamification, live Q&As, and chat.
If you think investing in such technology is expensive, think again. Not every event management solution puts a dent in your budget. To simplify your search, we have highlighted the seven top-rated affordable webinar software for event managers based on their pricing, as found on vendor websites and verified software reviews. Based on our research, we've considered products priced less than $46.61 per month as affordable software and have arranged them in ascending order. Read more.
Products featured in this article are either dedicated webinar tools that let you host online events, web-conferencing tools, or live streaming platforms. All the products offer core webinar software features, such as event management, live chat, and screen sharing.
We selected products for this article based on their average ratings between January 2022 - January 2024, which may differ from their current overall average ratings.
1. Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is a web-conferencing and webinar-hosting platform that lets you conduct online meetings and webinars with high-quality audio and video support. You can send messages, create subgroups, and coordinate events within a single built-in dashboard.
The software features a dynamic view system that automatically adjusts the video layout of your webinar as more and more people join. You can create customizable registration pages from within the software and keep attendees informed by sending confirmation emails. The standard plan offers unlimited group meetings for up to 30 hours and lets you invite up to 300 participants per meeting.
Product features of interest:*
Closed caption support: Turn on live captions to let the software detect audio from a webinar and provide closed captions during live or pre-recorded webinars. You can also turn on transcription to save the captions once the webinar ends.
Branded watermarks: Personalize your webinars by applying watermarks showcasing your brand name or logo during a virtual event. You can also enable overlays that will showcase participants' email addresses on their device screens, deterring them from taking unauthorized screenshots of a confidential meeting.
Attendee view management: Manage what a webinar attendee sees by deciding whose avatars or video feeds to spotlight during a webinar. Once set, other participants will be hidden from view during the spotlight.
Starting price: $4 per user per month
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: Chat, phone support, FAQ, and knowledge base
Who should consider Microsoft Teams?
Businesses looking for interactive elements, such as live reactions and chat bubbles, and virtual-reality meetings can choose Microsoft Teams since the software lets you create virtual 3D previews and digital avatars of participants to increase interaction and collaboration between them. The software also offers phone and web support, allowing participants to join from a mobile device or web browser.
2. Zoho Meeting
Zoho Meeting is an online video conferencing solution that lets you host webinars and virtual meetings for your audience. The software provides virtual meeting rooms where you can host team meetings to discuss business problems or invite potential leads for product demos.
You can also record your virtual meetings and webinars to share them with team members who may have missed an important meeting. The standard plan offers cloud recording storage for up to 25 webinar sessions and 125 attendees. It also lets you host a webinar for up to 24 hours.
Product features of interest:*
AI-powered keynotes: Auto-generate meeting keynotes with the help of generative AI that analyzes session transcripts and generates easy-to-read keynotes from the meeting. Once created, you can share the key points of the sessions with relevant stakeholders.
Customization and branding: Create personalized webinar rooms with the help of uploadable virtual backgrounds and showcase your brand during webinars. You can also embed webinar links on specific web pages on your website. The tool lets you highlight and showcase your brand name and logo on loading screens when someone joins your webinar.
Online whiteboard: Interact with your webinar participants and team using an online whiteboard. You can use the whiteboard to create step-by-step flowcharts to showcase business solutions. The whiteboard has a shape-recognition feature that identifies rough sketches and converts them into precise geometric shapes.
Starting price: $8 per host per month
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: Knowledge base, FAQ, chat, and phone support
Who should consider Zoho Meeting?
Sales and marketing teams that already use Zoho Suite, which includes a variety of applications such as Zoho CRM, Zoho Docs, and Zoho Mail, can integrate Zoho Meeting to collaborate with stakeholders and schedule webinars for potential leads that may be ready to convert. The software also offers webcasting to broadcast pre-recorded videos to a large audience.
Pro tip
Clearly outline the goals and objectives of your webinars. Understand whether you need the platform for lead generation, customer education, team training, or video conferencing. This will help you narrow down your options and choose the right software for your business.
3. LiveWebinar
LiveWebinar is a webinar tool that lets you host meetings, virtual team collaboration sessions, and online events. The software offers personal cloud storage to share documents and files related to your events. It lets you broadcast your meetings and webinars to third-party social media and external sources, such as Facebook, YouTube, and Vimeo.
You can increase audience engagement during webinars by adding engagement features, such as polls and surveys to collect feedback and maximize participation. LiveWebinar provides real-time data on attendance, audience participation levels, and engagement. It can also track audience demographics, such as location and device type. LiveWebinar’s most affordable plan lets you host up to 500 attendees and offers up to eight hours of webinar recording.
Product features of interest:*
Ad banners: Create customizable ad banners that you can upload and display during your webinars and lead viewers to your business's product and service pages.
Personalized certification: Offer personalized completion certificates that are entirely customizable to webinar attendees based on their engagement and level of completion to recognize their participation.
Paid webinars: Integrate a third-party payment platform such as Stripe or PayPal to your webinars and create paid invites for attendees to generate revenue through your online events.
Starting price: $14.42 per month
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: Knowledge base, FAQ, chat, and phone support
Who should consider LiveWebinar?
Businesses looking to include ad banners in their webinars and generate revenue via webinars can opt for LiveWebinar. The software's payment integrations make collecting payments from webinar attendees easy. You can create custom registration pages and add call-to-action buttons to nudge interested leads toward product pages.
Pro tip
Consider gamification options that increase engagement levels for your audience and make the webinar more interactive. Consider software that provides Q&A sessions, live polling, and completion certifications to attendees.
4. Adobe Connect
Adobe Connect is a virtual training, webinar, and learning and development platform. The software helps deliver engaging training, learning sessions, and high-quality team meetings. During a webinar, you can have various topic-specific chat discussions on the virtual stage, enabling participants to engage in relevant interactions.
The software provides colored text and emoticons for lively interactions. Adobe Connect allows up to five hosts and 100 attendees with its standard plan.
Product features of interest:*
Asynchronous browsing: Allow participants to freeze specific frames during a live presentation and browse content at their own pace while presenters can keep the webinar moving forward.
Moderated live chat: Moderate live chat during webinars and showcase participant identities and highlight speakers during a session. You can also efficiently manage hundreds of questions in large webinars by assigning them to the right expert.
Prepare mode: Enable webinar producers to continue stage setting by adding more layouts and rich media during live delivery but in stealth mode, without impacting the ongoing presentation for presenters or participants.
Starting price: $15.83 per month
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: Chat, email, phone support, FAQ, and knowledge base
Who should consider Adobe Connect?
Businesses looking for high customization levels in creating virtual room layouts can opt for Adobe Connect. The software also caters to layout changes required during live webinars without disrupting the webinar quality and participant engagement. With self-paced viewing and browsing, the software caters to attendees with different levels of participation.
5. Restream
Restream is a live-streaming browser-based platform that lets you host webinars for your audience and broadcast them on multiple third-party platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Kick, Twitch, and X. Since the software is browser-based, you can either stream directly from a browser or integrate it with a third-party streaming tool you’re more familiar with.
The software lets you invite guests to your live streams and conduct interviews and Q&A sessions. With a built-in chat feature, your viewers can interact with you and your guests, and you can highlight messages from specific channels to drive more engagement. The standard plan offers 720p streaming, up to 30-minute video uploads, and 500 MB of video storage for up to five videos.
Product features of interest:*
Multistreaming: Stream your online event on multiple platforms through integrated broadcasting. You can also manage streaming qualities and track details such as video bitrates and frame drops that can cause live streams to stutter.
Brand overlays: Use customizable templates to create brand-specific streaming overlays you can use over your live streams. This can help highlight your brand and offer a consistent visual identity for your business.
Centralized chat: Get a centralized dashboard to manage incoming messages from your viewers across all social media platforms. You can reply to your audience and highlight specific messages to increase engagement during live sessions.
Starting price: $16 per month
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: Chat, email, FAQ, and knowledge base
Who should consider Restream?
Since Restream offers multistreaming and cross-platform broadcasting, businesses with target audiences on multiple platforms wishing to capture their attention simultaneously can use the software. If your business hosts interviews and podcasts, you can invite up to 10 on-screen guests during your live stream and host such sessions seamlessly.
Pro tip
Assess which platforms your target audience spends the most time online and look for software that can help you broadcast your webinars and online events by integrating with those social media platforms. Such integrations can help widen your reach and improve engagement levels with your audience.
6. GoBrunch
GoBrunch is a virtual meeting and community platform suite for content creators and businesses. The software lets you create virtual rooms, which are digital versions of real conference rooms, by picking a theme and a layout from the many built-in templates. You can invite team members, partners, and collaborators and connect with them on a centralized dashboard.
The software lets you add branding elements, such as logos and multimedia content, to add a personal touch to the virtual room. You can conduct virtual meetings and webinars and share your screen to showcase presentations and projects to your audience. You can create up to five virtual rooms with the standard plan and each room can host up to 200 live attendees.
Product features of interest:*
Virtual workspace: Create a customizable virtual room with 24/7 accessibility for attendees and hosts, who may be situated across different geographies and time zones, to collaborate and engage with your community in a more interactive way.
Productivity tools: Use productivity tools such as Pomodoro clocks within virtual rooms and stay focused, organized, and efficient while working on projects or showcasing your findings to your audience.
Branding and customization: Customize the layout, background, and overall design of the virtual rooms to line up with your brand identity. This level of customization allows you to create a unique environment that reflects your organization's style and values.
Starting price: $23.99 per month
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: Chat, email, FAQ, and knowledge base
Who should consider GoBrunch?
Businesses looking to launch online communities with members from different time zones can take advantage of GoBrunch's virtual room creation capability. The virtual rooms you create are available 24/7 for your team and community members, even when you are not there or when community members from a different time zone wish to collaborate and engage. You can add pre-recorded content for your audience, such as courses and on-demand videos that your community can access anytime.
7. ClickMeeting
ClickMeeting is an online automated webinar software solution that helps you host virtual events such as product demos, interactive lessons, training sessions, and team meetings. You can use webinars to enrich your product marketing strategy by embedding pre-recorded webinars in email marketing and social media campaigns at every funnel stage (awareness, consideration, and decision stages.) Such informational webinars with the right content can guide and nudge potential leads and turn them into customers.
You can also schedule automated webinars during promotional events for a new product or service that you’re offering to automate your lead generation process and focus on deal closing. The software lets you add your branding, upload files, or send automated invitations to another event for a better lead-nurturing experience. The standard plan provides you with up to six hours or 1 GB of recording storage.
Product features of interest:*
Automated webinars: Create automated webinars with the help of pre-recorded events. You can set a specific date and hour and run your events on autopilot.
Virtual conferencing: Conduct your large-scale virtual & hybrid events online. You can sell tickets for such events via third-party payment integrations or create a proprietary payment gateway with ClickMeeting's application programming interface (API).
Waiting rooms: Keep your audience engaged before the webinar starts by enabling a waiting room with a set agenda. Let attendees know what the webinar will cover. Inform them who the presenter is and share any important files with them.
Starting price: $26 per month
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: Chat, email, FAQ, and knowledge base
Who should consider ClickMeeting?
Suppose your business has recurring webinars and online sessions with your target audience. In that case, you can benefit from ClickMeeting's ability to automate your webinar hosting process and schedule sessions at a specific time. The software also offers an ‘edu mode’ where presenters can see all the attendees and microphones are muted by default to eliminate distractions during a learning session.
How much does webinar software cost?
Webinar tools can cost as low as $4 per user, per month, or go all the way up to $399+ per month, depending on various factors—number of webinars and online events, number of users, and attendee capacity. Most webinar solutions typically include the following pricing plans:
Free trials: No-cost trial plans ranging from 15 to 30 days, giving users access to either all or limited features of the software to test out functionality. These are ideal for businesses that wish to try out a solution before purchasing it.
Free versions: Free software plans offer basic features and/or limited premium feature access. These are ideal for small businesses or individuals on a budget.
Entry-level plans: Start at $4 per month and offer limited webinar features such as event registration and live webinar hosting. These are a good option for small businesses or teams with basic webinar management needs.
Mid-tier plans: Range from $6 to $169 per month and offer advanced features such as customization and prerecorded video broadcasting. These are ideal for businesses that have outgrown basic webinar solutions but don’t require the full range of functionality and scalability offered by enterprise-level webinar tools.
High-end plans: May cost upward of $399 per month. In addition to basic and midrange features, these offer custom webinar scheduling, payment gateway integration, live streaming, and attendee engagement tracking. These are ideal for businesses that host large-scale virtual and hybrid webinar events.
Hidden costs associated with webinar software
Besides the software license itself, there may be additional costs associated with the webinar software, including:
Overage charges: Some webinar platforms have limitations on the number of participants, webinar recording storage, or bandwidth usage. If you exceed these limits, you may incur additional charges.
Transcription costs: If you require transcriptions of your webinars, some platforms may charge extra for transcription services. This is particularly relevant if you need accurate and professional transcriptions.
Integration fees: If you wish to integrate your webinar software with other tools, such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems or email marketing automation platforms, there could be additional costs associated with such integrations.
Frequently asked questions when selecting affordable webinar software
Here are some questions that you should ask software vendors to learn more and find the best webinar software system for your business:
Does your software help with lead generation?
An ideal webinar solution doesn't just track attendee registrations but also helps identify the engagement levels of different participants. It would help if you also asked whether the platform allows you to create customized registration forms to collect relevant information from attendees so you can retarget them after the webinar via email and other marketing channels.
Are there any storage and recording access limitations with your software?
Some solutions might have limitations in cloud storage space and restrict access to saved recordings after a certain number of days or weeks. You can always review and delete old webinar recordings that are no longer needed. Such a process would help free up storage space and ensure you only keep relevant content.
Are there any branding and customization limitations?
Some solutions may restrict branding and customization options, limiting your ability to create a fully branded and personalized webinar experience. Make sure to check the level of customization available with a product's standard plan.
Methodology
To be considered for this list, products had to:
Feature in Software Advice’s 2023 FrontRunners report for webinar software
Include event management, live chat, and screen sharing as core features.
Meet our market definition for webinar software: “Webinar software allows companies to conduct and distribute interactive live and recorded promotional or educational video presentations to existing or potential customers.”
We assessed all products that met the first three criteria for their monthly pricing and considered the products with publicly available pricing information. Based on the assessment, the average price was calculated to be $46.61. Products with a monthly subscription price lower than $46.61 were then shortlisted to be included in this list and arranged in ascending order.
*Our research team identified these features from vendor websites (as of Jan. 24, 2024) based on their analysis of what users find valuable in or expect from video editing software. This list is not exhaustive. For additional features, refer to the vendor's website.
Products evaluated for the pricing calculation were taken from Software Advice’s webinar directory. The pricing ranges exclude freemium versions of the products. The features highlighted were identified based on their relevance and the percentage of products in the Software Advice directory that offer them.
Editorial Independence: We select and rank products based on an objective methodology developed by our research team. While some vendors may pay us when they receive web traffic or leads, this has no influence on our methodology.