Virtual meetings, seminars, classes, conferences, and training are now part of the normal business world. GoToWebinar provides companies of any size in the US, Australia, Canada, Europe, and the UK a webinar platform to do all of the above.
This GoToWebinar review can help you understand the pros and cons, features, pricing, and plan options to ensure that you know what is best for you to use for your business.
In this review…
- GoToWebinar Summary
- GoToWebinar Pros & Cons
- Features
- Prices and Plans
- Comparing GoToWebinar With the Competition
- GoToWebinar Review Summary
GoToWebinar Summary
With the ability to host up to 3,000, GoToWebinar allows corporations to host marketing, training, and communication via the web. GoToWebinar’s features include reminder emails, interactive engagement tools, scheduling flexibility, instant-join links, and webinar insight performance, to name a few.
GoToWebinar Pros & Cons
Usually, products have a mixture of positive and negative reviews. They are all used to help determine if a product is best for a company. The user’s overview reviews gave GoToWebinar an overall 4.47 out of 5 stars. Its features such as ease of use, value for money, functionality, and customer support all received a rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons for GoToWebinar.
Pros
- Valuable and easy to use features
- Private or group messaging option
- Interactive features, i.e., the ability to virtually raise your hand
- Share screen and video
- User-friendly
- Great software for large organisations
- Can be used with mobile devices and tablets
- Audience monitoring
Cons
- Slow internet connections with lag time
- Chat window too small
- Not cost-friendly for non-profit organisations
- Cannot save the recordings
- Limited branding
GoToWebinar Features
All plans include:
- Analytics and reporting
- Handouts
- Polls and Q&A
- Automated emails
- Full-service registration
- Payment acceptance for the UK
- Custom branding
- Integrations
The advantage of having GoToWebinar is the option to record any meetings, seminars, and training your organisation may have. Other features include unlimited cloud storage, video sharing, editor, embedding, source tracking, transcripts, and a customised URL.
The Difference Between GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar
GoToMeeting is a sister product for GoToWebinar. Both are video-meeting platforms, but they’re used for different purposes.
Overall, GoToWebinar is designed for hosting one-way and interactive webinars, so the host does the talking. GoToMeeting offers multi-way video calls, so everyone can use a microphone to talk.
With that, GoToWebinar includes GoToMeeting software. You’re getting both for the same price and can attend or host webinars.
Setting Up GoToWebinar
Users tend to feel that GoToWebinar is easy to set up. To use it, you must first download the software. Those who don’t want to bother their customers and ask them to add it to their computers can use GoToWebcast, which lets them stream and not download anything.
To organise your live web conference, you must send invitations to the interested parties. This can be sent before your meeting starts. People can respond to the invitation by validating certain items.
People can also make audio calls with the software. However, when connections are better for everyone, a video conference is possible. The organiser of the group may share screens and let others see what they see.
It’s also possible to work remotely on someone else’s computer if they permit you to do so. You easily take control of the device and help them set things up or do whatever is necessary.
There may come a time where someone misses the conference. Don’t worry; you can record the session and send it to the absent person.
Email Tools from GoToWebinar
You don’t have to create your webinar and then email everyone separately. It’s possible to set up email management software to share the meeting details and send links. With that, you can send registration confirmation emails, which let the attendees know that you received their registration.
There are also reminder emails that you may send before the event to get people excited about attending. Scheduling is a bit limited because you can only send it one, two, or three hours before a webinar.
Customisation of the emails is also limited to the email body text.
After the webinar is finished, you can send follow-up emails. Audience segmentation is available here. That means you may send one follow-up email to those who were there and another to no-shows.
Where needed, you may send a certificate of attendance in the follow-up email. This proves to bosses and anyone else that the person attended and participated.
Mobile Device Compatible
People aren’t limited to where they can attend seminars. They may join from a mobile device, though they still have to download the app. It’s available on both iOS and Android systems.
Because there’s an extra step here, you can expect a decent user interface. Attendees may tap on the video to make it larger or zoom in by tapping on a shared screen.
Whenever polls are launched by the host, it’s presented as a full screen. That automatically grabs attention and is a great thing.
However, GoToWebinar doesn’t have a public chat feature, so attendees aren’t allowed to talk to each other. There’s only a Q&A session to ask the host for more information.
Though attendees have some leeway, a host can’t use a mobile app to begin the webinar. Most people complain that using a phone camera should be sufficient. Still, hosts can use their mobile devices to review “Hearts” and Q&A questions from others.
GoToWebinar Prices and Plans
GoToWebinar offers three plans. Whether you are an entrepreneur or an organisation with over a hundred employees, you can choose what is best for your company. GoToWebinar has four plans to choose from, hosting from 100 to 3,000 participants. They include:
Lite
The Lite Plan includes one license and channel page, and pricing starts at $49 billed monthly or annually, per organiser with 100 participant capacity.
Standard
the Standard Plan starts at $99 per organiser billed monthly or annually, hosting 250 participants and one GoToMeeting license and channel page included.
Pro
Pro Plan has one GoToMeeting license, and three-channel pages are the most popular plans with a seven-day free trial. Organisers can host 500 participants. Pricing starts at $199 per organiser and is billed monthly or annually.
Enterprise
For $399 per organiser billed monthly or annually, the Enterprise Plan provides one GoToMeeting license and five channel pages.
Comparing GoToWebinar with the Competition
Compare webinar software here.
When comparing GoToWebinar to EZ Texting, 96 percent of GoToWebinar users recommend this app versus 83 percent of those using EZ Texting. Although EZ Texting pricing starts at $19 per month, this plan is not compatible with Android devices. GoToWebinar has 144 features and 96 integrations, whereas EZ Texting has 50 features and 18 integrations. EZ Texting is ideal for usage within an organisation instead of hosting virtual meetings.
WebEx is another app used to collaborate virtual meetings. In comparison with GoToWebinar, WebEx plans consist of the basic plan free of charge, Meet Plan starting at $15 per month, Call Plan $17 per month, the Business Plan that offers meet and call plan for $25 per month. WebEx offers the Enterprise Plan where you can customise what you want, and the price depends on what is you include when customising.
Both apps provide the same platform support, customer users, and customer support. GoToWebinar has a 4.5-star rating, and 96 percent of its users recommend this app to others. WebEx is not too far behind with 4.4-stars, and 94 percent of its users also recommend this app. Both have intuitive usage and great chat functions. On the other hand, users have complained about the audio problems and delays.
Google Meet is another highly rated video conference app with 4.5 out of 5 stars. It can host up to 150 participants for calls and 100,000 viewers that stream live. Plans include Basic, free of charge hosting up to 100 participants per call, the Business Essential hosting up to 150 participants per call at $10 per active user per month, and the Enterprise Essentials that requires you to contact the company for pricing. Platform usage for both includes iPhone, Android, and Windows App, with a Web-based version. However, Google Meet does not provide phone support, and GoToMeeting does not offer chat feature support.
Zoom Meetings can be added to the list of well-known web-based apps used for virtual meetings. It can support Android, Windows, iPhone apps, and Web-Based platforms. With that, Zoom support includes a 24/7 live representative, chat option, FAQs/Forum, and help desk.
WebinarJam is another popular webinar software that allows users to customize the webinar funnel pages. It also offers a smooth interface and is easy for both parties to use. However, it’s designed for hosting marketing webinars; the features focus more on making a sale.
GoToWebinar Review Summary
GoToWebinar is an easy way to create online seminars and invite multiple people to present things. Though the presenter’s interface is different from other products, it does feature unique advantages. Plus, it’s less expensive than some of the other options and doesn’t take a lot of complicated steps to create an account. Overall it is recommended for those who have up to 3,000 attendees and want to share information and get paid.
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