Arena Virtual and Hybrid Events vs. Webex Webinars

From my experience, Arena works well for client events like entertainment, panel discussions, motivational talks, etc. with a drink and chat afterward. However, I can also imagine it working well for larger events like conferences as it was really easy to add additional rooms and stages. Attendees can easily navigate to the sessions they want to attend from the event's central lobby.

With the help of Webex Webinars, creating interactive sessions has become very simple. One great thing about Webex Webinars is the option to engage the audience. We can create polls, create some NPS-related surveys, introduce live polling, create emoji reactions, etc. within the webinar platform, which helps us understand the pulse of the user.

Incentivized

• Only pay for the attendees that show up.
• Moderated and unmoderated video breakouts.
• Easy to use.

• Cisco Webex Events is very straightforward and easy to use. Setting up an event within the platform is quite simple - anyone can do it.
• Webex Events is a great add-on feature to the Webex conferencing platform to allow a one-way broadcast of information, rather than worrying about attendees being able to interrupt the presentation.
• Recording a session is fairly simple and accessing the recordings post-event is quite reliable. I believe you can also upload .mp4 files into the Webex Events platform to serve as a host.

• They haven't yet released all their features, like audience polls.

• There always seems to be room for video quality improvement (not a necessity, but would be nice)
• Mobile screensharing from iOS/Android (and other mobile) devices would be a great feature
• The mobile app should be able to track meetings a user has been invited to, but does not do so (yet)

Incentivized

Webex Webinars continues to provide exceptional value as a community engagement and professional education platform. As long as there are a multitude of event offerings and the product continues to be supported with periodic software and security updates, I can anticipate using Webex Webinars for the foreseeable future. Overall a great product!

Incentivized

My experience with this software is fantastic; it's so satisfying that it only took me a week to go through an internal training program to use this software, actually, I don't think this training program was necessary. Usability is one of the most fantastic features to guarantee the increase of members in remote events.

Incentivized

WebEx is available 24/7, as long as the user has a reliable internet connection and the WebEx servers are up (they are typically up when we need it).

Incentivized

Fast, reliable, and consistent performance

Incentivized

I love the control that this product gives to those running the meetings. It allows you to assign presenter roles to people and everyone else that is an attendee can be totally controlled, like whether they can unmute, use video or just sit there and watch. It really gives control of the meeting to those who are running it. And we love that ability for those meetings that we are trying to make sure people are listening in on instead of trying to participate.

Incentivized

The implementation process was fairly simple and straightforward

Incentivized

We actually prefer MS teams as its now easier to chat; manage virtual backgrounds, better audio, and overall more features and tools. Given we actually use MS teams for daily meetings now, it led to us also using MS Events. As a result, we began to consolidate to only using MS teams for both daily meetings and MS events for larger meetings - in lieu of Webex Events

Incentivized

The scalability is really easy

Incentivized

• Reduced costs
• Less risk
• Better client engagement

• Allowed us to keep our product development moving forward during the pandemic.
• Reduced our travel costs by hosting virtual events.
• Allows us to host more events because of reduced cost over in-person events.
• Helps us with faster time to market on features as we can quickly set up and host a focus group.

Incentivized