BlueJeans Events (discontinued) vs. GoTo Webinar vs. WebinarJam

BlueJeans Events is really well-suited for large attendance virtual events and meetings. It was perfect for many of the classes I've taken, as well as hosted, especially during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, where oftentimes in-person classes and interactions have been limited. I love how BlueJeans Events fosters meetings and interactions for large numbers of individuals, despite the fact that in-person meetings of this size have not entirely been feasible during the past year and a half.

Incentivized

It is great for big events like training or product demos. It's good for marketing webinars with features like polls and Q&A. It's not ideal for small, casual meetings. It can be too expensive for some businesses. For smaller events, other tools might be better.

We have used WebinarJam for many reasons. Our main reason is to host large free webinars but we have also used it for smaller live training courses that people paid for, we have held private training classes for companies, and so on. I guess you could get creative and use it for a conference-style virtual event but wouldn't really recommend it for that. You could use it for internal training within an organization and things but I still feel it best suited for webinars and marketing purposes.

Incentivized

• Automatically generated reminder emails to registered attendees before the event.
• Easy to host a panel and have them meet before the event goes live.
• Moderator chat allows for those running the program to chat without all of the attendees seeing. This allows for you to address technical issues, program flow, etc.

Incentivized

• We launched a product for a mass and more than 500 people attended the webinar and it was seamless.
• Recording capability for the later usage
• Setup is very simple for both admins and end users
• Polls are helpful in assessing the engagement of the customers

Incentivized

• ADMIN/USER STRENGTHS: Easy to use the dashboard to start a webinar on demand, or schedule one in the future. Each step has a video tutorial made to set you up for success, understanding each set-up step along the way. If I want to practice a session live, I can set up a webinar instantly (called Right Now-takes 6 clicks and 30 seconds to set this up), and stream it through my YouTube Channel, or schedule a full campaign for a later date (takes about 10 minutes) and drive people to attend. I can set up one date, or multiple dates. It's very easy to follow the nine initial steps to (configuration, schedule, registration, notifications, integration, thank you, live, replay and finish) setting up your webinar. Once you have created a campaign, you can always clone them for future use.
• ADMIN/USER STRENGTH: You can inject a pre-recorded video seamlessly. Let's say you did an incredible sales pitch on one of your webinars, you can inject this into future webinars to ensure a perfect presentation.
• ADMIN/USER STRENGTH: Poll your customers BEFORE the webinar, on the registration page to find out what they are looking for, why they have signed up, to be sure the presenter covers each participant's needs.
• ADMIN/USER STRENGTH: Autoresponder reminders can come from Webinar Jam (this is what I have always done to keep it simple) or integrate it with the top systems (AWeber, Active Campaign, Infusionsoft, IContact, MailChimp, ConvertKit, Drip, Kartra, Zapier).
• ADMIN/USER STRENGTH: I can set up a replay for those who missed the event, or even a replica replay where I can go into the video, fix up my sales presentation, and add a new video for people to see. I can also see who watches the replay.
• ADMIN/USER STRENGTH: In the analytics page I can see the numbers of people who visited the webinar registration page (to get an idea of how popular my topic was/change headings or topics if it's low, keep presenting if there's a high number), registrants, people in the room when I go live, and numbers for those who watched the replays. I can connect my autoresponder to communicate with people who missed the webinar/replay vs those who attended and even can see when people dropped off so I know if they were engaged for the entire webinar.

Incentivized

• Reliability is the biggest challenge I see with BlueJeans. There are times when BlueJeans seems to handle the demands of a big company seamlessly, but then there are other times when BlueJeans runs into issues that I've seen affect entire offices for extended periods of time which creates a challenge for the teams who depend on BlueJeans to effectively run their remote meetings. While in the grand scheme of things, these outages have been few and far between, when they happen people aren't able to start their BlueJeans meetings and have to scramble for an alternate way to meet (while attendees are simultaneously having issues trying to dial into the BlueJeans meeting).
• Aside from the occasional outage, the quality of the video and audio is pretty solid. With variables that are likely outside of the BlueJeans product (office connectivity, bandwidth issues, internal routing) there are times where BlueJeans would either lag or echo which would either impact the output for the host of the meeting (who likely has a room full of participants) or multiple attendees. It would be great to see BlueJeans enhance their packet handling in these cases to prioritize audio over video (and perhaps auto-adjust video quality when there are bandwidth issues).

• Can't schedule recurring webinars twice per week or every other week--must manually add or delete instances.
• Can't schedule recurring webinars more than 'x' number of instances (less than a year's worth).
• If you want a recurring webinar to continue past the last instance (in order to keep the same link), your only option is to manually add future instances before the last one occurs. If the last instance occurs, the webinar (and corresponding link) are archived with no recourse and you must recreate it from scratch and update every bit of external collateral with a new link. So I have to have reminders on my calendar every 6 months to go in and add additional dates for all my recurring webinars in order to keep my links active.
• Canceling/changing seats is a huge pain.
• The default 'join' screen is app-based rather than web based, so registrants often have to download GTW. I have a lot of clients whose computers are locked down from unapproved apps and have missed the webinar because the ability to join on the web is very unintuitive.

Incentivized

• One of the biggest problems we have is that WebinarJam was sold to us as a lifetime license, and it was supposed to include broadcasting on Facebook. For reasons that were never clear, they stopped providing that functionality, which greatly reduced our use for the product.
• WebinarJam started out life as an innovative product, full of promise. Things changed within the organization, key staff and players changed, and it seems that key players just moved on to other projects. Users were required to pay for upgrades in order to get the best use out of the product.
• A big problem that was never really solved was the Lag/Delay between realtime and what the users were seeing and hearing.
• We really wanted to be able to administer Surveys to people during webinars and be able to store their responses and export them to a database. We were told there was no way to do that.

Incentivized

We use it frequently and it has its advantages so I don't see better options for some kind of meetings. The quality of video and audio are great and that's what is very important to us. We like thing being professional. BlueJeans is simple and rich in possibilities. What's more, BlueJeans support is great and professional, they don't forget about their customers.

Incentivized

Our largest issue with GoTo have been the limitations on recording and using recordings to host a webinar, and the biggest of those is the ability to record. We have had most of our webinars recorded successfully, but when it failed to save, it failed in a big way. Their customer service team was there to help, but they were unable to truly fix the problem. There are, of course, other providers, but as we are still seeing where hosted webinars fit in our marketing strategy, cost is an important factor. Since our company already uses GoToMeeting, it makes more sense for us to stay with the entire suite of products, especially while we are testing the strategy as a whole.

This rating comes from end user experience. When they step into a meeting, they get asked to put in SSO credentials if the meeting is restricted. In many cases, the meeting is open to anyone and staff needs to enter a name to continue. Some staff will forget to add a name and come in as a Guest. Call in options will only provide the phone number for the person calling in on the participant roster. This overall can be a little confusing for some, but to others this is a great service.

Incentivized

This is very easy to set up, configure, onboard, and use. The features can be explored without much ado. In-webinar and post-webinar features are also used seamlessly. Any new person can self-train in minutes and be hands-on. I love the overall usability of this tool.

Incentivized

The platform is really hard to use and they have a habit of pushing out updates without telling their users first. The last update completely reverted all of our customizations back to the default EverWebinar layout. I only found out about this after a lead kindly send an email to the firm letting us know that [our] registration confirmation page was showing lorem ipsum script. Customization is lacking as well

BJ Events is Available always when we need it. There was no situation that we encountered an error or an outage. How are you doing this? :)

Incentivized

I rated GoTo Webinar a 9 out of 10 for availability because it generally performs reliably, with minimal application errors or unplanned outages. The platform’s high uptime ensures that it’s usually accessible when needed, supporting a seamless experience for scheduling and conducting webinars. While occasional minor issues may arise, they are infrequent and typically well-managed, contributing to a strong overall rating for availability.

Incentivized

I think that BlueJeans Events is 7/10 because it's pretty efficient. The audio and video quality is pretty great. I've only had a few connectivity issues but otherwise, it's performed fine. The features are also impressive; I am a huge fan of being able to record my calls so that I can refer back to them whenever necessary.

Incentivized

I rated GoTo Webinar an 8 out of 10 for performance due to its generally robust capabilities. Pages load quickly, and reports are generated efficiently, even for complex data sets. The platform’s integration with other systems typically doesn’t introduce significant latency or performance issues. However, during peak usage times or when handling very large data volumes, there can be occasional slowdowns. Despite these instances, GoTo Webinar consistently provides strong performance and reliability in its core functions.

Incentivized

I really like site bluejeans.com and how simple it is.You can find there instructions, tips and how to create event or secure it! Of course FAQ is always useful and that's what you can find there too! Of course there is contact to support team which I remember was great and professional. Support Team really cares about their customers and don't forget about them. It feels like you can always count on them and reach out with any kind of question(s) which I think is very important.

Incentivized

I was always able to get someone on the phone when I needed to. They were very thorough and ensuring my questions were answered. And if I was asking for a solution or request that they didn't offer, they told me so I could at least stop trying to search for it.

Incentivized

The support overall is good. In the early days, it wasn't the best but they have definitely stepped it up lately. If you have questions about the platform, issues, setup, etc, and don't mind waiting 24 hours to get a response then it's good. They may have faster response times now but when they updated to 4.0 it took a while as they were getting hammered with emails cause there were issues. It seems like they have worked out some of the kinks so I imagine their support can respond much faster now. There is no phone number to call so there is no way to get immediate help or answers which can be frustrating when you have issues right before or during your webinar

Incentivized

Important to gather all infroamtion from client and ensure all basis are acknowledged before actually doing the installation of equipment

Incentivized

I didn't participate in the implementation nor did my company. As far as I know we have an IT office running alla these projects and we just use the final products for our educational purposes. I also didn't notice implementation at any level while using the desktop interface, but would immediately recognize it, if so.

Incentivized

BlueJeans Events is an all-in-one platform that works well when used as a moderator and as part of the audience. The feature that was useful was the practice session it allowed us to do for our tech check. Made the day of our event less stressful.

Incentivized

GoToWebinar has a user-friendly interface and intuitive controls. When comparing it with other platforms, assess how easily you can navigate through features, set up events, and engage with participants. Connection stability, audio and video quality seem pretty much ok. Interactive polls, Q&A sessions, recording options are also working fine and provide to the user experience

Incentivized

I prefer WebinarJam due to its super-easy setup and great integration options. It works well with other tools like ClickFunnels, Hubspot and Mailchimp. From the tools we tried, this one seems to work the best for our company and clients!

Incentivized

We've been using BJ Events with big event and it worked as good as smaller one. All meetings were international and it didn't seem like it at all, I mean the quality was great. Maybe time delay was noticeable sometimes (sound to video) but it might also be caused by poor quality of internet connection.

Incentivized

I rated GoTo Webinar an 8 out of 10 for scalability because it effectively supports deployment across multiple departments and sites with its flexible features. It allows for easy management of large-scale webinars and integration with various systems, accommodating a growing number of users and sessions. However, some users might find limitations in advanced customization or specific integration needs as their requirements become more complex. Overall, its robust capabilities and adaptability make it a strong choice for scalable webinar solutions.

Incentivized

• There has certainly been significant cost savings on travel, particularly for internal communications. We have also found that BlueJeans has been better than other client systems like Webex. For example, we regularly switch to using BlueJeans over customer systems (Webex, Skype for Business).
• Certainly meetings are shorter and more productive, specifically our daily standup meetings with remote users.

Incentivized

• GoTo Webinar has been an excellent way to stay relevant and to get current topics/information to our target audience.
• We usually get 100-200 attendees per session in a niche market, many are international attendees
• The ability to get specific data from the audience via custom registration questions allows us to really focus on what they want to see.

• WebinarJam has allowed us to present to multiple audiences at our prospective customers, rather than just a few individuals which made it difficult to get to the next sales step. By engaging a larger audience, we were able to drive more attention to our product and made follow up with the customer much easier.

Incentivized