GoTo Webinar vs Zoom

From LogMeIn, GoToWebinar is a webinar solution that helps teams plan, promote, and execute webinars. Zoom is a unified communications platform that includes web and video conferencing, team messaging, voice calls, conference room software, and webinar capabilities. However, Zoom’s core platform is primarily used to host video meetings. Zoom Video Webinar is a more appropriate product for the webinar use case. 

Features

Both GoToWebinar and the Zoom platform offer users several webinar features including: 

• customizable emails and webinar registration pages
• screen sharing
• interactive elements like polls and Q&A
• participant and panelist controls
• webinar recording
• reporting and analytics
• integrations with third-party marketing and sales software 
• Ability to collect payments from attendees

 However, each platform has a few unique features to consider as well. 

GoToWebinar also offers users 24/7 phone support, unlimited cloud storage (even on their free plan), video sharing, ‘Webinar channel’/events landing page creation, and GoToStage which allows users to host recorded webinar content after the live event. In comparison, cloud storage is a paid add-on and is not built into the webinar solution. GoToWebinar users can host webinars with up to 3,000 participants. However, Zoom allows users to host webinars with up to 10,000 view-only attendees on their highest-priced plan. 

Zoom’s webinar product allows webinar hosts to display up to 100 live video feeds at once and stream webinars across social media channels with Facebook Live, YouTube Live, and other integration services. It also offers virtual backgrounds, a pre-webinar session room, and whiteboard capabilities for panelists. Webinar attendees can also take advantage of Zoom’s hand raising feature. 

However, as noted above, these are Zoom Video Webinar features and are not available through the Zoom Meetings product. 

Limitations 

Each platform has a few limitations to be aware of. For example, compared with Zoom’s webinar product, GoToWebinar hosts a relatively smaller number of attendees (3,000 vs. up to 10,000). For both products, webinar attendees first need to download the client application (either desktop or mobile) before being able to join the webinar. However, if the user is hosting a GoToWebinar in webcast mode, attendees can join as audio-only attendees via web browser. 

GoToWebinar also does not offer group or private chatting within the webinar whereas Zoom Video Webinar does. One key thing to note: the core Zoom platform is better suited for online meetings and conferences—not webinars. So software buyers interested in using Zoom’s webinar component should consider Zoom Video Webinar instead. 

Pricing

Both GoToWebinar and Zoom have subscription pricing plans billed either monthly or annually. GoToWebinar’s plans range from $49 per host per month for 100 participants to $399 per host per month for up to 3,000 participants. It also provides users with a free trial of the software. 

On the other hand, Zoom has separate pricing for its core meetings platform and webinar solution. Zoom Meeting’s free version allows up to 100 meeting participants but has a meeting time limit of 40 mins. 

Zoom Video Webinar does not offer a free version, and it’s mid-tier plans are more expensive than GoToWebinar’s plans for a smaller number of webinar attendees. For example, Zoom Video Webinar charges $340 per license per month for up to 1,000 participants while GoToMeeting lets users host webinars with up to 3,000 attendees for about $60 more. 

However, Zoom Video Webinar can accommodate a much larger number of webinar participants than GoToWebinar; its highest-priced plan costs $6,490 per license per month but allows for up to 10,000 attendees.