ON24 vs. Zoom

ON24 works great for a 4 part webinar series we host every fall that is a annual legal update that allows us to reach a slew of clients that we would otherwise not. (if we conducted the same in person). We typically see 300+ attendees per webinar in this series. One component we focus on for some events is networking, the virtual break out rooms are a good add on when hosting but it does not replace the face to face component of networking. The ON24 ones are also more formal that a zoom breakout for instance, as ON24 is completely different experience than a Zoom webinar anyway

Incentivized

I think Zoom runs circles around Teams! I just wish starting meetings was easier - anyone with a link should be able to start the meeting the way you can in Teams. It would also be great to be able to see participants when you are sharing your screen.

Incentivized

• Engagement tools to help audience members focus on the important pieces of the material.
• Back end analytics allowed for us to understand customer sentiment.
• Produce live panel discussions in addition to showing slideware and polls.
• Use surveys to gather feedback and understand audience interest and intent with flexible question configurations.

• I love how easy it is to set the focus on the presenter. It is annoying when people don't spotlight themselves as a presenter, so you get to see the whole gallery of attendees in smaller, two-inch windows.
• I like the capability of having break-out rooms. Even though I don't use them very often, it is nice to have them available if the right situation presents itself for smaller group chats.
• The recording quality is better than I have experienced with other products (Microsoft Teams, WebEx, etc.), and the fact that it is already an MP4, so I don't have to convert it for publishing on our intranet is huge to me.

Incentivized

• We always have issues with the leaderboard in virtual conference manager not showing results in real-time (complaint from attendees)
• Doesn't always work with CRMs to transfer reg into virtual conference manager - has been an ongoing issue the IT team at ON24 can't figure out with our account

Incentivized

• Sharing zoom complete information is not visible on the screen, and also a bit is confusing minimizing and maximizing.
• Every time someone enters the chat, a chat box appears on my screen, and some features are missing from this version.
• Automatic conference connection based on a schedule isn't an option, and neither is enhanced security measures.

ON24 is everything we expected and everything we needed. It's simple to use, extremely customizable, and scales very easily. The integration to our CRM makes ON24 major lead generator for our sales team from our established webinars series. We can automate lead delivery to our sales team as well. If anything, we will look to expand our partnership in the future.

Incentivized

We're sticking with Zoom for the foreseeable future--given its compelling feature set, ease of use, and advanced technology, there's just no other competition to be excited about. Plus it's a Gartner-recognized industry leader, so it's a rather easy choice.

97% of our attendees say it is the best trainings they have every attended. But they other 3% have a horrible experience (while watching the event live) interesting fact. On24 uses two different encoders for live vs OnDemand. I have never had issues with the On-Demand experience. My only complaints come during live events

Incentivized

Zoom is made for the non tech office. It has features that can be made to do what you need to run things on a day to day basis. Immediately we we able to get meetings going with remote employees. The ability to be able to add smartphone connected people was a big plus. Zoom met our needs at the time.

ON24 is always available when I have a question about a new feature, if I'm having issues during a live webinar, or if I'm having issues with a webinar on the backend. Our client support specialist, Heather Haines, has always been incredibly consistent with getting me the answers I need when I need them.

Incentivized

There have been less than a handful of outages during our two years with Zoom, and whenever there was one, an email informing us of the outage went out immediately, and they had the issue resolved shortly thereafter.

Loading depends on how large the files in the webinar for us - sometimes it takes up to an hour to upload and that impacts the loading when the webcast is playing. Overall I'm happy with the performance, however if integrated with other systems it does tend to slow down the process

Incentivized

Zoom has among the best performance of any video conference platform, as I've mentioned several times. Besides that, their Chat platform works great, and their back end always runs smooth. It's unfortunate that reporting can now only be done by one month at a time, but nonetheless, it only takes a second to run any kind of Zoom report, whether it's an attendee report, Poll results, a user report, a list of meetings from the past month, etc.

ON24 support is really good with the 24/5 support chat line, where someone actually responds within 30 seconds. The customers success team is also really good and our rep is very helpful with all our questions. Whenever we have more technical questions, she will bring on a IT designer or a tech specialist on our calls for additional comments and help.

Incentivized

As I've written before, Zoom makes us feel like we matter and that we're a client rather than a customer. They want us to succeed and they put in the time to make sure that we do. I feel like they're more of a business partner rather than simply a vendor or supplier. They spent a lot of time onboarding with us, giving us demos, helping us get set up, and then giving us follow-up to be sure it's going well.

Incentivized

Most points of relevance were covered as far as I can remember.

Incentivized

On24 has amazing ON-Demand trainings that you can use at anytime and they walk you through step by step on different topics/ they are always updating and innovating and putting out new trainings. I would highly reccomend the trainings and reading the documents they have created. They also do live webinars on a rolling basis that are filled with so much knowledge and Information

Incentivized

We had a few training's, which were broken up, and focused on specific areas of how to use the platform. Mostly though, a lot of it is just dedicating your time to learning and exploring what the possibilities are for enhancing your webinars

If you receive any pushback from higher ups, point to any of the various positive reviews like this one. Or show Zoom's excellent Gartner report, or articles describing Zoom's partnership with Sequoia capital. It's not difficult to show how Zoom is a trustworthy industry leader with best-in-class technology.

We previously hosted our webinars on Zoom, which was a much less interactive format and not really scaled for such large-scale events that we have been hosting. The On24 consoles are really great and we are able to have links to share with our audience. The on-demand format is also a lot better on On24 than it was on Zoom.

Incentivized

Zoom cannot be beaten for ubiquity - 100% of my clients and prospective clients are already familiar with Zoom. This is the #1 reason why I use Zoom. Additionally, Zoom integrates with AcuityScheduling, saving me a lot of time in creating meetings and adding them to the calendar. Zoom is disappointing in terms of video quality, interactivity features, and privacy. In cases where I need to use the recording of webinars for digital products, I will always use Crowdcast, and in cases where privacy is essential, I will use JitsiMeet.

Incentivized

The billing and price model is really fair for so many functions that they offer, our remote work requires each of the features that Zoom offers, so accepting payment for a tool like this is the least we can do. I like that billing arrives on time and that they offer opportunities and payment times.

We haven't scaled a lot through ON24 a great deal beyond the initial scale-up of going from 4 events a year to 1+ a month but we can see that you can scale. The one drawback we have found with scalability is that events over a certain amount of time cost a lot more.

Incentivized

Because the Basic licenses are completely free, and because it's very easy to configure and install Zoom, and because anyone can join Zoom from a link without needing an account, scaling is a Breeze. There are absolutely no roadblocks. My company keeps adding more Zoom Pro license every week since it's so in demand. We were able to convert users from several different platforms onto Zoom with no trouble at all.

Zoom is perfect for our business. We use it to video chat with prospective clients. The name recognition alone gives us credibility and it is very easy to screen share and send content out.

• ON24 has allowed us to deliver meaningful pitches, promotions, and seminars to clients/audience members all year round, remotely.
• The reporting available to us through the ON24 platform allows us to assess and review what is working and what needs adjusting with our events. This is valuable to us.
• Using the tools available, we've doubled our audience engagement in the last 12 months, and this has allowed us to generate leads at a later stage of the "funnel."

Incentivized

• It enables me to send and receive messages from my team members during video calls, handling online presentations.
• With the ability to quickly stop, mute, and even receive notifications when someone enters or exits the meeting room, I'm never obligated to show up while making a call.
• It is possible to record online meetings for future reference and more effective customer service. As we dealt with a lockdown, Zoom helped our business run smoothly.