A Simple To Use, Extremly Powerful Webinar Solution
Updated July 28, 2020

A Simple To Use, Extremly Powerful Webinar Solution

Miles Szkoda | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with ON24

2020 Edit: We're still using On24 and are very happy with it. They've quickly rolled out HTML5, a ton of new features, and are still 100% reliable through hundreds of webinars. We've gotten several clients that have commented on how easy the On24 platform is to use and the ease of use and reliability have reflected positively on our business. I never have to worry about anything when I'm using On24 and any time I have an issue or submit a problem I get a response extremely fast and my issues are always solved very quickly.

2018 Edit:
On24 has continued to impress us and is still one of the best webinar platforms we use. They are a serious thought leader in the webinar industry and continually come out with new and innovative product improvements. They listen to the feedback from their user base and have made changes I've suggested on multiple occasions. Their entire company culture seems to be about creating the best webinar experience and you can tell this from what they produce and whenever you talk to someone there. This is seriously a great platform and worth the time to investigate if you are looking for a webinar vendor.

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We are currently using On24 across our whole organization to promote upcoming live events, present timely content with our partners, and to promote major reports we run in our magazines.

Some of our audience really prefers to consume content in a way other than reading print on the web and in magazines and we've been trying to branch out into something more interactive. With On24 we've found a simple and convenient way to provide the large amount of content we produce to our users in another easily digestible format. Most notable, we publish large reports which can be filled with charts and figures covering 20+ pages and it is a lot to take in, but with the webinar format we can separate all of the data out by individual slides and then have our editorial teams talk about each data point individually which not only simplifies the users' experience but also opens another channel of communication with our audience.

Giving our audience the ability to ask questions about the content we are publishing in a live format and to respond to their questions really helps us to gain valuable feedback about what is the best way to present this data in the future and get more feedback and what they are looking to learn more about in real-time.
  • On24 has an impressive screen sharing plugin that was one of the easiest to use based on feedback from a number of our partners. You simply click on screen share in their web interface, download the plugin, run it, and click screen share again and you are sharing your screen. You can re-size the screen share with a simple frame on your screen and broadcasting is as easy as clicking play and clicking stop when you are done.
  • On24 has a very streamlined self-service process for creating webinars. It took me about an hour and a half to set up my first webinar and create a webinar template and now that we have refined that template and I've worked with the tool I can create the initial registration page in under 30 minutes and at times much faster if the webinar is similar to one we've done before.
  • On24 has amazing support. Their online chat and support ticket system are always available and someone normally responds within minutes. They also have an emergency line that I have had to use two times and each time a person that was empowered to act and solve my problems answered and got everything figured out within minutes.
  • On24 has been extremely reliable for us. We've done over 150 webinars and have not had any issues. With attendees, we rarely see more than 1% of users having any issues and most of the time it is something on their end (volume muted, headphones turned down or not plugged in, or just needing a browser refresh) and not with On24.
  • I really don't have any areas that need improvement in regards to the On24 platform. Every time I find myself running into something that seems a bit complicated I can usually report the issue or by the time I've gotten annoyed with it they are issuing a update or change that fixes the problem. Really, they are constantly updating and improving their system and are a very innovative company.
  • I think the one suggestion I made was making their registration forms more customizable, but this is extremely minor. You can change colors, adjust location of registration forms and text, change fonts/text size/text color, upload images, upload videos, and nearly anything to the registration pages, I just asked for a more graphic UI that would be more modular. Right now, however, I'm extremely happy with the level of customization.
  • On24 has provided a very positive ROI for our business overall. We've been able to reduce the overall cost of each webinar by bringing the entire production process internal and having it internal has improved the speed at which we can create and produce webinars since we no longer depend on a third party project manager and instead use the self-service platform that On24 provides with an internal project manager.
  • The reliability of On24 and the constant innovation with their design and support have allowed us to provide our partners with an amazing and ever-improving webinar experience. We've had many partners mention that they really enjoy using the platform and that they really like all the new features that it has when they haven't done a webinar with us in some time.
We've recently moved all of our events online and actually added a few multi-session events with the COVID-19 pandemic and On24 has been a massive part of this.

They've been great for mutli-session events, we've done up to 4 sessions over 2 days so far and they worked great. We run these sessions with 6-7 presenters, 1.5-2 hours, and then split them into 4 different unique events. On24 offers multi-registration where the person just has to check the sessions they want to attend and it automatically registers them and sends emails to them to attend. It works great.
We've worked with a few other webinar vendors, but I would prefer not to mention them. We had no major issues with them, it more had to do with price and getting our process more internal than bad quality. On24 has provided the high quality platform that we need at a reasonable price. I don't have a lot of experience with the support teams from other webinar vendors, but to me, the company culture at On24 is all about helping the customer make better webinars and ensuring the customer has a positive experience. This translates into a positive experience for my users who are viewing the webinar. Every person I've dealt with at On24 has really seemed like they care about our success and want to ensure that we are happy with the product.
  • Lead generation
  • Training
  • Integrate with CRM/marketing automation software
  • Track registration and attendance
The entire platform is extremely user-friendly. The best part about this is that onboarding a new presenter takes very little time and nearly anyone can log into the platform and get presenting in 5-10 minutes. The platform administrator (normally myself) sets the whole event up, loads in the slides, and then we bring in the presenters for a quick training and walk-through and it rarely takes more than 15 minutes depending on what they are doing. For simple presentations, like I mentioned, 5-10 mintutes, and maybe up to 15 if there is a video stream or videos included.
Our situation is a bit unique because we do our webinars with many partners so we always have new people coming on and working with the tool, but it is so easy to use I have had no problem getting someone up to speed in less than 10 minutes. If you have a varying array of speakers, and especially inexperienced speakers, the On24 platform is extremely easy to use and understand.

We've noticed we have a lot more mobile users across all of our sites and the mobile version of the On24 platform for users is great. It loads quickly and is easy to interact with on my phone. If you have a lot of people that you work with who prefer to consume content on their mobile devices, On24 works extremely well and I normally recommend that users bring it up on their mobile if they don't have headphones or speakers to listen on their PC. On24 has been great for all of our users doing video as well recently. We've had basically 0 issues with doing dozens of videos across multiple different browsers, locations, networks, and computers with 6-7 presenters on video at a time. It's worked flawlessly and we've been extremely happy with it.




ON24 Feature Ratings

Audience polling
10
Q&A
10
Branding options
10
Integration to Marketing Automation
10
Participant roles & permissions
10
Confidential attendee list
10
Calendar integration
10
Record meetings / events
10
Slideshows
10
Event registration
10

ON24 and Communications During a Pandemic

On24 has a really streamlined platform that basically makes the entire setup, training, and running of webinars extremely efficient. Once you've done a couple, you can easily get more ready to go in a matter of minutes. We can schedule and move webinars as needed, train people to use the platform or to set up webinars, and quickly have everything ready if an event is needed last minute.
  • Internal communications
  • Lead generation
  • Product Marketing

Using ON24

20 - Most of our webinars are user-facing and involve a partner. We also have done a few user-facing webinars that are hosted solely by us. Across our business, it is most used by the editorial department, but also used by internal groups for communicating information.

The On24 platform is a great value to our team and it's reliability has been the best part of it.
1 - I personally produce and manage all webinars that we do. While other people coordinate the materials and the setup of the project, the usage of On24 until the live event are all done on my end. It's very easy to use and setup, so only having one person while doing 40-50 webinars a year is very possible.

On24 provides a lot of support as well. They have paid services for extensive webinar setup, but also will help you with a lot of things.
  • Partner Webinars
  • Small Events And Live Interviews
  • Multi-Session Panels And Events
  • "Live Events" Online
  • Multi-session events where we do 2-3 event sessions during the same "webinar" with different panels
  • We have been doing a lot more online events and are trying to ramp those up
  • We may use it more for internal training and presentations
  • We are looking into using it for sales presentations internally
On24 has been everything we've needed in a webinar platform. They provide an extremely reliable, easy to use, and fully-featured environment and they listen to their users and add features that we request. I have not had any issues with the hundreds of webinars I have done through On24 and our users have a great experience every time. It is VERY EASY for users to access and view webinars on On24 which is the most important thing for us. On large webinars we sometimes only get 3-5 questions about hearing/seeing and 99% of the time they either just have to refresh their browser or turn up their volume and everything works!

Evaluating ON24 and Competitors

  • Product Features
  • Vendor Reputation
  • Analyst Reports
On24 had all the features we wanted, including live video, they have a really solid reputation for reliability, and their reporting package is really strong. They also listen to customer feedback and implement features that people ask for while responding to issues and making fixes extremely quickly. They are definitely a company that values their customers and shows it.
We looked at several options when selecting a platform, but On24 just seemed like the most streamlined and simple to use webinar platform we could find. Other options were difficult to use, invovled passing control, different roles for different speakers, and things like that. Having to pass control between speakers/presenters was a massive turn-off for me, all my speakers are professional business people and they don't need to be babysat the entire time; they can have control and use it when they need it.

ON24 Support

I've contacted On24 about 10 times over the 4 years we've been working with them with mostly minor issues and I've called their emergency support number 1 time when a speakers audio was acting up.

Every time I get a response the same day (or immediately with the call) and my problems are taken care of right away.

The support requests appear to go to someone who has the power to help me every time and they know what they are doing and what they are talking about. They definitely care about my success and want to ensure everything goes well.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
Not Available
We had an issue where a speakers audio wasn't coming through clear during a presentation, so we had a different speaker cover it while I called On24. They had someone logged into our back-end within 1 minute and they were diagnosing the issue and seeing what was wrong.

It turned out the connection the user had from their office phone wasn't strong and On24 was not connecting the call correctly to On24. With that we had them switch over to a cell phone and they were able to resume the presentation within minutes. It was truly a great response time and they were extremely helpful.

Using ON24

On24 is all about usability. The whole platform seems designed around ensuring that someone could hop on and figure out how to set up and run a webinar with either very little or no training at all. I was able to begin using On24 before we even had an initial walkthrough. Everything was very easy to understand and well laid out.

I imagine if I had any problems and had to take time off work, someone could pick up for me really quickly with just a simple phone call or just by looking through and maybe a bit of help from On24. We really like that about the platform.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • Webinar Setup
  • Running A Webinar
  • Everything! It's really a great platform.
  • I don't find anything cumbersome or difficult at the moment.

ON24 Reliability

I have never in over 400 webinars (as of 2020) had a problem with the availability of On24's platform. Not only that, whenever I had a problem that I may have caused like uploading a last minute slide deck or accidentally deleting something, the On24 emergency line has been able to help me in minutes. They are extremely dedicated to uptime and quality service.