If you go with ON24, watch out for their Auto Renewals!

We use On24 across several departments for our webinars. Originally we chose On24 because its user interface is extremely simple and easy to use. We liked all the widgets that the console offered and the ability to customize with social media widgets and audience polling.

Recently (during live webinars) we've experienced some issues with webinars. I decided to start looking at other webinar platform vendors and let On24 know that we were reviewing other vendors. Our contract with On24 was going to be up 11/30 and I let them know 11/20. I was then informed that on 11/17 our contract auto-renewed for 12 months. There was a tiny line in our contract stating if we didn't notify them 30 days in advance of 11/17 that we would auto-renew for a year. We have been happy for the most part with On24 but I don't like being stuck with a vendor. With the rapid rate technology changes, I'd like to be able to explore other options. We have now given them notice we are leaving (a year in advance) and will not consider On24 once our contract is up. I don't feel like this was an honest business practice (to have a line in the contract like this). The auto-renew was never verbally discussed and we have very little contact with any customer service representative or account manager.

I work for a SaaS company and we would never force our customers to work with us. We clearly provide value and have built strong relationships with our customers so any customer of ours would have an account manager in contact with them on a regular basis. Our customers renew with us willingly based on the value we provide.

It was integrated when we used Marketo. We now use HubSpot and keep the two systems separate.