The wonderful word of webinar tools
November 29, 2017
The wonderful word of webinar tools
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with ON24
Our primary use of ON24 is to deliver sponsored webinars to our membership base globally and for digital mini-conference (multiple session, multiple day) type of events.
- Training
- Easy for multiple presenters to control presentation navigation
- Seamless transition between moderator, speakers and panelists for multiple presenter webinars
- Recording links are created and automatically sent quickly
- Straight forward Resource List feature to add more value add to session attendees
- Limited local call-in numbers for international speakers. Significant gaps for major presentations in countries such as India.
- In multiple infrastructure environments (home, office, business grade) will still routinely experience 3 to 10 second lag between presenter and audience view. Longer when playing videos.
- No 1:1 chat feature (that I'm aware of) to send a message to individual attendees, unless they ask a question and your use Q&A function to respond.
- Cannot combine computer audio dial in and phone dial in. Normally I wouldn't choose to do this but with so many countries missing on the local dial-in number list, most of our speakers could use computer audio but we can't do this with a mixed speaker panel (some have local dial# access and some do not).
- For US based folks, not having a visual or audible indicator of the session being recorded (other than the color changing from green to red) means it doesn't mean the local regulatory requirement to announce or visually inform attendees when the session is being recorded.
- Really, really, really dislike there isn't a link or other audible indication when a speaker has joined. If you happen to have the conference bridge tab open you'll see a phone# appear, but you can't tell who join and routinely we're viewing the slides or working on other features to prep and don't have this screen open. Plus it seems to have a slight delay to refresh when a person joins the audio. If they happen to join the webinar platform link first, we have a heads up that they'll be joining audio soon. Many times they've been on the line for a while and we don't realize it or don't know which presenter is speaking (other platforms show the name and also a voice level icon so you can id who is speaking).
- Very dangerous (we learned the hard way) to have presenters enter with the same link as producers. If the speaker accidentally chooses producers role (or worse yet, a speaker gives an attendee/colleague the link to present) they can enter as a Producer and have full control to open and shutdown the session. Months of work down the tubes in seconds when a presenter's colleague joined and hit the LIVE session button, then realized it was a mistake and hit End Session. Need a separate login for Producers and to remove the start/end session functionality from Presenters or Q&A panelists.
We are just starting to work on the integration as it required IT involvement and development of an API to integrate with our website and member portal.
- Replaced the use of another platform which required more upfront training
- with the easier availability of the ON Demand (real time) reporting we can provide more details for post-event activities to our sponsor (more value for their investment)
- The onesy, twosy, fees for everything and training means we will pay more overall that we expected.
- GoToWebinar, Adobe Connect and Zoom
ON24 is more reliable/stable than GoToWebinar and easier to switch between presenters, however GTW offers a much fuller list of local dial in numbers for speakers (most significant countries). Adobe Connect is more complex to learn from a admin console perspective but easier to engage all attendees in chats and exchanges with the speakers. Zoom has higher quality audio and video and the multi-web cam presentation is more engaging for attendees.