Item: ON24
Rating: 3
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with ON24

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

ON24 is the webinar hosting platform, used by the marketing team. We use it for one-off live and simu-live webinars, select sales demos (deminars) and they are also our virtual event platform provider (VEM).

Webinar Use Case

Lead generation

Pros and Cons

Pros

Rather easy to learn how to use
API with our Marketing Automation Platform rarely has issues

Cons

The webinar console builder is straight out of the 90s and unreliable and not responsive.
The webinar presentation manager is also prone to error - freezing in the middle of live presentations, which is not a good experience for presenters.
Requires weird things like sizing your PPTs 24 x 11.26 in to have clear images.
Must go back to a legacy dashboard to be able to download a report with actionable data on it (ie email address to link leads back to their records in our MAP).

Integration to CRM & Marketing Automation

We integrate ON24 with Marketo and while all registration is through Marketo landing pages and forms, the confirmation and reminder emails are sent via ON24. They have recently increased the sync time so we can get attendee/no show data pushed back to Marketo in a more timely manner, but depending on the size of the event it can still take a few hours. Another con is that you can't currently push poll responses back into Marketo and therefore we have to use their legacy dashboard to export survey results because that is the only way to export with email address, which is our record of truth. We use polls in the webinar to collect high value leads and the lack of an integration on polls and surveys delays us in getting leads to our sales team in a very timely manner.

Reliability and Availability

Platform reliability is probably the most important. We get customer complaints all the time because of the Flash-based nature of their platform and the industry we work in. Many people have issues with the platform and audio freezing and have to refresh often during the course of a live event. On the presenter side, the presentation manager can also freeze, cause presenters on different computers to appear like they are in different places in the slides, which can be extremely distracting.

Return on Investment

We drive leads through webinars

Alternatives Considered

6connex - we were all set to go with them for our virtual event platform and webinar hosting, but since our ON24 webinar contract was already signed for the year, we decided to hold off until next year when we can make the full switch and not try to work in two systems at once for half the year.

Other Software Used

Marketo, Drift, Litmus, Kapost, Full Circle Insights, SnapApp, Wistia, Hushly, ZoomInfo, Reachforce SmartSuite

Likelihood to Recommend

It provides a more customizable attendee experience than something like GoToWebinar but I think there are probably platforms that feel more up to date for both webinars and virtual events.

ON24 Feature Ratings

Comments

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Not worth the cost for the headache