WebinarJam Review

Detailed Reviews

WebinarJam lets you host live webinars and also includes co-presenters and moderators in the process. The platform provides the user with an easy to navigate interface throughout the process, and you get all the bells and whistles of a webinar hosting tool on the platform. It can also take care of landing pages and notifications, along with managing the webinar for you.

Pros

• Flexible approach to webinar creation.
• Allows up to six simultaneous video feeds.
• Different interfaces for hosts and moderators.
• Provides a whiteboard with varying transparency.
• Gives the option of quantity and time limit in the offers section.

Cons

• It doesn’t allow a fully automated webinar.

Introduction

A webinar is now easily among the popular choices of marketers to propel their businesses in the right direction. The goal can be anything right from getting more leads to building a positive image in the market; a webinar will allow you to take care of it.

Webinars are quite popular among entrepreneurs who want to acquaint the world to their services, and the same goes for educators who want as many people as possible to attend their classes.

One can interact live with a huge audience without getting into the ordeal of taking care of all the logistics in the case of a usual physical setup. Since it is far more convenient for attendees of a webinar to take part in it, they have also embraced webinars a lot better- another factor that places webinars on top of many other marketing strategies.

The popularity of webinars has flooded the marketplace with webinar hosting tools, and it can sometimes be more than just a head-scratch to find the right one for you among the lot.

WebinarJam is one among the various webinar hosting tools available out there, and it promises to provide the user with a world of features to host the best webinar possible.

Unlike other webinar hosting tools, WebinarJam doesn’t allow one to host automated webinars from the platform. There is, however, a sister product called EverWebinar that can help you in the matter.

WebinarJam focuses solely on live webinars and series, and all our analysis will be based on these kinds of webinars.

In this review, we will go through all the features of WebinarJam and find out if the product says true to the aggressive claims. We will go into the details of all the sections that they have boasted about, and also into the ones that they didn’t mention.

By the end of this review, you will know if WebinarJam is the kind of tool that you would want for your next webinar.

Express and full configurations to create a webinar

Webinar tools usually try to impress users by providing them with multiple options for the kind of webinar one can create on the platform. The options go something along the lines of regular webinars, automated webinars, hybrid webinars, and whatnot.

But WebinarJab doesn’t deal with the streaming of recorded videos. The makers of the tool have a different product for such needs of the user. All WebinarJam would let you do is create single or multi-session live webinars.

At the outset, one may feel a lack of options on the platform, especially when they are coming from another webinar hosting tool. But WebinarJam makes up for the lack of webinar options by providing the user with two completely different ways of creating webinars on the platform- express configuration and full configuration.

The express configuration allows you to create a new webinar within a minute, while the full configuration takes you through all the possible customization options around a webinar to let you create one.

Let us have a brief look at both the methods of creating a webinar.

Express configuration

Express configuration is supposedly the shorter, quicker, and simpler way to create a webinar on the platform. It won’t push you into the details of what you need to do around the webinar, and lets you start with just the bare minimum.

This configuration style is split into four simple steps. The first one is the basic configuration section. Here you get to lay down the important details of the webinar, such as its name, title, the presenters, and description. You can also modify the language of the webinar under the basic configuration section.

The next thing they would want you to mention is the schedule of the webinar. You can either start the webinar right at that moment or schedule it for later. If the nature of your job is such that there can be occasions when you need to go live with a webinar in a matter of minutes, then the express configuration along with the option of ‘schedule now’ can turn out to be great allies for you.

If you wish to schedule it for later, you can create respective sessions with appropriate time zones, and WebinarJam will take care of the rest.

The final two steps are to configure the registration page and the email notifications. WebinarJam has a rich section for both the cases, and we will shed some more light on it in the later sections of the review.

You can easily dash through the registration page setup, and the email notification set up since the default options work fine for most of the cases.

If you know what you are doing and what kind of webinar you want to create, then all of this won’t take much time, and you can literally be done with the process in less than 60 seconds.

Full configuration

A full configuration is the longer route that you might want to take while creating a webinar if you like to exercise complete control over things. WebinarJam marks this method as the more powerful one, and this one is supposed to take somewhere around 10 minutes to get you done with webinar creation.

The first noticeable difference between an express configuration and the full configuration is the number of stages. There are eight stages in cases of a full configuration, and they may come with some sub-sections, as well.

Even if a section has the same name as it has in the express configuration setup, you will find the ones in the full description section to be more detailed. For instance, the configuration section only touches only a few basic details of presenters in the case of the express setup. But for the full configuration, you need to provide a lot more detail than that.

Then there are additional details such as on what platform you want to host the webinar, and if you want to list the webinar in the OnDemand section.

The full configuration section also lets you decide if you want to have a single webinar or a series of them. And if you plan on monetizing the webinar, then the full configuration section will let you take care of that, as well.

The additional sections, in this case, are integrations, thank you, live, and replay. The sections deal with what they seem like they deal with. You can specify the third-party email automation tools and tracking tools in the integration section.

For thank you pages, you can customize them and also add surveys along with the pages. The ‘live’ will let you take care of polls, file sharing, slide presentations, and all kinds of other things that you would want to incorporate in the webinar.

And the ‘replay’ section lets you decide if you want to enable the webinar replay page or not.

The full configuration section allows you to deal with all the elements of the webinar in chronological order. Once you are done setting up the webinar using this section, you can rest assured that you haven’t missed out on anything at all.

The webinar room

There is a lot that you can do around the webinar on this platform. But before we get into all those features, let us first discuss all that you can do within a webinar. It is where all the magic is going to happen, and you get the chance to nurture relationships with the audience.

Once you create a webinar, you can test it out both as a presenter and as one of the moderators of the webinar. Yes, there are different interfaces for presenters and moderators, and other webinar hosting tools should take a cue from this.

An easier life for moderators

When someone is hosting the webinar, it is obviously going to be difficult for the person to manage polls, chats, and other interactions along with the hosting part. They also need to make sure that they are within the frame of the webcam, and therefore, need the webinar feed to occupy a larger area of the interface.

But if someone is the moderator of the webinar, they do not need to bother much about the feed. Instead, they need to be making sure that the polls go out at the right time, questions get answered, CTA shows up at the right time, and so on.

Since the interactive elements hold more importance for the moderator, it’s the right move to provide these elements at the center screen for them.

The moderator’s dashboard on WebinarJam is separated into three distinct sections. The first one is for chat and Q&A. It is where they can process all kinds of inputs from attendees and draw the host’s attention towards them, if necessary.

WebinarJam keeps the regular chat and Q&A section separate, so you don’t need to worry much about important questions getting lost in all the hustle and bustle of the chat.

The other section on the moderator’s window is for polls, offers, videos, slides, and files. This section essentially deals with all that the webinar host needs to put out during the webinar.

The section also gives one a great deal of idea about how much you can do with Webinar. We will discuss more about the tools that one gets to engage better with the audience in a later section.

What we need to understand now is that the moderator gets to have complete control over everything that needs to be published during the webinar, and it should elevate the experience for viewers as well as the host.

The third section is dedicated to stats. The moderator will be able to see how many of the registrants are present in the webinar, the number of buyers, and also keep an eye on who is speaking in the webinar at that moment.

We feel it’s a luxury to have all these stats present in a section. You will always know how the webinar is going on at that moment, and also if you are achieving the goals that you set out to achieve with the webinar.

And so much for hosts

WebinarJam took great care of moderators, and it’s no surprise that they have a plethora of features making lives easier for hosts and presenters, as well.

The interface for hosts is vastly different from what we saw in the case of moderators. In this case, more emphasis is on the webcam feed so that the host finds it easier to interact with attendees. The interface is clean, and there aren’t a lot of distractions.

There is the feed area on most of the screen where you will have your webcam feed, the slideshow, video, or the screenshare feed for attendees. The area gives you a clear idea of what the attendees see on their screens, and therefore, allows you to present a webinar.

WebinarJam allows one to have a total of six co-presenters streaming their webcam feeds all at the same time. The feature allows you to make the webinar rich, and keep the viewers interested. The quality of feed doesn’t get affected a lot even after entertaining so many participants.

Since there is also the option of inviting the attendees to share their feed, you can have more than one attendee sharing their feed along with you. There are just so many possibilities as to what you can do with six simultaneous feeds in a webinar, and it is up to you how you leverage the feature.

WebinarJam allows you to share screens and videos in the webinar. There is also the option of showcasing slideshows so that you can make the most out of your webinar.

But these are some of the options that you might find on every webinar hosting tool. What gives this platform a slight edge over them is the whiteboard feature. It is a usual drawing tool that is presented in such a way that you can end up accomplishing a lot from it.

There is a transparency slider, which means that you can draw over the elements of the screen or have a completely blank screen to imitate a whiteboard. You can pause videos and slideshows and then draw over them to emphasize or explain your point.

There is more than just a marker available in the drawing tool. You can insert shapes, text, change colors, modify the width of the marker, and so much more. The drawing tool makes it both fun and easy to curate the webinar.

Another one of the remarkable features of WebinarJam is the offer section. You can place a CTA button or a product for users to buy in this section. You can specify the number of units available for selling, and also a time limit for the offer.

The two details are supposed to create some sense of urgency among the attendees and boost the sales. Apart from the offer button, you can create polls, share files, chat with the audience, etc. using the side panel.

The slide sharing feature on WebinarJam is also slightly more advanced than what we are used to seeing on other webinar hosting tools. There is an array of transition options that you can use to make the presentation a lot more engaging.

WebinarJam made it quite difficult for us to find a fluke in the webinar room. Everything seems optimized to the point it is supposed to be, and they seem to have struck the right balance between the ease of use and functionality.

Make your registration pages appealing

Once you create a webinar, you will have to provide a registration page so that people can register for your webinar. There are a few cases when a webinar host doesn’t need to worry about the registrants or attendees. It happens in case of corporate webinars or when the participants are the ones excited for the webinar.

In most of the other cases, it is you, the webinar organizer, who needs to make a lot of effort to attract people to the webinar. The registration page or the landing page for the webinar can turn out to be one of the factors influencing the number of people attending your webinar.

A registration page is also necessary as it acts as the front of your webinar, and you get to know how many people will be attending the webinar. It is also how the webinar hosting tool can identify the attendees, and then grant them access to your webinar.

WebinarJam comes with a registration section, where you can choose an appropriate template and modify it according to your needs. All webinar tools come with a section like this, but when you look at what WebinarJam has got to offer for templates, you will realize that the section isn’t there just for the sake of it.

Very rarely do we come across landing pages sections on webinar tools where the choices make sense. This tool will provide you with plenty of landing page template choices. Each template comes with a modern design and has something unique to offer when compared with other templates.

Once you identify the template you like the most, you can go into the editing section and customize it according to your needs and preferences.

They also display the average opt-in ratio of each template across all their users. So if you are more concerned about getting a higher number of attendees for the webinar, you can use the ratio as the parameter for choosing the layout.

The landing page editor is also easy enough to use. You can hover over the elements of the page, and then edit or delete them as per your convenience. There will be some parts of the webinar that you won’t be able to edit, such as the countdown.

However, all the templates on WebinarJam seem professional, and we don’t think you will feel like meddling with the design. There will obviously be the need for you to edit the text and descriptions on the page.

You can modify the registration fields and collect more than just the name and email address of the registrants. You can also mark the fields mandatory or optional as it suits you.

If you want to monetize the webinar and charge a fee for the people to attend it, then WebinarJam has got you covered. There is a section dedicated to payment where you can specify the amount you want to charge for the webinar and also post the link to the payment gateway.

Irrespective of whether the webinar is paid or not, you can make it password protected. For password-protected webinars, people will need more than just the link of the webinar to access it.

WebinarJam also provides a thank you page similar to the registration page section. Here, you can choose from one of the templates for the thank you page and customize them as needed.

You can also enable/disable auto-subscription option under this section. And if you want to include a survey at the end, then you can create one in this section. The tool allows you to include various kinds of questions such as multiple-choice questions, long-form questions, etc.

WebinarJam takes due care of all the pre and post-webinar processes, and there aren’t a lot of webinar hosting tools that are this thorough.

Email and SMS notifications

You will have the task cut out for you even after someone registers for your webinar. You need to ensure that registrants do not forget about the webinar and mark a time in their schedule for the webinar.

One of the better ways to remind them about the event is by sending out timely notifications. WebinarJam allows the user to send email notifications as well as the ones over a cellular network. You can send them notifications using SMS, as well as a call.

There isn’t much to do to set up the notifications. First, you need to choose the mode for your notifications. Then you can set them up for a timeline. It can be for when they register for the webinar, a few days prior to the webinar, a few hours prior to the webinar, just before the webinar, etc.

You can also have notifications for after the webinar. It can be one thanking the person for attending the webinar, or it can be about the webinar replay for those who were not able to make it.

There is nothing fancy about the email editor in this section. You don’t get a choice of templates, but there is a simple email format that you can modify as needed. They also provide a good enough email body that you can use if you want to run through the process.

It is a simple enough task to manage all these notifications on a timeline, and you can also send out a test email before making them live.

Host it wherever you want

One of the primary goals of any webinar is to reach out to as many people as possible. There can be plenty of reasons why someone might not be able to attend your webinar even though they want to.

It can be a browser compatibility issue, maybe they do not want to install specific software, or maybe their system isn’t able to support the software you want them to download to view the webinar.

Whatever the reason may be, but every attendee you lose to a technical or compatibility issue is potentially a monetary loss to your business. It is necessary that whatever method you use to stream the host, the registrants should find it easy to adapt to it.

WebinarJam gives you two options as to the platform on which you can host the webinar. The first platform is the WebinarJam’s server itself. They boast how they create a universal signal that works with all the technologies, and therefore, makes it easier for attendees to attend and enjoy your webinar.

The attendees do not need to download any software, and the webinar will stream easily on most of the web browsers. However, if you are the host or moderator of the webinar, you are not going to be blessed with these many options.

You will have to make sure that you are using either the Chrome or Firefox web browser. You will also need to download and install a browser plugin to be able to host the webinar.

WebinarJam seems to have got all the bases covered when it comes to making it easy for a viewer to attend the webinar. However, this is not it. There is more to how you can make it easier for people to attend your webinar.

WebinarJam also comes with the option to stream the webinar directly on Youtube live. And there are several advantages of doing that.

The first pro would be that it would be easier for you to ask people to join your webinar if it is happening on Youtube. Everyone is well-acquainted with Youtube already, and you won’t have to give directions as to how to use the platform.

The other benefit of having the webinar on Youtube is that you can monetize it, during as well as after the webinar. The platform allows you to get great exposure, and if you have got Adsense working for your account, then you can also make some money out of it.

It isn’t very difficult to integrate WebinarJam with Youtube live, and they provide an easy to understand guide for the process.

The gist of the matter here is that you have plenty of freedom as to where and how the registrants can attend your webinar. It is something that will always help you improve the acceptance and reach of the webinar, and therefore help you achieve your webinar goals.

Integrations

WebinarJam allows the user to manage probably all the sections based around hosting a webinar. But since it is a webinar hosting tool, it can only do so much.

It might help you create landing pages, but what if you want to create an even better landing page? There are a lot of landing page builders that can be of some help in this better. But you can’t expect WebinarJam to be putting the same kind of attention on landing pages as much as those dedicated tools.

Similarly, what if you want more than just plain text emails for webinar notifications. Again, you can take help from some of the email automation tools in this matter.

There are a lot of areas where you might feel the need for a more specialized tool, and that is where some integration options might come in handy. WebinarJam gives the user the option of plenty of direct and indirect integrations, and you can use them not just to make your webinars better but also to make it easier for yourself to derive the benefits of it.

Most direct integration options on WebinarJam are for email autoresponders, but you can include a whole of other tools in the process. There is a Zapier integration option that allows the user to have the option of connecting the platform with more than a thousand other tools.

It is easy enough to access all these integration options under the integration section on the platform, and you should not find it difficult to manage the integrations.

Conclusion

WebinarJam doesn’t allow you to host automated webinars, and that might make you think less of this webinar hosting tool at the beginning, especially since most webinar tools come with the feature.

But as you proceed with the tool, you will find that it delivers what it says. It gives the user the option to be as thorough or as quick with the webinar creation process as possible. You can create a webinar in no time or take all the time in the world to create one.

They are among the very few webinar tools that provide different interfaces for hosts and moderators to make jobs easier for them. There is the option to create polls and CTA buttons during the webinar, which helps improve engagement.

We also liked the drawing tool on the platform. It works well with or without anything on the screen. You can easily vary the transparency and keep the viewers interested. The slideshow on WebinarJam is also better than most webinar hosting tools.

We haven’t seen as many landing page template options as much we got on this tool, and all of the templates were professional enough. The notifications section also had something extra to offer in the form of SMS and call notifications.

If someone still ended up feeling a lack of functionality in any section, then WebinarJam comes with enough integration options to take care of the woes.

We wouldn’t hesitate a bit to recommend this tool to our readers. They provide a trial subscription for just $1, and you should use this option to try out WebinarNinja if you are looking for a webinar hosting tool.