Webinar Wire

The Fourth Part of CAPP - Provider

Last in a four part series:

Ok, we’ve almost made it to the end of mastering CAPP. Let’s now spend some time talking about service Providers and what you need to know before choosing your platform.

Google the words webinar or web meetings and you’ll get plenty of vendors showing up in your search results. The vendors at the top and right side of the page paid the most for the search term you entered, and while they occupy desirable real estate in your browser, it doesn’t mean they are the right webinar solution for you.

While many webinar providers exist, the good news is that means the business is a vibrant competitive space. Competition drives innovation and price... That’s good for all us users. But it can also make the decision of which solution to use a daunting one. Here we’ll summarize some of the key things to consider and I’ll give you a recommendation based on my own experience. But you should also ask colleagues and other associates if they use a provider and get their feedback.

The top of the consideration list should be ease of use. The product should be intuitive, and be easy for both you as the administrator as well as your attendees as participants. Believe it or not some of the big webinar names have more issues with firewalls and security than others. You’ll want to take advantage of free trials and test out all the features in a no-risk, no commitment way.

Reliability and performance are very important. All the providers will have uptime statistics, but it’s better if you can talk to current users for the real truth so ask for testimonials or users you can contact. This is especially important if you are using a newer entrant that might still be in beta or an early release of their product.

Reporting is key – select a vendor that can give you good reports with outputs in multiple formats such as Excel and CSV. You want to be able to study webinar registrations as well as attendee data. Reports will also allow you to import the data to your contact manager or email marketing service for follow up and future marketing and events.

The system should be flexible in allowing you to conduct large group sessions and one-on-one meetings. It should include integrated telephony services or give you the ability to use your own.

Last, don’t sign a long term contract, look for a month-to-month deal. CitrixOnline’s GoToWebinar and GoToMeeting solutions can be a good choice. They offer fixed pricing for unlimited webinars and web meetings on a month-to-month basis. So you know exactly what you’re getting. I’ve used other solutions and found they could be cumbersome, expensive and difficult for attendees to sometimes join. The Citrix solutions are a great deal and since it’s month-to-month you can always stop the service if your needs change in the future.