ON24 in focus: reviews, competitors & alternative platforms

As we’ve mentioned, on this blog we like to keep track of the industry and the performance of other platforms. As the title might suggest in this post, we’re going to look at ON24 reviews, competitors, and alternatives. While we’ve had some words of recommendation for this platform in the past, we want to examine ON24 from every dimension.

What is ON24?

ON24 is a digital, virtual events platform recognized for supporting webinars well. The platform would likely be relevant to mid-to-large-sized businesses or organizations that have small events teams and tend to produce a lot of webinar content. It is specifically geared towards smaller, more intimate online gatherings.

ON24 features

ON24 is noted for being well-documented, and for making it simple to template and update specific webinars. ON24 is generally web-based, providing easy accessibility to users. Additionally, the platform is set up effectively on the back end for recording presentations and audio in-system without the need to time out slides, etc. Due to its engagement features, the platform also bills itself as a strong solution for continuing education and training.

ON24 reviews

ON24 has received some positive evaluations, however taking a look at aggregated reviews also points out some shortcomings. One common criticism is that ON24 is subject to its limitations, and while it works well for small webinars, it will quickly show poor performance when scaled to larger events. Secondly, users sometimes find the ON24 user experience to be awkward and unintuitive, leading to difficulties with navigation and usability. A third common complaint is that while ON24 is known to be well documented, when event hosts and users need to solve issues that are beyond the documentation, it has been reported to lack comprehensive and responsive technical support services.

All of this considered some webinar and virtual events creators might be looking for ON24 alternatives.

ON24 Pros & Cons 

Here are some pros and cons that ON24 users have mentioned:

ON24 competitors analysis

There are numerous ON24 competitors in the virtual event space, and breaking them down in a detailed manner would be outside the scope of this post. There’s also an equally large number of software comparison and consumer review aggregator sites; our recommendation for now is to take a look at a few different opinions for in-depth analysis.

Some of the key ON24 competitors in the current webinar space include:

• Kaltura
• Spotme
• Bigmarker
• Bizzabo
• Cvent
• Hopin

We have covered several of these platforms and services on the Kaltura blog and may return to entries on this list in upcoming articles for updated and more detailed reviews of features and capabilities.

Additionally, some more recent contenders in the space include:

• Zoom webinars
• Webex events
• Adobe Connect

These include either companies with expanding or rebranded services, or relative newcomers to the space. Again, we may take a closer look at these entries in upcoming posts.

Exploring ON24 alternatives

You’ve taken your first steps in exploring ON24 alternatives right here! However, if you’ve already been an ON24 user there might be specific areas that the platform is coming up short. In that case, be careful when researching and evaluating ON24 competitors, and make sure you’re trading up.

Understand the make-or-break features for your use case! (however, keep in mind that not every company’s webinar or virtual event needs will be identical.) In the list below we’ll also identify some key features/functions of a webinar platform. One company’s webinar plan can be wildly different from others!

Factors to consider

When analyzing webinar platforms specifically, in addition to thinking about the way your business or organization employs webinars and the size and scope of your events, some key factors include:

• • Scalability and flexibility– can the product be tailored to your needs whether smaller or larger gatherings are called for? Is it capable of supporting more than one type of virtual event or does it have limited capabilities?
• • Video quality– this point should be self-explanatory.
• • Customization– is a bare-bones, utilitarian setup adequate for you, or are you looking for more ability to customize and brand the experience?
• • User-friendliness and user experience– a significant factor in your event success will be whether attendees have a positive experience and can effectively navigate controls, etc. Further, consider your own needs as far as event setup and hosting; no one wants to get slowed down by a clunky, confusing interface.
• • Engagement features– a potentially overlooked feature. High engagement is another key to success in virtual events and features that facilitate high engagement, such as interactive activities, live chats, and networking tools can help you get the most out of your online events. Better still if data reporting tools are available to help you post-game.
• • Technical support and customer service– also (hopefully) self-explanatory. Will the product come with adequate support?
• • Hybrid capabilities– this point may or may not be relevant to your specific content, but consider whether you want to offer hybrid, mobile, or in-person options for your virtual events. If a product is strictly limited to a single web/online format your attendees have less flexibility.

Making informed choices

Whether moving to another platform from ON24 or just “playing the field,” as we noted above, it’s important to take a deep dive into reviews and alternatives to understand whether a platform or product is going to be a good fit for you.

in many cases, it’s also possible to test out a trial version of many virtual events platforms, so whenever it’s possible to get a trial or hands-on demo, we recommend it. It can be difficult to adequately weigh the pros vs cons of any particular software/SaaS until you’ve tried it!

Meet Kaltura — your #1 event and webinar platform

Of course, we also feel confident to recommend our solution: Kaltura Events.  Kaltura Events’ combination of features and scalability is best in class, and we’d love for you to join us at the front of the event pack. We can offer you a higher-value alternative to other services for any type of event at any scale, from webinars all the way to multi-day flagship events, with virtually none of the downsides.

Kaltura Events is a highly customizable and brandable video-based tool for creating anything from interactive presentations to workshops for a large audience. We also make it easy to create cloud recordings to share with attendees of live events as well as repurpose for on-demand content.

Kaltura’s platform is an A-to-Z solution that supports all your event needs from setup, promotion, and live streaming to post-event follow up and performance analysis, and offers a seamless video viewing experience integrated into your session flow.

Kaltura Events’ extensive feature suite includes template-based event setup, automatically generated landing pages and event website, extensive branding options, seamless third-party integrations, engagement tools, personalized agendas, content recommendations, full chat functionality, and so much more.

Additionally, we offer one-click set-up interactive polls, as well as detailed analytics that can evaluate the performance of your sessions and allow you to measure participant engagement. Finally, we keep all of our tools web-based and accessible, so they’re easy to set up and even easier to attend.

Cherry on top of the Kaltura Events pie is the brand-new AI assistant that enables you to whip up session descriptions and agendas, and even repurpose content fast. It also monitors attendee engagement and suggests ways to boost it in real time.

Kaltura Events offer multiple payment plan options as well as a free trial version, so you can get started with all of the standard features and decide if we’re the right fit for you!

In conclusion

Whether you’re looking for ON24 alternatives or are taking your first steps into webinars and virtual events, compile a checklist of your needs and success metrics for your events and make sure whatever tool you go with is well suited.

That said, if you’d like to experience first-hand what Kaltura Events can do for you, we kindly encourage you to book a personal demo. Click here.