Webinarjam vs Zoom: Which Webinar Tool is Right for You?

Webinars form an effective and personal way to connect with your audience and solve their issues within your area of expertise while keeping your brand front and center. This makes it the perfect tool for marketers, sales teams, and educators alike. If you’re new to the game, then your next question might be which webinar platform should I use? Let’s take an in-depth look at two of the most popular webinar solutions, WebinarJam vs Zoom, and find out which one is right for you.

Jump to:

• What is Webinarjam?
• What is Zoom?
• WebinarJam vs Zoom: Key differences
• WebinarJam vs Zoom: Features comparison
• WebinarJam vs Zoom: Audience interaction and engagement
• WebinarJam vs Zoom: Which tool fits your use case
• WebinarJam vs Zoom: Pricing comparison
• Verdict and Zoom / WebinarJam alternatives

What is WebinarJam?

As the name suggests, WebinarJam is purpose-built to host webinars and supports live webinar streaming to up to 5,000 attendees and 6 presenters. WebinarJam is a feature-packed solution developed by Genesis Digital in 2014 for high-definition webinar streaming.

What is Zoom?

Zoom started as a video conferencing platform in 2011 and recently added webinar capabilities into the mix. Basically, you are using the same technology, with added moderation and presentation controls. It also offers several integrations, into social platforms and scheduling tools. Zoom Webinars host up to 500 attendees.

WebinarJam vs Zoom: Key differences

With that, we highlighted the first key difference. WebinarJam is a marketing solution, while Zoom is a virtual meeting platform. And this will set the tone for most of this comparison article. Zoom is the more reliable contender, with better audiovisual quality, and a few good features going for it. WebinarJam is the more useful option that treats webinars as a marketing tool, rather than merely a communication tool.

WebinarJam vs Zoom: Features comparison

We already dropped a spoiler in the previous section, but we found that WebinarJam, being a dedicated webinar solution, offers vastly more features than Zoom:

WebinarJam

As the name indicates, WebinarJam is purpose-built to host webinars, with a range of features and tools that any webinar creator will know to appreciate, including webinar automation, event management, social media marketing tools, and on-demand webinars… four features that are lacking in Zoom’s webinar solution. WebinarJam also has decent analytics capabilities. We also liked the way WebinarJam organized its features and user interface –a webinar timeline of sorts where you move chronologically from the configuration of your webinar through scheduling, registration, notifications, integrations, thank you, live, replay, and finish.

Zoom

Last October, Zoom finally enabled users to join webinars through a web client (in-browser), without having to download the desktop application. Adding this feature was a game changer that solved one of the biggest friction points for most users. Still, Zoom falls behind on the feature front. This lack of features does offer the sole advantage that Zoom webinars are quick and painless to set up. And the learning curve is shallow. Another feature that makes the case for Zoom is the higher audiovisual quality of both the live webinars and the webinar recordings. Technically, Zoom seems to be more reliable than WebinarJam. But the choice between WebinarJam vs. Zoom very much depends on your business needs, too…

WebinarJam vs Zoom: Audience interaction and engagement features

It’s no secret that the biggest challenge with webinars, and online events in general, is to engage attendees and keep them at the edge of their seats throughout the session. In fact, engagement became such a focal point in the online event world that it even gave rise to a discipline of its own, engagement marketing.

When in the market for a new webinar solution, engagement features, and audience interaction tools should be high on your wish list. So, let’s see how our two contenders stack up in terms of audience engagement and interaction.

We already listed in the table above that both solutions offer live chat, Q&A, whiteboards, and in-session polls. Zoom does score a few extra points in this area with emoji reactions and the possibility for attendees to upvote each other’s questions. The Apps section in Zoom enables the host to install third-party plugin applications, some of which offer added interaction or engagement features, which we didn’t test in this comparison.

However, WebinarJam makes up for this lack with more marketing-focused features like interactive offers which enable marketers and sales professionals to launch in-session popups with customizable copy, product image, CTA, and a timer. WebinarJam also has a “control room” that can be operated separately by a moderator to interact with attendees so the presenter can focus entirely on the topic and his or her delivery, without interruption.

WebinarJam vs Zoom: Which tool fits your use case

Who uses webinars? Mostly marketers, sales professionals, and educators/trainers. And for good reason. Webinars build brand awareness, authority, and trust. They are an effective tool for education and lead generation.

But that doesn’t mean that all webinar platforms were built to accommodate all these uses. Neither WebinarJam nor Zoom are an exception to this rule. Especially the latter. WebinarJam is sufficiently feature-rich and comprehensive to satisfy multiple use cases to some extent. But Zoom leaves marketers and sales professionals in the cold with meager features, promoting and branding options, and lackluster analytics.

Because of that, Zoom is more fitting for an internal audience such as employees (i.e., corporate training, but with no employer branding options).

WebinarJam vs Zoom: Pricing comparison

Prices are subject to plans, fluctuations, and available offers, so we recommend you visit their respective websites to see the latest prices.

As it stands at the time of writing, Zoom Webinars’ basic plan for up to 500 attendees goes for 690 USD per year and jumps up to a whopping 3,400 USD per year for 1000 attendees and 24,900 for 5,000 attendees. Beware that Zoom requires you to sign up for a paid subscription to their Meetings Pro or Business plan as part of your Webinars plan.

WebinarJam offers a starter plan at 468 USD per year for 100 attendees, which is a great option if you don’t expect to attract bigger audiences than that. Their 500-attendee plan currently costs 948 USD, making it more expensive than Zoom’s equivalent, but you’ll also get more bang for your buck with added features and capabilities. It’s for the higher plans that the difference in price becomes borderline comical. WebinarJam’s Professional plan welcomes up to 2,000 attendees and will set you back 2,748 USD per year. Their Enterprise plan for up to 5,000 attendees costs 4,548 USD, a far cry from Zoom’s 24,900 USD for the same number of attendees, but only a fraction of the capabilities.

Verdict and Zoom / WebinarJam alternatives

We’ll make our verdict short and easy. WebinarJam scored much better than Zoom on our tests, across the line, and for all use cases. We didn’t find Zoom’s slightly superior streaming quality and stability, whiteboard functionalities, and app marketplace, to be sufficiently compelling reasons to opt for their offer.

We found that the sole situation in which you might want to choose Zoom Webinars would be if you were a corporate trainer, needed a 500-attendee plan (no more, no less), and were bound by budget. For any other use case, WebinarJam would be the better choice between the two. But there are other providers on the market… like Kaltura Webinars!

Kaltura vs WebinarJam vs Zoom

Both WebinarJam and Zoom are heavily centered on technology. Kaltura Webinars are user-centered making their solution fitting to any use case, whether you’re a marketer, salesperson, or educator.

When everyone and their granny puts out webinars, it’s getting increasingly difficult to stand out with yours. Kaltura’s webinar solution makes sure to give your webinar the edge with tools and features that will help you create unforgettable branded experiences for your audience. Easily.

• Automatically generate a branded webinar minisite and registration landing page
• Record your webinar and upload it automatically as an on-demand video to the webinar minisite
• Drop timed confetti over your participants’ screens to celebrate something or emphasize a speaker statement.
• Send on-screen interactive polls to call on the knowledge or opinion of your audience
• Have your audience connect with each other and send in Q&A questions via chat.
• Send announcements or calls to action via pop-up notifications.
• Bring participants to the stage to chime in on the discussion.
• Keep your eye on your bottom line with insightful and granular analytics

Kaltura vs WebinarJam vs Zoom. Don’t decide just yet. Take some time. 14 days to be exact, with Kaltura Webinars’ 14-day free trial, no commitment, and plenty of time to check out all of its features and capabilities!