Crowdcast vs Zoom – Which is the Better Webinar Solution?
Undoubtedly, beyond the scope of convenience satisfaction, encouragement of lots of online meetings, webinar has been a high converting measure, turning in several online passerby into paying clients since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite that, to make the right choice doesn’t come easy as it sounds. It’s compared with searching for a needle in a haystack. Talking about Crowdcast and Zoom.
In this post, I will be making comparisons between Crowdcast and Zoom highlighting their features, strengths and weaknesses.
Crowdcast which was launched far back in 2015 has played side-by-side to its name connotation, it has successfully pulled crowds to itself through its great functionalities.
Besides, the browser-based webinar solution has raised the flag of success in areas about interviews, live questions and answers, workshops, webinars, to mention a few.
Zoom is a webinar that has taken accolades in video conferencing. This software which was founded far back 2011 in San Jose CA, has about 300 million daily users of the zoom meeting.
All these sound good right?
As good as they sounded, some glitches might be deal breakers.
This post will help you have an in-depth view and knowledge of how they work, let’s plunge in.
Crowdcast Vs Zoom: Page Building Strength
To have a high conversion rate through your webinar, you need a page where your users can successfully land.
I mean a simple and straightforward registration page which gives your meeting a landing page and offers your users with the details of your meeting.
At this point, both Crowdcast and Zoom come with an intuitive interface which is easy and straightforward to use at a glance.
As interesting as it sounds, there are limitations to the personal customization of the fonts and colours to blend with your brand. Speaking of Crowdcast.
The light up about these restrictions is that, it comes with a built-in neutral colours and fonts that support well for any face of branding hereby decreasing the tussle of giving your brand the nice design it requires.
Also, Crowdcast allows you to add cover images, videos and other contents through the built-in registration page. The essence of this is to promote your branding and give your audience the assurance that they are in the right spot.
Here’s Zoom on the other hand, although it has a nice interface, Zoom doesn’t support the personal customization of the webinar registration form.
However, you need not to get yourself worried, the drag-and-drop form builder feature makes it easy to customize the form fields, upload images and even change the fonts and colours to blend to your brand.
On top of that, Zoom supports the editing of the profile pictures and description of at least three speakers which are always attached to the webinar invitation emails and attendees confirmation emails.
Crowdcast Vs Zoom: Polls And Survey
Looking for a way of engaging your attendees on your webinar, polls and survey section is the answer.
This section provides you with feedback on where people are falling off from the webinar and allows you to adjust in those areas. Both webinars support this feature.
Talking about Crowdcast, polls are extremely easy to configure and view replies ahead of time. It gives room for instant answering of the questions right after the registration.
And you can also decide to roll-in your polls while the webinar is live, it all depends on your choice.
Unlike Crowdcast, Zoom only enables polls during the webinar and the replies from the attendees are instantly gathered or can be downloaded afterwards the meeting.
The good thing is that Zoom allows the attendees’ information to either be attached or not to their replies through the registration button ON or OFF function.
When turned ON, the replies of the attendees go visible displaying their information like names and email addresses but when turned OFF, otherwise will be the case, and such becomes anonymous.
Asides that, polls on Zoom are set to roll-in singles or multiples, one or several answers all depending on your choice and purpose.
Crowdcast Vs Zoom: Live Chat
Live chat is the life blood of every webinar. It turns webinar to two-way conversation, increasing the number of audiences that turn-in.
Both Crowdcast and Zoom exhibit this wonderful feature. It runs in a way that it can either be enabled or disabled depending on your choice and purpose.
More so, both webinars allow your messages to be sent either privately or publicly.
When sent private, it allows an individual to view the messages but when made public, messages are viewed and responded to by all the participants.
Needless to say that Crowdcast is still faced with technical glitches which doesn’t really support chats to go private. This is due to the ‘hidden link” which controls this function not too visible to access.
The good thing is that Crowdcast has worked tirelessly to have a seamless and engaging section where audiences can drop their feedback and interact with each other.
I mean a separate comment section which also helps you as the host to cut the tussle of scrolling through the several comments of the attendees before getting the real question asked.
Zoom at the other end, includes the virtual hand-raising feature which helps to detract multiple people from talking at once during the live chat. This is to improve communication during a meeting.
Crowdcast Vs Zoom: Integration
At this point, both webinar solutions integrate with several third-party vendors to make sure easy and straightforward workflow.
However, since Zoom is a cloud-based video software that requires download before integration can work on it, extensions or plugins need to be configured on Zoom marketplace or account integrations page.
Here are some lists of Crowdcast integration
- MailChimp
- AWeber
- Slack
- Gmail
- Klaviyo
- Drip
- ConvertKit
- Zapier
- Salesforce
- Infusionsoft e.t.c
While Zoom integrations are
- Zenkit
- SalesMate
- MailJet
- MailChimp
- TypeForm
- Google Analytics
- InstaPage
- SharpSpring
- Twitch
- Drip
- PipeDrive, to mention a few.
Crowdcast Vs Zoom: Analytics And Reports
More than mere information, you need a superb analytics report that reveals what is best working out on your webinar and how you can improve on them.
You don’t need to be far-fetched for the excellent feature, both Crowdcast and Zoom exhibit them.
Speaking of both Crowdcast and Zoom, detailed analytic reports showing the conversion metrics i.e the converting rate of your audiences at different points of the webinar are made available for download as CSV file and locally on Zoom as cloud.
This detailed report entails engagement and tracking metrics which get you up-to-date on the sessions that most engage your audiences and to decide the different ways your audience takes to find your event.
To add up, the analytic dashboard also has referral data which reveals the marketing channel that is magnetizing the most traffic.
Also, the location data on the Crowdcast analytic dashboard is one of the selling points of the platform that helps you to find where in the world your audience is turning in.
Finally, meetings that have been slated for the period of 30 days and include its report on Zoom and does not hold, will be automatically cancelled without retrieval by the room.
Crowdcast Vs Zoom: Email Automation, SMS Notification
Sending automated Emails on webinars are important and interesting factors which enable you to add custom variables to your message.
Their integration with Zapier makes it easy to send automated emails, support phone calls and SMS messages.
Differences Between Crowdcast Meeting Vs Zoom Meeting
The aim of both webinars in this area is to be at the top-notch of what they offer to retain and be the number one choice of their audiences.
Crowdcast webinar no matter how best it is, its second best to what Crowdcast meeting offers in terms of intuitive, neat interface it offers.
Apparently, the meeting room becomes accessible instantly after the event is registered and audiences that are registered are entitled to take part in the chat.
Zoom meeting has taken the sky to write its name as one of the top video conferencing since the beginning of the pandemic. Notably, the Zoom meeting doesn’t start anew, it’s from a company called Zoom.
This development was to have better and improved features of Zoom, connect all employees while working remotely and generally to be made available for businesses of all sizes.
While it’s a cloud-based video software, it supports participants to join using different electronic gadgets like computers or a mobile device as long as the users are connected to the internet.
Some of the features that you might see interesting on Zoom meetings include the virtual background that permits you to set images or video as your background during a meeting.
This option is nice for those that don’t want people to see their exact location.
Also, the touch up my appearance is another fantastic feature that is likely turning in audiences.
What this feature does basically is that it helps you to filter your skin leaving it smooth hereby making you look nice for the meeting.
Similarities Between Crowdcast And Zoom
Although this post might not be inexhaustible in terms of features handled by both webinars but from the reviewed features, you will agree that they are at the verge of making life easy for their users by providing the best Webinar solution.
Also, Crowdcast and Zoom support the use of the platform by any size of businesses so far they can afford them and suit your intended purpose.
Furthermore, both Crowdcast and Zoom can connect with Zapier which makes it easy to integrate with over 500 other marketing tools hereby making automation easy and straightforward.
Asides that, Crowdcast and Zoom acknowledge the feedback and contribution of their attendees and as such support the sharing of your screen either of a full desktop or of a particular file.
Finally, it’s needful to mention that both Crowdcast and Zoom offer you with tools that drive more traffic to your Webinar.
Crowdcast Vs Zoom: Plans
It’s necessary to view the pricing plans of these webinar solutions before settling for the one that best suits your purpose.
However, without any controversy at this point, you will agree with me that the two webinars are best at what they offer.
Despite that, if going for the cheapest is your focus, you are in the right mind of choosing Zoom.
Notably, both Crowdcast and Zoom run a free trial during which your decision of whether or not to settle for the advanced premiums can be made.
Let’s dive in
Crowdcast Plans
STARTER: Usually a huge plus for starters that are new to webinar. It comes with exciting packages like more than fifty(50) attendees, two(2) hour sessions, multi session events, HD live video with recording, Email and chat support, to mention a few.
All these features are obtained cheap although might not be as cheap as other alternatives, $20 per month which is usually billed per annum.
LITE: This included all the Starter features plus extra benefits like more than 100 attendees, Zapier integration, direct integration with ConvertKit and Drip, and a lot.
It’s a plan that promotes business creators and small businesses searching for a premium to increase their audience.
Crowdcast Lite runs on a pricing plan of $34 per month when billed yearly and $49 when billed monthly.
PRO: This is another fantastic plan offered by Crowdcast which allows you to enjoy features such as, all the Lite features and additional ones like four(4) hour sessions, more than 250 live attendees, custom registration fields, to mention a few.
The plan which is best recommended for big and professional creators and businesses who constantly host live videos is given to you at $62 per month when you pay upfront i.e annually or $89 per month when billed monthly.
BUSINESS: This is the big brother among the premiums, companies and startups searching to engage their audience are always encouraged to use it.
With Crowdcast Business plan, you enjoy all the Pro features plus more than 1000 live attendees, 6 hour sessions, multistream to three(3) locations, et cetra.
Obviously, the price worth the features it offers, it come with a whopping price of $139 per month when you save to pay annually or $195 per month when you pay monthly.
Zoom Plans
BASIC: Do you need a webinar for your next personal meeting that will cost you less? Then you better plan choosing Zoom basic.
With Basic package which comes for free, you enjoy fantastic features like hosting up to 100 participants, unlimited one to one meeting, 40 minutes limit on group meetings, unlimited number of meetings, to mention a few.
PRO: Pro is another pricing plan that allows you to enjoy all the basic features and interestingly other great packages.
Packages such as hosting more than 100 participants, 1GB of MP4 or M4A cloud recording, assign scheduler, Admin feature control, meeting duration limit is 24hrs, et cetra.
Unlike the Basic plan, It doesn’t come for free. Its price is flexible compared to other webinar alternatives, with $14.99 per month usually billed annually or €11.99 per host, per month, you will benefit from the plan.
BUSINESS: This plan is the answer to every small and medium size businesses that want to engage their audiences with a low price as $19.90 per monthly usually paid upfront yearly or €15.99 per host, per month.
With the Business plan, you enjoy all the Pro features and extra features like 300 participants, minimum of ten(10) hosts, dedicated phone support, cloud recording transcripts, company branding, to list a few.
ENTERPRISE: Mainly suitable for large enterprises. Obviously, it sounded like the last of the plans but in the real sense, It’s the big daddy of all the plans and is embedded with great features.
Features such as all the Business features plus minimum of 100 hosts, 500 participants, unlimited cloud storage, executive business reviews, bundle discounts on webinars and Zoom rooms, to mention a few.
The package runs at $19.99 per month when billed annually or €15.99 per host, per month.
FAQs On Crowdcast And Zoom Webinar
Is Crowdcast Free?
No, Crowdcast is not free. However, it offers a free trial mode which enables you to enjoy the platform even before planning to buy any of the premiums.
Is Zoom Webinar Free?
Zoom is not free. You need to subscribe to any of the available packages to enjoy it. However, the basic plan is for free.
Does Crowdcast Support Paid Webinar?
Crowdcast doesn’t support paid webinars. You need to integrate with Zapier outside the Crowdcast event page to enjoy this feature.
Conclusion – Which Is The Best?
While this reviewed post might not be inexhaustible, the highlighted points have revealed and exonerated both platforms for their pricing.
Apparently, searching for the best webinar that drives more traffic is like searching for a fry in a river, your achievement is determined by the method of harvest implied.
However, if your intended purpose is searching for the best video-conferencing, simple online meeting platform, here comes Zoom but if hosting a meaningful live interaction with your audience is your intention, then Crowdcast is the answer to your search.
Needless to mention that Zoom is a cloud-based platform and as such you need to download the Zoom app on your device before it can work. This might be a drawback.
On this point, Crowdcast is completely a browser-based platform with zero download and as such you will not be faced with the hassle of installing before attending a meeting.
Claim CrowdCast Free Trial Now!Left for you to decide on which webinar will work best for you.
I would love to hear from you via the comment box below.
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