10 Best Webinar Software of 2025 – Forbes Advisor

When choosing the best webinar software for your business, you want a platform that offers all the features you’d like with a minimum of extras you won’t use, at the lowest cost possible. You may also want to consider complementary features that improve event marketing and lead generation or capabilities to get paid for your webinars.

Here’s what to consider when choosing webinar software:

Essential Webinar Features

The most critical webinar features are those you use to engage your attendees. These include not just your maximum capacity and time limit but features like chat, live polling and breakout rooms. Registration features are also essential to track sign-ups for your event.

Here are a few of the most valuable webinar features:

• Meeting capacity. This is the maximum number of attendees you can host in a meeting at once. Some plans let you begin with as few as 25 attendees, while some Enterprise options support up to 10,000 guests.
• Time limit. Some free and low-tier plans limit you to an hour for webinar sessions, while some let you host events that run up to 24 hours. This feature is worthwhile if you plan to host marathon-type events that run all day with multiple speakers.
• Chat. A live chat window enables attendees to communicate with each other and the host. Chat increases engagement, facilitates networking and gives you a pulse on the audience’s mood and wants.
• Polls. Polls let you pose questions to the audience in real time, with preset answer choices or a blank text box. In most cases, you can create polls ahead of time or write the questions live during the meeting. You can see the results live and display them visually for the audience, providing feedback and entertainment.
• Q&As. Question and answer sessions are periods during an event when audience members can ask questions. The host can choose questions to highlight and answer.
• Handouts and file sharing. Most webinar systems let you offer handouts during the session, such as PDFs, brochures and other documents. These materials can be used for promotional purposes, advertisement or to help attendees follow along.
• Breakout rooms. Breakout rooms split the larger audience into smaller groups for more personal communication. This capability gets more audience members involved, creating a more positive experience.
• Registration and sign-up forms. Webinar platforms let you create registration forms for attendees to sign up for events. Some registration forms are premade, some let you customize the form fields and some platforms allow you to customize an entire webpage for registration.

If capacity and time limit are your main concerns, Zoom Webinars and Zoho offer the best bang for your buck while including all or most of the other features listed. Webex offers the most in-depth and customizable polling features. BigMarker is a good option for breakout rooms and customizable registration.

Value

A webinar software’s value considers its cost as well as the capabilities you get for the price. The best value for your company depends on your business needs and the features you want. However, some webinar providers and plans stand out by offering a wide variety of advanced features at a lower price than competitors.

Zoho Webinar offers the best value in general, regardless of your participant capacity or pricing tier. Though its features are relatively simple, Zoho’s pricing is significantly cheaper than most other providers on the list. Zoom and Webex are also a good value, especially if you plan to capitalize on the advanced polling capabilities. While GetResponse is relatively expensive, it’s a solid value if you plan to utilize all the marketing and web-design features it includes in addition to webinars.

Marketing and Promotion Tools

Most webinar software providers include capabilities that help you market and promote your virtual event. For example, most platforms enable you to automate emails that send confirmations, reminders and post-event follow-ups. Some platforms let you create and sell tickets, offer discounts and promo codes or easily share your event on social media.

GetResponse is the most comprehensive marketing platform on our list, with in-depth email and SMS texting automations that promote your webinar and your business. ClickMeeting also has an excellent variety of marketing and promotion tools for a decent per-attendee rate.

User Experience

Beyond the features themselves, you need a user-friendly webinar platform. It should be a straightforward and efficient process for you to create webinars, set up marketing tools and emails, get paid, track registration and start the event. During events, you should enjoy the live-meeting display and have easy access to all the controls you need to engage a live audience. Live streaming should also be a harmonious and hassle-free process that doesn’t distract you from hosting.

Zoom offered the best user experience overall, with a super-intuitive setup and a pleasant interface. However, WebinarJam stood out with exceptionally clear HD video display. Demio and Livestorm offer step-by-step event setup menus that ensure you check all your boxes when setting up and marketing your webinar.

Paid Webinars

If you want to charge your webinar attendees and get paid, it’s critical to choose a platform and plan that lets you accept payment through your preferred methods. This capability is usually reserved for higher-tier plans. Further, providers vary in the payment methods they let you use—some let you only use PayPal, some only Stripe and some both.

ClickMeeting, GetResponse and Zoom are the most flexible options for paid webinars because they accept the widest variety of payment methods.

Live Streaming

Many webinar platforms let you live stream your events across social media platforms including Facebook Live, YouTube Live, LinkedIn, Twitch, etc. Streaming can help you reach a much larger live audience than your webinar capacity allows, especially if you’re working on building a social media presence.

While many platforms reserve live streaming for higher-tier plans, all ClickMeeting plans let you stream live to Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. Livestorm offers an exceptional variety of compatible streaming platforms, including X and Twitch—two options that no other providers offer.