Over the last two years, webinar marketing, as well as generating leads with webinars have been booming.
However, a professional webinar platform can be expensive. Would be great to test out webinars for yourself, before committing to a paid subscription.
As the world has gone online, it’s no surprise that choosing the appropriate webinar software is considered a key decision for so many organizations.
Having a webinar platform thar makes remote communication and event management, such as virtual conferences, training, lectures, and seminars, quick and easy.
Unlike traditional panels, webinar technology is mainly used to online meetings that are focused on interacting with the attendees. If you’re not so focused on interaction, then it’s cheaper for you to host a regular meeting.
In this article, we’ll look at the various free webinar software options available to help you keep your head above water during these trying times. By looking into our list, you should be able to choose which of the offered solutions is the best for your specific needs – all free of charge.
What are the Best Free Webinar Platforms?
Below are the best free webinar platforms we have tested, rated and compared. The best free webinar platform is Livestorm because it allows for testing out running webinars for a longer time with their free plan.
Pros
- Live & automated webinars
- Custom question on registration page
- Option to enable "only work emails"
- Q&A has upvoting
- Questions during webinar replay
- Conversion analytics & attendance tracking
Cons
- No polls or offers in automated webinars
- Can't open offers after closing
- No offers during replay
Best or unique feature
- Convenient automated webinar event builder
Webinar Types & Setup
Audience Interactions
Presentation Tools
Pricing & Trial
Webinar Funnel Pages
Video Engine & Support
Webinar Replay
Email Reminders
Mobile Devices
Analytics & Exports
Livestorm is the best webinar software that allows you to host webinars live or schedule on-demand webinars for free.
It’s also possible to host an online meeting with your teammates. The user-friendly interface makes it incredibly easy to attend webinars.
The webinar setup allows you to create a registration page with custom registration forms. Once you’ve set everything up, you can promote your webinar easily with a quick-access link, so attendees can join webinars easily.
During the webinar, you can keep your audience engaged with interactive tools like polls and Q&A. The presentation tools include screen sharing capabilities and HD video feed of the event organizers.
You can also automatically record webinars and schedule automatic follow-up emails with the webinar recording attached. Furthermore, you can create pre-recorded webinars out of these recordings.
Livestorm Free Plan Features
- Up to 30 contacts per month
- Up to 20 minutes per session
- Up to 30 live attendees
- Unlimited webinar hosts
- High video quality
Livestorm Upgrade Plan
- The cheapest Pro plan costs $88/month and allows 100 attendees and up to 4 hours per session
- Enterprise has many exclusive functions, like multiple workspaces, CSM, wire transfer payment, SLA, floating license, etc. (contact sales to learn about pricing)
Read the full Zoho Meeting review
Zoho Meeting is one of the best free webinar platforms on the market if you want to host online events. It’s a powerful webinar service and video conferencing software.
It has a browser-based version, but you can also download the desktop webinar application for more stable webinar virtual events.
The registration page is very clear and to-the-point. The free version of Zoho Meeting also allows embedding it to your own website, so you website visitors can have an incredibly easy access to your webinar.
Once attendees register, you can set up automatic reminder emails to maximize attendance.
To present your webinar content, there are abundant presentation tools available, like screen sharing, multiple video layouts and on-demand file sharing.
Interacting with your target audience during the webinar is a breeze. To keep your audience engaged you can use the chat, meeting reactions, polls, the collaborative whiteboard and the raise hand feature.
Zoho Meeting Free Plan Features
- Up to 100 webinar attendees per session
- Up to 100 participants on a video meeting
- Up to 60 minutes of duration per session
- Abundant presentation and interaction features
- Reporting and analytics
Zoho Meeting Upgrade Plan
- The cheapest Standard Plan costs $21 per month for 100 attendees
- Webinar recordings for up to 25 webinar sessions
- Priority customer support
- Offers a 14-day Free Trial on the paid plans
Pros
- Different stream layouts for multiple speakers
- Backstage feature for speakers to standby
- Automated personalized email reminder & follow-up
- Channels to show all uploaded webinars and replays
- Interactive tools that smoothly blend into the stream
- Lifetime free plan with unlimited webinar sessions
Cons
- No live offers with urgency timers
- No whiteboard tool
- No built-in stream editor for uploaded webinars
- There are only 2 widgets currently available
Best or unique feature
- Backstage feature and presentation tools
Webinar Types & Setup
Audience Interactions
Presentation Tools
Pricing & Trial
Webinar Funnel Pages
Video Engine & Support
Webinar Replay
Email Reminders
Mobile Devices
Analytics & Exports
Contrast Webinar is rapidly emerging as a distinguished player in the webinar sphere. Beyond its cost-effective appeal, this platform shines with features not typically seen in rival solutions.
A prime highlight is the backstage tool, streamlining speaker coordination effortlessly. Engaging participants becomes second nature with tools like polls, Q&A sessions, and dynamic widgets.
For those events that have a lineup of multiple speakers, you’re in luck with Contrast Webinar. Its extensive range of video layouts caters to diverse presentations, ensuring every speaker is highlighted effectively, no one gets overshadowed.
The platform takes great pride in its intuitive design, highlighted by the streamlined registration page. This user-centric feature ensures a hassle-free experience for attendees, streamlining the sign-up process.
Adding to its appeal is the webinar channel feature, allowing hosts to organize and present their webinars in a dedicated space, much like a content library. This not only elevates the user experience but also aids in content discoverability.
With such innovations, Contrast Webinar transcends being a typical solution, pushing the boundaries of what we’ve come to expect from a virtual engagement platform.
Contrast Webinar Free Plan Features
- Up to 50 unique attendees each month
- Unlimited seats
- Unlimited external speakers
- Webinar channel
- Backstage feature
- Store up to 10 webinar replays
Contrast Webinar Upgrade Plan
- Pro plan starts at €75 with up to 100 attendees and store 90 videos
- €188 with up to 250 attendees and store 150 videos
- €450 with up to 600 attendees and store 300 videos
- CRM integration
- Dedicated Slack support channel
- You can contact them for a more personalized pricing
Pros
- Live, Evergreen Webinars & Meetings
- Flexible email scheduling
- Add-to-calendar buttons in emails
- Continuous attendance tracking
- Replay recording captures interactions
- Very affordable
Cons
- No design options for registration page
- Can't open live offers again after closing
- No webinar replay in the follow-up email
Best or unique feature
- Also allows for break-out rooms and instant meetings
Webinar Types & Setup
Audience Interactions
Presentation Tools
Pricing & Trial
Webinar Funnel Pages
Video Engine & Support
Webinar Replay
Email Reminders
Mobile Devices
Analytics & Exports
LiveWebinar is a powerful browser-based tool for hosting webinars, web seminars, online lessons, training webinars and other online meetings.
The marketing automation features, registration forms, webinar recordings, and other free webinar software features, as well as the online meeting capabilities make it one of the best webinar software solutions you can get for free.
Customize your live webinar room with your trademarks and decorations to make your webinar consistent with your company’s brand.
Other audience engagement features include triggering call-to-actions, whiteboard, screen sharing and document sharing are all included in the free plan.
However, it must be said that the low limit of attendees per webinar session makes it more like a free trial. Also, there is no webinar recording with the free plan.
LiveWebinar Free Plan Features
- Up to 5 attendees
- Up to 45 minutes per session
- Up to 3 polls
- Up to 20 email invites per day
- Limited to 1 presenter
LiveWebinar Upgrade Plan
- The cheapest Pro plan cost $17.99 per month and allows up to 100 attendees per webinar
- Up to 200 email invites per day
- Up to 6h of HD video recording
- Virtual backgrounds and branding
- Interactive tools like chat moderation, vote manager, Q&A and up to 10 polls
Pros
- Very affordable
- Always-on webinars
- Custom registration fields
- Registration with Social Media
- Host can pause the webinar
- Call-to-action click tracking
Cons
- Clunky and outdated user interface
- No registration conversion tracking
- Q&A questions are private messages
- Webcam can randomly stop working
- Limited webinar analytics
Best or unique feature
- Free plan with up to 20 live attendees
Webinar Types & Setup
Audience Interactions
Presentation Tools
Pricing & Trial
Webinar Funnel Pages
Video Engine & Support
Webinar Replay
Email Reminders
Mobile Devices
Analytics & Exports
MyOwnConference is a webinar software that’s a bit rough around the edges in the design department, but it’s one of the cheapest webinar solutions available. It also has a free plan.
On the registration page, you can create a feeling of scarcity with the countdown timer and “Seats left” features. You can also add more custom registration fields to capture more information from your leads.
To boost your webinar sign-up rate, you can include Facebook and Google sign-up, so that attendees can register with just one click.
The live webinar room looks a bit outdated, but still has all the important presentation and audience engagement features.
You can start screen sharing, initiate polls, surveys and Q&A, engage in the chat, and show a video clip.
MyOwnConference Free Plan Features
- Up to 20 attendees
- Up to 20 webinars with permanent access links
- Up to 20 minutes of recording duration
- Up to 1 GB of file storage
MyOwnConference Upgrade Plan
- The cheapest plan start at $30 per month
- Start at 30 attendees, which you can increase
- Unlimited live and automated webinars
- Up to 10 hr of webinar recording duration
- Up to 3 GB of file storage
Pros
- Stable connection
- Reliable and known provider
- Easy to learn, if already using Zoom Meetings
- Hold up to 10,000 simuntaenous attendees
- Q&A has upvoting
- Rich whiteboard tool
Cons
- Requires downloading & installing
- No landing page customization options
- No call-to-action offers
- No automated webinars
- Steep pricing when scaling
- Not meant for marketing or sales webinars
Best or unique feature
- Best for large scale webinars with thousands of attendees
Webinar Types & Setup
Audience Interactions
Presentation Tools
Pricing & Trial
Webinar Funnel Pages
Video Engine & Support
Webinar Replay
Email Reminders
Mobile Devices
Analytics & Exports
Zoom has been the most widely-used used video conferencing software for a long time. It’s free to use for online meetings, but the webinar tool costs extra.
It connects people in a clean and secured space in order to prosper and be more effective. Whether you need to host a webinar, an online seminar or an on-demand online meeting, Zoom can help you out.
Over the years, Zoom has perfected its video engine and its downloadable desktop client can easily handle virtually unlimited attendees. Their pricing goes up to 10,000+ attendees, so they are very confident.
The online meetings solution allows you to have public and private conversations, collaborate on the whiteboard and initiate screen-sharing. However, if you want to host a webinar, you have to pay extra.
It covers various integrations with numerous tools, from safety to training and development to performance tracker. One of the great features is that people can join meetings and webinars with just one click.
The best thing is, people without internet connectivity can still participate via phone call. And all your sessions can be recorded stored in the cloud (1 GB of storage space), so you can save room on your hard disk and retrieve your recordings later for assessment.
Zoom Free Plan Features
- Up to 40 minutes per online meeting
- Up to 100 attendees
- Whiteboard feature
- Unlimited webinar hosts
- Team chat
- Mail and calendar
Zoom Upgrade Plan
- The Webinars add-on costs $79 per month extra
- Up to 500 attendees per webinar
- Up to 30 hours per session
Read the full Google Meet review
Google Meet (formerly known as Hangouts) is a free software by Google, which allows you to host online meetings.
Attendees can conveniently join a meeting via their browsers. One of the upsides for Google Meet is definitely its abundant integrations with Google tools, like Google Calendar and GMail.
It’s not meant to be a webinar platform, but you can definitely configure it in a way to make it work as a webinar solution. You would just need to craft your own registration page, reminder emails and follow-up email sequences.
Google Meet Free Plan Features
- Up to 100 participants
- Up to 60 minute meetings
- Screen sharing and recording capabilities
- Save recording to Google Drive
- Breakout rooms for moderators
Google Meet Upgrade Plan
- The cheapest Business Starter plan costs $6 per month per user
- Up to 100 participants per video meeting
- Up to 30 GB of storage
- Standard support
Read the full Adobe Connect review
Adobe Connect’s network, in classic Adobe tradition, emphasizes the creation of aesthetically attractive content that delivers a consistent story. Adobe Connect 11 was recently released, making it more open and providing a better consumer experience with modern HTML browsers and a new Windows desktop version.
The UI has been simplified, made more straightforward, and efficient. With improved host settings, you can better organize breakout sessions, create layouts, and save clean recordings.
Personalize your space with practical windows named Pods. You can design digital storyboards called Layouts by simply adding a label, a placement, and a dimension.
Adobe Connect includes a range of custom apps that you can use to boost the performance of your Layouts or develop your own applications, thanks to their new HTML SDK.
Adobe Connect Free Plan
- Free for one host with up to 3 attendees
Adobe Connect Upgrade Plan
- Meetings: Up to 25 attendees, range of options (screen/document sharing, unlimited meeting rooms per host, multiple hosts, etc.), starts at $50/month
- Webinars and Learning: 100-1500 attendees, starts at $130/month
Although you might not think of it as a free webinar platform. You can host live streams with YouTube Live. As a matter of fact, YouTube is used in the background by several professional webinar systems.
By using the event creation tool from YouTube Live, you can book and unlist your webinar, ensuring that only the crowd you want to see sees it. You can also embed the live video on your own website.
Thanks to their enormous servers, you can have as many attendees as you want (even though the participants are view-only). Also, you can decide if you want to publish your video after you’re done streaming it.
YouTube Live Free Features
- Unlimited participants
- Live streaming for up to 12 hours
- Must have a verified YouTube channel with 50+ subscribers to go live on Mobile
- Interact only via chat
Read the full Facebook Live review
Facebook Live is not built as a free webinar tool, but you can definitely make it work as one. As practically everyone has a Facebook account, it’s rational to employ Facebook Live. And it’s free!
To stream a discussion, presentation, Q&A session, or an online event, go live on Facebook. When you broadcast live, your audience can participate in the conversation by asking questions, commenting, reacting, or simply watching in real-time.
Once you’ve finished broadcasting, the video can be posted on your Facebook page or profile, which ensures it will continue to spread your message once your webinar has ended.
In addition, you can control who accesses your webinar by limiting it from your news feed if necessary. You can also filter who sees your message based on their age, gender, location, or language.
Facebook Live Free Features
- Up to 50 people on Messenger Rooms
- Live streaming up to 8 hours
- Interact only via chat
Free Webinar Tools FAQ
How to Choose the Best Free Webinar Platform?
It has to be noted that the marketing and engagement features on the free webinar software platforms are quite limited. They’re limited in terms of webinar session length, amount of attendees allowed and follow-up features.
Trying out any of these best free webinar software is great for getting a feel of the platform and trying it out, but at some point you have to take your webinar game to the next level and upgrade to a paid plan as you grow.
So, it’s important to evaluate all the features of a webinar tool, so that it can support you once you’re growing and need to scale up to a paid plan.
Summary of Free Webinar Platforms
There are many webinar platforms on the market. The best free webinar software allows you to organize webinars live or schedule on-demand webinars.
The ideal webinar platform allows you to customize the registration page and get more webinar sign-ups. Then send them timely reminder emails to invite them to your webinar session.
During the webinar, you can engage with them using various interaction tools and ultimately turn them into potential customers. If you’re hosting sales webinars, then the email follow-up sequence and the webinar recording software feature are crucial parts of turning attendees into customers.
Full list of the overall best webinar software platforms.
Most of them have free 14-day trials available.
