Best Webinar Software: What I Learned Hosting 1,000s of Webinars

Most "best webinar software" lists out there are generic comparison articles written by people who have never actually hosted webinars at scale.

After hosting 1,000s of webinars and building Univid, I've learned that most teams choose webinar software based on the wrong criteria.

After running webinars for +5 years myself, as well as talking to 1000s of marketers rolling out their webinar strategies, the biggest mistake I see companies make is treating webinars like larger meetings.

It means way too many organizations are hosting their webinars in their everyday meeting software, and as an extended, larger version of an everyday meeting. This causes a few things to happen:

Consequence: Their marketing team is burning out because of all the manual admin

A webinar with more than 20 people registering involves a lot of potentially time-consuming tasks:

• getting people to attend - registration pages, driving traffic to those, sending email invites, confirmations, reminders, follow-up, with calendar links, etc, and convincing attendees on why they need to download yet another application.

• running the live webinar - removing attendees who unmuted themselves, juggling guest speakers and presentations, driving next steps, and at the same time, creating a smooth, engaging, and memorable attendee experience

• following up with the right communication - editing the recording, sending the on-demand link out, segmenting out who attended/not, sorting out the hot leads based on engagement, and understanding the outcome.

Well, as a result of this:

Consequence: They are not hitting their KPIs, or data is not available.

The company is not achieving the webinar goals they expect - whether it's the MQL quotas or the number of qualified leads.

And many times, the outcome is not even measured in the first place - who attended, how they engaged, or if it moved the needle (no CRM integration, no personal links, no tracking).

Consequence: No momentum or synergies between webinars.

It's a painful process setting up a new webinar every single time, as they:

• don't have a repeatable way to set the webinars up

• don't use templates

• have a complex tool that relies on a single person knowing it all

Typically, they don't plan out in terms of webinar series, so there is no momentum and synergies between webinars.

Modern webinars are no longer just live presentations on Zoom-style platforms. For many SaaS companies, webinars have become a deep part of their GTM motion, or growth channel to upsell existing customers

But the business goals or SaaS KPI:s you aim to move with the webinars heavily impact what to look for in a webinar platform. And what will be the best option for your business.

So first, understand your main webinar objective, whether it's:

• build awareness, trust, and thought leadership

• generate leads and demand

• penetrate a specific new market or segment

• run demos and educate around your product

• onboard new customers

That changes what actually matters when choosing a webinar platform.

After hosting 1,000s of webinars, I've found that four factors matter far more than feature comparison tables.

In my experience, the most important things are usually not attendee limits or stacking up the most features. Instead, for 90% of companies out there, the biggest impact comes from:

Goal: easy to collaborate. Not "feeling new every time".

Easy collaborating with hosts, guest speakers, colleagues, moderators, records automatically, easy to go live and engage without losing focus.

Goal: branded, professional, conversion-driven.

It should be easy to join as an attendee - no downloads or additional steps. You want a browser-based webinar platform with nice reminders that have "add to calendar" buttons, and that is optimized to join easily with one click.

Going into the live session where the webinar takes place. Typically, with a countdown setting expectations.

And branding matching throughout the entire experience - making the attendees feel it's a professional experience that reflects your own brand.

Goal: webinar admin that saves time, and automation that plays nice with your other systems.

The webinar platform you choose should offer built-in reminders and follow-ups to automate.

Also, the webinar tool should ideally connect natively to your CRM to run things on your own from there (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, etc). This should be real-time two syncs that support both registering attendees to the webinar platform, sending your own custom reminder emails (enterprise), and getting engagement data back to segment, ping sales, and follow up accurately.

Preferably offering a custom API as well, where you can build your own webinar automation over time - for example, to create a new webinar, get attendee data, or build AI workflows with the webinar data using tools like n8n, Claude, GPT, or Zapier.

Goal: identify the right opportunities from the webinars, measure ROI, and pass lead signals onwards.

Make sure you don't just track attendees and no-shows. You want to get down to the details and understand if you can get lead signals like:

• who clicked your live CTA to download the e-book

• who only stayed for under 1 minute vs. who watched more than 70% of the webinar

• who signed up to watch a webinar on demand 2 months later

This data enables you to use webinars as a growth machine, and follow up with the right people at the right time - and it does not stop after the webinar is finished.

Example: get a ping on Slack in your #sales channel when someone registers for a webinar on demand.

These are things that reduce real friction from hosting, remove stress from going live, and allow the webinars to move real business outcomes and ROI.

This guide will go through the different types of webinar platforms and give you an actionable checklist based on +5 years of experience hosting 1000s of webinars. Let's go.

There are three types of software used to host webinars: the meeting software, dedicated webinar platform, and open streaming platform.

Best for:

• Internal meetings

• Workshops

• Team collaboration

Strengths:

• Easy to use

• Familiar interface

• Great for interactive discussions

Limitations:

• Registration and branding

• Webinar automation

• Replay experiences

• Marketing analytics

Examples:

• Zoom

• Google Meet

• Microsoft Teams

Best for:

• Thought leadership

• Demand generation

• Marketing

• Product demos and customer onboarding

• Automated webinars

Strengths:

✅ Conversion-focused attendee experience

Designed to maximize registrations and attendance with branded landing pages, reminders, and frictionless joining. No downloads, and no additional logins after registering to join.

✅ Professional webinar workflows

Built for webinars from start to finish, including registration, reminders, hosting, follow-ups, and replay. Branded from start to finish.

✅ Less admin for hosts

Automates repetitive tasks like reminders, recordings, moderation, and managing recurring webinar series.

Also, production is controlled when live, and you don't have to mute guests, and get a clean webinar recording.

✅ Audience engagement

Interactive features such as polls, Q&A, chat, and live CTAs to help keep attendees engaged and drive next steps.

✅ Automation and integrations

Connects with CRM and marketing systems to automate follow-ups and webinar operations in the backend.

✅ Rich attendee insights

Rich attendee and engagement data that automatically goes into the CRM system. No painful manual hours or guesswork from the marketing team, and no Excel.

✅ Replay and on-demand experiences

Turns webinars into evergreen assets with branded replay pages and ongoing lead generation opportunities. Good quality recording that can easily be repurposed.

Limitations

• An additional tool alongside your meeting software

• Premium platforms may cost more.

• Best suited for teams running webinars regularly rather than occasional internal meetings.

Examples:

• Univid

• GoToWebinar

Best for:

• Public events

• Brand awareness

• Community building

• Maximum reach

Strengths

• Big audience reach.

• Easy content distribution.

• Low cost.

Limitations

• Limited registration capabilities.

• Don't know who was there or how the attendees engaged - so can't follow-up, nurture, or measure

• Limited interaction.

• Can involve ads and recommend competitor content

• Minimal automation for B2B marketing workflows.

Examples:

• YouTube Live

• LinkedIn Live

• Vimeo

After hosting 1,000s of webinars, I don't think there's a single "best webinar software". The right platform depends on what role webinars play in your business.

If webinars are primarily for internal collaboration, meeting software is often enough.

If webinars are an important part of your go-to-market strategy, customer onboarding, or product marketing, I'd look at modern webinar platforms like Univid, built around those use cases - where you get automation to admin efficiently, branding, engagement, and can drive next steps with CTA:s, as well as data on who attended into your CRM.

Univid was built primarily for B2B teams scaling webinars as a marketing, onboarding, and growth channel - and it's become one of the top-rated webinar platforms on G2 (4.8/5) and HubSpot Marketplace (5/5).

Who is it for: Who is this for? This checklist is for any B2B company, SaaS team, organization, marketer, or enterprise buyer looking to run and scale webinars in 2026.

Maybe you're already hosting webinars in a meeting tool like Zoom, Teams, or an older platform like GoTo Webinar and are looking to take your webinar program to the next level.

After hosting 1,000s of webinars and working closely with B2B marketing teams over the past five years, these are the seven criteria I'd personally use when evaluating webinar software today.

Before signing an expensive annual contract, or even starting a free trial, I'd make sure I can confidently tick off each of these boxes:

Now you have the 7 criteria to look for when choosing webinar software. Let's wrap things up!

After working with webinars daily for more than five years, I've become convinced that the best webinar software isn't necessarily the platform with the longest feature list.

The biggest mistake I see companies make is treating webinars like larger meetings instead of a repeatable growth channel.

The right webinar platform should make it easier to build a repeatable webinar playbook that helps you:

• attract attendees

• engage your audience

• automate repetitive work

• understand what works

• and keep improving your webinar strategy

If webinars are an important part of your GTM strategy, product marketing, or customer education, those capabilities matter far more than looking at individual features.

At the end of the day, webinar software shouldn't just help you host a webinar.

It should help you build a repeatable system for educating, engaging, and growing your business.

The best webinar software isn't the one with the most features- it's the one that makes webinars a repeatable growth channel for your company.

How to host a webinar in 10 steps. Get more customers for your SaaS using webinars as a growth channel in 2026. This guide is based on real life examples and learnings from hosting 100s of webinars.

Watch the video guide, where I take you through how to create webinars like the best in 10 steps below:

A webinar is an online event that allows attendees from anywhere in the world to engage and learn around a topic.

Webinars often consist of a panel of a few speakers (visible in the video) and a larger audience (not visible in the video). This is commonly referred to as a "one-to-many" live stream. Engaging the audience is important to keep attention and increase webinar conversion rates - this is typically done through live chat, Q&A, polls, and live reactions.

Example of me hosting a live webinar in the Univid webinar platform - with engagement