ON24 Reviews

Pros

The reason we went with On24 was for the broadcasting feature, and how easy it was to set up an event. We host between 25 and 35 live trainings a year, but up to a few years ago they were only for those would could travel to our facility. Our goal was to open the experience to a much larger audience through video, and On24 was the best solution.
One of my biggest requirements when choosing a platform was the ease of use for our attendees. Between making it very easy to sign in, and how customizable the user dashboard is, I was able to ensure the best user experience for my audience, most of whom don't use a computer much.
We are now in our second year with the platform and it continues to get better. The On24 team has been very responsive when we had any concern.

Cons

Our two biggest issues with the system have been:
Freezing and buffering problems with our audience. When we first starting using their platform, On24 was flash based. They have made strides to move to HTML 5 and adaptive bit rates, but we still get complaints of the video freezing. Most of the time, a browser refresh fixes it. I have a feeling that most of the other problems stem from someone watching Netflix in the other room.
The second is the mobile phone experience. For a standard webinar it would be ok, but it is unusable for broadcast video. Since they cannot have the slide widget and the media player open at the same time, it makes it way too cumbersome to switch from video to slide to Q&A and back. Until they have an app like Citrix, I tell all my attendees to never use their phones.

Pros

Easy to learn, user friendly, and reliable. Other than a few quarks when doing a pre-record in for simulive events. Having a reliable and consistent platform is key for me. I know if I set it up to the specs ON24 provides, I'll get a quality product each time.

Cons

Few quirks that can't seem to be fixed. i.e. I can's pull raw lead reports in chrome, but I can in firefox. But, i find chrome is better for functionality while in presentation manager. So, basically this means I am constantly going between both browsers when creating, producing and reporting.

I produced a number of "simu-live" programs last year and I understand that the recording is done slide by slide, but when I have a single presenter and he wants to give a typical presentation in one continuous take, the slide transitions sometimes get caught up, and a few times I've had to go back and re-record.
So, I've asked the presenter to be mindful and pause in between each slide transition, and then it results in a bunch of dead air throughout. so, that can be a little tricky to navigate. But I've made it work.

sometimes the animations in simulive recording don't translate to the final rendering, which I can't seem to figure out why, when they transitioned during the taping. but again, just a small quirk.

Pros

We use On24 daily and it helps us reach mobile users otherwise left out (due to bulky plug-ins) and it´s on-demand module really helped us build a whole new service. Additionally the real-time Reporting is great and provides valuable information. The integrations can be improved but overall it´s a great tool if you want a reliable software for today´s user-demands.

Cons

integrations are bit difficult, paid add-ons (e.g. lead-notification for one should really be a standard feature and send it by email if someone registers).

Pros

Ease of use! I have NEVER used a software so simple and intuitive! It's always been easy to set up, and when On24 rolls out new features, they hold webinars that instruct those on how to use it. Those webinars are helpful, but even if you can't attend - the updates are pretty simple to navigate!

Cons

Chat - those on chat ALWAYS need an Event ID# even if you're simply asking a hypothetical question. I always get an answer, just takes some unnecessary exchanges at the beginning to get there.

Pros

Responsive technical team
Continuous improvement to platform
Excellent initial and ongoing training
Highly customizable screens to promote our brand

Cons

Infrequent technical difficulties with firewalls and unique audience configurations are sometime difficult to overcome during a live webinar which annoy customers

Pros

I really like that the registration link automatically becomes the On Demand link so I never have to worry about links expiring. I think it has a lot of bells and whistles that if you're able to leverage them are a big benefit.

Cons

The reliance on flash and cookies. I often have issues with an attendees or presenters slide player not working and we regularly have to tell people to refresh and enable flash. In a highly regulated industry where security settings on our attendees computers is high - this is often problematic. I also think it would be beneficial to have a dial in option for attendees as a standard part of the platform rather than an add on. This is pretty standard for other platforms. I also wish there was an easy way from the presenter platform to be able to see the attendee console too so you can see what they see.

Pros

We use On24 in our marketing department to attract new leads for our sales team. We use On24's Simulive feature. This allows us to pre-record our speaker and slides. Then the day of the live webinar the attendees watch the edited video then our speakers are pushed into a live conversation to take questions that have came in. On24 is maybe the only webinar platform that can do this. All others are more of a screenshare system. Simulive gives us the most flexiblity to have a seamless webinar​ without any sound or speaker problems.

Cons

On24 audience console allows us to put up different resources, surveys and links, but it is limited in its customizability​. I'd like to see more console customization when it comes to menu format and colors. Also being able to upload your branded font would be great too.

Pros

The ease of setting and conducting up webinars. The detailed reporting lead generation capability.

Love the widgets and the ability to customize the console. We use Ideas and group chat a lot within our training webinars to keep the audience engaged.

Cons

When we have a webinar series, we can link them so individuals can register for all sessions by choosing on all sessions in the list. They are not notified, in case they miss one or are not able to automatically register for all.

At times, an individual will me mistake use a wrong email address and we need to go to each session to remove him, instead of being able to do that for all sessions.

Pros

Flexibility, I have the ability to produce live presentations or pre-recorded presentations that are broadcasted as if they are live. My KOL's love this option. Once recorded On24 software is incredibly intuitive and easy to use, and the analytics we get post the live broadcast date are incredibly useful. They've allowed our company to have almost a "netflix esq" type of webinar service, where visitors can view any webinar we've done at any time all housed in one central location.

Cons

I have very few negative things to say about On24.

Pros

We started using On24 this year and the support getting started was tremendous and extremely helpful. The online tutorials come in handy as we have extended our use of the On24 webinars. The reporting is a true benefit to us and used in multiple ways before and after events.

Cons

We wish there was an option to set up and event where we could allow the agents to use a microphone. We also wish the Group Chat was more useful. Since attendees don't see the other people in the room with them, group chat has come in handy to add validity to the event, however when trying to read messages in chat, it becomes troublesome. We also wish our presentation would allow animation.

Pros

I love that we can customize the console to have the look and feel we want. I also like that you can use it in many different ways - for training, marketing, making a show out of your sessions etc. You can conduct courses, certifications as well which is very convenient - no need to use additional tools for this purpose.

Cons

Perhaps that it glitches sometimes and it can be nerve-wracking during live sessions.

Pros

I think it has got an interesting console which could be personalized with useful widget for both users and speaker.

Cons

I think the process for the post webinar for example. I would like to have a dedicated section for post webinar in order to have it already ready after webinar and to give possibility to non participant to go just after the webinar inside to look what done.

Pros

I like that ON24 is easy to use. I can setup my webinars quickly and there are also lots of elements I can customize. I like that it is easy to setup polling questions, move slides around and also easy to answer audience q's- either privately or to the whole group. It is also easy to see how many other webinars the participants have viewed and engaged with.

Cons

There are some elements I would like to have more control over the design. The polling questions do look a bit plain. But most of the elements are easy to customize.

Pros

I like the capabilities included, it's sufficient but not too many. We can do a simu-live, polls, upload videos, multiple customer engagement tools for the webcast windows, etc. It has been easy to explain to my presenters of varying experience and backgrounds how to use this tool and be able to jump right into it.

Cons

It's weird that you can't test the screensharing unless you/someone is dialed in. We have a lot of problems with people using ON24 with Internet Explorer/Microsoft Edge. It takes a really long time to upload slides, so I have to plan around having at least 10 minutes to spare. Also running into small, silly hiccoughs. Like trying to upload a PDF and it won't let me because "it's not the right file type" but really, there was a period in the file name. Maybe an addition to the prompt to warn that that could be the issue. It's unfortunate that we need a plugin to screenshare because when I have presenters with strict IT rules (government and big corporations, mostly) they can't just do that.

Pros

The ON24 platform is very user friendly. The set-up of a webinar, collection of registration to the execution on the day of the webinar is great and so easy. The system is very reliable and we've experienced very few hick-ups along the way from a technological standpoint and the quality of the call on the live webinar is also reliable. The reporting capabilities are robust and above average in comparison to other suppliers.

Cons

While ON24 is a great webinar platform, the cost is higher than average which makes it an expensive platform to use. Also, the tech people that join the webinars for an added $500 or more fee, aren't always the best and have language barriers and aren't that proactive. It's apparent this has been outsourced overseas. However, ON24 has worked with us and enabled us request specific technicians which has been helpful.

Pros

ON24 delivers a consistent webinar service for our marketing department. We do several webinars a quarter and see ON24 as being a partner in making them a success. We use a variety of widgets and love that ON24 rolls out new ones consistently to make the webinar experience better for the attendees and users.

Cons

Occasionally our phones delay behind the presentation, but support has been notified and there's nothing they can do on their end to improve it. We adjust when this happens.

Pros

I like the customization features of the console and that you can continue the customer journey by pointing them to additional resources.

Cons

There a few nitpicky things. The bigger issue is that I don't feel confident that requests for new features or adjustments to existing functionality are heard and taken any higher in the company (things like letting the media player remain fixed in location, rather than popping up whenever something is pushed to it). Also, their PowerPoint slide converter often makes slides fuzzy if there is too much text/detail. Granted, that last complaint is probably for the better, as detail-heavy slides aren't really a best practice.

Pros

Data capture and insights into how customers are engaging is miles ahead of other webinar software. There are so many touch point options.

More customisable than other webinar platforms, you can make it look and feel like your brand and curate the right experience.

Cons

We have had some problems with integrating it into our CRM (but we have a highly customised CRM, might be fine with off-the-shelf CRMs)

Pros

There are many features of the software and this makes it easy to customize each webinar. Functionality is great and ease of use by the users and attendees of the webinars. Love being able to customize the look and feel of your webinars and all the elements you can add.

Cons

We have had many issues with Screen Share and with attendees being about the hear or view the Live Presentations. Many times we can correct the issues that the attendees are having and most of the time it is a browser issue but there have been times that we have gotten complaints.

Pros

Overall it has a lot of great features for interaction, some of which I haven't yet used. I did find that there are some ON24 certifications available, and I'm looking forward to learning more on there. I do like that we can customize emails in many ways, and there are a lot of options for what sort of materials can be included in each webcast we run.

Cons

The reporting options are extremely disparate. If I want to download information on who attended, for how long, and what their survey responses were, I have to enter three completely different reporting windows and download all of those reports separately. It'd be great if there was a better function for pulling reports on more of a checkbox list of everything I want to pull at once.

It'd be nice to have more control over what "Producer" can see versus what "Presenter" can see, such as hiding the attendee list from presenters who are outside of my organization, for GDPR reasons.

Also, the "add to calendar" feature isn't exactly as customizable as I would like it to be, both in that specific module and how it appears in emails.

Pros

We do over 250+ webinars a year and ON24 allows us to scale our webinar program while still making every webinar fun and interactive. They have multiple webinar types (On-Demand, SimuLive, Live) which makes planning for a large number of webinars much easier. We can use the SimuLive feature to still host webinars when we don't have any presenters available. They also have lots of "widgets" that you can add to the audiences view of the webinar that allows them to customize and click on different items during the webinars.

Cons

There is not to much that we don't like about the software. Reporting could be better and have an aggregate reporting pulling feature.

Pros

Analytics, speed of setup, ability to fully customise and brand fully, engagement hub, plenty of widgets to keep customers engaged.

Cons

Speed navigating some of the setup menus, delay to live stream 30 secs. Lack of help with initial equipment recommendations and setup. Clunky help systems force a lot of reading no real on boarding process.

Pros

The ability to create a full experience for the user (sharing assets during the webinar), the ease of use for hosting speakers in different locations, reporting / insights and how it is compatible with SalesForce

Cons

Slide advancement it only via click the arrow, slide notes cannot be customized or edited after uploading the slides, supported fonts for the slide decks, editing the video post-webinar, video quality recommendations v.s what actually works / displays correctly during the webcast, being able to easily archive / delete test programs for webcasts

Pros

The primary reason for selecting and implementing ON24 was due to the fact that it offered integration with HubSpot. Upon integrating ON24 with HubSpot, I can manage registrations, trigger reminder/invite emails, send follow-up emails, and host registration forms through my HubSpot instance. In addition, when I do need to access the ON24 portal directly, it's easy to navigate and contains many of the features you need and will use to execute webinars.

Cons

There are certain places within ON24 where the functionality seems a bit limited. For example, there are only a handful of ways you can personalize reminder emails, including branding, text editing, etc. We have also found that ON24 doesn't enable you to create a series of webinars. Instead, we had to create individual, separate events.

Pros

When comparing webinar platforms, One24 was above and beyond in terms of analytics. You can easily see registrants, attendees, and see their engagement (who downloaded a resource, who responded to a poll, etc). This has helped immensely for measuring and helping us drive continued engagement in our presentations. The webinar console was a big selling point too, as it can be completely customized to your brand's identity. Finally, the automated follow up emails and Marketo integration are key.

Cons

On24 is by far the most expensive webinar platform that my team encountered. However, it's reliable and worth it for my company. There are a few small things that I don't like - for example, getting signed out of the platform constantly - but overall, it works for us.