In this article we will compare Zoom Webinars against Contrast webinars. It's important to know that Zoom has currently two webinar platforms on offering. The first is called Zoom Webinars – and the others is called Zoom Webinar Plus. In this article, we'll look at both webinar products in-depth and compare them vs. Contrast webinars.
Zoom Webinars Plus is the webinar product that we think most companies will end up using. Simply because the regular Zoom Webinar comes in short for businesses who run webinars for lead generation. It's clunky in use, has no real branding features – and does not collect the important data you and your sales team can use to turn viewers into revenue.
Zoom Webinar Plus, has more features – is easier to brand, although still limited – and allows teams to create a more professional experience. Not only is this product more expensive than the regular Zoom Webinar product – all these extra features also are difficult to set up. Adding significant setup time to your webinars.
What is Contrast Webinars?
Contrast makes it effortless to host modern, engaging webinars, and then repurpose every moment into content that keeps working long after you go live. Clips, highlights, landing pages — without manual work and tons of set up.
Plus, with native HubSpot integration, every registration, attendance, and interaction syncs straight to your CRM. Zero CSVs.
Hundreds of companies have switched webinars from Zoom Webinars, including , Webinar Plus to Contrast in recent years. With success. Userguiding for example has 5x their registration since switching over to Contrast. Or take what Lauren from Rally shared about her change to Contrast:
Our framework to compare platforms
To create a fair playing field, we're going to look at different categories and rank how Zoom and Contrast compare. These categories are based on what independent review site G2 say are important decision factors for marketings when purchasing webinar software:
- Pricing
- Brandability and customization
- Webinar engagement and data
- Ease of use and implementation
- Repurposing and Artificial Intelligence
- Analytics and ROI
- HubSpot integration
- Support
We break this down between Zoom Webinars and Contrast webinars. If you're thinking about choosing Zoom Webinars Plus, we also wrote a guide on that platform here where we compare it to Zoom Webinars.
How does Contrast compare vs. Zoom Webinar in terms of Pricing?
Let's talk price first. Important to note is that Zoom prices on attendees – meaning people who actually come to the webinar. Whereas most other platforms price based on registration. At first, pricing per attendee seems the fair solution, because it means you only pay for what you get.
However, if you look deeper – that logic is flawed. Because webinars are so much more than the live moment. It's about how much time you spend setting up, and managing the webinar. The recording – that still drives views and therefore value. And especially, once the webinar is over to repurpose it in new content such as short clips and blog articles.
Zoom's pricing
Zoom's pricing is not as straightforward as it appears on the surface, i.e. their pricing page. What seems easy at first becomes more complex as you add team members to zoom. If you're using Zoom for your meetings, that means yet another subscription (Zoom Workplace Pro subscription) you need to purchase. Want to run pre-recorded webinars? Mandatory upgrade to Webinars Plus.
Where the real pain lies with pricing? Try adding a team member. It's yet another Zoom Pro license - and they cannot co-host webinars with you. So every team member lives in their own unique space with their webinars and without the ability to see other team members their webinars.
If you're hosting webinars as a team – which many of you marketing teams are – then we recommend you stop reading here and instead read the review on Zoom Webinars Plus.
Let's paint a somewhat realistic scenario to better understand pricing. This is the only section where we compare all three platforms at once so if you're price sensitive – you can make a quick decision.
We're going to assume a few things:
- You get 250 registrants in a month
- You host webinars with a team of 3
The advertised price for Zoom Webinars is $89 (ex-VAT) for 300 attendees. Add additional Hub-hosts of $65 per host. They don've have Zoom Workplace Pro? Add an additional $16.99 per team member.
The initial $89 advertised plan quickly becomes $253 (ex-VAT) for those same 300 attendees and three team members.
Zoom is still cheaper than most webinar platforms. But not as cheap as you might have initially thought by looking at its pricing page. I'll warn you here. Contrast is more expensive than Zoom. However, even if price is a problem to you – I recommend reading on. There are lots of hidden costs that are making your webinar program less effective over time, and actually cost your team time compared to Contrast.
Contrast's pricing
Contrast charges based on unique registrations. Their belief is that value is created along the webinar workflow, and not just the live moment. That also means that Contrast is more expensive than Zoom. But its pricing easier to comprehend, and perhaps more transparent:
- Free plan with up to 30 registrants and 45 minute webinars
- 100 Registrants per month starting at $69 per month
- 250 Registrants per month starting at $179 per month
- 600 Registrants per month starting at $419 per month
Every plan includes unlimited team members, AI repurposing and pre-recorded webinars. That means you can scale your webinar strategy – without unexpectedly inflating your costs when you for example add a team members, or want to run pre-recorded events.
While Contrast is more expensive at first sight. One has to take into account the value derived from the platform. Time is money as they say. And with Zoom you'll spend a lot more time on setting up and managing your webinars. Let's look at why that is in the next section.
Ease of use Zoom Webinar vs. Contrast
It's ironic. Something that's difficult to use gets used more than something that's easy to use. But that's not a good thing. It matters if you're spending your time managing the webinar vs. improving its content. That's why you should look for a platform that's easy to use; so you and your team can focus on the important things.
Zoom's ease of use
Everything on Zoom Webinar is an option. That's great if you're looking for a lot of customization. I mean, have you ever wanted to protect your webinar using a password – Zoom is your friend.
But it seems to not have any opinion on what a generic webinar looks like. For example:
- You need to turn on a registration page
- You need to turn on asking people for their email address
- You need to turn on the recording
- Etc...
For 90% of times when people run webinar, this is the default setup. Yet on Zoom, you have to pay attention and not forget to turn these options on. Before you know it, you hosted a webinar and forgot to record it. How frustrating.
Yes, it is possible to template the settings. But it will create issues later on with ownership, and changes in the templates that are not properly communicated with your team.
Contrast's ease of use
Contrast webinars in comparison is the exact opposite of Zoom Webinars. It's built with marketers in mind and the webinar platform is designed around that use case. By default:
- A registration page is created when you create your webinar
- The registration form is added and built in a way to optimize for conversions
- Recordings are turned on and automatically available after the webinar
This means that the path to create a webinar on Contrast webinars feels natural – and logical. There are no things to really think of, because it's simply Plug and Play.
This makes Contrast a lot easier to use than Zoom Webinars. This is also confirmed by Contrast users and G2 who rated Contrast the #1 webinar platform in terms of usability.
Because it's easier to use, you and your team will make less mistakes – you gain back time you would normally spend on managing the webinar. Users that switched from Zoom say that they save lots of time they can now put into improving their content, or webinar follow-up.
Customization and brandability
You want to make sure your brand is well represented. After all, you spent countless hours on designing and improving your brand's perception. Studies show that brand plays an important role in improving conversion rates, because they help establish trust.
Therefore, a good webinar platform helps you to recreate your brand throughout the webinar experience – instead of flaunting their own.
Zoom's branding abilities
Zoom is Zoom and they don't shy away from this. You need to download the Zoom Application to run the webinar. Your attendees will need to do the same. That's added friction that will hurt registration and attendance rates. Throughout the webinar experience, it simply shouts Zoom. Including things like webinar reminder emails. Your brand takes the passenger seat.
If your brand matters to you, your prospects or customers – then Zoom is hurting your business. A cohesive brand experience is important for … and studies show that cohesion plays a favorable role in improving conversion rates.
Let's for example look at the registration page of your webinar on Zoom. This is likely the first impression that your potential attendees and prospects get. Now scroll down to the registration page of Contrast in the next section.
The few branding options on Zoom Webinars are limited in functionality too. They include trivial things like the color of your speaker badge. Or the more aggressive virtual background. For some brands, that's enough. But for a brand that takes itself seriously, it's not.
Rich and customizable branding with Contrast
On Contrast, while you create your account – it fetches your brand's look and feel from your website. Including your logo and color. That's because Contrast webinars believes your brand should be front and center throughout the experience.
Your logo appears throughout the entire webinar experience, including confirmation and reminder emails. It automatically adjusts the color of important components to that of your brand color. This means your attendees will feel right at home.
Poll on Contrast that will adapt to your brand's color and font
Besides that, Contrast has also put a lot of effort into making your video look on-brand. With of course your logo, colors and also fonts and even themes to match. These elements are part of the video. So that when you download the webinar, you don't need to add them again – or hire a video editor to do so. Again, it's all play and play.
Webinar repurposing and artificial intelligence
Teams are always looking to extract more value out of their webinars. Webinars are more than just live moments. The best marketing teams turn their webinars into short clips and lots of written content such as blog articles. This is often referred to as repurposing.
Let's look at how both webinar platforms help you repurpose your webinars.
Zoom
First Zoom. Remember at the start, where we showed that on Zoom you have to turn on the recording for your webinar? Well, here's another reminder to do so. Because without a recording – it's difficult to repurpose your webinar.
That is a little bit of a “foreboding” sign of the way Zoom sees repurposing. Because there are not many more features than this. Yes, you can record the webinar. You can also create clips.
Zoom also has a few other AI features, which are paid add-ons:
- AI Companion: The AI Companion can provide summaries and "catch me up" features if a user joins late. While the idea is sound, it is somewhat hidden in the menu and I doubt many users will find it naturally. We can imagine other use cases that will become more valuable in the future.
- AI Avatars: You can generate an AI avatar with a script for the registration page. The AI Avatars are awfully robotic and will in no way do your brand justice. Please stay away from them.
Luckily on Zoom Webinar Plus, there are more repurposing features – but they of course come at a price.
Webinar repurposing on Contrast
Contrast is one of the first webinar platforms that built repurposing in. Contrast uses artificial intelligence to automatically find the best 10 moments of your webinar based on an engagement score. You can download these clips, including subtitles for social media straight from Contrast. That feature is called Clip Ai and available on every Contrast plan – including the free one.
If you don't like the clips that Contrast found, it's still possible to create your own clips. No need to be a video editor. On Contrast, video editing is as simple as selecting a part of the webinar transcript and turn it into a branded clip with subtitles.
Select a part of the transcript to create a clip
With Repurpose Ai users turn their webinars into written content such as rich summaries, worthwhile quotes and of course marketing material such as blog articles optimized for SEO and newsletters. It uses an Ai-model in the background to turn your webinar transcript into high quality content. Simply in the click of a button – and it's always possible to fine-tune by talking to Repurpose Ai, in the same way you can chat with ChatGPT or Claude.
Click written summaries, blog articles and more in the click of a button
Just like Clip Ai, Repurpose Ai is freely available on every Contrast plan. You can try it now by creating a free account.
Contrast does more on the repurposing part. Here's an overview of other things worth nothing:
- Webinar recording in FullHD
- Local recording of every speaker
- Poll results as beautiful branded shareable images
- Webinar transcripts automatically created
- Chat transcripts
It's clear that Contrast is a clear winner here – as it's the only platform that seriously lets marketers put more out with less resources.
Engagement Zoom Webinar vs. Contrast webinars
Engagement refers to how people interact during your live webinar. One, more engagement means that people stay longer to watch the end of your webinar. And two, it means data that you can use for follow-up and personalization. Three, it's also the best signal that your attendees had a great time and got value out of your webinar.
Creating engagement during webinars matters. And your webinar platform should help you do this. Let's look at Zoom and Contrast – and how they compare.
Zoom
Zoom has many different engagement features, including chat, polls and hand raising. They do what is expected of them and work generally well. There's a debate whether these features couldn't use a lick of paint – because they appear as simple popups (over the video), which some people might find basic.
The problem with these engagement features is that they are copied from Zoom Meetings. So your webinar ends up feeling like…. A meeting. That's right. Who wants their audience to feel like they're stuck in yet another meeting? No one.
Contrast
Compared to Contrast, who also have all the engagement features you expect – and they go beyond that. One thing that Contrast does differently than other webinar platforms is to allow you to add engagement features onto the stream. Without spending too many words on explaining it, why not look at what that looks like:
Polls can be added on stream resulting in more engagement
Of course that's optional and you can also do something like a poll the classic way. Most of the engagement features on Contrast are designed in a way so that they create more engagement – they create a unique moment during the live webinar, keeping audience attention.
All of that engagement data is tracked and stored. Available for your review after the live webinar. Either in CSV format, or synchronized with HubSpot or Salesforce. Allowing you to create truly powerful segments, workflows and reports that help you increase the ROI from your webinars.
Data and analytics: webinar ROI
Data and analytics are key in measuring the success of your webinar program. If your only goal is to broadcast a presentation – then sure any webinar platform will do. But most of us, go deeper and want to understand how long people stay around for, so that you can judge your content's usefulness. Other want to understand engagement during the webinar, and use that data later on in sales follow-up.
Zoom analytics
This is a major pain point for B2B marketers. On the regular plan, you cannot see who registered for your webinar within the dashboard UI; you are forced to download a CSV file to view registrant data. Or you need to go into a report builder to see who registered to your webinar. Nobody has time for this.
More detailed analytics live in a separate tab "Analytics & Reports". Here you need to do a bit of effort to set the filters right so that you get analytics for your webinars. This is time-consuming and unnecessarily complex.
Contrast analytics
Before the webinar starts, Contrast offers detailed analytics on who registered to your webinar. It includes information such as the UTM, how many of your webinars they attended before and the company of the logo they work for. This makes it at once clear what kind of people are registering to your webinar.
On Contrast, the Q&A feature is open to attendees before the webinar starts. Questions asked by early registrants are visible as well, meaning that you can adapt your content to your audience's wishes. A powerful way to increase view time.
Once the webinar is over, Contrast shows you detailed information on:
- The average watch time for both the live and replay (on-demand)
- Watch time per viewer for both the live and replay (on-demand)
- The number of viewers, both new and returning
- The most watched moments of the webinar
Besides giving you a comprehensive overview of how long people watched your webinar, Contrast also gives you detailed analytics on polls
- Overall poll results
- Poll results broken down by attendee
- Number of poll answers per attendee
And on CTA clicks:
- Number of clicks per CTA
- CTA clicks broken down by attendee
And on Q&A:
- Questions asked by attendees
- Number of upvotes per questions
All of this data is available as a CSV download. Smart teams integrate Contrast with their CRM Platform, such as HubSpot so that this data is there available too.
HubSpot integration
Chances are that you're using HubSpot as your CRM. It's important to receive webinar data in HubSpot, so that you can create personalized marketing campaigns based on attendance – and the sales team can do follow up.
Typically, webinar platforms send over attendee data (such as watch time) and engagement data (such as poll answers). This data then enabled teams to create segments, workflows and also reports and dashboards within HubSpot.
Zoom x HubSpot Integration
Good news. An integration exists. Keep in mind that the Zoom integration on the marketplace is the integration that spans both meetings and webinars. It's currently reviewed at 3.4 stars.
It helps you synchronize data from your webinars to HubSpot, including HubSpot Marketing Events. It offers basic insights into which contacts attended your webinars, and how long they watched.
Unfortunately engagement data is missing – which makes acting upon webinar data difficult for those who are using Zoom.
Contrast the webinar platform built for HubSpot
Contrast was designed with HubSpot in mind. That means that all the data you can view on Contrast, is also synchronized with HubSpot in realtime. Including engagement data – making it automatically a more powerful integration than that of HubSpot.
A few ways Contrast customers are using the integration today:
- Build smart lists of contacts who attended specific webinars for targeted follow-up campaigns
- Use attendance signals (registered, attended, watched replay, engagement score) to update HubSpot lead scores
- Trigger lifecycle stage changes — e.g. automatically move a contact from MQL → SQL when they attend a live session
- Enrol attendees and no-shows into separate HubSpot workflows automatically after a webinar ends
- Push webinar activity (which sessions a contact attended, how long, what they engaged with) onto the contact record so sales has full context before outreach
Not using HubSpot? Contrast also has a native Salesforce integration. Or simply connect to 3000+ other tools through Zapier, or Make.com. For advanced use cases, there are webhooks and APIs available.
Support
Both Contrast and Zoom offer support for their plans. On Zoom, you'll firstly have to talk to a chat bot before being able to talk to a human. On Contrast, you'll directly talk to a human – and the response times are fast. Enterprise customers get a shared Slack-channel with direct access to the technical team of Contrast.
Still struggling to make a choice? A few more details..
Let's look at a few more differences between Zoom Webinars and Contrast that will hopefully help you make a choice.
Video quality Zoom Webinars vs. Contrast
Zoom is famed for its stable video and the audio. But that comes at a cost and that is unfortunately video quality. Zoom Webinars are broadcasted in 480p. What does that mean? If you're not tech-savvy, this screenshot shows what that means.
Most videos that you find on YouTube these days are 1080p (FullHD) – so that is quite the upgrade from Zoom. You'll visually notice the difference.
Does this mean then that Contrast has less stability in video and audio? Nope. Contrast was founded in 2021 and has the luxury of using the latest technologies in video. This way, they can guarantee stable video and audio with high quality video in FullHD.
Both platforms support local recording of every individual speaker.
Setting up emails on Zoom Webinars and Contrast
Emails are one of those things you don't want to spend too much time on setting up. Ideally, the webinar platform helps you do this quickly with preconfigured templates and sequences. Like registration pages, you want to put the touch of your brand in there to create familiarity with your viewers.
On Zoom Webinars, emails are a little limited and lack in customization. This can be a limiting factor for most teams that want to deliver a branded and custom experience. Here are a few examples:
- You can only edit the body text of your emails
- You need to make use of the default reminder times
- You can't select the sender label or reply-to
- It does not contain your brand, but Zoom's brand instead
On Contrast, none of these problems apply luckily. Moreover, the email editor is easy in use and includes calendar invites for your attendees, ensuring high turnout rates for your webinars. There are both global email settings – as well as settings for individual webinars. That's useful with multi-language webinars for example.
How to make your choice: Contrast or Zoom Webinars
There is no denying that Zoom offers a lot of webinar for buck. It has most of the features you expect to capture registrant's email addresses and then broadcast a presentation to the attendees. It will do all of this, and it will be a reliable partner to get it done. But this is where it's stops.
Teams that are looking to take their webinars to the next level, will quickly find Zoom's shortcomings to slow them down – and often stand in the way of real webinar success. Contrast offers a real alternative for modern companies that are looking to deliver branded, engaging experiences to their audience.
Its branding and customization features help you stand out from the Zoom-crowd and your competitors by giving you easy to use tools to make your webinar experience shine. Your audience will feel right at home.
The engagement features on Contrast make webinars feel alive and Contrast users report an increase up to 46% in engagement during their webinars. Definitely a plus, in a world where most people don't stick around until the end of your webinar.
Other things like your audience not having to download the Zoom app in order to watch a webinar is a big advantage. This removes friction and leads to higher signup and attendance rates. Zefort for example, reported up to 79% higher attendance rates after they switched from Zoom to Contrast.
There's of course the HubSpot integration that gives you detailed analytics in who attended your webinars, how long – and how they engaged during them. All of that data is available as a property so you can use them in segments, workflows and reporting.
Book a demo and why 100s of companies have recently switched from Zoom Webinar to Contrast webinars.
