Finding the best webinar platform for your brand can be hard, especially when there are so many options to choose from.
If you’ve been looking at the different tools available to host your webinars, you’ve probably encountered tools such as Crowdcast and Demio.
Both platforms offer a basic coverage of the features you need to run webinars, no matter what your objective is. But how do they compare to one another in terms of offering, value, and pricing?
In this article we'll take a look at the key features and offering each platform has to offer. Let's jump right in.
How we sourced this data
To make sure we provide you with the best and most unbiased comparison possible, we look at 20+ websites.
These websites include user-review websites, specifically those specialized in SaaS, and the websites of the mentioned tools of course.
Information from these different sources were prioritized in the following order:
- Third party websites (no sponsored posts/content)
- User reviews (G2, Gartner, marketplaces)
- Websites of the tools themselves
Some examples of those relevant sources:
- Crowdcast review on G2
- Crowdcast reviews on Capterra
- Demio reviews on G2
- Demio reviews on Capterra
- Demio reviews on HubSpot Marketplace
Pricing, viewer limits, feature list, and customer support options are sourced directly on the website of the tools themselves.
We will try to provide the most unbiased review possible. However, the quality of the viewer experience for each tool is subjective. We will be judging it on the modernity and interactivity of the experience.
Before we get into the key features, here’s a brief overview of the two products, including Crowdcast vs Demio pricing and online review ratings.
Crowdcast overview
Cost
Crowdcast offers a very transparent and cheap pricing model based on the number of live attendees to your events.
These start at:
- $49 /month for <100 live attendees (with 1 host seat)
- $89 /month for <250 live attendees (with 2 host seats)
- $195 /month for <1000 live attendees (with 5 host seats)
If you go over these limits you will be charged 15 cents per additional contact, which can quickly rack up your bill at the end of the month.
Note that host seats are limited, which can be a problem if you have a large team running webinars on Crowdcast. You can add more for $29 /seat/month.
However, some key features only unlock on some of the more expensive Pro plans:
- Multicasting (LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitch, etc.)
- Custom registration fields
- 4-hour max session length
Free plan: Crowdcast does not offer a free plan.
Free trial: Crowdcast offers a 2-week limited free trial with 10 live attendees & 60 minute sessions with all business features included. This is good to test the platform but most likely won't be enough to run a real webinar.
Reviews
Capterra reviews: 4.6/5 (96 ratings)
Ease of use: 9.4/10
Support: 9.3/10
Support options: Email or live chat.
Platform availability: Online, no download, all devices (mobile and desktop).
Crowdcast is a relatively cheap webinar platform compared to other options on the market, and they offer all the main features you need to run webinars.
They focus primarily on the community-building webinars use case, instead of the typical lead generation one. This is made obvious by their lack of CRM integrations (HubSpot, Salesforce, etc.).
Their interface is relatively user-friendly (and beginner-friendly) making it a good choice for companies that are just getting started with webinars, or who can't invest a lot of resources into the channel.
Crowdcast allows mature content on their platform which means they can be flagged by some firewalls, preventing viewers from accessing the content. This is especially the case for employees of enterprise companies that have tighter restrictions. Many Crowdcast users have experience reliability issues and have started to move away from the platform.
They also do not currently offer HubSpot or Salesforce integrations, meaning you have to use Zapier to send registrant data to and from your CRM. This requires extra work to set up and maintain from your team, and often won't cover all the same functionalities of a native integration.
Their per-organizer pricing model also means that it can be complex to enable other teams than the core webinar team to run their own sessions.
Looking for an alternative? Check out our top 10 Crowdcast alternatives.
Demio overview
Cost
Demio's pricing can be relatively complex to understand. They offer 4 different plans, with variations depending on how many attendees you're expecting: Starter, Growth, Premium, and Unlimited
These start at:
- Starter: $59 /month for <50 live attendees (only 1 host seat)
- Growth: $109 /host/month for <150 live attendees
- Premium: $259 /host/month for <500 live attendees
- Unlimited: $399 /host/month for <1000 live attendees
If you go over these limits, or if you need CRM integrations (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pardot, etc.) you will need to upgrade to one of their yearly plans (starting at $2200 /host/month for 150 live attendees). Zapier integration is available from the Growth plan and above.
Note that this pricing is based on host seats, so when you will be looking to scale your webinar efforts pricing won't scale well.
Free plan: Demio does not offer a free plan.
Free trial: Demio offers a 14-day free trial with all the features included in their Growth plan, but is limited to 20 attendees and a 1-hour session limit. You can run an internal test with this but not a full-blown webinar.
Reviews
Capterra reviews: 4.7/5 (240 reviews)
Ease of use: 9.2/10
Support: 9.1/10
Support options: Email or live chat. Standard support for Starter & Growth plans, and priority support for Premium & Unlimited plans.
Platform availability: Online, no download, all devices (mobile and desktop).
Demio provides a webinar platform at a cheap entry price that covers the tablestakes features for running webinars.
They focus primarily on the lead generation use case, but can also be used for group demos, thought leadership, panels, roundtables, or others.
However their pricing can be deceiving. The cheapest plans don't cover Zapier or CRM integrations — requiring a lot of work from the webinar team to export and import data from Demio into the other tools of the stack.
They offer the basic webinar features (landing pages, emails, analytics) that are easy to use, good engagement features like polls, Q&A, chat, and breakout rooms. However, they are lacking in video quality and viewer experience - Demio webinars can look a little outdated.
If you're willing to pay for a Premium Demio plan you're going to get a lot of high-quality features: custom domains, premium support, dedicated account manager, as well as all the integrations mentioned previously.
Looking for an alternative? Check out our top 10 Demio alternatives.
Crowdcast vs. Demio Comparison
As you can see from the overview of Crowdcast and Demio, they offer very similar products. This makes it difficult for users that are trying to figure out which solution best fits their needs.
Let's compare these two tools across 5 main topics:
- Live experience (host and speaker)
- Pre- and post-webinar experience
- Viewer experience
- Integrations
- Support
1. Live experience
As a host, your choice of tool is going to have a big impact on your capacity to put on a high-quality show for your audience.
Most webinar tools offer a webinar studio to help you run more interactive webinars. Demio has it's own version of a "webinar studio" to help you host, animate your webinars, and engage your audience. They offer all the standard features: chat, polls, uploading slides, etc. They also have some more niche features like "Handouts" that people can download from the viewer side.
However, the branding capabilities of Demio are relatively limited, without the option to select custom fonts, or add a logo for example.
This interface is not the most modern of all the webinar platforms available on the market but they do have a very simple interface that makes it relatively easy for people without a lot of experience to run webinars. Having multiple tabs and a lot of options can get overwhelming, but it's easy to get the basics done right.
Crowdcast has a "webinar studio" too, with the addition of a Greenroom where you can practice your webinar before going live, and tee up speakers before launching your event. They also have the "Wing" where guests and speakers can sit before being invited to join the stage. This gives you a lot more control over what your audience sees.
The branding features are much better with Crowdcast (see screenshot) while having the same coverage of engagement features. Providing a coherent brand experience for your viewers will positively impact engagement and at the end of the day will help driving more revenue.
Both tools offer similar speaker and moderator options to run your webinar, but Crowdcast has a few more useful features (especially when it comes to branding).
Winner: Crowdcast
2. Pre- and post-webinar experience
When it comes to your viewers' experience, Demio and Crowdcast are pretty evenly matched as to the pre-and post-webinar experience, and both cover the basic features.
They both offer customizable and branded registration pages, automated reminder and follow-up emails, and replays (Demio and Crowdcast do not record all webinars by default, so be careful if you go with them to run your events).
Demio offers recurring events and simulive session (providing a live experience to the viewer with nobody managing the event), that Crowdcast doesn't offer.
Crowdcast has a channel that gives an overview of all upcoming and replay events that users can follow to be notified about your upcoming events.
But both tools allow you to build your own landing pages with 3rd party tools and send registrants to your webinars via automation tools.
Demio gives you a little bit more flexibility when it comes to emails and landing pages but the design is still basic and far from ideal. This is a priority for a lot of event managers, to provide an experience that feels like their brand, without needing to put a lot of extra effort into it.
Winner: Demio
3. Viewer experience
Demio's viewer experience looks a lot like its live experience for admins, moderators, and speakers. It's pretty straightforward, meaning your audience can concentrate on your webinar instead of on the interace itself. However, it's a little outdated and doesn't give your audience a premium feel for your content.
Crowdcast lets you brand your webinars as mentioned previously, so the viewer experience is a lot closer to your brand.
Their interface however has a lot of tabs that can confuse users and have them spending more of their energy clicking around than actually focusing on your content. They have a modern chat experience which drives more interaction with the audience (but also between audience members themselves).
Crowdcast is clearly built for community-building in mind.
Both platforms let you stream in 720p, but if you're looking for a platform with the best high video-quality and the most engaging experience: you know who to go with.
Winner: Crowdcast
4. Integrations
Demio has native integrations with CRMs Hubspot, Salesforce, Marketo, and Pardot. They also offer integrations with emailing tools like Mailchimp, Drip, GetResponse, and others. However, these are only available from the Premium plan and above (starting at $2200/host/year for 150 live attendees). These integrations get average ratings across different marketplaces (2.3* on the HubSpot Marketplace).
Looking for the webinar tool with the best HubSpot integration?
Check out Contrast for free (4.9* on the HubSpot Marketplace).
Crowdcast does not offer any native CRM integrations, but does have an intergration with Stripe if you want to run paid webinars. They also have integrations with ConvertKit, Drip, and Patreon.
Both Crowdcast and Demio have Zapier integrations, allowing you to connect them to 3000+ tools. They both offer actions around the participant registering, attending a live and to register people to webinars. However, Crowdcast offers triggers and actions around organizing webinars: event reminder, clicks on CTAs, replay views, etc. This makes it easier to automate the operations surrounding webinars.
Winner: Demio
5. Support
Both tools offer very similar support options for their cheapest plans: email and live chat.
Demio and Crowdcast both have a help center where you'll find answers to the most commonly asked questions, so you can troubleshoot issues on your own.
As mentioned above, Demio does offer priority support on their most expensive plans. However, this isn't an option for all businesses.
Users rate the quality of Crowdcast's support higher (9.3/10) than Demio's — even if the options are limited.
None of the two platforms is a clear winner on average across all plans, but the numbers have spoken (and we listen).
Winner: Crowdcast
Which is better — Crowdcast or Demio?
So we just took a look at each of these platforms, but which one is going to take first place?
If your only goal is to run webinars while investing the least amount of resources possible, Crowdcast is going to be the best choice for you. However, it won't be the best choice for your audience and will require extra work to integrate with your CRM or other tools of your marketing stack.
If you're willing to invest a bit more and have a bit more experience running webinars, Demio can be a great option. They'll provide a lot more tools around running webinars and will drastically reduce time spent setting up and managing data around your webinars. The premium support can also come in handy.
Go beyond webinars
Both Crowdcast and Demio are great tools for running your webinars.
However, there are many other alternatives to these two webinar tools offering a wide variety of features and pricing plans — and of course don't forget to take a look at Contrast.
Contrast is the most modern webinar tool on the market, covering all the basic features you're looking for in a tool while providing a fun, authentic and engaging experience to your audience.
We also offer tools to help you repurpose your webinar, a Netflix-like branded Channel to host all of your replays and upcoming events, all while providing the highest quality branded video experience on the market and stellar CRM integrations.
