Livestorm has been making the rounds lately, and some people have been giving it positive feedback. I wanted to know if it is better than the other webinar software programs I have used.
In this Livestorm review, I will provide objective information about the product features. Here are what we will be discussing in this article:
- Understand how Livestorm works
- Identify the different plans and tiers
- Determine its best features
At the end of this Livestorm review, you will be able to decide if this webinar platform is an excellent all-in-one platform for your online meetings, landing pages, and PowerPoint presentations.
Let us get started!
What is Livestorm?
Livestorm is a web-based platform for conducting online meetings, webinars, and video conferences. It provides a range of features for hosting and managing virtual events, including screen sharing, audience engagement tools, creating webinar rooms, and analytics to track attendance and engagement.
What does Livestorm do?
Here is a summary of what Livestorm does:
- Virtual meeting – Set private rooms for your employees to conduct virtual meetings.
- On-demand webinars – create recorded webinars that people can attend at any time or per a set schedule
- Webinars – Create and schedule live webinars for online training courses or online events
- Virtual events – You can use this like other webinar platforms where you can host a virtual show while your attendees are at home
Who Should Use Livestorm?
Livestorm is a versatile platform that can benefit a wide range of businesses and organizations that want to host online events and engage with their audiences.
Here are some of the key groups that can benefit from Livestorm:
CEOs and Corporate Leaders
Businesses grow big after some time. It is nearly impossible to speak to all employees at once in today’s employment landscape. They work odd hours, and you would be hard-pressed to find a schedule where they can all attend your speech.
The alternative is to record your message and store it in the servers of Livestorm. Send that link to your employees for them to watch at their convenience.
Affiliate Marketers
As an affiliate marketer, you want to demonstrate a product. The thing is that while you can do this on YouTube, the people who would watch your videos are those who may not really have a deep interest in your offer.
You can use automated webinars as an alternative. The truth is that you do not have to ask your attendees to pay. If you use automated webinars, you can take the users away from YouTube, where there is too much distraction.
For example, you can tell them to watch you demonstrate how to use Shopify on your first webinar. If they do, they can concentrate better and not observe other YouTube recommendations.
Teachers, Tutors, and Course Creators
If you facilitate online classes, you will find it a breeze to conduct your teaching activities on Livestorm. You can create and record classes and courses, plus make your lessons more engaging.
It is up to you if you want to facilitate live classes or on-demand courses. I like that I can use the platform to convince a site visitor that the class will start soon (even if it is recorded).
The replay storage is also unlimited, so the students can play the recorded classes as often as they want.
Small Businesses
Small businesses can benefit from the platform by using it as a tool to onboard new employees. Surely, you want to train new employees about your company’s policies and procedures. However, you do not have a dedicated HR team to do that.
Here are some highlights for this specific purpose:
- Manage your HR onboarding processes
- Have all employees attend in a single webinar room
- Create a remote onboarding standard
With Livestorm, you can customize the video player and use your company logo. You can also set up recurring events, integrate the platform with your employees’ calendars, and create polls.
Discover If Livestorm The Right Platform For You Here
Features of Livestorm
Here are some of the cool features that Livestorm provides.
Virtual Meetings
If you think about it, most virtual meetings today are held in Zoom. It is by far the most popular application for online calls. People do not realize that Livestorm gives you more value for your money because it is also a webinar platform.
Here are some things you can do:
- Share PowerPoint presentations
- Offer quick-join options for your support team
- Conduct video conferences with other departments
- Separate breakout rooms per team
- Use virtual whiteboards
- Share media files
What makes Livestorm different is that you can have meetings with a high engagement rate. The admin tool is also powerful, as it can deliver analytics data to you. It is not Google Analytics, but it comes close.
Overall, the platform is what you need to host virtual meetings. You can integrate it with your employees’ calendars and add a link to your Google meeting invite.
It is also possible to create email cadences. What it means is you can create customized emails and use them to follow up with your participants. You can choose to use plain text or custom HTML in your emails.
Webinars
Livestorm is one of the best webinar platforms in the world. I am not saying this as a biased person, but I have to make this Livestorm review real, as this is based on our first-hand experience using the platform.
Why is it one of the best? Take a look at the following:
- It is easy to set up a webinar
- You can set up a registration page in less than three minutes
- You can brand the webinar and reflect your identity
- You can send follow-through emails
- There is an option to make customized webinar rooms.
Most importantly, you can create weekly webinars if that is what you want. There are also several ways by which you can make the webinar more engaging.
For example, you can create breakout rooms and send polls. There is a tool in the system where you can develop questions for your participants to answer. You can get their opinions. On top of all that, you can see a running report of the poll results.
As a businessperson, you also want to see how your activities work from the backend. With Livestorm, you can check your stats and analytics and keep a record of your contacts so you can send them notices or emails later.
The platform comes with an automated email. This feature eliminates the need to sign up and pay for a separate email marketing tool like Active Campaign on MailChimp.
On-Demand Webinars
An on-demand webinar is not the same as an introductory webinar. An on-demand webinar is like Netflix. The user can watch the webinar anytime. Of course, this is the perfect opportunity to earn money.
You can use this as a selling g point on the registration or landing pages. You can also tell the site visitor that you are just one email away if he needs customer support.
Here are some of the best things about this feature:
- You can expect to generate more leads
- You can create webinars that have no expiration date
- The webinars are easy to access
- It is easy to create a functional registration page
- You can create a company page to announce past and future events
One thing you will love about the on-demand webinar is that the user can perform a replay. Yes, it is like watching a movie. The user will not miss out on any information because of this.
Like the other features, the on-demand webinar gives you access to analytics, contact management, and follow-up emails.
Automated Webinars
Automated webinars are a tad different from regular webinars or on-demand webinars. With automation, you can schedule your webinars to play at a specific time and date.
For example, let us say you want the webinar to launch every Saturday. All you need to do is to program this at the backend.
From a site visitor’s point of view, he has the option to choose when to attend. He can now pay, fill up the information required on the registration page, and participate on the selected date.
- You can attend the recorded webinar if you want to provide customer support
- You can schedule automated webinars every day
- You can create webinars as recurring events
An automated webinar is scheduled. The user or attendee cannot play the webinar right now. He has to come back at a later date and log in. The webinar will only play at the time and date you specified.
The biggest benefit of the automated webinar is it helps you save time. You do not have to return to the software program, again and again, to re-enable the webinar or change the content on your landing pages.
You can program the system during the webinar to share files with your audiences. You can also create polls, surveys, and questionnaires that your students can sign after the webinar.
Virtual Events
A virtual event is a live event. Think of it as a conference. It happens in a big room, with many participants. There are keynote speakers, guests of honor, and many more.
With Livestorm, you can achieve the same. You can use it as a platform for hybrid live and remote virtual events or conferences.
Here are what you can achieve with this feature:
- Easy to organize a huge virtual event
- Host the event with as many as 3,000 participants
- Create a registration page in a matter of minutes
- Customize your assets and branding
- Gather data from your participants
- Use virtual backgrounds
What makes Livestorm an excellent platform is that you can integrate the system with multiple cameras. The remote audience can see the stage in your actual, physical event.
Then, if you want to highlight what is on the board, you can shift the screen and show only the presentation, not the people in the physical event.
But why would you do this? You must use a virtual event platform like Livestorm to increase your revenue. If you hold a seminar in Sweden, you cannot allow everyone to be able to fly there. So, what you can do is have a simultaneous live event and a virtual event.
Long Sessions and Large Capacity
One of the gripes or complaints of webinar platform users is that they can only use the systems for a short time. Some webinar platforms have a limit of a few minutes only.
Livestorm gives its free users a maximum of 20 minutes for each session. The limit is 30 attendees. While this may seem small, it actually is competitive, considering that the platform is free.
All it takes is a simple upgrade, and you can begin enjoying longer session times. The same thing goes with the replays. You can always ask customer support if you need more airtime.
Here is a snapshot of what you get per plan:
- Free – a maximum of 20 minutes per session with 30 replay views per month
- Pro – a maximum of four hours per session with 500 replay views per month
There is no limit to the replay views for the Business and Enterprise Plans anymore. One thing I like about Livestorm is that it has a maximum capacity of 3,000 attendees. However, you can only get this in the Business Plan. If you buy the Pro Plan, your limit is 500 attendees per event.
Marketing Integration
While most webinars can only integrate with email marketing, Livestorm offers more. It can integrate with HubSpot, Marketo, and Pardot. Let me walk you through each one.
- HubSpot – HubSpot is a multi-tool platform. It has CMS, CRM, sales tools, and customer service operations tools. It is an ideal platform for huge businesses.
- Marketo – this is a tool primarily used by medium-sized businesses. They offer several tools in a bundle. Some examples of these tools are lead management tools, consumer marketing, mobile marketing, and media.
- Pardot – this one is a product of Salesforce. Like Livestorm, it is a software program as a service. What it does is integrate automation and marketing platforms. With it, you can automate email campaigns. It is also an effective tool for tracking customer behaviors.
With these integrations, you can use Livestorm in so many ways. For example, it would be easier to market your event with HubSpot. If you use Pardot, you can automate your email messages until you convince the recipient to sign up.
GDPR and ISO 27001 Certified
GDPR is a law in some countries. It is a European standard that aims to protect consumer data. It also has something to do with processing a user’s personal information. Livestorm is 100% compliant with this law. As such, you no longer have to worry about it.
European lawmakers designed the GDPR to protect internet users’ personal information. Because of this, there is a proper way for organizations to process data. Non-compliance with it can cause severe penalties.
On the other hand, ISO 27001 is an international standard that has something to do with information security. Since it is a set of standards, companies who comply with it will get recognition for being compliant.
Companies can create their own processes to meet the security framework with this standard. You will have to hire an information security expert if you do this independently.
With Livestorm, this security standard already comes with the tool. I like that you do not have to pay for these two things. Even if you are on the free plan, you can expect the system to comply with GDPR and ISO.
In addition to these two, you can secure your team’s access with SSO or single sign-on. However, you must be at the Enterprise plan to get this SSO feature.
Users Experience
Livestorm not only provides you a platform to launch webinars and conference calls. The creators added a lot of features that will allow you to enhance the user experience.
Here are some examples:
Customized live experience
You can create a room with active plugins like file sharing. You can customize the room color, brand name, logo, and more.
Email Cadence
You can send an unlimited number of email reminders. You can use plain text or HTML when designing these emails. Use this email marketing tool to increase the likelihood of your target participants joining your webinars.
PowerPoint Embedding
You can share your PPT presentations by embedding them in the live stream. Your participants will not be able to see anything but that. But then you can switch screens anytime you like.
Q&A
You can post questions in the webinar or live stream and let the participants answer them in real time. It makes the discussion much more engaging.
Browser
The application works perfectly on a browser. I cannot tell you how much I love this feature. I have seen so many virtual meetings or conference platforms where you need to download and install the app before you can attend the webinar. It is infuriating.
Chat
You can set up a chat box while the webinar is going on. If you activate chat, your users can use emojis to convey their feelings.
Multiple Speakers
One thing many webinar platforms cannot do is allow two people to speak simultaneously. It may have something to do with technology. With Livestorm, they built the system to have multiple speakers. Because of this, you can create a webinar room with two presenters.
Virtual Background
I personally love this one because you do not have to set up your room physically. All you need is a reliable green screen, and you can change your background virtually.
Of course, there is an analytics part where you can see the engagement of your attendees. For example, you can take advantage of the contacts record feature. In it, you can store each participant’s details and see stats about that particular user.
Ways to Use Livestorm
Below are the common ways people use Livestorm:
Product Demonstrations
If you have a product or a service, such as a new software tool, you can use Livestorm to conduct a demonstration. The video quality of Livestorm is superb, which makes it ideal for screen-sharing activities.
For a product demonstration, I recommend using a high-quality video camera. Although Livestorm has HD video quality during live events, you still need HD cameras to help the system.
Live Events
Live events refer to activities where you have a convention and people would attend. Typically, people will participate in person. With Livestorm, you can facilitate this event online.
On the other hand, you can create a hybrid event. In it, there are attendees physically present in your venue. Then, others would watch the event from their screens.
You can broaden your reach and get more attendees if you offer an online virtual event. People who would love to attend can do so at the convenience of their homes.
Company Communication
You can use the platform to communicate announcements to your employees. You can do this in a live broadcast or have it recorded.
If you are on the Enterprise plan, you can upload a video and ask your employees to watch it. You can distribute a unique and personal link by which the employees can access the video.
As you know, you cannot be in several places simultaneously. With Livestorm, you can congratulate your team or give them positive feedback for their good work. You can even record your message and ask HR to play it in cafeterias or something like that.
Online Courses
You can use the video conferencing platform as a tool to facilitate online classes and online courses. However, I can say that it works best for real-time classes.
The good news is that you can host a live class and use the program to record it. The beauty of Livestorm is that it has polls and surveys, which you can use to gather feedback from your students. You can also use the polls to measure audience engagement.
Typically, you would use a platform for an online course like Teachable. However, a platform like this does not allow you to “force” the target user to register now. With Livestorm, you can use on-demand webinars to drive more sales.
How, just upload your videos on the platform and create your registration page. Somewhere in the backend, toggle the option where the user can watch the webinar right now.
We determined through our test that If you do not like the setup, you can use the calendar method. In it, you can give the site visitor several dates. Now, he has to make a choice. In fact, he has t decide to register now or he will lose a seat if he is indecisive.
As you can see, the on-demand and scheduled webinars are excellent for marketing. These things will allow you to drive more sales.
Employee Onboarding
You can conduct employee onboarding sessions with this tool if you are operating a multi-site company. You do not have to be physically present in a room of people to introduce them to their new jobs.
Another option I like personally is that you can record a series of videos and have your employees access them. They can watch simultaneously.
Through my practical experience, you no longer need a person to facilitate a class. Of course, I recommend making the onboarding only accessible from your company’s network.
Benefits of Using Livestorm
- The product has multiple uses
- There are many features that you can access
- The application has excellent and reliable marketing features
- You can facilitate live and recorded events
- It is possible to automate webinars
- You can engage with your audience in real-time
Drawbacks of Using Livestorm
- The free account does not have a lot to offer
- You need to upgrade to increase the maximum event hours
As you can see, no system is perfect. However, I can see the appeal of why many people want to host webinars using Livestorm.
Livestorm Pricing
This Livestorm review will not be complete without looking at the pricing plans. Below are the tiers of the plans, how much they cost, and what major differences they have.
Free Version
The free version comes with 30 active contacts per month. You will have a maximum of 30 attendees for your Livestorm webinar and unlimited team members who can access the platform.
Pro Plan
The pro plan costs $110 per month. In it, you get a limit of 500 active contacts in a month and a maximum of four hours per session. You can have up to 500 attendees per session.
Business and Enterprise
There is no fixed price for the business and enterprise plans. The Livestorm pricing matrix will change according to what you need. To find out the pricing you have to contact management and tell them what you need. With these plans, however, you can have up to 3,000 attendees.
Based on the Livestorm pricing matrix, the Enterprise plan also opens new technological advantages for you. For example, Livestorm can do customized integrations with your existing platform. You can make the Livestorm webinar software work in multiple spaces yet have a unified billing.
Livestorm has annual and monthly plans. The price of the Livestorm webinar will change if you pay annually. For example, for the Pro plan, you will only pay $80 per month if you pay for the whole year of subscription.
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Final thought
I have found from using Livestorm, I can say that Livestorm is a complete platform. It can help you do many things without breaking an arm or a leg. I strongly recommend it to people who can spare at least $110 a month for employee engagement.
You can use it for free, but I must be transparent here. The free account can only give you 30 minutes of virtual conferences, meetings, live meetings, and recorded ones. There is also a limit to the number of people who can attend.
My general recommendation is that you try the free version for now. Test the system with yours and see if the speed and performance match your expectations and standards.
Calvin Lim is a professional blogger and founder of TheCalvinLim.
He enjoys helping others learn about various internet marketing tools and dedicated to helping people achieve success online.
