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ADR-4: Webinars capability.md

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ADR-4: Webinars capability

Date:

2021-10-29

Status:

Proposed

Context:

We are convinced that developing webinars capability from scratch is not the best idea, because it is quite difficult, risky and expensive. Therefore, we offer a seamless connection of a ready-made solution to the Farmacy Family system.

Choosing a proper online webinar platform is difficult sometimes as things can go wrong anytime during the webinar. Weak network, download issue, unclear audio, non-HD video, and whatnot. While selecting a webinar hosting platform, we need to make sure to consider the several aspects:

  • Is it fulfilling our requirements?
  • Does it have necessary APIs for full integration with the Farmacy Family system?
  • How many participants can join our webinar?
  • How cranky downloads and extensions are?
  • What is the price? Is it reasonable?

We have reviewed several popular platforms and prepared a comparison table.

Name Pros Cons Price Rating
Demio
  • Automatic, cloud-based events and recordings
  • Chats, handouts, and polls with enjoyable waiting room experience
  • Built-in robust analytics and insights
  • Easy-to-integrate marketing tools
  • Email automation plus event reminders
  • Price is on the higher end for more than 50 live participants.
  • No registration page conversion analytics, so it cannot be determined how many did not register, for instance.
Starter Plan costs $34/month for a 50-person room 8 of 10
WebinarJam
  • Automatic recording
  • Excellent customer support
  • Social media integrations like Facebook
  • Handle multiple attendees easily
  • Compatible with various browsers and OS
  • Incorporate polls and surveys with webinar
  • Needs purchase of EverWebinar for automated on-demand webinars
  • Occasionally video and sound delay up to a couple of seconds
  • Lacking integration with third-party AV tools
Basic Plan costs $499/year or $41.58/month for up to 500 participants per webinar and 3 presenters. 8 of 10
EverWebinar
  • Switch between WebinarJam and EverWebinar in one click
  • Fake your audience count
  • Show performance stats in real-time
  • Convert previous live events to evergreen events
  • Just-in-time online events start right upon registration
  • An advanced scheduling system that blocks out unavailable dates
  • Auto-detection of time zone
  • Unlimited free hosting through cloud-based servers
  • A few complaints about streaming on mobile
Monthly Plan $99/mo 7 of 10
Livestorm
  • Access easy to set-up adaptable webinar themes
  • Interactive experience with chats, polls, questions, and more
  • Integration and analysis of meetings
  • High-level automation and webinar sequences
  • Comprehensive, multi-language customer support.
  • Detailed attendance analytics, source tracking, replay analytics, and participation report
  • Unlimited storage of recording
  • The host’s internet connection influences video and audio performance
  • Occasional blurry and pixelated display
  • Spotty customer support at times
  • No offers on replay; offers done on live are lost on replay
  • There’s not way to re-open pop-ups
  • Email reminder is uncustomizable
Webinar Premium costs $99/host/month with a 4-hour limit per webinar 5 of 10
Crowdcast
  • Easy to get started
  • Go live or attend on any device
  • Has a separate tab for public chat and for asking questions.
  • Easy invite feature
  • Presenters can multi-stream on Facebook and Youtube.
  • Very interactive (Polls, Analytics, Question & Answer)
  • A good option for people who are new in marketing or live streaming.
  • The audience can chat and ask questions even before the live starts.
  • The landing page for the audience is not very customizable
  • Sessions have a limit of 2 hours for starter plans
  • No multi-user access
  • Some features are locked on expensive plans.
Pro $89/mo 6 of 10
Livestream
  • Unlimited storage and attendees
  • Excellent customer support
  • Privatization of events
  • Private sharing of link
  • Extensive in-built robust analytics
  • Facebook Live or YouTube streaming
  • Embed webinar to website
  • No audience engagement features such as surveys or polls
At $42/month, there’s no limit to participants 8 of 10
WebinarsOnAir
  • Schedule webinar for up to 50,000 attendees in under a minute
  • Use “Tracking Pixels” to create “laser-targeted audiences for retargeting”
  • Live Q&A with live-chats
  • Allows 10 moderators or speakers at once
  • Easy webinar registration
  • in-built opt-in forms
  • Cloud-based hosting
  • strong customer service
  • Dependent on Hangouts and may become inaccessible due to changes in Google software
$99/month for unlimited participants 5 of 10
DaCast
  • No viewer limit
  • Real-time robust analytics
  • Allows FTP access
  • Live stream on social media platforms like Facebook
  • An interactive video on demand (VOD) solution
  • Easy to set up
  • User-friendly web conferencing interface
  • strong customer service
  • $0.15 charge per GB beyond the bandwidth amount or streams will shut off
The monthly plan starts at $19/month and includes prepaid bandwidth, viewer hours, storage, and support 7 of 10
Zoom
  • HD video and audio plus screens sharing
  • Desktop and app sharing options
  • Backup meetings in the cloud
  • Private and public chats, allowing participants to communicate during webinar interruption
  • Free access to up to 100 participants with 40 mins limit on group meetings
  • Host controls and virtual whiteboards
  • Easily navigable dashboard.
  • No one-time fees
  • The navigating interface can be quite confusing
  • There are complaints of calls being disconnected
The business package is $19.99/month and is ideal for small and medium-sized businesses 10 of 10
Adobe Connect
  • Various templates to customize for virtual environments.
  • Create unique registration pages
  • Reach out to target audience using videos, blogs, surveys, and polls.
  • Detailed adobe analytics for better insights
  • Integrates with CRM software such as Eloqua and Salesforce.
  • There are reports of some video and audio disturbances on mobile.
Meeting Plan starts at $50/month for 25 participants and up to 200 participants for the Learning plan. 6 of 10

Decision:

We suppose to integrate Farmacy Family with Zoom for several reasons:

  1. Very stable on all kind of devices
  2. Could integrate this several popular learning management systems (LMS) and makes it easy to schedule a meeting with any course activity
  3. Well documented API with a lot of capabilities for better integration
  4. Reasonable price

Consequences:

For new users it could be quite confusing to use Zoom for the first time