ON24 Review: A Virtual Event Solution Review

In today’s digital world, virtual communication is crucial to business success as it allows businesses to reach a global audience without the need for travel. However, even now, many companies struggle to create engaging webinars and virtual events to connect with their audience and unlock these benefits.

ON24 is one platform that promises to revolutionize how companies conduct webinars and virtual events. But does it do this well? This ON24 review will answer this question.

In this detailed review, we’ll discuss what ON24 does well and what it lacks. We’ll also introduce some ON24 alternatives worth considering. This way you can choose the right webinar platform for conducting your virtual events and conferences.

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What is ON24?

ON24 is a cloud-based digital experience platform famous for its robust webinar and virtual event solutions. When it was founded in 1998, ON24 was more basic and focused primarily on providing online broadcast services. However, over the years it has slowly evolved into the powerful tool we see now. A tool that empowers businesses to create and scale highly engaging virtual experiences.

Today, ON24 combines ease of use with powerful features, including AI-powered tools, that facilitate interactive webinars and virtual events. It allows organizers to create webinars with interactive tools, branded elements, and multimedia content. It also excels in offering real-time analytics, which gives businesses valuable insights to drive audience engagement and lead generation. ON24 is used across various industries, including technology, healthcare, finance, and education. However, its limited customization options is usually a big concern.

ON24 Pros & Cons

While ON24 does a lot of things right, it certainly has its drawbacks. Considering its pros and cons will help you decide whether it is the right platform for your webinar and virtual event needs. So, let’s start with some of ON24’s strengths:

ON24 Pros

• Offers Comprehensive Analytics: ON24 offers in-depth analytics that can help you measure the success of your webinar or virtual event. Like Remo, it provides both real-time analytics, for gauging audience engagement levels during your event, and post-event analytics. ON24 also offers a range of metrics like attendance rates, content downloads, and engagement scores. All of which can help you prioritize leads for follow-ups, calculate your event’s ROI, and identify ways to improve future events.
• Webinars are inclusive: ON24 prioritizes accessibility to ensure that webinars are inclusive. For example, it offers closed captioning, which makes content accessible to a broader audience, including those with hearing or visual impairments. It also offers the option for live translation, where presentations are translated into multiple languages in real-time. ON24 also offers post-event transcripts, providing a written record of the webinar that attendees can review and reference later.
• Streamlines event planning with AI: ON24 allows you to use AI to speed up event planning and management. For example, its automated content recommendation feature uses AI to analyze attendees behavior and suggest relevant content, helping you to tailor your virtual event to audience interests and needs. You can also use its AI-powered content repurposing tools to quickly refine your content and make them more enjoyable.

ON24 Cons

• Lack of pricing transparency: ON24 does not publicly disclose pricing information on its website. So, you have to contact ON24 directly for a price quote. Often this will require taking time out of your schedule to attend a sales meeting, which can be time-consuming and inconvenient (especially if the platform ends up being way out of your budget).
• Limited customization options: Despite its impressive feature list, ON24 may fall short in terms of customization options compared to other platforms like Remo. It is customizable, but branding options are limited in comparison. For example, you can add a logo and some colors, but that’s about all you can do. This inability to fully customize the event environment to specific branding guidelines limits the personalization of your virtual events.
• UX looks dated: Some users have described the visual interface of ON24 as outdated. This may reflect poorly on you when you are trying to present a cutting-edge image to your audience because modern users expect sleek and visually appealing interfaces.
• Limited integration flexibility: ON24 integrates with many third-party tools, including CRM and marketing automation platforms. However, the integration process can sometimes be more rigid than expected, which can cause challenges and delays. ON24 also charges extra if you need an integration that is not currently available. 

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ON24 Key Features

ON24 offers powerful features that can help event organizers, like yourselves, effectively engage your audience and enhance your digital strategy. Let’s take a closer look at what some of those features are:

1. Webinar Creation

A virtual event management tool should make it easy for event organizers to create virtual events. ON24 ticks this box by offering a simple event creation process. For example, ON24 offers several professionally designed virtual event landing page templates that you can quickly select from to create polished, professional-looking webinars without advanced design skills. 

Their intuitive interface also allows you to rearrange elements within the webinar environment easily. You can drag branding elements, interactive widgets, and multimedia content into the webinar layout.

2. Audience Engagement Features

ON24 offers a range of interactive tools to keep your audience engaged throughout your virtual event. Like with most platforms, you can incorporate polls in your webinar to collect real-time feedback, host live Q&A sessions for attendee interaction, or encourage the use of chat to promote networking among attendees. 

However, one unique aspect of ON2’s4 engagement capability is that it allows event organizers to embed interactive elements (like polls and clickable CTAs) directly into content slides. For example, during a presentation, attendees can see a live poll embedded directly into the slide. They can then participate right then and there without having to navigate to a different tab or open another panel. 

3. On-Demand Engagement Hub

ON24 offers a unique Engagement Hub, a centralized, always-on content destination that gives audiences access to content whenever they need. Organizers can create the Hub and use it to house all their digital assets, including webinars, videos, whitepapers, and case studies.

Being an “always-on” content destination means the ON24 Engagement Hub is designed to maintain engagement with audiences even beyond the event. Since your audience can always access content in the Hub, your content will continue to drive inbound links post-event. 

Not to mention, you can also monitor all the interactions of your audience within the Hub. The platform provides content performance insights that can help you track the effectiveness of everything you add.

4. Simulive Webinars

With Simulive, you can pre-record a webinar and then play it to a live audience on the scheduled event date. This feature combines the benefits of both live and on-demand webinars. The pre-recorded content is uploaded to the ON24 platform and streamed directly through the platform as a live webinar. Attendees will log in at the designated time to watch the content as if it were live. And even though the content is pre-recorded, attendees can still interact with the webinar through live chat and Q&A features.

This takes the stress out of managing speaker schedules. It reduces the risk of embarrassing last-minute technical issues that can delay your event. It also helps you avoid the chaos of having to present and watch the chat, Q&A, and polls all at the same time.

Like ON24, Remo allows you to stream presentations via external platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, or Twitch, and leveraging these platform’s robust streaming capabilities can help you reach a broader audience.

5. Advanced Analytics

ON24 offers comprehensive analytics that provide deep insights into your attendees, both during an event and after. For example, in real-time you can monitor metrics such as attendee rates, engagement scores, and poll responses. You can then use this feedback to adjust your strategy on the fly to better engage your audience. This is similar to Remo’s guest experience survey, which asks attendees to rate their current experience midway through an event. 

Like most other platforms, ON24 also offers detailed post-event reports you can use to assess the effectiveness of your event. However, its most distinct analytics feature is its engagement score This scoring system examines how your attendees interact with your event (considering poll responses, Q&A participation, content downloads, survey participation, and more) to provide a comprehensive engagement score for each attendee. You can then use this measure of engagement to identify high-quality leads and tailor follow-up efforts accordingly.

6. AI-powered Experiences

ON24 offers numerous AI-powered functionalities that can help you create more effective webinars and virtual events. 

One example is their personalized content recommendations. The platform uses AI to analyze their attendees' behavior and the content they interact with to then suggest additional relevant content to them. This is particularly helpful in large virtual conferences where there are a lot of streams or tracks. This is because it can help attendees find content that aligns with their interests quickly, thereby enhancing the overall user experience. 

Another example of ON24’s use of AI is in content repurposing. Users can use the AI-powered feature to instantly turn long-form presentations into new assets like ebooks, blogs, and snackable video highlights. This helps speed up post-event marketing tremendously, giving you instant access to valuable content you can share to drive even more engagement.

However, while their use of AI certainly has advantages (namely greater efficiency), they also can raise privacy concerns for attendees. This is because they rely on the collection and analysis of attendees' personal data, which they must be made aware of when joining your event. In today's digital age, this may just be a deal breaker for attendees.

Maximize Event Impact

Double registration & attendance

Boost engagement by 3.2x

Attendee data and analysis at your fingertips

Book Demo

‍

ON24 Pricing

As we mentioned above, ON24 does not publicly disclose its pricing structure on its website, because its costs vary depending on users’ specific needs and event size. However, they do mention their three packages:

• Essentials: This is their lowest-tier package with basic features for creating customizable live, simulive, and on-demand events.
• Standard: This is their mid-tier package. It comes with some of ON24’s advanced features, such as advanced analytics and AI-generated contents and videos.
• Advanced: This is ON24’s top package. In addition to everything in the Standard package, it features content hubs and lets you create personalized content journeys.

To find out how much using the platform will cost, contact ON24 directly for a personalized quote.

Final Verdict

In an era where many event organizers struggle to create engaging webinars or virtual events, ON24 is a breath of fresh air. It offers robust features that help capture and retain audience interest, as well AI-powered features that speed up event planning. Not to mention, it also provides post-event features, like its Engagement Scores and Content Hub to keep audiences engaged even beyond your event.

However, while ON24 is certainly capable, its interface is not as striking and it does not offer realistic virtual event spaces. This is where Remo's virtual event platform comes out superior. Remo not only has a sleek and modern interface, but it offers more realistic virtual event spaces and superior networking experiences. So, Remo may be a better fit for those seeking more immersive events or those who want to optimize for live attendee engagement, in addition to pre and post-event engagement.

Remo; ON24's Better Alternative

The innovative event management platform Remo, stands out as a better alternative to ON24 because it helps host virtual events that are as real as face-to-face gatherings.

Remo prioritizes creating immersive and visually appealing virtual environments that closely mimic physical event spaces. Unlike ON24’s dated webinar interface, Remo’s interface is more visually appealing and captivating while still remaining functional.

Moreover, Remo allows attendees to move freely between tables, and engage in spontaneous discussions with other attendees, as they would in a real-life setting. This level of immersion delights attendees and makes Remo's virtual events more memorable. More importantly though, it drives real conversations and deepens engagement among attendees, as they have the freedom to seek out connections independently.

Despite its comprehensive set of features, Remo’s interface remains intuitive for both event organizers and attendees. Organizers find it simple to create events on Remo, whilst event attendees can easily navigate and connect with others. This is in contrast to ON24’s virtual platform which has a steeper learning curve, requiring more time and effort from attendees and organizers to learn how to use the platform.

You can explore the experience Remo provides for yourself at a free platform demo. See for yourself how Remo’s immersive virtual events delight attendees, deepens engagement, and drives real connections. Book a demo today!