So, you’ve made up your mind and want to produce a webcast for training employees, educating customers and readers, or perhaps marketing your new product. To do that, firstly, you need to envision a presentation which involves a talking video and a presentation. Perhaps, some FAQ’s and chat would be needed. While price is absolutely substantial when you choose a webcasting solution, but you may also be looking for more, perhaps a low-cost web casting solution would do.
Note that most LSSP solutions are offered only as SaaS, which is also the predominant model for webcasting, though some webcasting vendors do sell software for on-premise installation and deployment.As far as the quality of video streaming and the level of simplicity is concerned, Resolve Web Conferencing is far better than others. But, what if you have limited options? Who would you go for? Let’s analyze a number of factors that will help you determine the right web casting service for you.
- Cost
To a degree, the most significant advantage of the LSSP class of products is cost. Many are free, some with limitations on the number of viewers or video quality; some are advertising-supported, which may be inappropriate for many presentations.While the most expensive option, traditional webcasters also come with technical hand-holding, which may be required for some users. On a single event basis, expect to pay around $600 or more for a base number of viewers, though you can reduce this price with volume.
- Registration and Lead Generation
If you’re producing webinars for sales and marketing purposes, the ability to capture customer information is key. No LSSPs provide these capabilities, though there are workarounds. All webcasting products offer sophisticated lead-generation functions that let you create a fully branded registration page for viewers, choose the required data fields, and export the contact information for later use.
- Video Quality
Video quality is another strength of the LSSP category, where all services can input HD video and most can deliver adaptive streams to desktop and mobile devices. If you want to incorporate PowerPoint or a software demonstration into the webcast, you have to input this into a tool such as the NewTekTriCaster or TelestreamWirecast, which converts it into the video transmitted to the LSSP for streaming.
- Presentation Components
Most support a shared whiteboard, enable screen sharing, allow users to swap files, and have a robust chat function. In contrast, webcasting systems are typically designed to display PowerPoint slides and a talking head.If you’re training employees or partners, the ability to award and deliver certifications based upon quiz results is an important capability.
- Playback Platforms
Of course, the more features a service offers, the larger the task of porting it for mobile platforms. While mobile support is becoming increasingly important, it varies greatly among all the companies in all categories. If mobile playback and interactivity is important to your application, get this on the table early.
- Post Webinar Components
Webcasting systems are designed with effective post-webinar editing in mind and go much further. For example, since the video and PowerPoint slides are separately maintained, you can typically change the timing of slides, or even submit a new audio or video component or swap out a slide. Beyond this, many webcasting services can extract text from the PowerPoint slides and index the presentation to those slides.