WebinarJam Review

In this WebinarJam review, we take a look at a new “webinar platform” called WebinarJam.

I couldn’t find any useful reviews from people who had actually used WebinarJam and had something worthwhile to say about it. In the end, I just decided to purchase it and see for myself.

I have been a big fan of Teleseminars and Webinars because of how well they convert visitors and email list members into customers. So naturally when I heard of WebinarJam (the founders also created Evergreen Business Systems for automating your webinars), I had to try the shiny new object.

The pricing was originally $297 for a lifetime license, then $297 per year (which is the offer that I got), and now they’re saying that they’ll be raising the price to $497 per year.

The biggest appeal to me is that you can host as many people as you want. 10,000 attendees? No problem! I’m paying GoToWebinar $499/month for up to 1,000 attendees.

Sure — it’s really great when people get locked out because it demonstrates social proof. But ultimately I’d prefer it if people actually attend the webinar because they’d get more value from learning what I have to teach than simply knowing that the material’s in demand.

And the guys at WebinarJam, Andy and Mike, both savvy internet marketers, do push the comparison so you see the value. Did it work? Well, that was part of the reason I bought!

Contents

A Word on Expectations: Google Hangouts Add On

It wasn’t immediately obvious to me when I was purchasing but what you get is essentially a Google Hangouts add on with some front end marketing features. I was incorrectly expecting something more like GoToWebinar with unlimited attendees. Honestly, I did think about cancelling my purchase a few times since this wasn’t going to replace GoToWebinar for me.

But the more I played around with it, the more I realized how powerful it is. So if you’re thinking about purchasing WebinarJam, then you need to think about it as a platform to better utilize Google Hangouts. Otherwise, you might find yourself disappointed afterwards. If you’re already thinking about it this way, then let’s move on!

Is WebinarJam For You?

Just to re-iterate my previous point, WebinarJam can be worthwhile if you want more out of Google’s very powerful Hangout app, or you want to at least try it out for your business.

WebinarJam Review

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about how WebinarJam can help you.

Pros

  • Take advantage of Google Hangout’s powerful technology
  • You get some nice analytics including sales conversion, earnings per click and earning per attendee — all very useful statistics to know if you’re selling on the live webinar/hangout

WebinarJam Analytics

  • It’s quite easy to use — there are only three menu options:
    • My Webinars
    • New Webinar
    • Analytics

WebinarJam Menu

  • It’s quick to set up a new webinar — once you know what needs to be done, you can set up the entire thing in about 5 minutes and you can set it up so that the webinar is recurring, or you can clone and modify the details
  • Your videos get automatically recorded and uploaded to Youtube
  • You can have the replay easily on your own website
  • You can present your offer during the presentation with just a click (you create the offer before hand when you set up the webinar)
    WebinarJam Offers

    • You can add tracking code to your receipt/thank you page so that you get some very useful analytics
  • You can charge people to attend the presentation.
  • You get to use some easy to use and fairly nice looking templates.
  • Real time polls, surveys and public/private chat rooms.

 

If you’re using Infusionsoft, you can easily register people using an HTTP post.

In WebinarJam, you go to My Webinars –> Advanced Custom Registration Hotlink

You’ll get a link that looks something like this:

 http://webinarjam.net/webinar/webinar-register-auto.php?webicode=abcd&memberid=1234&firstname=yourname&email=your@email.com&countrycode=XXX &phonenumber=XXXXXXXXX&schedule=1

All you’ll need to do is update the “yourname” so that it’s ~Contact.FirstName~ and “you@email.com” so that it’s ~Contact.Email~ and usually schedule will be “1” but you can leave that to whatever number it was originally and you can delete the countrycode and phonenumber parameters.

Now the reason why this is useful to have is because if you’re driving registrations through OptimizePress or through Leadpages, you can’t register them directly with WebinarJam because none have native integrations with WebinarJam.

Instead, what you can do is set up your registration so that it’s a regular opt in but add the HTTP post in Infusionsoft after the opt in so that they’re registered also for the webinar:
WebinarJam with OptimizePress and Leadpages

Cons

  • There are no warning signs that any field has been left out. You have to go through all of them one at a time to see where you went wrong
  • Webinar itself must be hosted on their website
  • Emails sent out from WebinarJam (e.g. for registration confirmation) seems to have lower deliverability rates compared to GoToWebinar which has very high delivery rates

Conclusion

So is WebinarJam for you?

In many situations, I think that Google Hangouts will be enough or even Leadpages (in case you’re already using them) can do Google Hangouts hosting together with live chatting and product link. I know that some internet marketers including John Lee Dumas (of Entrepreneur on Fire) uses Leadpages to host Google Hangouts and then sells a $2,000 podcasting product.

If you’re looking for more overall control of the webinar experience, more detailed analytics, and better conversions, then WebinarJam is seriously worth considering.

41 thoughts on “WebinarJam Review”

  1. Thank you for this comprehensive and practical review, Rui. Very helpful and much aligned with what I have seen and heard about the product. allows for us to make an informed decision.

  2. Thx for this unbiaised analysis.
    What turned me off from Google HangOut is the delay when speaking.
    I tried one time and a lot of my users got issues to get onto the webinar.
    GotoWebinar have never let me down.

    Any feedback related to that ?

    1. If they want to SPEAK as an attendee, YES, they NEED to have.

      This is on of the biggest turn-offs for me, because to be able to speak with your attendees live they all have to have GOOGLE ACCOUNT.

      That’s “feature” alone makes WebinarJam NOT “gotowebinar killer” …but a joke.

      1. it takes about 2 minutes to open a google account, Tim, although I get where you’re coming from.

        That said, in my view, If an attendee speaker cannot or refuses to do that I’m sorry, but they are no real speaker of value.

        Sometimes we forget, all these marketing ploys tactics and techniques are useful, but sometimes its too much about minor issues.

        Ultimately if your value proposition is solid these things are minor irritations, not devastating impacts on sales. Let the attendee open a google account.

  3. I was about to buy the Webinarjam subscription when somebody told me Google Hangouts hasn’t got a 100% stable connection.

    Can you tell me something about it?

    Thanks for your post!!

    1. The time delay is something that comes from WebinarJam’s integration with Google. That’s the way Google Hangouts works.

      They basically record and transform your live broadcast signal into a streaming video, which is what your webinar attendees receive. That process takes a few seconds and that’s the delay you’re referring to.

      From an attendee’s perspective the delay is about what they’d experience from watching live television. You don’t notice the 7 second delay when you’re watching live TV, and you don’t notice it when you’re watching a webinar either.

      However this is part of why many webinars have Q&A breaks to allow questions to catch up to the recording)

      Polls, videos and such are part of the WebinarJam overlay, as such they do not have a delay. In order to compensate for that, you might want to spend a minute introducing your poll or video, for a video, “I may get cut off, but this video is about….” (press play) for a poll “”you will soon see this poll on the right that is about…”

      To learn how to compensate for the delay, please read https://help.marketinggenesis.com/777567-How-Do-I-Compensate-for-the-Delay

      And finally, as Google keeps optimizing their service, the delay is shortened week after week. Not long ago, the average delay was 60 seconds, whereas now it’s 35 seconds.

  4. Hi-
    I was happy to find your site. I would like to integrate Infusionsoft, leadpages AND webinarjam. Is this possible?

    Thanks,
    Lisa

    1. I agree. Crappy! 10 second lag. Very technical to configure. So much integration with youtube means if google changes something, you have to go tweak your settings again! They also refused to return a prorated balance. Just terrible

  5. Rumor has it that Webinar Jam users are finding that our boys over at Webinar Jam sell, distribute, use, or otherwise compromise the leads they manage from users of Webinar Jam.

    If you put 1000 of your people into a Webinar Jam, Mike and Andy will sell those leads to your competitors, or to other marketing services. (This is how they can afford to give you lifetime service for a one-time-fee.)

    They’re making money off of you, by selling your client list down the river.

    Read the license agreement.

    I’ve tried to contact Webinar Jam regarding this practice, asking them to confirm or deny, but they never respond to my question. Silence…

    If this is not true, they need to dispel this rumor.

    1. I did a little digging (i.e., actually read the Privacy Policy) at it sounds like Lan Turner is right. Here’s an excerpt from the Privacy policy that basically states you must opt OUT of having your personal information sold. Otherwise, they’re going to do it.

      “Controlling your personal information

      You may choose to restrict the collection or use of your personal information in the following ways:
      • whenever you are asked to fill in a form on the website, look for the box that you can click to indicate that you do not want the information to be used by anybody for direct marketing purposes
      • if you have previously agreed to us using your personal information for direct marketing purposes, you may change your mind at any time by writing to or emailing us using the “Contact Us” link in the footer menu.
      We will not sell, distribute or lease your personal information to third parties unless we have your permission or are required by law to do so. We may use your personal information to send you promotional information about third parties which we think you may find interesting if you tell us that you wish this to happen.”

      That’s a definitely dealbreaker for our company. And that’s unfortunate because if the product is as good as it sounds, I’m sure more companies would be willing to pay more (and even on a monthly basis) with the comfort of knowing that they’re potential customer’s will not be subjected to SPAM. Huge sad face…

      1. Hi there! This Jennifer, Director of Customer Experience for Genesis Digital and WebinarJam. I’m very happy to say, you are entirely wrong. Please re-read the TOS and Privacy Policy. We never sell, distribute, or use your attendees information. We do market to you, the account owner, and send promotional information to you, the account owner. This includes training and product information about the services you purchased.

      2. Mssrs. Turner and Williams,

        Thank you for your concerns regarding WebinarJam. I’d like to assure you that they are completely without foundation.

        Let me address them one at a time:

        1. We do *not*, nor shall we ever, “sell, distribute, use, or otherwise compromise the leads they manage from users of Webinar Jam.”

        The privacy policy which Mr. Williams quotes specifically states, “We will not sell, distribute or lease your personal information to third parties unless we have your permission or are required by law to do so. We may use your personal information to send you promotional information about third parties which we think you may find interesting if you tell us that you wish this to happen.”

        2. The privacy policy which Mr. Williams quotes is an outdated one; we have recently upgraded our legal policies with clearer language and to maintain compliance with existing and upcoming statues. Nevertheless, our basic policy remains unchanged. You can review our new privacy policy here: http://www.webinarjam.com/welcome/privacypolicy.html

        3. Mr. Turner, thank you for your communication of March 15, 2016. It was received and promptly responded to as follows:

        “From: Morgan
        Date: 03/15/2016 16:52:09
        Subject: Rumor has it that when we host a webinar, and our clients sign …

        Hi Lan,

        I am sorry that you have been misled, but we do not use your client lists. Your client lists are and remain yours.

        Thanks for your patience with me, as I’m new to the team and still in training. If this answer didn’t completely answer your question (or answered the wrong question) be sure and let me know so I can get it corrected quickly.

        Morgan
        Junior Customer Support Representative”

        4. Mr. Williams, WebinarJam *is* as good as it sounds! 🙂

        I hope this addresses all of your concerns. I do not know the source of the “rumor,” but I trust we’ve put it to bed. You are, of course, welcome and encouraged to express any of your further concerns via email: legal -at- genesisdigital.co.

        Kindest regards,

        Gideon Marcus
        Chief Operating Officer
        Genesis Digital, LLC
        Makers of WebinarJam, EverWebinar, and Kartra

        1. How nice of you to “upgrade” your TOC and provide clearer language. Thanks?

          To bad it wasn’t already clear when I was trying to make a huge business decision…

    2. Hi there! This Jennifer, Director of Customer Experience for Genesis Digital and WebinarJam. I’ve serached out databases for your inquiry and was not able to find anything from you. Can you share where you sent your message so I can ensure we’re receiving all your questions? I’m very happy to say, you are entirely wrong. Please re-read the TOS and Privacy Policy. We never sell, distribute, or use your attendees information. We do market to you, the account owner, and send promotional information to you, the account owner. This includes training and product information about the services you purchased.

    3. Hi there! This Jennifer, Director of Customer Experience for Genesis Digital and WebinarJam. I’ve serached out databases for your inquiry and was not able to find anything from you. Can you share where you sent your message so I can ensure we’re receiving all your questions? I’m very happy to say, you are entirely wrong. Please re-read the TOS and Privacy Policy. We never sell, distribute, or use your attendees information. We do market to you, the account owner, and send promotional information to you, the account owner. This includes training and product information about the services you purchased.

      1. Cynthia Hudson

        I guess I am confused – I had signed up for the webinar about making money on amazon and all these post are about google hangout etc. . I am not interested in finding out about google hangout or such. I am interested in finding out about making money on Amazon. Please advise. Thanks in advance.

  6. I was watching a webinar by Frank Kerns yesterday and noticed he was using WebinarJam and since I was in search of an inexpensive tool to use for training and sales webinars, I was curious. I’m bummed by some of what I’m hearing here. My user experience was good and when I reviewed what WJ could do, I got very excited. I wanted to find out who was looking at my webinars and also to be able to include videos and automate some of my materials. I use Infusionsoft and the integration is making me salivate.

    I Williams, are you suggesting that each potential lead needs to opt out on having their info shared or would I, as a customer change the agreement with WJ to include a no sharing/reselling clause in my contract? I wasn’t clear on exactly what you were suggesting.

    Thank you Rui Zui, for putting this together. I’m going to think on it.

  7. In my opinion: My team had a horrible experience with WebinarJam. We signed-up for the 1-year subscription, took a month to learn it and practice with it, working through its little idiosyncrasies, and finally hosted our first webinar. We found it running very slow, the attendee experience was simply a locked screen, the invites were sent out showing the incorrect start time, and the recording we tried to make never recorded. Again, we practiced internally a number of times to make sure we could get it to work and work-around its problems. Sadly, though, it failed us at a critical moment when we were presenting to potential clients.

    When we wrote to WebinarJam requesting a pro-rated refund, they said no, that their policy was a 30-day cancellation and that beyond that you were stuck with the 1-year charge. I was truly surprised by this attitude especially from a team that represents itself as the “Customer Success” (support) team.

    If you were reading the Tony Hsieh book, “Delivering Happiness,” where Zappos is an example of an incredible company focused on customer success (and reaping the rewards of word-of-mouth praise and repeat customers), in my opinion WebinarJam / Genesis Digital LLC is the antithesis.

    We explained our case and that we didn’t want a full refund. (We wanted a refund just for the 10 remaining months of service we could never use). Their final word was, “No,” and that was that.

    Very sad. In my opinion (and, of course, this entire write-up is my opinion), the WebinarJam tool falls well short of the hype. We’ll be moving over to GoToWebinar. While you marked GoToWebinar as “Old technology,” I would categorize it as “proven technology.”

    Thank you for your write-up. I’m glad someone had a good experience. We certainly did not.

    1. Tom Arnold,
      What are you talking about?
      Strange. I did my first webinar easily. Logged in 30 minutes before. Clicked through the options. Then, all done in 20 minutes. Copy pasted the email address, which were few hundred. At the right time, all checks in. Had a 4 hour webinar – all done just on myself, with no other persons.
      No team, no group to work on.

  8. I’m not a fan. There is only email support so I’ve been stuck 30 minutes before a webinar is about to start and can’t figure out why a link I’m posting in the offers page isn’t working and I cannot find the answer in the extensive online manual (who has time to read through all the material, especially in a pinch) and I cannot live chat or phone someone, I have to wait for an email response.

  9. Mark from Queens

    Tom Arnold and Rama,

    Each of you had different experiences. I wonder why?
    I’m looking for the best software and platform to run my first webinar. I have not met or spoke to anyone who could share his or her own opinions about it.
    I’d like to speak with each of you personally over email if possible.

  10. Ed Singer/Shmuel Mantinband

    I also am not thrilled with WebinarJam. I understand the learning curve, and we allowed ourselves plenty of time setting up and testing everything before we announced our first webinar.
    We even did a test the week before the webinar went live and everything was fine.
    But when the day of the webinar came (last night), not only did I find I could no longer access the live room (as presenter/Admin) from Internet Explorer (which I was able to do the week prior), but when I did enter the live room as presenter, the statistics showed 0 of 0 registrants had entered (I had 17 registrants).
    So I left the live room and came back in, and this time I had 8 or 17 present, but not in the live room. However, I didn’t know that – I just had people emailing me asking what the problem was (and if they hit refresh, they got the replay)
    Likewise, We did the entire 50 minute presentation, but we weren’t connected for quite some time, again without my even knowing it. So what was recorded was about 10 minutes of the actual presentation.
    Lastly, there is the option to go from camera to screen share, but every time you switch, there is a lag time of about 3-5 seconds – so the presenter has to stop speaking and the attendees have to sit and stare at a blank screen.
    All in all, it was not only a big waste of time and energy, but actually counter-productive since in my industry, getting good leads is a major and expensive part of what we do, and instead of being able to give a good presentation, I have to call/email 18 people and try to get them to understand that while I am lousy at webinars, I am good at my regular job.
    I sent an email to customer support last night (Sunday) and I am hopeful to get an answer today (specifically like if they have a copy of the entire webinar, and not just 10 minutes of it).
    Based on what I have seen, I don’t think this is a platform I can count on, and am really disappointed.

  11. I was registered for a webinar that was to be hosted by webinarjam.
    1) Received an SMS reminder 15minutes prior to the webinar that I would be receiving an email with the link. The email arrived 25 minutes later. In the meantime, none to contact. Replying to their SMS just produced a reply which was not meaningful to me.
    2) Did find the link from when I registered but then “The presenter has lost his connection,,,,please stand by”. The presenter was never able to run the webinar and I somehow think webinarjam is somehow culpable.
    3) Received an email three hours later with a link for what was supposed to be the webinar recording. Big surprise – Nope. Obviously a case of being overly reliant on the technology and no one to catch the glitches.

  12. I would advise anyone against using WebinarJam. We have held a total of 6 webinars. The first two were free ones that we provided for marketing, the last 4 have been for an online curriculum. The software has cut out and stopped working in three of the 6 webinars, with two being in the past three sessions.

    The first collaspe was due to the internet outage on the East Coast, so we were understanding to that one. The second one is because they updated their site with new patches/debugging during the time frame that we were hosting a live webinar. The result was that our entire webinar was shut down and we couldn’t get the connected again. As a result, we had a re-record the initial webinar and waited hours for a response from customer service with an explanation.

    Today, the webinar software collapsed again during a live webinar. All of our participants lost access again and we had to contact support. We told them that we were disappointed and given that the system failed three times within the past 6 webinars offered, we wanted to terminate our contract and a refund.

    The response was a half-way sympathetic apology and no explanation/resolution to the webinar issue was. Furthermore, they noted that despite our recent problems, they only provide a refund for 30-days regardless of quality of service. Our first webinar was on February 21st, so you can see how despite falling barely outside the refund date that we would be dissatisfied.

    The current level of reliability that they are providing is not representative of how our experience was earlier in using their platform. The customer service is poor, the platform is unreliable, and the refund policy is abysmal. Who cares about everything that it “can” do if it continuously fails to provide reliability. My suggestion is use another vendor and stay away from Webinar Jam at all costs-it has cost us too much time and customers at this point.

  13. Wow they sound terrible!

    I almost signed up on the basis of a cheap yearly fee. But they don’t even have that now. When I initially searched for a platform I was advised ‘go to webinar’. When I saw the price I said how can that be justified ? I will go for sensibly priced ‘webinar jam’ .

    Now After reading all these comments I think I now know how G2webinar can get away with their price. Everybody else is crap!

    Any one have any suggestions for a less crap and less expensive platform?

    1. I’ll throw my two cents in here too that WJ is not reliable. I spent hours learning the platform and testing it and both of my webinars resulted in lock-ups and/or loss of connection (despite being hard-wired). At first they wanted to tell me it was my connection speed, I provided my stats on that and that ended that.

      I too am trying to get a partial refund and am hearing the same “we only give a 30-day refund”. Really awful customer service. I’m looking into legal action. How can you not deliver on what you promised I was buying? The platform is weak, bottom line.

      I wish I had saved my money and just purchased Zoom.

  14. Laura Gisborne

    Our team found Webinarjam to be a nightmare. I can understand the business platform for their company in making it “our fault” and in selling “Concierge Services” but overall, it was a very bad experience and customer service was almost non-existent.

  15. Impressed with what is here EXCEPT , this new trend of usng a light color font on a white or light background, makes it cery difficult and slow to use your site, the slider on the side and text. It is almost painful. This is across several industries. I am not sure where web developers got this from Would you let me know if you would consider just changing the font color. Actually it is discrmination aganst those of us with vision problems. Thank you in advance and keep the information flowing (in darker text). Even a dark grey would help.

  16. You should take a look at the new WebinarJam. It is has many new features and no longer uses GHO. You do have an option of using YouTube livestreaming. You don’t have to though. There’s a video I found here on how to use the new one https://youtu.be/_7mcnS5ZXCQ. Are you planning to update this for the new WebinarJam?

  17. You can hire a decent marketing automation expert for this money. And get a custom landing page with an autoresponder + gradually all bells and whistles your particular funnel needs.

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