Livestorm: Features and Pricing of a Leading Webinar Platform

Livestorm is a browser-based video engagement platform designed for hosting live, on-demand, and automated webinars, virtual events, and online meetings. Founded in 2016, Livestorm has evolved from a webinar-focused tool into a comprehensive video communications platform trusted by thousands of organizations globally. The platform aims to empower teams with intuitive functionalities, tailored branding options, and seamless integrations, all while ensuring security and compliance.

Key Features and Benefits

Livestorm offers a range of features designed to facilitate engaging and efficient online events. Here's an overview of some of the key functionalities:

Intuitive Interface: Livestorm is designed to be user-friendly, allowing teams to run events in minutes.
Customizable Branding: The platform allows users to maintain brand consistency with customizable templates and permissions. Easily design the branding of each event room with a logo, background images, and custom colors.
Seamless Integrations: Livestorm integrates with various CRM systems, improving efficiency with seamless data transfer. It offers native integrations with Salesforce and HubSpot, among others.
EU-Hosted and Secure: Livestorm is EU-hosted, ISO 27001 certified, and GDPR compliant by design, ensuring data protection and privacy.
Engagement Features: These include live polls, surveys, and public or private chat to foster real-time engagement and feedback.
Analytics and Reporting: Detailed analytics provide insights into attendee behavior and engagement, helping organizations evaluate session effectiveness. Easily identify replay views and key moments of your events with engagement data.
On-Demand Webinars: Livestorm allows users to create on-demand webinars, making content available at any time.
Multiple Workspaces: The multiple workspaces feature is available with the Enterprise plan as a paid add-on.
Breakout Rooms: Divide participants up automatically, autonomously, or manually to collaborate in smaller groups.
Questions and Answers: Centralize audience questions and answer them through a tab in the event room.
Contacts Record: Effortlessly view and export all your contacts and their data from a single place.

Use Cases

Livestorm caters to various industries and use cases, including:

Webinars for Healthcare: Engagement features and browser accessibility ensure maximum participation.
Webinars for Finance: High attendance duration, with a significant percentage of participants staying for the entire event.
Webinars for Software: The platform's UI and landing page simplicity positively impact customer communication.
Product Demos: Save sales reps valuable time by sending prospects on-demand product demos.
Employee Training: Scale and improve remote onboarding with on-demand webinar software.
Online Courses: Allow students to view courses online at any time using an on-demand webinar platform.
Online Conferences and Summits: Organize live events and record webinars effortlessly.
Customer Training: Train customers remotely with ease using a live webinar platform.

Livestorm Pricing Plans

Livestorm operates on a freemium, usage-based pricing model. When you first sign up for Livestorm, you will get the Free plan. You'll be able to create and publish as many test events as you want for free. Then, you can upgrade to the Pro, Business, or Enterprise plans, either by yourself or by contacting our Sales team, depending on the plan you want.

The pricing is defined through monthly and annual subscriptions, and there is no pricing per event. Instead, you pay for the amount of active contacts you need each month.

Understanding Active Contacts

An active contact is someone who has interacted at least once a month with Livestorm, regardless of the type of interaction. This could include:

Registering for an event.
Joining a live event or watching a replay.

Available Plans

Free Plan:
- Features: Up to 20 minutes/session, up to 30 active contacts/month, up to 30 live attendees, and unlimited team members in the workspace.
Pro Plan:
- Features: Up to 4 hours/session, 100, 200, 350, 500, 750, or 1,000 active contacts/month, up to 1,000 live attendees, unlimited members in the workspace, and standard support.
- The 750 and 1,000 monthly active contacts subscriptions are only available as annual subscriptions.
- Users can also purchase an annual MAC credit package for flexible use, but credits are still counted on a monthly basis.
- Pro features include Hubspot integration and standard support.
Business Plan:
- Features: Up to 4 hours/session, unlimited active contacts, up to 3,000 live attendees, unlimited members in the workspace, VIP support, and access to the Livestorm Learning platform.
- Business features include VIP support and 3,000 live attendees/event.
Enterprise Plan:
- Features: Up to 12 hours/session, unlimited active contacts, up to 3,000 live attendees, unlimited members in the workspace, VIP support & SLA, enterprise onboarding & training, dedicated CSM, enterprise & custom integrations, multiple workspaces with unified billing, and SAML SSO.
- Enterprise features include unlimited replay viewers and Salesforce, Marketo, and Pardot integrations.
- The multiple workspaces feature is available with the Enterprise plan as a paid add-on.

Managing Your Subscription

When you sign up to Livestorm, you automatically get Livestorm Free, which is the basic, free plan. It allows you to try the platform for an unlimited amount of time. Livestorm also offers different paying plans according to your needs: Livestorm Pro, Livestorm Business, and Livestorm Enterprise. At a certain point you might need to upgrade or downgrade your plan, update your payment method, and download your invoices. A banner will also be displayed in your Dashboard, visible to your whole team, warning you when 50%, 70% and 100% of your active contacts are used.

Upgrading Your Plan:
- You can upgrade your plan to add more active contacts. In that case, you will be charged based on a pro-rata computation until the rest of the month. If you upgrade, the changes will be applied immediately, and thus additional people will be able to enter the room without any problem.
Downgrading Your Account:
- You might not need as many hosts or live attendees as your plan offers anymore. You can change your options for your next billing cycle.
- Don't forget to downgrade your plan before your next renewal date. Downgrades come to effect at the end of the current billing period.
Pausing/Canceling Your Subscription:
- Only hosts and workspace owners can cancel a subscription.
- Since we provide the flexibility and option to cancel at any time, you will not be refunded if you cancel your plan after your renewal date. Therefore, don't forget to cancel your subscription before your renewal date if you don't want to be charged again.
- All your event data will be deleted upon canceling so we recommend that you back it up beforehand.

How Livestorm's Pricing Works

Attendee Credits: You buy a yearly pack of attendee credits and you spend 1 credit each time a person actually attends a session, whether it is live, a replay, or on demand. The same person attending two different sessions uses 2 credits. If they attend live and later watch the replay of the same session, they are only counted once for that session.
Who Counts as an Attendee?: Only real participants are counted: people who join live, watch a replay, or watch on demand. People who register but never show up are not counted, so you never pay for no shows.
Do Team Members Consume Credits?: No. Your internal team members do not consume attendee credits when they join sessions, run tests, or attend internal trainings. You only use credits for your external audience.
Reaching Attendee Quota: You will receive alerts as you get close to your limit. If you fully reach your quota, new attendees will not be able to join sessions until you upgrade.

Advantages of Using Livestorm

Browser-Based Platform: Livestorm operates fully within web browsers, eliminating the need for downloads and simplifying access across devices and operating systems.
High Engagement: Interactive features like polls, Q&A, and chat keep audiences engaged.
Detailed Analytics: Comprehensive reporting provides insights into attendee behavior and event effectiveness.
Integration Capabilities: Seamless integration with CRM and business tools enhances workflow efficiency.
Scalability: Designed to scale from small team gatherings to large virtual conferences.
Security: Robust security measures ensure data protection and privacy compliance.

How Livestorm Compares to Other Platforms

Livestorm competes with other webinar and virtual event platforms like Zoom Webinars, GoTo Webinar, Demio, BigMarker, ON24, Webex Events, and WebinarJam. Each platform has its strengths and weaknesses, and the best choice depends on the specific needs and priorities of the user.

Zoom Webinars: A popular tool for virtual meetings that also supports webcasting. Zoom charges extra for add-ons like cloud storage, extra hosts, extra co-editors, and event services.
GoTo Webinar: Supports both live webcasts and pre-recorded webinars. Organizers, speakers, and attendees must download a desktop app to join the webinar rather than using a browser-based app.
ON24: Designed to host webinars and virtual events for lead generation.
Webex Webinars: An enterprise webinar tool for large organizations that regularly host events with thousands of attendees.
BigMarker: A popular choice for large virtual events, with a focus on branding and custom experiences.
Demio: A webinar platform that focuses on delivering return on investment (ROI) and driving conversions, with integrations for popular CRM tools.
WebinarJam: Webinar software that offers AI and automation tools. Users report occasional stability issues.

Tips for Hosting Successful Webinars

Plan and Prepare: Define your goals, target audience, and key message.
Choose the Right Time: Consider the time zones and needs of your audience, avoiding lunch hours and commute times.
Promote Your Webinar: Invite attendees at the beginning of the week, as invites sent Monday through Wednesday rank higher for pre-registrations.
Engage Your Audience: Use interactive features like Q&As and live polls to keep participants involved.
Record Your Webinar: Maximize views and engagement by making the recording available on-demand.
Follow Up: Share the recording and any additional resources with attendees after the event.

Read also: Host Engaging Webinars

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