Selecting the right platform for your virtual event is no small feat. With so many options available, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. ON24, Goldcast, and Hubilo are among the leading contenders for event organizers who want to deliver memorable webinars and conferences. This detailed comparison breaks down their features, strengths, and limitations and highlights why Hubilo could be the solution you’ve been seeking.
Below is a quick snapshot of key features across ON24, Goldcast, and Hubilo.
ON24 stands out for its robust email marketing capabilities, particularly for enterprise customers. The platform integrates seamlessly with marketing automation tools like Marketo and Eloqua, enabling highly targeted email campaigns. This allows you to create personalized invitations and follow-up messages that are segmented for different audience types. However, ON24's advanced features are primarily locked behind higher-tier plans, which can be a limiting factor for smaller businesses or organizations on a budget.
Goldcast takes a different approach to pre-event engagement by sending out detailed event information via email. This includes important session details, speaker bios, and one-click login links for a smoother experience. While Goldcast doesn’t allow direct messaging between attendees and hosts, it compensates for this by sending out automatic reminders one hour before the event. This ensures that attendees are kept informed and are ready to join the event without unnecessary steps.
Hubilo makes pre-event engagement incredibly easy with its integrated email builder. You can design branded invitations, reminders, and follow-up campaigns with minimal effort. Additionally, the platform’s custom landing pages help create a seamless transition from registration to event participation. Hubilo’s suite of pre-event tools can significantly enhance attendee engagement and boost attendance rates for your event.
ON24 offers a range of customization options to ensure your webinars match your corporate identity. However, more advanced branding tools—such as custom layouts and deeper integration of branding—are reserved for enterprise clients. For smaller businesses and mid-market companies, the customization options might feel somewhat restricted, making it difficult to achieve the desired look and feel for the event.
Goldcast is particularly strong when it comes to customization. The platform provides extensive options to fully brand your event landing pages, themes, fonts, and colors. You can easily create a unified brand experience across event pages and emails by integrating custom logos and banners. This consistent branding approach ensures a polished and professional look for your events, regardless of the size or type of your organization.
Hubilo excels in offering an extensive range of customization and branding features. It supports custom domains and white-label branding, so you to align color schemes and visual elements with your brand identity. You can even add sponsor banners, which helps maintain a cohesive narrative throughout the event. Hubilo’s customization options are ideal for businesses looking for a professional and unified look across all touchpoints during the event.
ON24 offers powerful presenter tools, although they can be a bit overwhelming for users new to large-scale webinars. Features like simulive (where pre-recorded content is played as if live) offer flexibility but may require some training or support to fully master, especially if you don’t have a dedicated webinar production team. For larger events, having staff to manage the technology might be a necessity.
Goldcast puts a lot of focus on improving the speaker and host experience. The platform includes green rooms for speakers to prepare and test their equipment before going live. It supports up to 30 speakers on stage, including hosts and co-hosts, with full screen-sharing capabilities. Goldcast also allows speakers to use virtual backgrounds and add videos, helping them create a more engaging and polished presentation. However, it does fall short when it comes to offering advanced camera support.
Hubilo’s speaker dashboard provides real-time data on attendee engagement, including poll responses, questions, and key discussion points. This means you can adjust your presentations and focus on areas of higher interest. The platform also features a green room for speakers to prepare privately before the event starts, so you'll have no last-minute hiccups. Hubilo allows up to 30 speakers on stage at once, making it an excellent choice for events with multiple speakers or panelists.
ON24 provides a solid range of engagement tools, such as polls, Q&A sessions, and a resource section where attendees can access additional content. These features are particularly useful for marketers who want to share valuable materials during the event. However, features like breakout rooms or gamified networking experiences are generally only available with enterprise-level plans, which could limit interactive engagement for smaller organizations.
Goldcast is built with attendee engagement in mind, offering live chat, polls, Q&A sessions, and the ability for attendees to message hosts or panelists directly. It also includes CTAs for adding events to attendees’ calendars, keeping them informed and engaged throughout the event lifecycle. These features help create an interactive and engaging experience for all participants, making Goldcast a top contender for those looking to boost attendee interaction.
Hubilo goes above and beyond basic engagement tools by offering integrations for quizzes, real-time participation features, and even language translation to accommodate global audiences. The platform also allows clickable CTAs during sessions to prompt actions like demo sign-ups or downloads. In addition to live chat, polls, and Q&A, Hubilo supports a wide range of interactive features, including embedded apps, to ensure a dynamic attendee experience throughout the event.
ON24 provides on-demand webinar replays, giving attendees ongoing access to session recordings and supplementary materials. While ON24 provides AI-powered Analytics and Content Engine that identifies key moments, but it lacks the ability to provide automated social media-ready output. You’ll need extensive editing, or rapid content snippets may need additional third‐party tools or post‐production resources.
Goldcast supports on-demand viewing soon after a live session concludes, allowing participants to revisit any part of the event at their convenience. Although Goldcast includes AI features for analytics and transcripts, it does not offer an integrated tool for automatically generating shareable content clips or social media posts. Event teams aiming to create quick, polished highlights or short video snippets may opt to export recordings for further editing.
Hubilo delivers on-demand access generally within 15–20 minutes after a session ends, ensuring that participants can promptly catch up or rewatch key presentations. Hubilo also stands out by providing AI-powered content generation—commonly referred to as a “Snackable Content Hub”—which automates the creation of short write-ups, social posts, and video snippets. This functionality streamlines the post-event marketing cycle by reducing the need for manual video editing and content repackaging.
ON24 is typically well-suited for mid to large-sized webinars, comfortably hosting up to around 2,500 attendees under standard plans. For organizations running enterprise-level events, ON24 can scale further, but additional costs may apply. Its infrastructure focuses on delivering stable streams for marketing-driven webinars, conferences, and virtual town halls, while smaller customers might find high-capacity features locked behind higher-tier plans.
Goldcast generally works best for events with up to 1,000 live attendees, although the platform can sometimes accommodate slightly larger audiences if enterprise features are enabled. This capacity targets mid-size webinars or specialized conferences, where interactive tools like polls, chat, and Q&A remain responsive. Although it does not rival the largest capacities on the market, Goldcast emphasizes maintaining a high-quality, personalized attendee experience at moderate scale.
Hubilo can handle significantly large audiences, up to 100,000 making it a compelling choice for organizations planning sizable summits or global conferences. Engineered with load balancing and fallback systems, the platform strives to maintain smooth streaming even as attendee numbers surge. This scalability enables event organizers to begin with smaller webinars and confidently expand to major virtual productions without switching platforms.
ON24 is well-known for its comprehensive and sophisticated analytics, especially for enterprise-level users. You can track metrics like how long attendees watched specific sessions, which resources they downloaded, and whether they completed surveys. Lead scoring is primarily driven by engagement metrics (e.g., poll responses, Q&A participation), and no weighted scoring is available. These features make it an essential tool for data-driven marketers. ON24 also supports CPE Credits & Certificates.
Goldcast offers a thorough analytics suite, tracking session attendance, chat activity, booth interactions (if applicable), and poll engagement. It also includes a lead scoring mechanism that attributes points based on attendee demographics and behavior, helping align sales and marketing efforts. Goldcast does not support CPE functionality; users may be able to distribute certificates through external integrations or manual workflows
Hubilo provides granular analytics on user engagement, from poll and Q&A activity to click-throughs on embedded calls to action. Its robust lead scoring system assigns values to various attendee behaviors, which then sync directly with CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot for targeted follow-ups. Hubilo supports certificate issuance for those needing proof of participation or CPE credits, offering a straightforward way to acknowledge attendee achievements.
ON24 supports integrations with a wide variety of CRMs and marketing tools, including Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Pardot, Marketo, and Mailchimp. Some of these integrations may require third-party tools like Zapier or Tibco connectors, depending on your subscription level. Users on higher-tier plans will have access to more robust integration features, making it easier to automate workflows and streamline event-related tasks.
Goldcast integrates with several popular CRM and marketing automation platforms, such as Salesforce and HubSpot. It also supports communication tools like Slack, and marketing platforms like Drift, ensuring smooth data flow between event activities and your organizational workflows. For further customization, Goldcast offers webhook notifications and a public API to extend the platform's functionality.
Hubilo shines with its automation-first approach, offering out-of-the-box integrations with leading CRMs like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365, as well as marketing automation tools such as HubSpot and Marketo. The platform’s ability to set up automated triggers—such as sending follow-up emails after an attendee participates in multiple sessions—makes it easier to streamline workflows without needing additional customization or third-party tools.
ON24 provides excellent support for enterprise clients, including dedicated help resources and training. However, for smaller clients on more basic plans, support can be less personalized. In these cases, users may need to rely on self-service options like knowledge bases or email support, which could be slower than more premium options.
Goldcast offers responsive customer support through live chat and email. The platform also provides an extensive knowledge base to help users navigate its features. Larger clients may have access to dedicated support channels for faster response times, particularly for complex issues. Goldcast’s live support is available starting 30 minutes before the event and continues throughout its duration, which is beneficial for event organizers.
Hubilo offers 24/7 customer support, which is especially useful for organizations hosting large or global events. The platform provides VIP onboarding, recurring training sessions, and access to technical and video production partners to ensure everything runs smoothly. Hubilo’s dedicated customer success team ensures that you have the necessary support whenever you need it, no matter the time zone.
ON24’s pricing is somewhat opaque compared to other platforms, and there’s no free trial. Prospective customers are encouraged to request a demo or chat with their team for a custom quote. Key pricing plans include:
Goldcast offers structured plans to meet the needs of different organizations and event complexities. However, there’s no free trial available. Here’s additional info:
Hubilo provides tiered pricing plans tailored to different event sizes and organizational needs. Hubilo also provides a 14-day free trial. Here are more details:
Hubilo stands out with its automation-focused workflows, real-time engagement scoring, and CRM integrations. Its ability to scale from small webinars to large-scale virtual events, combined with customizable branding options and flexible ticketing, makes it a top choice for organizations looking for a professional, integrated solution. If you're interested, book a demo today!
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