Since the demand for video conferencing tools is going up, more of them are appearing. And they keep getting better because there is no chance we will totally forget about video calls anytime soon.
We already wrote a blog post about platforms for hosting online events back in March, but some other video communication tools have appeared since then.
One of them is Livestorm. It’s a tool for both video calls as well as for hosting online conferences.
The video call feature can be found in almost every messenger, so the webinar tool is more interesting.
How to set up your own webinar with Livestorm
Livestorm seems pretty easy to use: first of all, you have to register and confirm your email. After that, you’re all set to create online conferences, which are called webinars here. You don’t need to download any applications.
To create a webinar, all you have to do is click on the +new webinar button, name, and edit your future webinar. Then, you have to publish it to pursue with editing.
Then, you get to the general settings, where you can edit the name of the event, explain what it will be about as well as how long it will last. This is what people will see in the invitation.
You can change how the invitation or the registration will look like as well: you can add your logo, add the cover image, and change the background color as well as of the text. It always has a countdown, which looks cool.
Brand your live event
You can customize a lot of things. For example, whether
- the attendees need to have a photo (logo) to take part in the event,
- they can only register with a work email address
- the webinar can be recorded and replayed afterwards
- whether the last names of the attendees should be hidden
- they should be able to download shared PDF presentations.
You can also add polls and questions’ sections: private or public.
Integrations
Another nice feature that might be useful is that you can stream your video on external sources like YouTube live or Twitch.
Livestorm can also send registration confirmation and reminders per email automatically. You can also integrate it into Mailchimp and push your registrants inside Mailchimp.
This tool can actually be integrated with a lot of apps such as Zapier, Microsoft Dynamics, Slack, Eventbrite. Such integrations give you nice features. For instance, you can integrate Livestorm into Calendly, a tool for creating online bookable events synced with your calendar, mentioned in our blog post earlier. By doing so, you will be able to create online meeting rooms based on your Calendly events. It makes it possible to join video calls for the duration of the meeting instantly.
Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and Google Analytics can be used to promote and understand your webinar demographics better.
Livestorm is a promising solution
These features look very promising. The developers even host free 30 minutes long webinars on demand to explain all the possibilities Livestorm gives.
Even though there is a paid version of the tool, you still get all the features in the free version. The difference between the paid and free version is that you can only have up to 10 registrants per webinar, and one session can last no longer than 20 minutes. In the paid version, that costs €89 per month, there’s an unlimited number of registrants, and one session can be 4 hours long.
Right now, you can also get the Meet Premium (video calls feature) with an unlimited number of meeting rooms and with up to 12 participants for meeting for free. In the basic version, you have one meeting room with only 4 participants at a time.
Conclusion
All in all, Livestorm looks very nice, but it may be rather pricey if you don’t hold conferences often. However, if webinars are something you only do occasionally and for small groups of people, Livestorm might be a good solution. You can find out more about other platforms for online events here.