EverWebinar Review

What Is EverWebinar?

EverWebinar is an automated webinar platform from Genesis Digital.

Can you record a webinar in EverWebinar? The answer is no.

“Automated” is the operative word since it doesn’t require and support live events. Live video conferences live in the orbit of WebinarJam, its sister app. We consider both programs as some of the industry’s best.

The goal of EverWebinar is to present your older recordings as if they were new to monetize them repeatedly. This solution does more than just replay live webinars over and over. It creates an illusion that they’ve never been aired, simulating the whole experience.

This product has attracted 20,000+ subscribers. But you can only find a handful of EverWebinar reviews on G2, TrustRadius, and Capterra. Although the average rating across these platforms was somewhat neutral, keep in mind they’re a very small representation of their user base.

To fill the void left by its relatively quiet community, I dissected EverWebinar’s functionality myself. Let’s see whether or not it’s worth our money.

Features 

Not everything about EverWebinar stands out above the rest. However, some definitely do!

Compatibility

Like BigMarker, EverWebinar is a cloud app. This means you only need a web browser on your computer to launch it.

As long as there’s a major browser in place, you and your attendees don’t have to download anything else. Because of this, the setup is a breeze and no hardware storage is needed.

EverWebinar’s deployment is the complete opposite of how Adobe Connect works, which is a must-download program.

Video Import

EverWebinar doesn’t record new material, so you have to feed pre-recorded content from an external source into it. Ideally, your webinars would come from WebinarJam.

Naturally, Genesis Digital has designed EverWebinar and WebinarJam to work together seamlessly.

If you subscribe to WebinarJam and at least use the EverWebinar trial, you’ll turn your live events into evergreen ones. Using the procedure called the one-click platform swap, you can initiate the conversion process with the click of a button. 

But can EverWebinar work with a different app? Yes, it can.

If you’re not a WebinarJam subscriber, you can use MP4 and MOV files from a shortlist of hosting services. At the time of writing this EverWebinar review, Amazon S3, YouTube, and Vimeo (Pro or higher) are the most prominent ones.

To host any video from an external source, copy-paste the URL to the actual file into your EverWebinar console. Each third-party source comes with restrictions, though.

On Amazon S3, you need to set your file permissions to public. To reduce the chances of buffering to zero, you have to convert your S3 file URL into a CloudFront URL. CloudFront, Amazon’s content delivery network, is optimized for streaming, whereas S3 is more suitable for hosting.

On YouTube, you won’t be able to get rid of the platform’s branding logo and video player controls. In other words, your attendees can pause, play, rewind, or escape your video as if they’re YouTube. This isn’t ideal for a webinar environment.

On Vimeo, you need a premium account to broadcast your videos on EverWebinar. But you won’t have to worry about any branding logo or video player controls.

High-Definition Video Quality

It’s generally believed that recordings in incredibly high resolutions and at 60 fps (frames per second) may look better. But Genesis Digital recommends 720p (HD) at 30 fps instead. These video characteristics may uninspire attendees with poor internet connections.

To optimize your content and avoid EverWebinar problems, Genesis Digital recommends using HandBrake, a free video transcoder. If they aren’t already, it can convert your files into MP4 and set their audio bitrate at 128.

Scheduling

On EverWebinar, you can choose a specific date and time to broadcast your webinar.

Likewise, you can set recurring sessions to replay your event more than once. Even arrange schedules with flexible times and days of the week.

To set recurring webinars for groups of attendees in different geographical areas, you can specify the time zone too.

On-Demand Webinars

On-demand webinars can increase your sign-up rates due to three tricks. As shown in the EverWebinar demo, you can:

1. Activate the Just-in-Time option. This creates an impression that the registrant just found your webinar a few minutes before the scheduled broadcast. Psychologically, arriving at the registration page at the right time can compel them to attend.
2. Allow attendees to join in progress. With this option, the attendee can enter the session while it’s in progress. It incentivizes latecomers to jump in instead of bouncing somewhere else.
3. Permit registrants to watch the replay immediately. Like the second trick, this one doesn’t let them wait for the next session. It induces relief since the whole webinar is still available for watching, despite missing the original. But since it’s meant to be a replay, it doesn’t display any rolling chat feed.

Dynamic Attendee Display

Using this live element, EverWebinar mimics the typical webinar attendance curve throughout the event. This means that the simulated number of attendees increases at first and then gradually decreases.

If you want, you can display a fixed number throughout the event. However, the dynamic growth and decline of room attendance are more realistic.

Sadly, the EverWebinar demo doesn’t show a sample of this live element in action. 

Live Chat Simulator

Another way to create a hybrid webinar (a pre-recorded event that appears live) is to enable live chat. You can make up interactions so that the attendees think you’re talking with others.

To make your messages genuine, determine the time they appear and their senders’ role and name. You can add your pre-written lines manually or import them into the system through a formatted CSV file.

As the host, you can incorporate real comments from actual attendees into your simulated chat roll. Allow them to see each other’s messages so that you can monitor and moderate their ongoing conversations.

Among all alternatives to EverWebinar, JetWebinar is the only notable one with a similar feature.

Question Box

In place of a live web chat, you can activate a question box instead. EverWebinar sends the inquiries from the attendees directly to the email address you provide.

The question box is another way to simulate an authentic live webinar experience for your attendees.

Highlighted Announcements

This refers to a glowing chat comment you want to amplify for the attendees to see.

Of course, you should use an actual comment present in your simulated chat to make your announcement believable.

Surveys

These pieces of content can generate live interactions in evergreen webinars.

Apart from encouraging your attendees to participate actively, surveys can also help you get to know them better. Using interactive content, you can understand what your attendees learned from your event and how they’re feeling.

You can also introduce a poll or a question at any time with the click of the mouse.

EverWebinar has a few survey problems, though. One of them is that you can’t create questionnaires.

Product Offers

On EverWebinar, promote products or services during the event as clickable offers. This is a viable option if you’re an affiliate marketer or sell products yourself.

To lure your attendees, you can craft an eye-catching headline, an informative description, and a persuasive call to action. Then customize the text in the ad and inside the button, possibly including an image.

To boost your sales on EverWebinar, apply scarcity and/or urgency. This means you limit the number of items up for grabs. Plus, display a countdown to signal the end of your offer.

This feature reminded me of Livestorm, one of the popular alternatives to EverWebinar. Livestorm also lets you direct attendees to promotional offers outside the webinar room. But the beauty of using EverWebinar is the luxury of leveraging sales pressure to inspire prompt action.

Live Sales Notifications

In addition to scarcity and urgency, you can also use social proof to motivate attendees to make a purchase. EverWebinar can broadcast sales in the room in real-time, nudging others into following suit.

Page Builder

Like Demio, EverWebinar provides a selection of professional-looking registration and “thank you” page templates.

All EverWebinar landing page designs have fully customizable content and are 100% mobile-responsive. You can change the colors and text, add your logo, and more.

For the registration page, you can make it your own with custom fields.

The only mandatory fields are First Name and Email Address. But you can supplement them with more fields to get more information. You can set the others as either mandatory or optional.

If you don’t have a website, you can host your landing pages on EverWebinar’s cloud servers. With free unlimited hosting, you never have to pay extra for the privilege.

On the other hand, if you have a website and want to display the registration forms, EverWebinar has an embeddable widget you can copy-paste. What’s more, you can use your own landing pages and link them with the software’s Register buttons.

Split Testing

This feature makes it possible to test two EverWebinar landing page templates. It’s helpful in determining which design converts more visitors.

You can also specify the percentage of visitors pages A and B receive.

One-Click Registration Hotlink

With this advanced feature, the contacts on your autoresponder mailing list can register for your events with one click. This will make life easier for your existing leads.

Paid Registration

As on Zoom, you can charge interested parties upon registration on EverWebinar.

You’ll need to integrate the software with a third-party payment processor like PayPal or Stripe to bill participants. EverWebinar even has analytics capabilities to track your sales figures.

Naturally, Genesis Digital recommends Kartra, its other product, when setting up an eCommerce on EverWebinar.

To configure the payment flow, you must set the registration fee and choose among different currencies. Then, you need to copy-paste the payment checkout page and post-payment redirect URL from your third-party payment processor. The whole process requires zero EverWebinar integrations.

If the user completes the payment but not registration, EverWebinar can come to the rescue. It’ll provide you with a link you send to the client to save a seat for his webinar.

Moreover, you can grant free passes! This is done by sending the post-payment redirect URL. Essentially, clicking this link gets around the whole payment procedure.

Password Protection

To keep unwanted eyes floating around the internet off your event, you can password-protect it.

Enabling password protection locks your webinar room. Otherwise, it’ll be accessible through a valid link. The password acts as a second factor for authenticating users.

To set up a password, EverWebinar gives you two options: use a master password or generate different ones for each attendee.

Email Notifications

EverWebinar has its own complete email system. This means you can launch email campaigns for your events without any EverWebinar integrations whatsoever.

For starters, you can send out up to 10 pre-webinar notifications and up to 10 post-webinar ones. You also have the ability to precisely schedule your messages before or after your webinar.

One of the standard pre-webinar emails is the Sign-Up Confirmation Message, which is sent out immediately. It’s an excellent opportunity to share the link to your webinar room and go over its topics.

The other is the Last-Minute Notification, which is sent 15 minutes before the event.

For message customization, you can use EverWebinar’s ten shortcodes to tailor your emails. Each one is a placeholder for relevant information on file. For example, the shortcode {TITLE} corresponds with your webinar’s title.

If you don’t want to send out the same message to everyone post-webinar, segment your recipients. You can craft specific messages for attendees, for no-shows, for attendees who ignored your offers, and so on.

Indeed, expect simplified email campaign automation with or without an EverWebinar and Infusionsoft integration.

The catch is that the emails will come from Genesis Digital. Meaning its domain will appear in the email address since you’ll be using its servers.

To change the Sent-From and Reply-To headers of your emails, you need your own Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) gateway. To do this, you’ll need a third-party app integration.

Integrations

To expand EverWebinar’s functionality, you can integrate it with third parties, ranging from autoresponders to customer relationship management (CRM) solutions.

You can link EverWebinar to Zapier and at least 15 other apps, including: 

• Kartra
• Active Campaign
• AWeber
• Constant Contact
• ClickFunnels
• ConvertKit
• Drip
• GetResponse
• iContact
• Keap (formerly Infusionsoft)
• Leadpages
• Mailchimp
• Maropost
• OntraPort
• Twilio
  

Moreover, the EverWebinar and Zapier integration enables you to create automated workflows using 750+ apps.

Plus, you can embed a third-party tracking token to the Facebook Pixel or Google Tag Manager to your webinar pages.

How can you enrich this software’s functionality with these integrations?

Doing call and SMS notifications is an excellent case in point. With the Twilio integration, you can send webinar updates to your registrants over the phone or text messaging.

Call and SMS reminders are optional. But they can neutralize the drawbacks to email marketing and help increase your attendance rate.

EverWebinar Analytics

EverWebinar monitors and reports the numbers you care about. These include click-through figures, statistics about your registration and attendance rates, latecomers, and dollar-per-signup values.

Regardless of how you monetize your evergreen webinars, EverWebinar provides valuable insights for achieving your unique goals.

Long-time subscribers can attest that the software’s analytics have improved over the years. In fact, some older EverWebinar reviews were explicitly critical of it.

Fast forward to today, the usual complaint is regarding the inability to select custom dates.

Interface and Ease of Use

One of EverWebinar’s strengths is its well-thought-out interface.

It illustrates its automation procedure using symbols arranged linearly. You start from left to right. Simply scroll down to adjust your settings and enable the features you like.

Furthermore, EverWebinar has abundant whitespace. It capitalizes on bold colors to draw your eyes to design elements that matter, including toggles, buttons, and checked circles.

Thanks to such a layout and colors, you can conveniently monitor your progress and review your settings.

If you’re a novice marketer or content creator, EverWebinar is super intuitive. Everything is in plain English, so don’t worry about complicated terms. Save for copy-pasting code for integrations; this software doesn’t require any sort of technical expertise.

EverWebinar Pricing

EverWebinar only has one plan, and it’s all-inclusive. This is great because you don’t need to pay more to experience its full glory.

EverWebinar sets its price based on how long you want to subscribe. Here are its two billing options:

• 1 year: $499
• 2 years: $874
  

Before, EverWebinar cost you slightly less every year or every two years. But at least now you can sign up for this service monthly, which replaced the annual subscription.

Not only does EverWebinar have a simple pricing model, but it’s also more affordable.

EverWebinar’s flat rates mean that your subscription fee stays the same regardless of your attendance. Conversely, ClickMeeting wants more money for more attendees.

Unfortunately, there’s no free trial, although EverWebinar had a 60–day free trial in the past.

As of now, you can give this software a whirl for 14 days at just $1.

If you’re a penny pincher, you’ll love this paid EverWebinar trial, but it entails entering your credit card details first.

Having said that, Genesis Digital provides a 30-day money-back guarantee on all subscriptions. You can use multiple currencies during checkout as well.

So, is there a way to understand how this software works without sharing your sensitive information?

Yes, there is. A free demo is available online.

Support

EverWebinar support doesn’t cost anything, but don’t expect around-the-clock instant customer service.

Genesis Digital’s chat representatives are online from 8 AM to 12 PM PST, Mondays through Fridays. Four hours is a short period and suggests that the company’s help desk is understaffed.

If you reach out to Genesis Digital outside of this window, you’ll have to submit a support ticket instead.

Email can be less convenient than live chat. However, the company’s fast response to my message was commendable.

Regarding self-help options, Genesis Digital’s Documentation Wiki has a wealth of guides and tutorials. By the time you finish them all, you’ll be an expert in EverWebinar.

I only wish that the company did a better job segregating relevant reads for WebinarJam and EverWebinar. Sometimes, they overlap. This may cause you to think that the instructions are relevant when they’re not and ultimately confuse you.

Lastly, you can join EverWebinar’s private Facebook community of more than 44,000 users.

There, you can network with other content creators and marketers and share your best practices.

EverWebinar Review – Verdict

EverWebinar is unique in many ways.

When appropriately used, its live elements can keep attendees in the dark about watching pre-recorded events. 

EverWebinar’s internal email system helps eliminate the need for yet another integration. Then there’s the all-inclusive plan and flat subscription fees, which are a breath of fresh air.

I would have loved to test-drive this software at zero cost and had its live chat agents available longer. Another thing is that I wish there were an easier way to promote EverWebinar events on social media.

Nevertheless, I think it’s a solid solution for what it’s designed to do.