Last updated: 2026-01-15

For most U.S. marketing agencies, StreamYard’s browser-based On‑Air webinars are the most practical starting point: you get production-quality video, registration, multistreaming, and easy embeds without heavy setup. If you need automated evergreen funnels, ticketing with built‑in payments, or six‑figure‑scale events, alternatives like Demio, Crowdcast, or Zoom can cover those edge cases.

Summary

• StreamYard gives agencies a browser-based studio plus On‑Air webinars with registration, automatic emails, on‑demand replay, and site embeds.
• You can multistream the same webinar to major social platforms while also hosting it behind a registration gate for lead capture. (StreamYard)
• Demio, Crowdcast, and Zoom are useful when you specifically need automated/on‑demand funnels, built‑in payments, or very large attendee caps.
• Most day‑to‑day lead gen, client education, and campaign webinars sit comfortably inside StreamYard’s viewer limits and feature set.

What does a marketing agency really need from a webinar platform?

When agencies search for webinar software, they’re rarely chasing specs; they’re chasing outcomes: booked meetings, upsells, and renewals.

In practice, that usually means a platform that delivers:

• High-quality, reliable audio/video so your brand and your clients look polished.
• Ease of use for hosts, guest experts, and attendees—ideally in the browser, with no downloads.
• Automatic recording so every live session becomes evergreen content.
• Custom branding to keep your client’s visual identity consistent.
• Interactive tools like chat (and, ideally, polls) to keep attention and gather insight.

At StreamYard, we built On‑Air around exactly these needs: a browser-based studio with an integrated webinar mode that adds registration, hosted watch pages, and on‑demand replay without extra plugins or software. (StreamYard)

Why is StreamYard a strong default for agencies?

For agencies, the winning setup is usually the one that takes the least time to explain to a client.

StreamYard On‑Air checks key boxes with very little friction:

• No downloads or accounts for attendees – people join from a hosted watch page in their browser, so support tickets drop dramatically. (StreamYard)
• Registration and lead capture built in – you can require registration, customize form fields, and export all registrants as CSV for upload into your CRM or marketing automation tool. (StreamYard)
• Automated email flow – confirmation and reminder emails (24 hours and 1 hour before) go out automatically, and when on‑demand is enabled, attendees receive an email with the recording link after the webinar.
• Embeddable player and chat – drop the webinar on a client’s landing page while still using On‑Air registration and chat for a fully branded experience.
• Automatic recording and on‑demand replay – a single toggle makes the webinar replayable on‑demand, and you still keep a private recording in your content library.
• Integrated production studio – you can run layouts, overlays, screen shares, and multi-camera or multi-guest setups from the same browser-based studio you might already use for live shows.

If you’re already running live streams for clients, On‑Air essentially turns that same workflow into a lead-generating webinar engine.

How do multistreaming and embeds help agency campaigns?

Marketing agencies rarely run a webinar in isolation. You’re running a campaign.

StreamYard lets you multistream the same webinar to Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitch, X/Twitter, and custom RTMP destinations, while also hosting it as an On‑Air webinar behind a registration gate. (StreamYard)

That gives you a few practical plays:

• Top-of-funnel reach: simulcast to social channels to reach cold audiences.
• Mid-funnel capture: direct engaged viewers to register for a gated Q&A or follow-up workshop hosted in On‑Air.
• Client-owned experience: embed the On‑Air player and chat on a client domain, so your campaign drives traffic to their site, not a generic event hub.

Similar products like Crowdcast support multistreaming, but typically cap external destinations by plan (for example, one vs three locations) and add hour quotas or per-attendee overages, which can complicate budgeting. (Crowdcast) For many agencies, StreamYard’s “studio plus On‑Air” model is simpler to reason about month to month.

How does StreamYard compare to Demio and Crowdcast for agency use?

If you’re shortlisting tools, Demio and Crowdcast often appear beside StreamYard. Each has a slightly different emphasis.

Demio

Demio is a browser-based webinar option that leans harder into marketing automation and evergreen funnels:

• Supports live and event-series webinars on all plans, with pre‑recorded on‑demand and automated webinars from higher tiers. (Demio)
• Pricing is per host and per room size, with tiers like a Starter plan for 50 attendees and larger rooms up to 3,000. (Demio)
• Engagement tools include chat, polls, featured actions, and handouts geared toward marketing teams. (Demio)

Demio is worth a look if your primary objective is complex evergreen funnels with automated events and you’re comfortable paying per host and attendee room.

Crowdcast

Crowdcast focuses on multi-session live events and built‑in ticketing:

• Single-link multi-session events let attendees register once and attend several sessions—useful for summits or class series.
• Built‑in Stripe monetization with platform transaction fees; you pay a percentage on each ticketed event. (Crowdcast)
• Pricing includes hour and live-attendee quotas, with overages charged per live attendee beyond the plan limit. (Crowdcast)

Crowdcast is helpful if in-platform ticketing is non‑negotiable. For most agencies, combining StreamYard On‑Air with an external ticketing tool (like Eventbrite) avoids per‑ticket platform fees, at the cost of an extra setup step. (StreamYard)

In everyday agency scenarios—monthly client webinars, launches, partner events—StreamYard’s simpler browser workflow and multistreaming often outweigh the more opinionated funnels of Demio or the quota model of Crowdcast.

When does Zoom Webinars actually make sense for agencies?

Zoom Webinars tends to enter the conversation when scale is the priority.

Zoom’s webinar offering can:

• Support very large audiences, with capacity tiers that now reach up to 1,000,000 attendees on specific single-use webinar licenses. (Zoom)
• Include up to 1,000 interactive video panelists for events that feel more like large-scale broadcasts. (Zoom)

However, this comes with trade-offs:

• Webinar functionality is generally an add‑on to a broader Zoom stack, which adds cost and configuration.
• The very large 10K–1M attendee options are positioned for rare flagship events and can be significantly more expensive than self‑serve browser-based tools. (Computerworld)

For marketing agencies, that usually means Zoom Webinars is a niche choice for exceptional events—global town halls, one-off shows tied to major budgets. For recurring lead gen webinars and client education, StreamYard’s On‑Air viewer capacities (up to 10,000+ on higher tiers) already cover the vast majority of campaigns at a lower operational overhead. (SoftwareAdvice)

How should agencies handle interaction and analytics?

StreamYard On‑Air includes live chat around the event window, with the ability to highlight comments on‑screen. A native polling feature is on the roadmap, and many agencies already combine On‑Air with third-party interaction tools like Slido or Mentimeter when they need advanced Q&A, question upvoting, or complex polling flows.

This “bring the right tool alongside” approach has benefits:

• You keep your production and delivery stable in StreamYard.
• You plug in the right interaction layer per client without being locked into one vendor’s Q&A format.

On the data side, StreamYard’s registration and attendance data can be exported as CSV for upload into CRMs or marketing platforms, which is often enough when agencies already have reporting set up elsewhere. Demio offers more built‑in engagement analytics and registration source tracking inside the webinar product itself, which can be useful if you prefer everything in one place. (Demio)

For most agencies, the bigger bottleneck is campaign strategy, not data volume; a clean export from StreamYard that slots into an existing stack usually beats retraining teams around an all‑in‑one analytics view.

What about cost and getting started?

Because budgets are real, it helps that you can get into StreamYard with very little friction:

• We offer a free plan that lets you produce professional webinars by streaming to destinations like YouTube (for example, using unlisted privacy for a pseudo‑private event).
• Paid plans add On‑Air webinars, multistreaming limits suitable for agencies, and higher viewer caps, with self‑serve options that are competitive against tools like Demio and Crowdcast in the same price band. (SoftwareAdvice)
• New users can typically access introductory discounts for the first year and a 7‑day free trial to validate fit before committing.

Because everything runs in the browser, you’re usually running a client‑ready webinar within a day—without IT tickets, local installs, or new hardware.

What we recommend

• Start with StreamYard On‑Air as your default webinar platform for client work: browser-based, multistream, embeddable, and built around registration and replays.
• Layer in interaction tools like Slido or Mentimeter when you need deep Q&A or complex polls, instead of chasing an all‑in‑one webinar package.
• Consider Demio if automated, on‑demand funnels are central to your strategy and you want more in‑tool marketing analytics.
• Use Crowdcast or Zoom Webinars selectively when you specifically need built‑in ticketing (Crowdcast) or very large, one‑off events at Zoom’s scale—otherwise, keep your stack simpler with StreamYard.