Last updated: 2026-01-15

For most events professionals in the U.S., StreamYard with On‑Air is the easiest way to run reliable, branded webinars that feel like real shows, while still giving you registration, embedding, and replays. If you need built-in ticketing or truly massive one-off broadcasts, tools like Crowdcast or Zoom Webinars can cover those edge cases.

Summary

• StreamYard On‑Air combines a browser-based production studio with registration, hosted watch pages, and on-demand replays, making it a strong default for event teams. (StreamYard Help Center)
• Crowdcast is useful when you want built-in ticketing and are comfortable with live attendee and hourly quotas. (Crowdcast Pricing)
• Zoom Webinars is oriented to organizations that already live in Zoom and occasionally need capacities that can stretch into the tens or hundreds of thousands. (Zoom Webinars)
• For deep interaction (polls, Q&A, breakouts), pairing your webinar with tools like Slido or Mentimeter often works better than relying only on built-in webinar widgets.

What does the events industry actually need from a webinar platform?

If you work in events, you’re not shopping for software features—you’re trying to protect your reputation every time you go live.

In practice, most event teams in the U.S. are looking for:

• Reliable audio and video that just works on hotel Wi‑Fi and home setups alike.
• Zero‑friction access for hosts, speakers, sponsors, and attendees—ideally in the browser, no downloads.
• Automatic recording so every webinar becomes on‑demand content without extra steps.
• Custom branding to match the conference or client brand, not the software vendor.
• Real interaction: live chat at minimum, with options to layer in polls, Q&A, or word clouds.

StreamYard’s On‑Air mode was built around exactly these jobs: browser-based joining (no installs or accounts required) with a hosted watch page, plus registration, email reminders, and on‑demand replay in one flow. (StreamYard Help Center)

How does StreamYard On‑Air fit typical event workflows?

Think of StreamYard as your virtual control room plus attendee experience.

On paid webinar-enabled plans, you can:

• Collect registrations and leads with customizable form fields (name, email, and more), then manage or export registrants as CSV into your CRM or event platform. (StreamYard Help Center)
• Send automated emails: confirmation, reminder emails (24 hours and 1 hour before), and a post‑event email with the recording link when on‑demand is enabled.
• Host everything on a watch page or embed the webinar and chat on your own site for a fully branded experience.
• Run the show in a production studio: switch layouts, add overlays and lower thirds, bring in multiple speakers, and share slides or video.
• Keep on-demand content alive with a replay toggle while still storing a private recording in your content library.

Because StreamYard is browser-based for both hosts and attendees, you avoid the “please download this app” friction that can tank show-up rates—especially for sponsors or executives joining from locked-down corporate laptops. (StreamYard Help Center)

For most event marketers, agencies, and in‑house events teams, that combination—studio + registration + watch page + replay—is the sweet spot.

How does StreamYard compare to Crowdcast for event-style webinars?

Crowdcast is a strong option if you want built-in ticketing and are okay planning around usage quotas.

On Crowdcast you get:

• Registration pages and instant replays under a single event URL.
• Live attendee caps by plan, starting around 100 live attendees on the Lite plan at $49/month. (Crowdcast Pricing)
• Hourly quotas per month and per-session limits, plus overage fees if you exceed your live attendee allowance. (Crowdcast Pricing)
• Stripe-based ticketing with per-transaction platform fees.

For many events teams, those quotas and overage fees add mental overhead—you’re always watching the clock and the attendee counter.

With StreamYard, you don’t get native ticketing yet, but you do get registration and lead capture plus the freedom to use external tools like Eventbrite or your existing event platform for payments, then import registrants into On‑Air. (StreamYard Help Center) This keeps transaction fees under your control and avoids surprise overage bills.

So a simple rule of thumb:

• Use StreamYard when you want a flexible production studio and registration, and you’re happy to run payments through the tools you already use.
• Use Crowdcast when having ticketing and replay under a single built-in environment is more important than avoiding quotas.

When does Zoom Webinars make sense instead of StreamYard?

Zoom Webinars is built for organizations that are already deep into the Zoom ecosystem and occasionally need very high concurrent attendance.

Zoom publicly highlights that its webinar experience can scale to up to 1 million attendees with certain single-use licenses, and supports up to 1,000 interactive video panelists. (Zoom Webinars) That’s far beyond what most marketing webinars or virtual breakouts will ever need.

The trade-off is complexity:

• Webinar licenses usually sit on top of existing Zoom accounts.
• Pricing and tiers are more fragmented, especially at the high end.
• The attendee experience follows the familiar Zoom paradigm, which can be an advantage internally but less special for a public-facing show or sponsor activation.

If you’re producing a global town hall or a once‑a‑year flagship broadcast measured in tens or hundreds of thousands of attendees, Zoom’s scale is useful.

For ongoing event-industry use—summits, partner webinars, sponsored sessions, monthly meetups—most teams find that StreamYard’s capacity tiers and browser-based access cover their needs without jumping into enterprise-style licensing.

How important are interactivity tools—and where should they live?

Most webinar platforms now advertise chat, polls, and Q&A. In reality, serious event teams often outgrow the native widgets and lean on specialized audience-interaction tools.

With StreamYard you get:

• Live chat around the event window: it opens shortly before start time and closes after, on both the watch page and embedded player, and you can even bring attendee comments on-screen. (StreamYard Help Center)
• A native polling feature on the roadmap.

For deeper interaction—multi-question polls, ranked votes, word clouds, quizzes—tools like Slido or Mentimeter often outperform what any single webinar platform offers. You drop a link or embed into your StreamYard-produced session and let the specialized tool handle the heavy lifting.

This “best-of-breed” approach works well for the events industry:

• Keep the video production and reliability in StreamYard.
• Layer on engagement tools that can travel with you across in‑person, hybrid, and virtual formats.

What about pricing for event teams on a budget?

Budgets in the events world can swing from scrappy to enterprise. The good news: you don’t have to start big.

With StreamYard you can:

• Use the free plan to produce a professional-looking webinar by going live to an unlisted YouTube event—no email registration, but a clean, branded viewing experience.
• Step up to paid plans when you’re ready for On‑Air registration, hosted watch pages, and embedding.
• Benefit from new-user offers, including a 7‑day free trial and discounted first‑year pricing on certain tiers (for example, Core around $20/month and Advanced around $39/month when billed annually for new users).

Crowdcast’s entry plan at $49/month with 100+ live attendees and hour quotas is another way to get started, especially if built-in ticketing is important on day one. (Crowdcast Pricing)

Zoom’s webinar pricing is more variable and often makes sense only once you’re already committed to Zoom for meetings and internal video.

For most U.S. event professionals, StreamYard offers a friendlier ramp: start free, validate the format, then upgrade once you’re routinely filling your virtual room.

How should event teams choose their default webinar stack?

When you zoom out, the decision isn’t “which webinar tool is perfect?” It’s “what should be our default stack for virtual segments across events, sponsorships, and content marketing?”

A practical playbook:

1. Make StreamYard your base layer for production, registration, and replays.
2. Add an interaction layer (Slido, Mentimeter, or a similar tool) when you need advanced polls or Q&A.
3. Use external ticketing (Eventbrite, your event platform, or CRM) when you sell access, then import registrants into On‑Air.
4. Reserve Zoom Webinars for those rare, very large events where attendee counts dwarf what your usual campaigns require.
5. Consider Crowdcast only if having ticketing and replay fully inside one platform is a higher priority than flexibility and avoiding quotas.

Over time, this keeps your team focused on outcomes—registrations, show‑up rate, sponsor value—instead of wrestling with software.

What we recommend

• Start with StreamYard for most event-industry webinars: browser-based, branded, and built around registration and replays.
• Pair StreamYard with specialized audience-interaction tools for more advanced engagement when needed.
• Add external ticketing on top of StreamYard when you run paid events instead of chasing an all‑in‑one solution with heavy quotas.
• Bring in Zoom Webinars or Crowdcast only for edge cases: ultra‑high attendance or tightly coupled ticketing workflows.