ON24 vs Zoom Webinars: Which Webinar Platform Is Better?

Choosing the right webinar platform isn’t just about hosting an event, it’s about driving pipeline, capturing insights, and creating reusable content. ON24 and Zoom Webinars are two of the most widely used platforms, but they serve very different business goals.

But here’s the real question most teams miss:

Are you choosing a platform just to host webinars… or to generate revenue from them?

ON24 and Zoom Webinars both dominate the market, yet they solve different problems:

• One is built for enterprise marketing orchestration.
• The other is built for simplicity, scale, and familiarity.

If you’re a B2B marketer, product marketer, or demand gen leader trying to justify ROI from webinars, this breakdown will help you decide strategically — not just technically.

ON24 vs Zoom Webinars: Quick Verdict

High-level takeaway:

• ON24 = Marketing engine.

• Zoom = Reliable event delivery platform.
  
  

ON24: Best For Which Teams?

1. Enterprise Demand Generation Teams: ON24 is built for marketers who treat webinars like pipeline assets. Its engagement scoring helps prioritize hot leads for sales follow-up.

2. ABM & Revenue Marketing Teams: You can track detailed attendee behavior what they downloaded, how long they stayed, what they clicked! making it ideal for account-level targeting.

3. Marketing Ops Heavy Organizations: If your team relies on Salesforce, Marketo, Eloqua, or HubSpot integrations with advanced workflows, ON24 fits well into that ecosystem.

4. Always-On Webinar Strategy: ON24 allows you to create webinar content hubs turning one event into a persistent on-demand experience.

Zoom: Best For Which Teams?

1. Product Marketing & Internal Teams: If your organization already uses Zoom Meetings, webinars feel seamless and easy to deploy.

2. Sales Demos & Partner Enablement: Simple setup, reliable streaming, and familiarity make it great for quick deployment.

3. Small-to-Mid Marketing Teams: Affordable pricing and ease of use reduce operational complexity.

4. Large Live Events Without Heavy Automation Needs: If you need scale but not deep marketing analytics, Zoom performs well.

What Actually Matters When Choosing a webinar platform?

Beyond features, evaluate based on outcomes:

Revenue Attribution:

• ON24 enables engagement scoring tied to marketing automation.
• Zoom offers participation data but requires additional systems to interpret intent.

Attendee Experience:

• ON24 allows custom-branded webinar consoles with embedded content.
• Zoom offers a familiar interface but limited design flexibility.

Scalability:

• Both scale technically.
• ON24 scales marketing sophistication.
• Zoom scales operational simplicity.
  
  

Common Issues & Complaints

ON24: Real-World Cons (Based on Reddit & Community Feedback) 

Even though ON24 is powerful for enterprise use, many marketing practitioners voice consistent challenges online:

• Steep Learning Curve: Users often mention that ON24’s interface and setup take time to master compared to lightweight webinar tools.
• Complex Setup for Small Teams: Teams without dedicated marketing ops resources report onboarding can feel overwhelming.
• Reporting Overwhelm: Some marketers say the Dashboard is rich but not intuitive, requiring training to interpret engagement metrics.
• Cost Concerns: Multiple threads point out ON24’s enterprise pricing can be hard to justify for small or mid-market teams.
• Limited Creative Flexibility Without Support: Some complain that advanced branding or custom layouts often require professional services or vendor help.

In summary, ON24 users typically acknowledge its depth — but often highlight ease-of-use, learning curve, and pricing as drawbacks.

Zoom Webinars: Real-World Cons (Based on Reddit & Community Feedback) 

Zoom Webinars is widely adopted, but users frequently share these limitations:

• Limited Advanced Engagement Tools: Polls and Q&A are basic; many wish for more native interactivity without add-ons.
• Report Depth Is Shallow: Users report attendance metrics don’t tell the full story — e.g., no heatmaps, no resource tracking.
• Branding Restrictions: There’s minimal ability to customize the webinar console or landing pages directly in Zoom.
• Recording Management Issues: Forum threads point out that organizing, tagging, and storing recordings within Zoom can be clunky.
• Platform Spam & Security Complaints: Especially for public webinars, some users mention concerns about unwanted participants or link sharing.

Zoom’s strength is simplicity — but many users note that simplicity sometimes means limits for professional webinar marketers.

Integrations & App Marketplace: What Makes Each Ecosystem Work

ON24 Integrations & Extensions:
ON24 integrates deeply into marketing ecosystems, because enterprise webinar strategies rely on continuity between platforms:

Native Integrations:

• CRM: Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics
• Marketing Automation: Marketo, Eloqua, HubSpot
• Analytics / BI Tools: Integrations for advanced reporting pipelines
• Event Platforms: Tools used for event orchestration and follow-up sequences

Ecosystem Strength:

• ON24’s partnerships are enterprise-focused, built to connect engagement data directly to revenue workflows.
• It supports lead routing, scoring models, and automated nurture flows.
• ON24 also offers API access for custom integrations, making it a solid choice for teams that require bespoke workflows.

Limitations:

• Marketplace is not as broad as general SaaS app stores. The integrations are strategic, not plug-and-play for every tool.
• Third-party automation often requires implementation support from technical teams.

Zoom Webinars Integrations & Marketplace:
Zoom’s ecosystem is broader because the company spans across meetings, team communication, phone systems, and webinars.

Native Integrations:

• CRM: HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho
• Marketing Automation: Mailchimp, HubSpot, Marketo (via connectors)
• Automation Platforms: Zapier, Make (Integromat), Workato
• LMS & Training Platforms: Integrations to embed webinars into certification or training programs
• Calendar & Scheduling: Calendly, Google Calendar, Outlook

Marketplace Capabilities:
Zoom has a large public marketplace where you can add apps for:

• • Advanced polls
  • Live captions & translations
  • Event registration layers
  • AI-powered recap tools
  • Analytics extensions
  • CRM and data sync connectors
  • AI note-taking and transcription

Why It Matters:

• Zoom’s integrations thrive in ecosystems where teams already use Zoom for meetings, teaching, internal enablement, or external webinars.

• Zapier + Zoom expands automation possibilities e.g., push registrants into CRMs, send follow-ups, trigger campaign events.

Tradeoffs:

• Deep behavioral tracking still requires external tools (CRM + marketing automation + BI) to combine into actionable pipelines.
• Many “extensions” in the marketplace are third-party tools which can introduce additional cost of ownership.

ON24 and Zoom: Pricing Comparison

Common Webinar Platform Pain Points

• Low Live Attendance and Drop-Off Rates: Even with strong promotion, a significant percentage of registrants never attend live, and many who do leave halfway through. Most webinar platforms optimize for event delivery, not post-event consumption, leaving valuable content underutilized.

• Surface-Level Engagement Data: Attendance duration and poll participation don’t always indicate buying intent. Marketing teams often struggle to distinguish between passive viewers and genuinely sales-ready prospects without deeper engagement context.

• The “One-and-Done” Content Trap: Webinars require substantial investment — speaker prep, promotion, coordination, production. Yet after the live session, the recording is often sent in a follow-up email and then forgotten. That’s a massive content ROI gap.

• Manual, Time-Heavy Post-Webinar Workflows: Downloading recordings, clipping highlights, writing blogs from transcripts, creating social posts, and building nurture emails are typically manual processes. This slows down distribution and reduces momentum.

• Poor Multi-Channel Distribution Strategy: Most teams don’t systematically repurpose webinar content for LinkedIn, SEO blogs, paid ads, sales enablement, or email nurture streams. As a result, valuable insights never reach their full audience potential.

Post-Webinar Workflow: Repurpose Your Webinar Recording Into Content

The real ROI of webinars begins after the event ends. Once your webinar is recorded, it shouldn’t just sit in your webinar platform dashboard — it should become a scalable content engine.

This is where Parmonic becomes critical for B2B teams.

1. Automatic Topic Segmentation
Parmonic uses AI to detect topic shifts and break long webinar recordings into structured chapters, making them easier to consume and distribute.

2. Social-Ready Video Snippets
Instead of manually scrubbing through recordings, marketing teams can instantly generate short-form clips optimized for LinkedIn and other B2B channels.

3. Blog Drafts from Webinar Transcripts
Parmonic transforms webinar transcripts into structured, SEO-ready blog drafts — dramatically reducing content production time.

4. Speaker-Level Thought Leadership Clips
Individual speaker insights can be extracted and repurposed as standalone content pieces for executive branding and demand generation.

5. Sales Enablement Micro-Assets
Key objection-handling moments or Q&A responses can be turned into bite-sized clips that sales reps can share directly with prospects.

6. Multi-Asset Content Multiplication
One webinar can become 10–20 assets: clips, blogs, social media posts, gated on-demand pages, nurture content, and more. For B2B marketing teams, this shifts webinars from event-based tactics to compounding content investments.

ON24 and Zoom handle the live experience well, butParmonicis purpose-built to maximize what happens after.

Final Recommendation:

If your priority is enterprise-grade engagement tracking and deep marketing automation alignment, ON24 is a strong choice. If you value simplicity, familiarity, and cost-efficiency, Zoom Webinars delivers reliable performance with minimal complexity.

However, the biggest differentiator in webinar ROI isn’t just the hosting platform! it’s what you do with the content afterward. Whether you choose ON24 or Zoom, pairing your webinar strategy with a post-webinar repurposing engine like Parmonic ensures your investment continues generating pipeline long after the live session ends.

Webinar platforms help you run the event. Repurposing platforms help you scale the impact.