Bigmarker versus Zoom:
Which Is Best for B2B Marketers?

Choosing the Right Digital Event Platform

The platform you choose for your digital events can make or break your pipeline and revenue goals for the year. No pressure, right?

From building beautifully branded events to engaging your audience to showcasing event ROI, there’s a lot at stake. Plus, you need a tool that fits seamlessly into your existing tech stack. It’s no easy order.

If you’re here, you’ve likely narrowed down your search and need help choosing between Zoom and BigMarker. Luckily, we’ve compared both platforms for you so you can see which one best fits your webinar goals. Let’s get to it!

BigMarker versus Zoom

Here’s a quick breakdown of the features and functionality offered by each SaaS platform and how they compare.

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BigMarker

BigMarker is a browser-based online event platform for virtual events, webinars, and hybrid events. They were one of the early players in the webinar space. BigMarker is known for providing stable, reliable events with few issues.

While their age is great for reliability, BigMarker falls short in other areas, like beautiful branding and robust engagement. Marketers with revenue and pipeline goals might also find gaps with BigMarker’s MarTech integrations. And while BigMarker has added in-person features to support hybrid events, they fall far behind industry leaders in the space like Cvent. Let’s explore more.

The Good: Features & Benefits of BigMarker
Let's explore the features and benefits of BigMarker in more detail. These are the things people love.
  • Live and pre-recorded webinars

    Pre-recorded? Live? How about both? Event organizers can easily host both live and pre-recorded event content on BigMarker

  • Downloadable resources

    Need to host additional resources in your event? BigMarker allows organizers to easily upload and share documents, links, handouts, and more.

  • Polls, Q&A, and Chat

    While they’re not considered best-in-class, BigMarker does support table-stakes engagement features like the ability to launch polls, live chat, and Q&A. These are essential to amp up the energy and interaction during online events.

  • Feedback surveys

    Looking to get a pulse on event attendees? BigMarker offers built-in surveys, making it easy to solicit feedback on the fly.

The Bad: What Are The Drawbacks of BigMarker ?
We mined popular review sites like G2, Capterra, and Trustradius to highlight the most common challenges customers experience with Bigmarker.
  • Very few native integrations

    Integrations can literally make or break your tech stack. Unfortunately for data-driven marketers, most of BigMarker’s integrations are only available through Zapier. This limits the amount of data you’re able to share across tools. 

  • Steep learning curve

    Many customers mention that BigMarker is quite difficult to learn and cumbersome to manage. This can make onboarding new users and speakers a hassle and limit scaling events across different teams. 

  • Limited customization

    One of BigMarker’s biggest downfalls is its customization—or lack thereof. Many users note that event branding, from registration pages to emails, to the overall look and feel of events, is limited. 

The Details: BigMarker Pros & Cons

To summarize, here’s a simplified chart that outlines the top pros and cons of BigMarker.

Zoom

Zoom is a popular cloud-based video conferencing tool that's used by businesses all over the globe for online meetings. It was widely adopted during the pandemic as businesses scrambled to adapt to work-from-home life.

Zoom also offers a webinar software product that can be used for marketing, training, and enablement events through live broadcasting. While Zoom is a solid product, marketers looking to host large, engaging events will find its functionality and engagement extremely limited.

The Good: Features & Benefits of Zoom
Let's explore the features and benefits of Zoom in more detail. These are the things people love.
  • Easy-to-use and familiar software

    Most folks are familiar with Zoom, so there are no surprises. Both organizers and attendees know what to expect during live webinars, so there’s little to no training required.

  • Live stream on YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms.

    Looking to reach a large audience? Zoom integrates with YouTube, Facebook, and other social media sites for easy live streaming.

  • In-house studio effects and filters

    Zoom provides built-in studio effects, filters, and virtual backgrounds to enhance speaker video quality. These can be handy for remote settings and at-home recording.

  • Easy feedback process

    Collect attendee feedback on the fly with post-event surveys. Zoom supports built-in surveys in a variety of formats, including single-choice, multiple-choice, rating scale, and open-ended.

  • Engagement options that include chat, reactions, and polling

    Zoom offers webinar organizers table-stakes audience engagement features like live chat, screen sharing, live reactions, and the ability to launch polls.

The Bad: What Are The Drawbacks of Zoom?
We mined popular review sites like G2, Capterra, and Trustradius to highlight the most common challenges customers experience with Zoom.
  • Inability to embed CTAs

    If you use webinars for lead generation, Zoom might not be the best option to support your goals. Zoom doesn’t allow organizers to add CTA buttons or embed additional resources within the platform.

  • Mobile users have to download app

    Unfortunately, Zoom doesn’t offer an easy option for enjoying events on the go. Attendees have to download the Zoom mobile app to participate in events, which may be a concern for event accessibility.  

  • Not built for highly interactive digital events

    Zoom webinars aren’t built to be highly engaging and interactive. They cater more to 1:many broadcast-style events with large audiences. The website even mentions that typically webinar attendees do not interact with each other, which is not ideal for community or networking events. 

  • Doesn’t cater to B2B pain points

    Simply put, Zoom is not built for B2B marketers. It caters to small to mid-sized organizations and educational institutions. If lead generation through digital events is a goal, Zoom is probably not the best platform. Zoom also offers very few customization opportunities, video production capabilities, and limited MarTech integrations. 

  • Breakout rooms aren’t part of the Zoom webinar package

    The Zoom webinar package does not include table-stakes features like breakout rooms, which is limiting if you’re hosting a large community event designed for networking. 

The Details: Zoom Pros & Cons

To summarize, here’s a simplified chart that outlines the top pros and cons of Zoom.

Goldcast: The Revenue-Driven Event Marketing Platform

Goldcast is built for B2B marketers to run engaging digital events. Many leading B2B brands like 1Password, Mailchimp, Lattice, Drift, Salesloft, and others have chosen Goldcast as a key component of their marketing tech stack—and it’s not hard to see why!

At Goldcast, our goal is to make it easy to set up and run high-quality digital events while providing a seamless experience for attendees and empowering organizers to prove event ROI.

The Revenue Driving Event Formula

With Goldcast, your sales team can access actionable analytics and real-time insights through native CRM integrations. We make it easy for you to run pipeline-driving events.

Proven results

Attendance
Rate
Time spent per event
SQLs and demo requests
Time saved
every month
3 hrs
Implementation Support
This is an image of Nina Butler, Director of Global Events Marketing at Alyce.

That was the best part—we made the decision to pivot on a Friday, and I didn’t have to work or stress over it on the weekend. I knew that I’d be able to move the whole event into Goldcast on Monday. It wasn’t even a concern.

Megan Guerra
Increased attendance rate
This is an image of Davi Schmidt, Demand Generation Director at Snaplogic.

Goldcast was super easy to use compared to other platforms for both our employees as well as our guest speakers

Davi Schmidt
Demand Generation Director
snaplogic logo.
Video Production Capabilities
This is an image of Nina Butler, Director of Global Events Marketing at Alyce.

Our MQL goals saw an increase of 20% through Goldcast’s video production capabilities. The experience was super engaging and very modern!

Laura Lilley
Global Experiential Marketing & Events
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The Details: Top Goldcast Features for B2B Marketers
  • Goldcast enables B2B marketers to create incredible experiences and engage prospects and customers like never before

  • Supports a wide range of B2B use cases, which include community events, webinars, product launches, demos, field events, hybrid events, user conferences, and more

  • Ability to easily embed CTAs and resources in an event

  • Built-in engagement features like chat, polls, and Q&A in a fully customizable interface

  • Video production tools that include overlays, lower thirds, and tickers for an elevated attendee experience

  • Event templates that can be duplicated to scale any and all kinds of events

  • Accessible to a wide range of audiences — captioning, subtitles, and translation in 14+ languages to cater to a global attendee base

  • Actionable insights (including 16+ engagement points) that are synced into CRMs and MAPs

  • Deep, native integrations with popular MarTech tools like HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot, and more

  • Slack + Salesforce integration sends notifications to sales teams when prospects engage in the event, which ensures timely and relevant post-event follow-ups

  • On-demand access to all recordings within 24 hours

  • Dedicated customer success team with live customer support for ALL your events

  • Generous pricing model that allows multiple teams to scale digital events

Thoughtspot logo.
BitSight logo.
snaplogic logo.
Hootsuite logo.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do businesses choose BigMarker?
BigMarker is used for businesses to host simple, recurring events like webinars. They were one of the first webinar platforms to market and offer a stable and reliable platform for events.
Why do businesses choose Zoom?
Zoom is an online meetings tool best suited for educational institutions and corporations wanting to host broadcast-style events, like town hall meetings. They were not built for interactive and engaging events that drive revenue and pipeline.
Where do BigMarker and Zoom fall short?
BigMarker and Zoom both lack high-end customization features that a modern B2B brand would need to stand out in a crowd. Zoom fatigue is real, and most people are tired of attending Zoom-like meetings. Additionally, both companies fall short when it comes to the needs of B2B marketers in that they lack deep, native integrations and other table-stakes features required to drive pipeline from events.
Why choose Goldcast over BigMarker and Zoom?
Goldcast is purpose-built for B2B marketers and focuses on delivering a Netflix-like experience for attendees while enabling marketers to prove revenue from events. Goldcast is fully customizable and has an intuitive and modern interface that is easy to work with. The platform can be used for a plethora of use cases, including community events, product launches, webinars, hybrid events, employee engagement events, and virtual conferences.
More questions?
Last Updated February 2, 2023

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