How to choose a virtual event platform
There is no vendor scorecard on this page, because an honest one would be out of date within a quarter. There is something more durable: the questions that decide the answer.
The short answer
Start with the licence you already hold. In most cases the right platform is the one your organisation has already bought, already administers, and your audience has already installed.
Only move if the event has a specific requirement your current platform genuinely cannot meet. Then choose against five criteria: audience friction, presenter control, failure behaviour, what you get afterwards, and who administers it.
Never migrate platforms inside four weeks of a show. That is risk taken on for no benefit.
Why there is no comparison table here
We produce on whichever platform a client holds a licence for, and we have used many of them across more than 400 productions. We are not going to publish a feature matrix, because platform features change every quarter and a stale scorecard presented as current is worse than no scorecard at all.
The criteria below do not go out of date. Apply them to whatever the market looks like on the day you are deciding.
The five criteria
1. Audience friction
Every step between "I clicked the link" and "I can see and hear the thing" costs you attendees, and the loss is concentrated in exactly the people who were least committed — which is most of your potential audience.
- Does it work in a browser, or does it demand an install?
- Is there an account requirement, and can it be waived?
- What does it do on a phone, honestly, on a mediocre connection?
- What happens behind a restrictive corporate firewall — where a large share of B2B audiences actually sit?
2. Presenter control
The presenter experience determines whether your show looks competent.
- Can a producer control what the audience sees, independently of what presenters are doing?
- Is there a genuine back-stage or green room?
- How hard is it to bring a speaker on and take them off cleanly, live?
- Can you play pre-recorded segments reliably, with sound?
3. Failure behaviour
Not whether it fails — everything fails. How it fails.
- When a presenter's connection drops, what does the audience see?
- Can a presenter rejoin without disrupting the broadcast?
- Is there any redundant path, and what does switching to it look like live?
- If the recording fails, do you find out during or afterwards?
4. What you get afterwards
Frequently ignored during selection and deeply regretted later.
- Do you get a usable, downloadable recording — or a link inside their platform that expires?
- What quality, and are separate speaker tracks available for editing?
- Do you get the registration and attendance data, in a format you can use?
- Do you get the chat and the Q&A? Those are the highest-signal content prompts the event produces.
5. Who administers it
- Does someone in your organisation already own this tool?
- Can they grant the access a producer needs, in time?
- Is procurement or security review required, and how long does that take? This is very often the real deadline, and it is discovered late.
The decision, in order
- List what you already licence. Start here, always.
- Write down the event's hard requirements. Hard means the event genuinely cannot happen without it — not "would be nice".
- Test the existing platform against them. Actually test. Vendor documentation is marketing.
- Only if it truly fails a hard requirement, look outward.
- Check the calendar before committing. Under four weeks to the show, the answer is the platform you already have.
The one rule we would not bend
Do not change platforms close to a significant event. A new platform means new presenter behaviour, new failure modes, new admin permissions and a rehearsal process that has to discover all of it. Every hour spent on that is an hour not spent on the show. If a platform is genuinely wrong for you, migrate after the event, deliberately, with time to learn it.
This is also why we work on the platform you already hold wherever it is sensible — see live stream production and the planning checklist.
Common questions
What is the best virtual event platform?
In most cases, the one your organisation already licences and administers, and that your audience can join without installing anything. A platform is only worth changing when the event has a hard requirement your current one genuinely cannot meet.
Should we switch platforms for an upcoming event?
Not within four weeks of the show. A new platform introduces new presenter behaviour, new failure modes and new admin requirements, all of which have to be discovered during the time you should be rehearsing content.
Do you work on our platform or yours?
Yours, wherever that is sensible. Avoiding a platform migration close to a show removes a whole category of risk that has nothing to do with your content.
Tell us what you already licence
In most cases we will produce on it. If it genuinely cannot do what your event needs, we will tell you exactly which requirement it fails.
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