GoTo Webinar vs Livestorm
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentGoTo Webinar compared with Livestorm
Livestorm is the modern product: fully browser-based for presenters as well as attendees, a far better interface, and a billing model based on how many people actually showed up rather than a capacity tier you prepay for. GoTo is the operationally proven one with unlimited recording and better enterprise plumbing. Small marketing teams with variable attendance should take Livestorm; teams with predictable large audiences and existing Marketo or Salesforce process should stay on GoTo.
Choose GoTo Webinar if
Marketing and training teams at established small and mid-size companies who run large, conventional webinars, need audiences above the few hundred that cheaper tools cap at, and value a proven platform with deep marketing-automation connectors and predictable per-organizer billing over a modern interface.
Choose Livestorm if
European and EU-data-conscious marketing teams running a steady program of live webinars, product demos, and customer onboarding sessions, especially those with high registration volume and typical no-show rates, who want attendees to join in a browser with zero friction and would rather pay for people who turned up than for a seat licence.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | GoTo Webinar | Livestorm |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Webinars | Webinars |
| Starting price | $49 per organizer per month billed annually (Lite, up to 250 attendees); $59 month to month (free trial) | Pro at approximately 2.50 euros per attendee credit; third-party trackers report an entry block around 105 euros per month (free trial) |
| Pricing model | Per-organizer subscription across four tiers whose primary difference is the attendee ceiling. Feature differences between tiers are modest, so you are mostly buying room size. | Attendee-credit consumption model. One credit is consumed per unique participant per session across a rolling twelve-month period. Team members are not counted, and no-shows consume nothing. |
| Free plan | No | No |
| Free trial | A free trial is offered on the pricing page; length is set by the current promotion rather than published as a fixed term | A trial is available on request through the signup flow; Livestorm does not publish a fixed trial length on the pricing page |
| Best for | Marketing and training teams at established small and mid-size companies who run large, conventional webinars, need audiences above the few hundred that cheaper tools cap at, and value a proven platform with deep marketing-automation connectors and predictable per-organizer billing over a modern interface. | European and EU-data-conscious marketing teams running a steady program of live webinars, product demos, and customer onboarding sessions, especially those with high registration volume and typical no-show rates, who want attendees to join in a browser with zero friction and would rather pay for people who turned up than for a seat licence. |
| Setup time | An hour for a first webinar. Scheduling, branding the registration page, and configuring the reminder sequence are straightforward. Wiring a CRM connector properly, especially Marketo or Salesforce field mapping, is a half-day job for someone who knows the target system. | Under an hour for a first event. Create the event, choose the format, restyle the registration page, edit the reminder emails, and connect your CRM. There is no software rollout and nothing for attendees to prepare, so the usual pre-launch IT work simply does not exist. |
| Learning curve | Low for attendees, moderate for organizers. The desktop presenter console carries two decades of accumulated options and the first dry run will surface several settings you did not know existed. Run a practice session before your first real event; the platform supports practice mode specifically for this. | Low for the basic live event. The parts that take practice are the automated event mode, the role and permission model in a larger workspace, and the analytics export, which is powerful but not self-explanatory. |
| Platforms | Windows and macOS desktop applications for organizers and panelists, Browser-based attendance with no download required, iOS and Android apps for attendees, Web administration and scheduling | Web browser (attendees and presenters, desktop and mobile), iFrame embed on your own site, RTMP simulcast to YouTube, LinkedIn, X, and custom endpoints |
| Compliance | SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA-supporting configurations available through GoTo, ISO 27001 within the GoTo platform | ISO 27001, GDPR |
| Founded | 2003 | 2016 |
| Headquarters | Boston, Massachusetts, United States | Paris, France (fully remote team) |
| Ownership | Private equity owned (Francisco Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital, the private equity affiliate of Elliott Management) | Venture-backed |
Strengths and limitations
GoTo Webinar
Strengths
- Unlimited cloud recording storage on every tier, including the cheapest, which is unusual in a category where storage is a standard upsell.
- The deepest marketing automation connector set in the category, with Salesforce, HubSpot, and Marketo integrations that mature marketing operations teams already have processes built around.
- Twenty years of operational reliability at scale; a 2,000-person webinar on GoTo is a boring event, which is exactly what you want it to be.
- GoTo Meeting is bundled with every licence, so the subscription covers everyday video meetings as well as webinars.
Limitations
- The presenter experience is a dated desktop application, and next to Livestorm or Demio the whole product feels like enterprise software from an earlier generation.
- The 250-attendee floor means small teams overbuy; there is no fifty-seat or hundred-seat plan for a business whose webinars draw forty people.
- Per-organizer licensing gets expensive fast for teams with several people who each need to host their own sessions.
- Reminder sequences are email only, with no SMS and no behavioural branching, which leaves show rate on the table compared with tools that text registrants.
Livestorm
Strengths
- Genuinely zero-install for both attendees and presenters, which lifts attendance rates and removes the most common day-of-event support ticket.
- Attendee-credit billing means no-shows are free, which is a real saving in a category where more than half of registrants routinely fail to attend.
- Unlimited team members at no additional cost, so a large marketing organization does not pay per host.
- Live, on-demand, and automated formats are all first-class rather than one of them being a token feature.
Limitations
- The pricing page publishes no flat monthly number and no free plan, so building a budget requires a conversation or a configuration exercise rather than reading a table.
- Running out of attendee credits blocks new joiners mid-session rather than billing you for the overage, which is an unusually harsh failure mode.
- Replay and on-demand views consume credits, which quietly makes evergreen content more expensive than it looks.
- Production control is thin compared with a studio tool: no scene composition, no multi-camera switching, no high-bitrate local recording.
Pricing compared
GoTo Webinar
Per-organizer subscription across four tiers whose primary difference is the attendee ceiling. Feature differences between tiers are modest, so you are mostly buying room size.
- Lite$49 (annual) or $59 (monthly)
- Standard$99 (annual) or $129 (monthly)
- Pro$199 (annual) or $249 (monthly)
- Enterprise$399 (annual) or $499 (monthly)
GoTo Webinar is priced for audiences, not for teams. At 99 dollars a month for a 500-seat room with unlimited recording, marketing automation connectors, and a bundled meeting product, it is competitive with anything at that capacity and cheaper than Zoom Webinars once you climb past a few hundred attendees. At 49 dollars for a 250-seat room it is poor value for a small business that draws forty people, because there is no smaller, cheaper room to buy and no discount for using a fraction of it. The per-organizer model compounds this: three presenters who each need to host means three licences. Buy it when your audience is genuinely large and your marketing operations already run on Salesforce or Marketo; look elsewhere when your webinars are intimate or your team is multi-presenter.
Livestorm
Attendee-credit consumption model. One credit is consumed per unique participant per session across a rolling twelve-month period. Team members are not counted, and no-shows consume nothing.
- ProAbout 2.50 euros per attendee credit
- EnterpriseCustom quote
Livestorm is good value when your no-show rate is high and your attendance is uneven, and poor value when it is neither. Paying only for people who turned up is genuinely fairer than a seat licence with a fixed room cap, and the unlimited team members clause means a twenty-person marketing org pays the same as a solo operator for the same audience. The catch is forecasting. A quote-free per-credit model turns your webinar bill into a variable cost that rises exactly when a campaign works, and the hard block when credits run out during a live session is a worse failure mode than an overage invoice. If you can predict your annual attendee volume within twenty percent, buy the credits and the economics beat Demio or Zoom at similar volume. If you cannot, a capped per-seat platform will be less stressful even if it is nominally more expensive.
Editorial verdict on each
GoTo Webinar
GoTo Webinar is the safe, unexciting, operationally excellent choice for large conventional webinars. Unlimited recording on every tier, the deepest marketing automation connectors in the category, a real API, SSO, a bundled meeting product, and twenty years of running thousand-person sessions without incident are all genuine reasons to buy it. The costs are equally clear: a dated presenter console, a 250-attendee floor that forces small teams to overbuy, per-organizer licensing that punishes multi-presenter teams, email-only reminders, and a hard attendee cap that turns real registrants away when you underestimate a session. If your audiences are in the hundreds or thousands and your marketing operations run on Salesforce or Marketo, this is still the right answer. If your webinars draw forty people and you care how the room looks, Demio, Livestorm, or Zoho Webinar will serve you better for less.
Read the full GoTo Webinar profileLivestorm
Category LeaderLivestorm is the best browser-first webinar platform for a marketing team that treats webinars as a lead channel rather than a big meeting, and the attendee-credit model is the fairest billing structure in the category for anyone whose no-show rate is typical. Zero-install attendance is not a marketing line; it measurably changes how many registrants become attendees. Buy it if you run a steady program with volatile attendance, have many occasional hosts, and want EU hosting with ISO 27001 behind it. Think twice if you need a fixed, forecastable monthly cost, because credits that run out block joiners mid-session, or if your strategy is really an evergreen funnel, in which case a dedicated automation tool will do more for less.
Read the full Livestorm profileGoTo Webinar profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Livestorm last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.