Vimeo vs. GoToWebinar: Which video platform to choose?

What is the difference between Vimeo and GoToWebinar?

Vimeo and GoToWebinar are two solid contenders in the world of live streaming, virtual events, and webinars. These platforms offer excellent solutions for live or pre-recorded virtual events, allowing you to customize registration forms and branding options, along with audience engagement tools. However, if you want an all-in-one video platform to produce, host, edit, and share video content, Vimeo stands out with the advanced video creation and editing capabilities it has to offer (including AI-driven tools that remove mistakes and filler words). In this article, we’ll compare Vimeo and GoToWebinar to help you decide what video platform is best for your needs.   

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Vimeo vs. GoToWebinar: Quick comparison

Need a complete platform for streaming live videos, hosting webinars, or running multi-day, multi-session virtual events? You can see how Vimeo’s features stack up against GoToWebinar’s in the comparison table below.  

Live streaming and virtual event software comparison: Vimeo vs. GoToWebinar

Both Vimeo and GoToWebinar offer tools to create and host live streams and virtual events. You can simulcast to social media with both platforms. Vimeo stands out with its easy-to-use production studio that gives you centralized controls for managing your live streams and virtual events. 

Vimeo live stream and virtual event platform overview

Vimeo’s live stream and virtual event platform offers three types of virtual events, depending on your plan. Host a town hall, fireside chat, company meeting, or multi-track virtual conference and give your employees or attendees an engaging, interactive experience. 

• Go live from mobile. With Vimeo’s live streaming platform, you can go live from your mobile device, giving you the freedom to connect with your audience right from where the action is. 
• Pre-recorded, live, or hybrid events. You can do it all with Vimeo’s flexible live stream and virtual event options, whether you want to broadcast live, run pre-recorded video at a scheduled time, or host hybrid events with a mix of live and pre-recorded content. Even for pre-recorded events, you can include interactive elements such as polls or a Q&A. 
• Quality streaming you can rely on. Vimeo’s HTML5 video player streams in 720p and 1080p, giving you the reliable performance your audience demands. With Vimeo, your audience never has to sit through ads before, during, or after your event.   
• Simulcast to social media. Simulcast your live streams to make sure you reach the largest audience by targeting YouTube, X, Facebook, and other social media sites where people spend a lot of time. You can also embed the Vimeo video player on your website. You can stream simultaneously to up to 10 integrated platforms and 20 custom RTMP (Real-Time Messaging Protocol) destinations.
• Browser-based production studio. Vimeo makes it easy to set up and manage live streams and virtual events from one central dashboard, through a browser or on your mobile device. Customize the appearance of your video player, control guest speakers and scene layouts, upload pre-recorded videos, and more. 

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GoToWebinar live stream and virtual events overview

GoToWebinar is a live-streaming and virtual event platform that has been around for many years. Its live stream and virtual event capabilities are similar to Vimeo’s, including event templates, custom registration forms, and audience engagement tools. Depending on their needs, users can hold live streams in GoToWebinar’s webcast mode or host multi-day, multi-session interactive events with Virtual Events. 

• CRM integration. Similar to Vimeo, GoToWebinar connects with CRM platforms so you can track leads in your preferred software. It also integrates with other tools, such as Slack, Google Calendar, and Microsoft Teams to make your workflows run smoothly. 
• Custom emails and registration forms. GoToWebinar offers templates for creating email invitations, confirmations, and reminders to maximize attendance. You can also customize your registration forms with up to 20 custom registration questions, set attendee limits, and choose automated or manual registration approval.  
• Simulcasting to social media. Like Vimeo, GoToWebinar offers the ability to simulcast to social media platforms. However, it only supports RTMP (Real-Time Messaging Protocol) connections, which require a more complex setup than Vimeo’s seamless streaming to integrated platforms.   
• Incorporate your branding. Personalize your virtual event materials by adding your brand colors, logo, and custom images. 

Webinar software comparison: Vimeo vs. GoToWebinar

Webinars are versatile tools for businesses, providing a convenient format to host events like fireside chats, panel discussions, and thought leadership webinars. Vimeo and GoToWebinar offer similar tools for producing and hosting webinars, such as webinar templates, audience engagement tools, and the ability to create pre-recorded and on-demand webinars. However, Vimeo offers more options for repurposing your webinar content, such as creating highlight reels and short clips for social media promotion.   

Vimeo webinar platform overview

Vimeo’s browser-based production studio provides a central dashboard for planning and managing webinars. Vimeo makes it simple to produce fireside chats, thought leadership webinars, panel discussions, and internal communications. And when your webinar is over, Vimeo’s webinar platform makes it simple to repurpose your webinar content to get more value from your work.  

• Webinar presentation templates. Vimeo’s pre-designed webinar presentation templates for fireside chats, panel discussions, and thought leadership help you design and plan your webinars with ease. 
• Repurpose your webinar content. With Vimeo, you can help maximize your ROI from every webinar with easy-to-use tools for repurposing your content. Offer your previous webinars as on-demand content, create short, catchy clips for social media, or repurpose chapters or segments for online courses, team training, and more. 
• Integration with third-party apps. Vimeo integrates with popular CRM platforms like Marketo, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and HubSpot, so you can sync your analytics data for a holistic view of your marketing strategy. Vimeo also integrates with apps like Google Drive, Webex, and Zoom to easily upload your video content from other platforms, as well as apps like Asana, Adobe Premiere Pro, Intuit Mailchimp, Shopify, and more to further streamline your workflows. The specific third-party integrations available vary based on your plan, as well as the capabilities available through all these integrations.   
• Audience engagement tools. Vimeo’s audience engagement tools help to keep your audience entertained and interested. Host Q&A sessions, run polls, or offer live chat during your events to keep your attendees engaged. 

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GoToWebinar webinar overview

Webinars are GoToWebinar’s primary offering, and its capabilities are similar to Vimeo’s. You can join or present from your desktop or mobile device, create pre-recorded webinars, offer your webinars as on-demand content, and utilize audience engagement tools to make your webinars more interactive. 

• Offer your webinars on-demand. Record your webinars and share them on GoToWebinar’s on-demand webinar platform, GoToStage. It has millions of professional users, helping you reach a new audience with your webinars.  
• Join or present from a desktop, phone, or tablet. Organizers and attendees can access or manage webinars from their desktop, phone, or tablet. Up to 6 organizers, presenters, and panelists can share their webcam during events. 
• Webinar templates. GoToWebinar’s users can use the platform’s webinar templates or build off of previous webinar settings to quickly create new events. 
• Pre-recorded events. Users can pre-record webinar content, delivering it to their audience at a scheduled time or offering it on-demand.
• Audience engagement tools and analytics. Keep your audience engaged with surveys, slide-in questions, interactive polls, and live results. GoToWebinar’s engagement dashboard shows you how your audience is engaging. After your event, you can dive into reports to explore engagement data, who attended, your most loyal attendees, and which channels drove the most traffic. 

Screen recording comparison: Vimeo vs. GoToWebinar

Screen recordings are valuable tools for both internal and external communications. Both Vimeo and GoToWebinar offer screen recording, although GoToWebinar’s features are more limited, particularly in terms of editing capabilities. 

Vimeo screen recorder overview

Vimeo’s screen recorder is the perfect balance of simplicity and functionality. With flexible recording options, a customizable, HTML5 video player, tools for collaborating with your team members, advanced editing capabilities, and the ability to organize your screen recordings into a shared library, you can get the most out of your screen recordings without being overwhelmed by overly complex software. 

• Record your screen, webcam, or both. With Vimeo’s screen recorder, you can record your screen, your webcam, or both. Easily start recording in seconds from your desktop or your smartphone. 
• One-take video creation. Users on Standard and above plans can use Vimeo’s AI to automatically generate a script based on a simple description. This can potentially save you hours of time coming up with the perfect words to deliver your message. And with our built-in teleprompter, you can get it right without tons of re-takes.   
• Advanced privacy controls. You get complete control over who can access your screen recordings with Vimeo. Set permissions for individual videos, users, or folders, or set videos to private. Want to share a video with a few select team members? Use an unlisted link to make sure only the viewers you share it with can access it. Vimeo Enterprise users can take advantage of Vimeo’s advanced security tools to ensure data security and meet compliance regulations. 
• Organize your screen recordings. Build a library of your screen recordings with Vimeo's video hosting platform by organizing your videos into folders. Vimeo also supports team collaboration — you can @mention other users, leave comments within videos, and get notified when a team member watches or comments on a video. 
• Advanced editing capabilities. Need to polish your screen recordings? Vimeo’s advanced editing capabilities enable you to edit your videos as easily as editing a text document. Simply delete any pauses, mistakes, or awkward phrases from your video transcript, and Vimeo automatically removes them from your video. Vimeo also offers advanced editing tools like a timeline editor to easily rearrange clips, tools for trimming, cropping, adjusting the aspect ratio, and a video compressor. You can also add music, text, images, backgrounds, and video clips — and on paid plans, you can access Vimeo’s extensive stock media library.    

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GoToWebinar screen recorder overview

GoToWebinar has built-in screen recording capabilities like Vimeo. You can share your screen during a webinar session and record the session to create a screen recording. It’s possible to create a screen recording without broadcasting a webinar, but you have to use the desktop app to do so.  

• Built-in screen recorder. GoToWebinar’s screen recorder is built-in like Vimeo’s, so you don’t need to download more software. 
• Screen recording during webinar sessions. The most obvious way to create a screen recording with GoToWebinar is by recording a webinar session. To do this, users start a webinar session, start the broadcast, share their screen, and record the session. 
• Record your screen from the desktop app. It’s also possible to create a screen recording without broadcasting a webinar via the GoToWebinar desktop app by right-clicking and selecting “Record Screen.” 
• Limited editing capabilities. With GoToWebinar, you can trim and cut your recordings to remove dead space and unnecessary words or awkward phrases. However, unlike Vimeo, GoToWebinar doesn’t have a timeline editor or the ability to incorporate additional elements like text and graphics. While you can edit the video transcript, it doesn’t automatically edit your video.  

Which video service is best for you, Vimeo or GoToWebinar?

If you’re looking to host simple webinars and virtual events and don’t need to repurpose your content or create other types of videos, GoToWebinar is a solid choice, and it’s an established, recognized brand. But if you want to develop a more comprehensive video strategy for internal team communications or video marketing, Vimeo’s browser-based production studio, advanced editing tools, and video repurposing features make it the best choice for brands and creators who want to go the extra mile with their video strategy. 

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