Automated webinars: how they work and how to run one
A recorded session that behaves like a scheduled event: people register, get reminded, arrive at a start time, and see the offer when you planned it. Here are the three ways to schedule one, what it costs you, and how to build one people stay for.
What an automated webinar actually is
An automated webinar is a recording played on a schedule, inside the machinery that makes a webinar work: a registration page that turns a visitor into a contact you own, a start time, reminder emails, a room where chat, polls and handouts appear on a timeline, an offer that opens and closes at a fixed point, and a replay.
That machinery is the difference between this and a video on a landing page. A video has no start time, so there is nothing to remind anyone about, and no timeline, so the offer either sits there from the first second, ignored, or never appears at all.
It is also not a fake-live webinar. It becomes one the moment you claim a recording is happening in real time — a choice in your copy, with a cost most people underestimate.
The three kinds, and when each one fits
What separates them is how long someone waits between clicking register and watching. That gap decides how many people show up and how much pressure the event can carry.
| Kind | When it starts | What it is for | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scheduled from video | A date you set: once, weekly, or specific sessions. | Launches and cohort openings, where a shared date is the point. | The wait. Every day before the start is a day someone cools off. |
| Evergreen (just-in-time) | Minutes after each person registers. | Always-on funnels from ads or search, where the visitor is not coming back. | The shared moment. A deadline that resets per visitor works once on each. |
| On-demand replay | The moment they press play. | Second chances after a run, and search traffic that wants it now. | Most of the event pressure. More people start it; far fewer finish. |
A fixed date buys urgency and pays in no-shows; just-in-time buys attendance and pays in urgency. In Webinly, just-in-time is the Always on option: set the offset, and optionally offer up to twelve upcoming sessions spaced five minutes to twenty-four hours apart, shown as a dropdown reading “Starts in 7 minutes” or “Happening now”. A replay page either stays open indefinitely or expires on a date you set — usually its only pressure.
How many people actually show up
Attendance is the number most people get wrong, by planning against registrations. Our free attendance calculator starts from published industry base rates, then adjusts for reminders and traffic source. Below: 1,000 registrations from a warm list, reminded at 24 hours, 1 hour and 5 minutes.
| Format | Base show-up rate | 1,000 registrations, warm list, full reminders |
|---|---|---|
| Live | 40% | ~462 in the room |
| Automated / evergreen | 30% | ~347 in the room |
| On-demand replay | 20% | ~231 pressing play |
Roughly 60% of arrivals are still watching when a mid-session offer lands, so the automated row is 208 people hearing the pitch, not 347 — that is the number to multiply by. Reminder cadence swings the result around 40% between none and three, a bigger effect than live-versus-automated.
Replay is not comparable: its views come from a different denominator and are watched in fragments. Judge it on what it recovers — which is also why the two follow-up emails should differ. These are planning benchmarks, not measurements of your audience.
How to make a recording feel like an event
A dead automated webinar is a video with a chat box nobody uses and an offer link stapled to the page. The fix is a timeline.
- A chat simulator, written like real questions
Each message has a sender name, a body and a number of seconds into the video, up to 200 per webinar. The ones that work are questions you were actually asked last time, dropped just after the point that prompts them. Never imply the host is typing back live.
- Polls and handouts at the moment they are earned
A poll pulls back someone who is half-watching. A handout is the reason people stay until you drop it. Both sit on the same timeline, with a duration, on every plan.
- A timed offer with two clocks, not one
An offer has a start second, an on-screen duration, and a separate per-buyer discount window in minutes. The card appears where you put it; the countdown belongs to each buyer, running from when they first saw it. One rule is enforced — the window can never outlive the card — so Webinly extends the card, or moves the offer earlier.
A worked example. A 42 minute recording, just-in-time on a 15 minute offset. The offer appears at 28:00, stays on screen 12 minutes, with a 10 minute discount window. Someone registering at 9:07 starts at 9:22, sees the card at 9:50 and has until 10:00 — nobody arrives to a countdown already at zero. And record the talk after two live deliveries, so the objections you answer are real ones.
What you give up, honestly
There is no real Q&A. Live questions are where you learn what your offer is missing. Route around it with a handout linking to a form or a booking page, a reply-to address a human reads, or one live session a month.
Pretending it is live costs more than it earns. One attendee typing a question into a room that never answers, or reloading and watching the same “live” event start again in fourteen minutes, burns the trust the webinar just built. Almost nobody objects to a recording. People object to a small lie for money.
The recording ages and you will not notice. A price, a season, a launch you call recent, a screenshot of an interface that has since changed — still there eight months later. Keep offer terms in the offer card rather than the video, where changing them needs no reshoot.
You cannot read the room. No slowing down when people are lost, no skipping a section landing flat. Everyone gets your best take instead of your Tuesday take.
Two Webinly limits. Reminders go by email; there is no SMS or push channel. And Starter is automated-only — if you want to deliver the talk live before you record it, that starts on Pro.
How to set one up in Webinly
Six steps in the wizard. The first is the only one awkward to change later.
- 1. Basics — pick when it runs
Just once, Repeats weekly, Specific sessions, or Always on — the last being just-in-time, for automated webinars only. Sessions per webinar: one on Starter, four on Pro, twenty-four on Scale.
- 2. Landing page
Drag and drop from 43 blocks, 19 of them cinematic, or start from a template. On Pro and up the AI Creator drafts it from a description.
- 3. Upload video
MP4, MOV or WebM up to 10 GB, dropped into the wizard or picked from the media library.
- 4. Engagement — the timeline
Offers, polls, PDFs and links that appear at the second you choose, plus the chat simulator. On every plan.
- 5. Emails
Confirmation on register, reminders 1 day, 1 hour and 5 minutes before, then two follow-ups after the end time — one for attendees, one for no-shows. Editable per webinar, in English or Arabic; replay links are signed.
- 6. Review and publish
Then register for your own webinar with a spare address and sit through it. Every scheduling mistake shows up in the first five minutes.
Every registrant becomes a contact record you can segment, with live engagement, buyer-intent and qualification scores. In-room checkout runs on Stripe or Tap, including KNET and Tabby, in KWD, SAR or AED.
What it costs to run
Automated webinars are on every plan. Starter is $39/mo: one webinar at a time, 120 registrations per webinar, 300 evergreen viewers per cycle, Webinly badge shown. Pro is $159 for unlimited webinars, 300 registrations each, 1,000 evergreen viewers, two co-hosts, live broadcasting and your own branding. Scale is $349 for 1,000-person rooms and 4,000 evergreen viewers. A year up front is about two months free on every plan.
An evergreen viewer is one unique registration that actually watched during the cycle — rewatches free, no-shows never counted. Past the included number it is $0.25 per extra viewer, capped at $500 a cycle. Webinly takes 5% on Starter and 2% on Pro of what you sell through its checkout, nothing on Scale; your processor charges its own fee on top.
Common questions
- Is an automated webinar just a pre-recorded video?
- The video is the smallest part. An automated webinar wraps it in a registration page, a start time, reminder emails, a room with chat and polls, an offer that opens at a fixed point in the timeline, and a replay. A plain video page has none of that.
- Should I tell people the webinar is recorded?
- Yes, or at least never imply otherwise. The start time, countdown, timed offer and chat work just as well when the page says it is recorded. What does not survive is an attendee asking a question and getting silence.
- How many people show up compared to a live webinar?
- Fewer, comparing fixed-date to fixed-date. Our attendance calculator uses 40% for live, 30% for automated or evergreen and 20% for on-demand replay. Just-in-time closes much of that gap by removing the wait.
- Do automated webinars use my live attendee-minutes?
- No. An attendee-minute is one person watching one minute of a live broadcast, so a 60 minute live webinar with 100 people watching throughout is 6,000. Automated and evergreen webinars use none; they are measured in evergreen viewers: 300 per cycle on Starter, 1,000 on Pro, 4,000 on Scale.
- Can I run one on the cheapest plan?
- Yes. Starter is $39 a month and is the automated-only plan: upload a video, schedule it, build the page, send reminders, run the chat simulator, sell from the room. It does not include live broadcasting, co-hosts or badge removal — those start on Pro.
Run your first one on Webinly
Upload the video, pick a schedule, and let the page, reminders, chat, offers and replay run themselves. Your card is saved when you pick a plan; on a first plan the first charge is 14 days later, with one webinar and 50 registrations in between. Cancel any time from the billing page.
Last updated 2026-09-11. Plan limits, caps and fees checked against the product on 10 September 2026; show-up rates are planning benchmarks from our attendance calculator, not measurements of your audience. The docs walk through the wizard, and Webinly vs EverWebinar compares the two. Something out of date? Email us.