Live webinar platform: when to go live, and how to host one well
A live webinar is you presenting in real time to people who registered for that hour and can ask you things while you talk. Here is when that beats a recording, how to run one that holds the room, and what live webinar software should handle while you present.
What a live webinar is
A live webinar is a scheduled broadcast. One presenter, or a small panel, is on camera and screen share; the audience takes part through chat, questions and polls rather than by speaking. Around it sits the usual machinery: a registration page, reminder emails, an offer, and a replay for people who missed it.
It is not a meeting, where everyone talks (the difference between a webinar and a meeting has its own page), and it is not an automated webinar, which plays a recording on a schedule. What separates live from automated: when someone asks a question, you can answer it while they are still watching.
When live beats automated
Going live costs you the hour, every time. It pays that back in four situations.
| Situation | Why live wins |
|---|---|
| A new offer or a launch | You do not know the objections yet. Live questions tell you, and your answers become the script you record later. |
| A high-price or complex product | The sale often turns on one question a buyer needs answered before they commit. |
| An audience you are still earning | People forgive rough slides from someone who answers them by name. |
| A date that matters | A cohort opening, an announcement, a deadline the whole room shares. |
Automated wins when you give the same talk every week, when your audience spans time zones, or when ad traffic should watch minutes after signing up. The usual path is both: present live until the talk stops changing, then run the best recording as an automated webinar. Our attendance calculator plans on 40% of registrants showing up live against 30% for automated, as benchmarks, not measurements of your audience. The full comparison is in live vs automated vs evergreen webinars.
How to host a live webinar people stay for
Most live webinars go wrong in the first five minutes or the last fifteen. Here is a run of show for a 60 minute session.
| Minutes | What happens | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 0:00 to 0:05 | Welcome, what they will leave with, one quick poll | Late arrivals catch up, and the poll turns watchers into participants. |
| 0:05 to 0:35 | The content, one idea per slide or screen | Take one question around minute 20 so the chat knows you read it. |
| 0:35 to 0:45 | The offer, with the offer card on screen | Say the price and the deadline out loud once, then stop selling. |
| 0:45 to 1:00 | Questions from the queue, offer still open | Answering real objections often sells more than the pitch. |
- Rehearse in the room you will use
A day before, on the same connection and device, open the control room in rehearsal mode, check camera and microphone, open the slides or tab you will share, then say your first five minutes out loud. A wired connection and headphones prevent most sound problems; headphones stop your speakers feeding back into the microphone.
- Write everything you will show in advance
Offers, polls and handouts written the day before are one click on the day. Typed mid-broadcast, they are a silence the room notices.
- Give the chat its own person
A co-host who reads the chat and flags the good questions lets you keep your place. Alone, you ignore the chat or lose the thread.
- Decide the replay before you start
Say at the top whether there will be a replay and for how long, then keep to it: a live replay has no closing date, so switch replay access off yourself when the time is up. A promised replay that never arrives costs more trust than none.
How Webinly runs a live webinar
In Webinly you broadcast from the browser, and co-hosts and attendees join from theirs, so nobody installs anything. A live webinar is built in the same wizard as an automated one and shares its registration page, reminder emails, contact records and checkout. Live broadcasting is on Pro and Scale.
- The control room
It opens on a camera and microphone check; nothing goes out until you confirm Go live. You present with camera, microphone and screen share. Early arrivals wait on the webinar page and move into the broadcast when you go live, without reloading. If you turn on the waiting room, they wait until you admit them.
- Chat, questions and moderation
The chat sits beside your video. Questions arrive in their own panel, so chat does not bury them, and you mark each one answered. Messages that match a banned-word list wait in a moderation queue for you to approve or reject.
- Offers, polls and handouts, thrown when you are ready
Write them in the wizard, then throw each one into the room with one click, for as long as you set; a handout can also stay pinned until you take it down. Polls close when their time runs out. An offer opens a checkout inside the room, on Stripe or Tap, so buyers pay without leaving the broadcast. With a discount window, each buyer's countdown starts when they first see the card, and the card stays up at least that long unless you take it down.
- Co-hosts
Invite a co-host by email. They join from a private link with the same camera, microphone and screen share controls you have, no Webinly account needed, and can approve or remove chat messages, so one of you presents while the other runs the room.
- An AI assistant in the chat
Optional. It answers questions from the facts you write and posts your fallback line otherwise. More on the AI webinar assistant.
- Simulcast on Scale
RTMP simulcast sends the broadcast to one outside destination, such as YouTube or LinkedIn, alongside the Webinly room. If that stream fails, the Webinly broadcast keeps running.
A live room has no chat simulator; the chat is the real one. Every registrant becomes a contact record with engagement, buyer-intent and qualification scores that update as they watch, click and buy: see the webinar CRM and selling inside a webinar.
The live webinar replay
Turn on Record the broadcast in the wizard before you go live. When you end the broadcast, the recording is processed and the replay plays at the link attendees already have. You decide whether registrants can watch it.
The offers, polls and handouts you threw come back in the replay at about the moment you threw them; cards you never threw stay out. People who attended and people who did not get different follow-up emails, each with a signed replay link that still resolves to the right person when forwarded. Webinar follow-up covers what to send each group.
After a recorded broadcast, you can also turn the webinar into an automated one where it stands: same page, same link, same registrations, on auto-rolling sessions or at a fixed time, with polls and handouts timed from when you threw them live. Check their timing, and set when each offer appears, before it runs.
What live costs to run
| Live | Pro | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $159/mo | $349/mo |
| Room size, watching at once | 300 | 1,000 |
| Live broadcasting | 12,000 attendee-minutes | 36,000 attendee-minutes |
| Co-hosts | 2 | 10 |
| Recording | 6 hours a cycle | 20 hours a cycle |
| RTMP simulcast | Not included | One destination |
An attendee-minute is one person watching one minute of a live broadcast. A 60 minute webinar with 100 people watching all the way through is 6,000 attendee-minutes. Automated and evergreen webinars do not use them.
Room size is how many people can watch live at the same moment. If more show up, they still get in: each extra person costs $0.50 as a flex seat, billed after the broadcast, and people who registered but never came do not count. To switch that off, lock the room to your plan size in your settings; extra people are then not admitted and nothing is charged.
A year up front costs ten times the monthly price. Prices, room sizes, attendee-minutes, co-hosts and fees are on the pricing page.
What it does not do
Starter cannot go live. Starter, at $39 a month, is automated-only; live broadcasting starts on Pro.
It is not a meeting tool. There is no round-table room where everyone is on camera together. For a working session, use a meeting app.
No recording, no replay. If recording never ran, there is nothing to replay and nothing to turn into an automated webinar. Simulcast is Scale only; on Pro the broadcast goes to the Webinly room alone.
Very large rooms. The largest included room is 1,000 on Scale, and one room tops out at 2,900 people. Above that, a streaming-first product is safer.
It still needs you. A live room nobody answers is worse than a recording. If you cannot staff the questions, run it automated.
Set one up in five steps
- 1. Basics
Pick Live, give it a title, and choose when it runs: Just once, Repeats weekly or Specific sessions. Always on is for automated webinars only.
- 2. Landing page
Let Webinly build the registration page from a few answers, or start blank and place blocks yourself. Webinar landing pages covers what it needs.
- 3. Live room
Recording, replay access and simulcast on Scale, then the offers, polls and handouts you will throw, then co-host invites and the AI assistant.
- 4. Emails
Confirmation, reminders 24 hours, 3 hours, 1 hour, 30 minutes and 5 minutes before, and follow-ups after, editable per webinar. See webinar registration.
- 5. Review and publish
Then open the control room a day early and check camera and microphone in rehearsal mode; screen share only runs once you are live. Confirm Go live only at the real start.
Common questions
- Do I need to install anything to host a live webinar on Webinly?
- No. You broadcast from your browser, co-hosts join from a private link in theirs, and attendees watch on the webinar page from the link in their emails.
- Can I run a live webinar with checkout?
- Yes. Throw the offer into the room when you reach the pitch. It opens a checkout inside the room, on Stripe or Tap, with a countdown, so buyers pay without leaving the broadcast.
- Is there a replay of a live webinar?
- Yes, on Pro and Scale, when the broadcast is recorded. It plays at the same link once processed, and you can switch replay access off.
- How many people can attend a live webinar?
- Pro includes a room of 300 people watching at once, Scale 1,000. More still get in as flex seats at $0.50 each unless you lock the room to your plan size. One room tops out at 2,900.
- What is an attendee-minute?
- One person watching one minute of a live broadcast. A 60 minute webinar with 100 people watching all the way through is 6,000 attendee-minutes. Automated and evergreen webinars do not use them.
- Can I have a co-host?
- Yes: 2 on Pro and 10 on Scale, at no extra cost. Each co-host joins from a private link with the same camera, microphone and screen share controls you have, without a Webinly account.
Host your next live webinar on Webinly
Build the page, write the offers, invite a co-host, then go live.
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.
Related reading
- Live vs automated vs evergreen webinars: which format fits an offer, and in what order to use them.
- Automated webinars: how to run the recording on a schedule once the live version works.
- Offers and checkout inside a webinar: timed offers, countdowns and paying without leaving the room.
- How to increase webinar attendance: getting more of your registrants into the live room.
Last updated 2026-09-27. Plan limits and live room behaviour were checked against the product that day; show-up rates are benchmarks from our attendance calculator. Something out of date? Email us.