Wondering where to host your webinar or online training? YouTube and LiveWebinar are two popular tools, but each works well in slightly different situations. In this article, we’ll take a clear, practical look at both of them: their strengths, differences, and ideal use cases — to help you decide which one best fits your goals.
So, which should it be: YouTube or LiveWebinar? Let’s explore!
Table of Contents
The purpose of LiveWebinar vs YouTube
Let's start with the fact that both tools have slightly different purposes and uses. YouTube is a platform primarily designed for sharing videos, both recorded and live streams. It focuses on content distribution and audience building.
LiveWebinar, on the other hand, is a professional tool for conducting webinars and online meetings in real time, with interactive contact with participants. It is ideal for training, product presentations, and direct contact with customers.
The purpose of both tools is therefore different, and so are their functions.
So before you choose one of them, it is worth answering the following questions:
1. How large a group do you want to invite? Public or private?
YouTube: You can broadcast live to a virtually unlimited number of viewers – anyone who finds the link or your channel can watch. However, this means that you have no control over who is actually watching – the broadcast can be taken over by random viewers or trolls, which can be problematic if the event is supposed to be more intimate or professional.
YouTube also offers the option to mark a video as unlisted. This means that only people with a link to the broadcast will be able to view the material. We need to send the link to the broadcast to our audience. An unlisted livestream on YouTube is a quick way to deliver content to a limited group.
However, in the context of marketing, sales, and lead generation, LiveWebinar webinars are much more effective because they give you control over participants, data, interaction tools, and the ability to integrate with your entire business ecosystem.
2. Do you want your webinars to be interactive?
First of all, YouTube is a platform that was created primarily for passive content consumption. The viewer logs in, watches a video, sometimes leaves a comment or clicks “like.” The creator has limited influence on how the viewer's experience is shaped during the broadcast, although YouTube Live does have poll options.
LiveWebinar offers more opportunities for interaction. During a webinar, you can invite participants to interact in real time:
- organize a quiz to introduce an element of competition,
- conduct a professional Q&A session where you answer questions on the fly,
- share a whiteboard and work on ideas together,
- ask participants to raise their hands and turn on their microphones to speak in the forum.
This makes a LiveWebinar webinar more like a dynamic meeting or workshop than a regular video broadcast. Each participant feels that they have an impact on the course of the event – that their voice is important and not lost in a sea of anonymous comments.
Additional data
What's more, all these activities generate additional data that you can use in your marketing and sales activities. If 60% of participants in a survey indicate that the biggest challenge in their industry is lack of time, you have a ready-made insight that you can use in further communication. If someone actively asks questions in a chat, they are most likely close to making a purchase decision.
You won't see this on YouTube, where viewers leave comments such as “Great video, thanks!” at best. That's nice, but it doesn't contribute to the optimization of your sales funnel. Moreover, you cannot fully anonymize participants, which is possible with LiveWebinar.
That's why LiveWebinar is a tool that not only allows you to share knowledge, but also to collect data, build relationships, and accelerate purchasing decisions – something that no passive video platform can fully offer.
3. Do you want to use webinars to grow your business?
YouTube, although powerful in terms of reach, is a platform closed to business integrations. This means that even if someone watches your broadcast, clicks “subscribe,” or leaves a comment, their data will not go directly to your CRM or marketing automation system. Of course, you can manually analyze comments or the number of views, but this does not feed your sales funnel in real time.
LiveWebinar works completely differently. The platform was designed with business in mind, which is why it offers native integrations with key tools used by marketers and sales teams:
- HubSpot – automatically add webinar participants to your CRM and assign them to the appropriate stages of the sales funnel.
- Mailchimp – add new participants to your mailing list immediately and launch a follow-up campaign within minutes of the event ending.
- Zapier – hundreds of possible connections, e.g., with Asana, Salesforce, Slack, or Trello, allowing you to tailor data flow to your own processes.
This allows each webinar participant to be immediately assigned to the appropriate communication path:
- Participants who actively ask questions can be sent to the sales department as “hot leads,”
- People who only watch the recording can receive a series of educational emails as part of lead nurturing,
- Customers who have already purchased the product can be automatically invited to onboarding webinars or Q&A sessions.
This means that a webinar is not a “standalone online event,” but a full-fledged element of the marketing and sales funnel. Participant data is not lost, but immediately works in the systems used by your team.
It gives a huge advantage in the world of performance marketing. Marketers can:
- track the cost per lead (CPL) from a webinar,
- monitor conversions (e.g., how many participants became paying customers),
- compare the effectiveness of webinars with other channels, such as display campaigns or lead ads.
On YouTube, such analysis is virtually impossible because there is no data flow between the platform and your CRM system.
Flexibility of format and branding
YouTube is a powerful platform in terms of reach, but when it comes to personalization and branding, its capabilities are limited. Your webinar always takes place within Google's universal interface, with the platform's logo and standard colors, and with no full control over the event page. For companies that want to build a consistent image and user experience, this can be a significant limitation.
LiveWebinar allows you to customize almost every element of the event to match your brand. You can add your own logo, choose colors that match your company's visual identity, and even host the webinar under your own domain so that participants feel like the event is taking place directly within your brand's space. In addition, you can create a registration landing page that is fully consistent with your company's design, making the registration process intuitive, attractive, and visually consistent with all your marketing communications.
As a result, the webinar is no longer just a video broadcast – it becomes a professional experience for the participant, in which every element reinforces the brand image. This is particularly important in the B2B world and in sales campaigns, where details such as the appearance of the registration page or video branding have a real impact on the perception of professionalism and trust in the company.
4. What information do you want to collect from participants?
YouTube: You don't collect participant data – you don't have a list of registered viewers or their contact details. This means that after the event is over, you have no idea who watched it, you can't send participants thank-you notes, bonuses, or any additional offers, and thus you lose the opportunity for further communication and building a loyal customer base. YouTube simply does not offer the possibility to collect leads.
YouTube has its own analytics, but to start tracking content performance, you need to access the YouTube Analytics dashboard.
General statistics on the number of views and viewing time are available, but there is no information about specific individuals or the possibility of creating individual follow-ups. The possibility of further contact with viewers is therefore limited.
Collecting valuable leads from a webinar
LiveWebinar: As a rule, participants sign up for an event using a simple registration form. This means you collect email addresses right away, you can also add your own questions, and after the meeting you have a ready-made list of contacts, i.e., leads. You can immediately send summaries, thank-you notes, and follow-up materials only to participants. What's more, you can edit the forms according to your needs: you can add your logo and colors, and you can decide what data you collect from participants: whether emails, and what kind of emails.
LiveWebinar also has many useful additional features: it allows you to limit registrations to company emails, so you only collect data from professionals who are genuinely interested in the topic. You can also easily embed the registration form on your website, which will facilitate and increase registrations.
That's why organizing webinars on the LiveWebinar platform is one of the best ways to collect valuable leads, which a webinar broadcast on YouTube certainly won't give you.
After the meeting is over, you have access to detailed reports – who was present, how long they participated, quiz results, chat list, etc.
5. What features will be helpful to you during the meeting?
YouTube: You are limited to video streaming with chat; you cannot share presentations or your screen in an interactive way. You can present images and sound, use a simple chat, but without the ability to moderate individual participants, divide the room into groups, or conduct joint presentations.
This is a good choice if you want simplicity, e.g., you just want to quickly “post” something live. This means that if you want to divide participants into groups during the training, use an interactive whiteboard, take joint notes, or invite a participant to the “virtual stage,” you will not be able to do so.
LiveWebinar: You have access to slide presentations, screen sharing, a virtual whiteboard, rooms divided into smaller groups (breakout rooms), co-hosts, and many other more advanced features that will allow you to engage participants, e.g., during a training session or workshop. Here you will find a full list of LiveWebinar features.
YouTube is more passive – you cannot conduct interactive training on it.
Feature Comparison
Recording meetings
If you want your meeting to be recorded or available only for a limited time, YouTube broadcasts can be saved on your channel and made available to anyone who has the link or visits your profile. With LiveWebinar, however, you decide who has access to the recording and for how long. You can share it only with selected people or limit its availability. You can share recordings on YouTube & Vimeo Players. You can also organize automatic webinars.
Series of meetings and registrations
If you are planning a series of regular meetings, it will be difficult to manage registrations and communication on YouTube – everything is mainly based on channel subscriptions.
Broadcasts are organized individually. All notifications go only to subscribers. It is also difficult to manage an advanced event calendar or a series of regular meetings for the same people.
If you just want to go live once in a while, all you have to do is set up another broadcast. However, this makes it difficult to maintain group loyalty and participant engagement, as there are no tools for automatic information and reminders or community building.
Recurring webinars
With LiveWebinar, on the other hand, you can create webinar series, automatic email reminders, and conveniently manage each event from one place.
You can plan an entire webinar series, invite the same people with a single click, and manage a series of events from one place.
Registration forms
You can also create registration forms based on ready-made templates available in the LiveWebinar tool and landing pages, saving you time and automating processes. You can also use the event calendar subscription option. YouTube does not offer such possibilities.
This allows you to build a community around your brand or product, effectively maintain contact with customers, and increase their engagement.
Confidential information
The wide public availability of webinars on YouTube can be an advantage, but if a webinar contains confidential information, “participants only” bonuses, or materials intended only for selected individuals, you have no control over who views them and when anyone can forward the link.
This is particularly important for sensitive topics such as sexology, therapy, tarot, and others. In such cases, anonymity and control over participants are crucial.
Equally important, chat in LiveWebinar can be anonymized, while on YouTube this is limited.
Paid events
In addition, LiveWebinar allows you to organize paid webinars thanks to integration with popular payment gateways such as Stripe and PayPal. You can sell tickets to your events.
On YouTube, you can share live streams only with viewers who have made donations, which is possible through integration with donation platforms such as Streamer or Tipply, which allow you to create special panels with payment links or offer payment verification systems. These platforms allow creators to set who can view a given material, depending on the donation made.
However, only those who have paid have access to LiveWebinar. You can limit the number of seats, create VIP access, or various ticket packages. This is not possible on YouTube. The broadcast is public, and a donation does not guarantee access – anyone can watch, regardless of whether they have paid. In addition, in LiveWebinar, participants pay in advance for access to the event (e.g., a webinar ticket). You have a clear picture of how many participants have purchased admission and what the revenue is.
Advertisements
If you organize an event on the LiveWebinar platform, your participants will see at most an advertisement for your product or service. There will be no other external advertisements that only distract attention and may annoy the audience. On YouTube, we all know what it looks like – advertisements are ubiquitous and can cause viewers to stop watching.
YouTube restrictions to keep in mind
YouTube has several important restrictions that will not be present in LiveWebinar. This concerns copyright issues.
YouTube – copyright
Copyright is a broad issue, but here we will focus on a small part of it. The legal rules governing YouTube are contained in the YouTube Terms of Service and in the so-called community guidelines, which are regularly updated, so you need to keep track of changes.
YouTube license
Let's start with the fact that by uploading your content, you grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, and sublicensable license to use it. It sounds complicated, but what does it mean in practice? Contrary to what some people think, you do not lose your copyright when you publish content on YouTube. You always retain your personal copyright, at least under Polish law. By granting a license, you allow YouTube to reproduce, distribute, modify, display, and perform your video. The license expires once you decide to remove your video from the YouTube platform.
Violations of YouTube's terms of service
It is worth remembering that YouTube is a public platform and automatically monitors copyright in video content. YouTube has Content ID, an automatic detection system, which scans uploaded videos for music, video, and other copyrighted material.
LiveWebinar and copyright
In LiveWebinar, you also need to pay attention to where you get your material from. This is due to general copyright protection rules. Copyright law states that you must cite the source of a given work: audio, graphic, or text. In practice, this means that you must credit the creator of the work.
However, in the case of LiveWebinar, you do not grant anyone a sublicense to use your content.
YouTube account restrictions
If you violate copyright on YouTube, i.e., use someone else's music, film clips, or graphics without the author's consent, the YouTube video may be:
- Blocked in certain countries or worldwide,
- Monetized by the copyright owner (advertisements for them),
- Deleted, and the account may receive a warning.
Content ID also applies to live streams. If you play copyrighted music or videos, YouTube may mute the audio, block the stream, or automatically redirect ad revenue to the rights holder.
The legal consequences can be severe – YouTube actively enforces copyright, and violations can result in account restrictions or financial claims.
Summary and recommendations
LiveWebinar offers a wide range of useful features – both for audience engagement and marketing – and it is up to you to decide which ones you need.
On YouTube, you don't make the decisions; you have to accept what the service provides at any given time. And this service can change regularly. For example, YouTube currently offers automatic dubbing, which automatically turns on interpretation into your language when you play videos. To opt out of this option, you have to change it in the settings, but this requires additional action every time you play a video. This can be annoying for people who don't want this translation and don't want to block it separately each time.
If you want to see how LiveWebinar works in practice, sign up for a free account. It's easier than you think. If you have any questions, our customer support team will be happy to help you.