Not all things last forever… especially when it comes to the fast paced world of technology. That’s why today we’ve got an announcement to make about one of our products.
After a lot of conversations and tough decisions, we’ve officially made the decision to stop offering WebinarAlly to the world at large.
Here’s Why We’re Retiring WebinarAlly:
Over the past few months Google has rolled out some changes to their Hangouts On Air/YouTube Live technology that have made it difficult for users to embed hangouts on their sites.
Although we have been able to code a workaround fix for each of these changes, we’ve realized that offering a product that relies on another company’s decisions can make your own product vulnerable.
With each change, our users have had to “relearn” the plugin to keep it working properly.
This extra hurdle for our customers doesn’t fit with our software design philosophy: that things should be easy to use out of the box!
What This Means For Current WebinarAlly Customers:
As a current customer, you’ll continue to be able to use the plugin as is and assuming Google doesn’t spring more changes on us – WebinarAlly will keep on rocking your WordPress site.
If you haven’t done a webinar yet or you have one coming up, make sure to give yourself a few days to go through these steps before you plan to start a webinar – since it might take time for Google to process your request.
Other Tool Recommendations
Now you might be wondering what other tools you can use to host webinars, and here is a starting point:
- CrowdCast: This is another YouTube Live based webinar solution, with built-in chat and additional features that make it easy to organize live events.
- Facebook Live: You can easily host live videos directly on your public Facebook page, that instantly turn into re-watchable videos.
- Webinar Jam: This is another YouTube Live based webinar solution, that has a lot of additional features like landing pages and email integrations.
- Zoom: If you’re looking for a non-YouTube or Facebook option, this is one of the top contenders that is very affordable.
- GotoWebinar: This is the corporate standard that works great if you have a smaller audience or the budget to invest in quality webinars.
Thank You For Your Trust
We so appreciate your business and your trust in us as software creators. That’s why we’re committed to making sure this latest version of the plugin keeps working for you, and it’s also why we’re focusing on our efforts on our other tools, such as membership management and an LMS plugin, that don’t depend on Google.
Thank you so much and happy webinar hosting!
