Wistia vs. Goldcast: Which Live Event Platform Should You Use?

When it comes to live streaming your events, Goldcast and Wistia are great options.

Both platforms offer customizable branding, interactive features for audience engagement, robust analytics for measuring success, and integrations with leading marketing automation tools, just to name a few.

Your choice ultimately boils down to what your needs are and what you’re looking to accomplish with a live streaming platform.

Goldcast at a glance

Goldcast is an event management software that’s designed with event professionals in mind, and it’s all about recreating in-person experiences.

Goldcast got its start back in 2020 when the pandemic caused a rise in remote work. People needed new ways to connect online, especially for large virtual or hybrid events that used to be hosted in person.

That’s why Goldcast comes with features that encourage networking like breakout rooms for group discussions and networking lounges for attendees to informally engage with each other.

Wistia at a glance

We built Wistia Live, our more recent live event hosting feature, with marketers in mind to help folks at companies of all sizes create an effective live streaming strategy.

Wistia has been around much longer than Goldcast. It started off as a video hosting platform for marketers, and now it’s an all-in-one video marketing platform with a variety of features that can help streamline your webinar process from registration to redistribution. We’re talking about a built-in video editor, video embedding, galleries, lead generation tools, engagement tools, and more.

With Wistia, you don’t have to think about using different tools and technology to schedule, host, and manage your webinars. That entire process happens in one place, saving you hours of work.

This head-to-head comparison will focus on how Wistia Live and Goldcast are similar and different. Learn more about these live streaming platforms and see what features and benefits they offer for your business.

Webinar and event management

Compared to Wistia Live, Goldcast offers more advanced webinar and event management tools.

If you’re hosting large-scale virtual events like conferences, trade shows, or corporate meetings, Goldcast’s event registration and ticketing features can help you manage attendee registrations, collect payments, and issue tickets for events.

If you’re not planning to host large-scale virtual events regularly, Wistia Live still allows you to set up a professional-looking webinar registration page in a flash. You can add a detailed description of your event and upload some sweet artwork to serve as a thumbnail. Plus, a Wistia-hosted landing page will automatically be created so you can start inviting your audience and collecting new leads right away.

“We want Wistia Live to make everything so easy and look so nice that it gives people confidence going into their webinar.”

Brendan Schwartz
CTO, Wistia

Attendee engagement

Goldcast has more networking tools, such as virtual breakout rooms and networking lounges, for larger live-streamed events.

Organizers can create virtual breakout rooms for smaller group discussions or activities to let participants collaborate, network, and engage in more intimate conversations.

Networking lounges allow attendees to connect with each other in a more informal setting. These lounges simulate the experience of networking at in-person events and facilitate relationship-building among participants. This feature is great for hybrid events and conferences hosted on the Goldcast platform.

The goal of Wistia Live isn’t to recreate in-person gatherings but to make online experiences as engaging as possible. Features like Q&A, audience polls, a chat box, and emoji screen reactions are easy to use and keep you connected with your audience.

Again, if you’re looking to host online conferences, trade shows, or corporate meetings where your attendees can network with each other, you might consider Goldcast. But if you’re a marketer looking to deliver live webinars and presentations and connect with your audience in an engaging, stress-free way, Wistia is likely more suitable for your needs.

Post-event marketing

Goldcast and Wistia Live share common post-event tools, such as analytics to measure an event’s success and integrations with marketing automation tools to create workflows and nurture campaigns.

Goldcast provides more in-depth reports on individual attendee engagement and offers leading marketing automation integrations (HubSpot, Salesforce, and Slack + Salesforce) on its lowest pricing tier. However, you have to upgrade to higher tiers to integrate with Pardot, Slack, Drift, Wistia, and Adobe Marketo Engage.

Wistia Live offers robust event analytics for you to measure your webinar’s success. On our Advanced Plan, you can also integrate with HubSpot, Adobe Marketo Engage, and Pardot.

As a platform made for marketers by marketers, Wistia has post-event tools that can help you take your on-demand webinar recordings to the next level all in one place. Once your Wistia Live event is over, the recording will show up in your account. From there, you can open up our built-in video editor and make simple edits, add music, and let AI find the most shareable snippets for your social channels — all without having to download or upload a thing.

“For a lot of webinar software, you have to choose between something that looks beautiful and something that has great analytics and works well for the performance marketer. We don’t want our users to have to make the choice. We want to offer something that looks great and works well with the systems marketers use today.”

Brendan Schwartz
CTO, Wistia

Which one is better for your business?

Now that we’ve compared Goldcast and Wistia Live, we hope you see how each platform serves a specific purpose and how well it would meet your streaming needs.

Goldcast is designed for event planners who want to host large-scale virtual events, recreate in-person experiences, and encourage networking while Wistia Live is designed for marketers who want a streamlined live streaming solution. If the latter resonates with you, why don’t you start a free trial of Wistia’s Pro or Advanced Plan?