As a keynote speaker, I’ve delivered hundreds of talks, workshops, and webinars over the past decade. My job is to not only share useful content and insights with my audiences but also ensure they feel engaged regardless of whether I’m giving a live, in-person talk or hosting a virtual webinar.

Although I did host the occasional webinar in the past, since 2020, the number of virtual webinars I hosted exponentially increased. Between 2020-2023 alone, I hosted over 200 virtual webinars for corporate clients and business school clients using platforms like Zoom (by far my favorite!), Microsoft Teams, Webex by Cisco, GoToWebinar, Streamyard, and BlueJeans amongst others.

As a host and presenter, I’m often sharing slides while having to also monitor and manage the chat, participant reaction, and in some cases, Q&A windows. While plenty of articles exist comparing the various platforms out there, I wanted to share my perspectives and viewpoints on some of the most popular platforms from a presenter’s and host’s point of view.
(last updated June 2023)

🥇Zoom

Zoom_Logo_BlueSince 2016, long before Zoom became a verb, I used Zoom for all my private client consultation calls and podcast guest recordings. I immediately became a huge fan of the platform due to its professional look & feel (vs. Skype which is what I had been using up until that point for video calls). I love using Zoom for webinar presentations because the interactivity built into the app is best in class.

Zoom-Screengrab-Joseph-Liu

👍🏼Pros:

  • 💻Total window control– As a presenter, I often need to create different views so I can see my participants on their webcams or move windows around so they don’t occlude my slides that I need to see while presenting. I love how you can fully adjust windows, both size and shape, even hiding other’s webcam images if preferred.
  • ⚙️Unbeatable UX: easy to access settings while presenting for audio, video, and screen sharing options.
  • 📊Polling: fully integrated with option to share results with attendees immediately.
  • 💬Chat, Q&A, and Participant windows: can be floated or merged into the main window, which is extremely handy when I’m presenting slides.
  • ☕️Waiting room: I love the fact you can not only have a waiting room but also customise your waiting room branding
  • ✍🏼Annotations: As a presenter hosting a virtual webinar, I try to mimic the in-person workshop experience as closely as possible, and this means capturing input and thoughts from audience members on a whiteboard–in this case, a virtual white board. Zoom has incredible virtual spotlight, drawing, and text annotation options.
  • 🔊Sharing computer sound: I embed a lot of multimedia, sound, and videos into my slides, so being able to share the sound from my computer and PowerPoint slides is absolutely critical. With Zoom, you literally check a box, and voila, it works.
    • Additionally, after a Zoom version update in mid-2022, you can now control the volume of my audio as it’s heard by an attendee simply by adjusting the volume up or down on my own laptop, which is a huge bonus. With all other web conferencing software, sound behaves as it would with an HDMI connection when presenting live, where you don’t have control of the output volume.
  • 🤝Breakout rooms: This is kind of insane if you think about. We’re talking about clicking a button to enable multiple groups of attendees on your virtual meeting to virtually “meet” up with each other in separate virtual rooms missing a beat.🙀
    • You can not only create breakout rooms, but also share live slides and audio to breakout rooms. You can also visually monitor the audio of those inside each breakout room as a host! Wow.👏🏼Very impressive, Zoom.
    • Breakout rooms have become even better as of mid-2022, when you could easily exclude co-hosts from the rooms, making the room assignments that much easier to make on the fly.
  • ✋Raise hand visibility: As a presenter, my ability to immediately see when someone “raises” their virtual hand is critical so attendees feel I’m attuned to their reactions just as I would be if presenting face-to-face. The Raise Hand feature of Zoom has always been outstanding, but in their June 5, 2023 release, they improved it further, enabling me as the presenter to immediately see the hand raised, jump to the participant window, and prompt the attendee to unmute themselves. This reduces the UX friction to an already seamless piece of Zoom functionality.

👎🏼Cons:

  • 🤷🏻‍♂️Honestly, I can’t think of a single one other than the fact some organizations don’t prefer to use Zoom over Teams for reasons related to security or organizational guidelines.

🥈Webex by Cisco

Webex Cisco LogoI’d always pick Zoom over Webex if given the option, but I have had occasions where corporate clients have required I use Webex. As a presenter, I’m more often asked to present via Zoom or Teams, but Webex does come up. From a presenter’s standpoint, I prefer Webex over Teams, mostly because it offers a lot of the same versatility as Zoom.

However, the interface is somehow less intuitive when presenting. The philosophy of Webex seems to be to allow the presenter to focus on the content they’re sharing rather than being distracted by a lot of on-screen windows or controls.

I do appreciate a distraction-free presenting environment, but this comes at a cost. I find myself having to think a lot more when accessing application controls because they end up tucked deep into dropdown or auto-hidden menus rather than just being always visible and one button click away. While I can appreciate the spirit of having a clean screen, when presenting, you don’t want to have to search for buttons while you’re mid-sentence.

Webex-Screengrab-Joseph-Liu

👍🏼Pros:

  • 🔊Sharing computer sound: again, very important to me, and this works fine on Webex, although you cannot control the volume like you can in Zoom.
  • 💬Chat, Q&A, and Participant windows: like Zoom, can be floated or merged into the main window, which is extremely handy. However, the UX goes a bit downhill once you start sharing your screen.
  • 📝Notes: you get a dedicated Notes window in Webex, which is not an option in Zoom or Teams. I typically have my Note app open that I alt-Tab to if I need to capture an idea. However, I like the idea of having it right there in the Webex app. You can also save this as a .txt file afterwards, which is incredibly handy. You can also pre-populate the note with links you plan to share with attendees that you can then just copy & paste into the Chat box. It doesn’t get any easier than that.

👎🏼Cons:

  • 📉Polling exists, but it’s a bit clunky: while you can use polls with Webex, it’s a bit clunkier and less intuitive compared to Zoom. I haven’t figured out a way to pre-populate polls. Instead, I create them, save them as files, then import them in one by one before my presentation’s start time. However, in Zoom, you can do all this in advance very easily so you’re not scrambling with this right before your present. Also, in Webex, for some reason, you have to manually re-add the poll window to your screen panels every single time, which is a hassle.
  • 🫥Chat, Q&A, and webcam windows disappear when sharing my screen: once I share my PowerPoint presentation with attendees, my own webcam video goes away. Additionally, even if I’ve floated my chat and Q&A windows before sharing, they all disappear. I then have to go back and re-open them, which is an additional step you don’t to deal with once you’re presenting. And if you’re presenting as one of many speakers at an online conference, you don’t alway have the luxury of having a lot of time between the moment you share your screen and start presenting.
  • 🥷🏾Control bar auto-hides: when presenting, the control bar auto-hides. Imagine if you were flying an airplane, and the flight controls auto-hid. When presenting, I like having all the buttons, windows, and options visible at all times so I can quickly click on them without having to spend to long searching for them. If you’re the main speaker, and you don’t have a co-pilot (I often don’t), you’re often talking while also navigating buttons and windows on your screen, so waiting for the control bar to reveal from the top of the screen after it auto-hides itself isn’t what I prefer.

🥉Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams LogoAlthough widely adopted and used by many of my corporate clients, Microsft Teams is, unfortunately, one of my least preferred platforms to use when hosting a webinar, mostly because many of the basic functions I prefer to have at my fingertips are not available when presenting on Teams.

As a presenter, I find using Teams to be extremely unintuitive, and the UX is not what I would consider user-friendly. When you share slides, you don’t have the functionality, window visibility, or layout control you have in Zoom. I often find myself scratching my head when trying to navigate Teams, and when you’re presenting, you want everything to be “glance-friendly,” where you can quickly and easily scan amongst windows so you can focus on engaging with the audience rather than trying to make sense of the actual Teams app.

When using Teams, I find myself feeling very much like I’m in a virtual environment. In contrast, on Zoom, the technology kind of disappears, which allows you to mimic the in-person experience as closely as possible–the whole ambition of a virtual webinar.

Teams-Screengrab-Joseph-Liu

👍🏼Pros:

  • 🌍Widely used: Almost every corporate client I work with uses Teams as their main videoconferencing platform mostly because it’s pre-installed and fully integrated with their enterprise software, i.e., Microsoft Outlook. And there’s something to be said for simply using a system everyone’s already used to using.
  • 🔐Security: Sometimes, I have clients who are not “allowed” to use Zoom for security reasons. I don’t know the ins and outs of what’s behind this, but having total security during a corporate presentation seems fairly critical to a client’s peace of mind. With this said, I’ve never had any issues whatsoever with Zoom security.

👎🏼🤦🏻‍♂️Major Cons (where do I begin here?):

  • 🔇Can’t always share computer audio: as a MacOS user, at least as of this writing, while I can share my computer audio when I set up a Teams meeting myself, when calling into someone else’s meeting, I do not have the option of sharing my computer audio, which is a major limitation since I often embed audio and video into my slide presentations to keep things lively. While I’ve developed my own workaround, it’s precarious and introduces more variables leading to user error and an inconsistent viewer experience.
  • 🖥Can’t monitor my own camera image: for some odd reason, when I share my screen on Teams, I can’t actually see my own live video feed, as you can in Zoom. The only way to view my own video is to manually re-open the meeting window that shows my camera and everyone else’s videos, but this then covers my presentation slides.
  • 💬Hidden chat window: when sharing slides, I can’t monitor my own video screen without manually switching over to the Teams meeting window, which is cumbersome when I’m in the middle of presenting.
  • 🤦🏻Hidden participants window: when sharing slides, I also can’t see the participant activity unless I manually switch over to the main Teams meeting window
  • 😱No option to even view chat window!: inexplicably, in some cases when I’m a remote presenter calling into another company’s Teams meeting, the chat box button is no longer available to me, meaning I cannot view it at all, which is a huge handicap when I’m a presenter prompting attendees to share their comments in the chat box. It’s utterly perplexing why this happens.
  • 📊No integrated method of polling: while you can use a 3rd party polling app like Mentimeter and share the polling URLs with attendees, the idea of then having to re-share another window to display real-time results then re-share your presentation window after is just way too clunky when presenting.
  • ❌Limited window control: Teams seems to dock windows I would prefer to float, both as a host and as an attendee. This severely limits how I can arrange my screen windows to optimize the layout based on my personal preferences or desktop constraints.

If you present regularly, you should be comfortable using them all

Man videoconferencingIn spite of my critiques of the different platforms, as someone who regularly hosts webinars for clients, I’ve had to become 100% comfortable using any and all web conferencing platforms, including the ones I don’t prefer. When clients ask me to host a workshop on Teams, I happily do it, and it certainly does the job.

When presenting virtually, my job is to deliver high-quality content and present in an engaging manner. However, navigating the technicalities of the webinar software is as important because it affects the attendees’ overall experience with me. The onus is on me as a presenter to figure each platform out and find a way to work around any of the inevitable annoyances inherent to any piece of software.

I’m grateful that Teams, Zoom, Webex and others exist. My business during the pandemic probably wouldn’t have survived without them. Each of these platforms is incredible in its own way.

Which is best for you?

woman at laptopThe best way to truly figure out which works best for you is to set up another machine as a mock “attendee,” and test things out from your slide sharing to your audio sharing to window navigation. Regardless of which platform you enjoy using most when presenting, it’s worth familiarizing yourself with more than one in case you’re forced to present on a platform that’s not your favorite.

A long tail of webinar and videoconferencing software that goes beyond Zoom, Webex, and Teams certainly exists. GoToWebinar is probably a distant fourth. After that, there’s a huge drop-off once you’re in the Streamyard and BlueJeans territory. I steer clear of these unless a client insists I use them, which has happened.

Right now, Zoom definitely gets the 👑crown for ease of use, versatility, and technical capabilities. With each version release, it just keeps getting better and better, so I don’t see it getting dethroned anytime soon.

All these platforms are true feats of genius though!👏🏼

Woman speaking at laptopI know I’m being kind of critical here, especially of Teams. HOWEVER, just to keep this all in perspective, we’re talking about applications that enable us to videoconference with anyone who has an internet connection anywhere in the world.🤯

That’s nothing short of insane technology.


I know we can all poke holes into these platforms. It’s WAY too easy to critique things you didn’t build yourself. But honestly, if you had asked me back in 2010 whether we could host virtual conferences for hundreds, sometimes thousands of people, sharing the content on our screens without leaving our chairs, that would have seemed crazy.

Zoom, Webex, Teams, and other videoconferencing platforms are ridiculous feats of software engineering. Thank you, Zoom, Cisco, Microsoft for creating these tools that enable us to communicate seamlessly with anyone in the world. My business certainly wouldn’t be able to function without them, and these platforms enable me to ultimately reach more people in more places with my content.


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About Joseph Liu

Joseph Liu helps aspiring professionals relaunch their careers to do work that matters. As a keynote speaker, career & personal branding consultant, and host of the Career Relaunch® podcast, his passion is helping people gain the clarity, confidence, and courage to pursue truly meaningful careers. Having gone through three major career changes himself, he now shares insights from building & relaunching global consumer brands to empower professionals and business owners to build & relaunch their personal brands.

About Joseph Liu

Joseph Liu helps aspiring professionals relaunch their careers to do work that matters. As a keynote speaker, career & personal branding consultant, and host of the Career Relaunch podcast, his passion is helping people gain the clarity, confidence, and courage to pursue truly meaningful careers. Having gone through three major career changes himself, he now shares insights from building & relaunching global consumer brands to empower professionals and business owners to build & relaunch their personal brands.

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