Adobe Connect vs Webex: which webinar software is right for you?

For users looking for flexible software, both Adobe Connect and Webex are good options as they can be accessed through a browser or on mobile.

Adobe Connect’s top promotional feature is its landing pages with customizable event registration forms and social sharing buttons. As a strong player in the industry, Webex also has registration pages. However, the lack of social sharing buttons may disappoint some users.

Adobe Connect offers its users a variety of engagement features, like polls, Q&As, and whiteboards. On the downside, though, it does not allow hosts to customize their backgrounds. Some of Webex’s best activation features are chat boxes, emoji reactions, and polls, but it has no question upvote tool that lets hosts know which questions to prioritize.

Finally, while Adobe Connect provides attendance reporting, it does not support on-demand webinar streaming. Webex offers a useful analytics tool, but it is not built into a dashboard, meaning that data must be exported.

Adobe Connect offers multiple native integrations for its online event and virtual classroom use cases, including Brightspace, Moodle, and Sakai. Cisco's Webex also offers many direct integrations with products such as Salesforce, Facebook Workplace, and Microsoft.

Developers can create custom applications for Adobe Connect via its wide suite of APIs. Webex also has a REST API which enables communication with RESTful web services, allowing users to post messages in Webex spaces, obtain Webex space history, and more.

Adobe Connect also offers a public SDK, which allows developers to build custom apps and widgets. Webex customers can also customize the platform to their liking with its SDK.

Adobe Connect's LMS integrations, widgets, and API tools are all listed in its Apps & Integrations marketplace. Webex's integrations and applications are displayed in a well-organized App Hub, which can be accessed directly from a web browser. It also offers a collaborative Developer Portal.

Adobe Connect’s free plan is called Small Meetings. It allows up to three participants and is not designed to be an end-to-end activation solution. Webex also offers a free plan called Webex Suite Basic, which supports up to 100 people.

Adobe Connect’s most inexpensive plan, Meetings, starts at $50 per month and allows meetings of up to 25 participants. Webex’s least costly plan is the Suite Business option, which gives users premium meeting and calling for $25 a month.

The next option available within Adobe Connect is Adobe Connect Webinars, which starts at $130 per month for up to 100 participants. Users can upgrade to 500 or 1000 participants, making this a great scalable solution. Webex does not advertise any plan options tailored specifically for webinars.

Adobe Connect does offer enterprise solutions but you must contact sales for pricing. It also offers Adobe Connect Learning, starting at $370 per month. Webex does offer Webex Enterprise, whose price and features are also unlisted.