Virtual Event Platforms: Adobe Connect Review
How we would rate the platform:
Ease Of Use - 5/10 - With so much customization, Adobe Connect is not a “plug and play” option that you can simply roll out for an event or a team in a matter of days. That said, with some training and onboarding, any user will be able to enhance a virtual meeting experience.
Customization - 10/10 - Customization is key for Adobe Connect. Mimicking a desktop environment, meeting hosts have the ability to curate pods specific to functionality from presentations, polls, live chats, and even decide how attendees will be displayed on screen. Having the ability to further customize the presenter view, allows for real-time tracking of engagement and attendee analytics.
Security - 9/10 - Following current best practices for encryption and leveraging HTML5, Adobe Connect’s attention to security is felt and noted.
Integrations - 6/10 - As an enterprise level solution it’s no surprise that the majority of integrations available with Adobe Connect are with other Adobe products. If you are looking to simultaneously cast from Adobe Connect to Facebook Live or Youtube Live, you may need some programming support.
Price - 6/10 - With all of the bells and whistles that come with Adobe Connect you are looking at a bit of a spend, especially if you want to capitalize on all of the customizable features. Starting at $50 a month and growing to over $370 a month, you will want to ensure that you will get ROI before moving forward with Adobe Connect.
Overall Rating - 7.5/10 - For the right client, Adobe Connect would be a great enterprise level solution for virtual meetings, webinars, and training. With focusing on user training, the attendee experience will feel more organic, authentic, and may even be more enhanced than what could be done in an in-person environment.
Who would use Adobe Connect?
We would classify Adobe Connect as an enterprise level solution for virtual meetings and events. For organizations, associations, or businesses who are in need of pivoting multi-day seminars with multiple sessions happening simultaneously throughout the day, we would recommend considering Adobe Connect.
From a planning perspective, the ability to apply architecture similar to what would be done in a conference center could very easily translate to Adobe Connect by creating meeting rooms. If the speakers and session require presentations, handouts, polling, Q&A, all of those features are built in directly to the platform and can easily be customized to fit a speaker's needs.
Just as you would have an AV tech for each session room, with Adobe connect we would recommend having a dedicated room facilitator in each meeting room to keep things on track, cue up presentations, and customize the layout of the session to fit the needs of the content.
From an attendee experience, Adobe connect can be viewed by downloading software or streamed from the web (with less functionality), this would allow for easy access for all attendees. Layering on a meeting management software like Cvent or RegFox, you could in essence do everything you would do in person, virtually.
User Experience
Adobe Connect is ideal for those looking to have a variety of options while presenting. Not only can you upload Powerpoints and videos, but Adobe connect also allows you to annotate directly onto those for all of your attendees to see. Connect has a handful of different layouts for presenters to choose from and offers a few visually customizable choices including color and background.
Adobe connect has a myriad of apps that can be included in meetings including a countdown timer to let presenters know when their time is running up, Hands Up which allows users to add reactions to the meeting and increase engagement, and many other apps and add ons.
While there are some customization options, the overall look of the platform feels a bit outdated, at least from the demo and from the promotional videos. Considering it is an Adobe platform I would expect there are ways to truly customize the platform and modernize your meeting, however, from the demo and trial it isn’t quite obvious how to do so.
Technical Assessment
Adobe Connect comes with all the technical capabilities you have come to expect from an Adobe products, some of our favorites are:
Multiple hosts with a single license
Room templates that can be reused and shared, this creates an effective way to have premade templates for meetings or webinars saving time and making it easier for IT administrators to onboard users.
Attendance and user engagement reports can be a great tool to leverage during virtual classes or marketing events.
Breakout rooms is a feature that we have seen on other platforms however the ability to have participants joining by phone participate on those rooms is a feature we haven’t seen before.
Sharing pads are a great feature that allows the host to create panels for sharing content like images, video, files and even whiteboards, sharing pads are also available for breakout sessions and can then be shared with the entire meeting making a great way to divide or segment work and then socialize the results.
The platforms offer support for meetings, webinars and virtual classroom and is rated as market leader in the virtual classroom and webinar segments according to G2 Crowd 2020
On the backend Adobe has built one of the best browser compatible interfaces we have seen on this series, leveraging HTML5 and robust security protocols like TLS and AES-256 and enterprise ready features like managed deployments, least privilege principle and private cloud hosting options.
As expected in a platform so robust and with a wide variety of features, user training is necessary before it can be deployed and properly utilized. The interface in general can be somewhat difficult and new users might encounter challenges without the proper support.
