This is a comparison by category, because specific features change every quarter and vendors' pricing pages are their own. We run shows on all of these, and the right answer depends on your audience and what you need them to do — not on which is "best".
Microsoft Teams (meetings, webinars, town halls)
Best for: internal corporate events where everyone already lives in Microsoft 365. Strengths: zero friction for staff; SSO; attendance reporting; town-hall mode scales to large internal audiences. Limits: the look is Teams; production control is limited unless you bring an external broadcast feed in; external audiences find it clunky. Production fit: good when a gallery feeds a broadcast-quality programme into it as a single source.
Zoom (webinars and events)
Best for: mixed internal/external audiences that need reliable interaction. Strengths: everyone knows how to use it; strong Q&A and polls; breakout rooms; decent analytics. Limits: branding is basic; the "webinar look" is hard to shake; large-scale streaming is via its own player or simulcast out. Production fit: good — a gallery can inject a produced feed, or pull participants out as isolated sources.
YouTube Live
Best for: public reach, discoverability and free hosting of the on-demand version. Strengths: unlimited scale; excellent player on every device; free; automatic captions. Limits: no registration; minimal interaction beyond chat; blocked on many corporate networks; ads and recommendations you don't control; rights enforcement on music. Production fit: excellent — it's built to receive a broadcast feed.
Vimeo (and similar professional video hosts)
Best for: branded, ad-free public or semi-private streams on your own website. Strengths: clean embeddable player; privacy controls; good on-demand tooling; reliable. Limits: interaction is light; registration needs another tool; costs scale with tier. Production fit: excellent.
LinkedIn Live
Best for: B2B thought-leadership events where the audience is already scrolling. Strengths: reach into the professional network; comments as a social signal. Limits: needs eligibility and scheduling; little control; not a place for a four-hour conference. Production fit: good as a simulcast destination, rarely as the primary.
Dedicated event platforms
Best for: multi-session conferences, events with sponsors, and anything needing registration, agendas, networking and detailed analytics in one place. Strengths: everything in one branded environment; the data model is built around events. Limits: cost; attendees have to learn a new interface; quality varies enormously between vendors; some have weak streaming under the hood. Production fit: varies — check they accept an external broadcast feed at decent latency.
Side by side
| Teams | Zoom | YouTube | Vimeo | Dedicated | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Audience | Internal | Mixed | Public | Public/private | Public B2B | Registered |
| Registration | Basic | Good | None | Add-on | None | Strong |
| Interaction | Good | Strong | Chat | Light | Comments | Strong |
| Branding | Low | Low–med | Low | High | Low | High |
| Scale | Large | Large | Unlimited | Large | Large | Varies |
| Corporate network risk | Low | Low | High | Med | Med | Varies |
| Cost | Included | £–££ | Free | ££ | Free | £££ |
How we'd decide
Internal all-hands: Teams, with a produced feed. Public thought-leadership: a produced stream to LinkedIn and YouTube simultaneously. Customer conference with sponsors and tracks: a dedicated platform, chosen with the feature checklist, fed by an external gallery. Branded launch on your own site: Vimeo-class embed. And in every case, a standby destination ready in case the primary fails.