What are some tips for hosting webinars outside of Zoom?

If you have budget, my advice would be to find an AV Production company who has been doing Webinars. They will be able to elevate your webinar from a production stand point and guide you to the right platform / tools. I talk to clients about different platforms that will fit their needs, but ultimately the platform is just a tool and no platform is a one stop shop. One option is to live stream the webinar through Vimeo which allows you to run a live stream, have live comments, questions, and polls through a chatbox feature. Bizzabo is a high end option that is used for live and virtual conferences. They have a cool tool / feature called "Bizzabo Live" which allows you to share content, add additional people to the feed, field comments, setup quizzes and polls, and more. Another thing to consider is pre-recording content. Live webinars are great, but not always polished and professional. Having a super polished webinar typically happens by pre-recording speeches and streaming the content after editing has taken place. You can switch to a live panel or Q&A forum after streaming the speeches by transitioning from the pre-recorded video to a live camera feed. Other tools in the Zoom Webinar space are Go-To-Meeting (Go-To-Webinar), WebEx, Twitch, Microsoft Teams, and Adobe Connect.