Cost breakdown for virtual events

Line item	Estimated cost
*Gear*
Microphones	$40+ per speaker
Video cameras	$24+ per speaker
Ring lights	$30+ per speaker
Green screens	$18+ per speaker
*Event hosting software*
Up to 100 attendees	$50 to $250
500 to 2,500 attendees	$625 to $8,000
3,000+ attendees	$25,000 to $40,000
*Other software (as needed)*
Landing page hosting	$39/month – $469/month
Event registration form	$39/month – $720/month, or expect to pay a ticketing fee (and payment processing fee) per ticket
Email management software	$3/month – $150/user/month
Audience engagement software	Starting at $8/month – $1,000/month
*Speaker fees*
New expert	$2,500 to $5,000
Keynote speaker	$7,500 to $10,000
Thought leader	$10,000 to $30,000
Celebrity	$20,000 to $75,000
Well-known celebrity	$100,000 to $200,000
*Content production*
In-studio pre-recording	$375 to $500/hour
Remote pre-recording	$125 to $200/hour
Post-recording edits	$100 to $200/hour
*Swag bags*
Branded notepad	$4.66/notepad
Custom socks	$9.78/pair
Custom tote bag	$3.99/tote
Plain mailer bag	$0.87/bag
*Marketing expenses*	Variable

What you need to pull off a successful virtual event

Technically, you could run a virtual event with little less than an online meeting space, a camera, and a microphone. However, if you want to create a seamless, successful virtual experience, there are a few expenses that you might want to consider investing in.

Gear

It doesn’t take too much equipment to make online speakers look polished and professional — but it does take some.

Make sure your presenters look and feel their best on event day by equipping them with the tech they’ll need ahead of time. If you rely on your presenters to simply use their laptop speakers and microphones, you may run into tech problems or have variance in how they present (nobody wants to be the one speaker with grainy video or choppy audio).

Instead, get presenters set up ahead of time with the following:

Microphones to ensure your audience can hear every word (prices start at $40)
Crisp video cameras (prices start at $24)
Ring lights to control for any poor lighting (prices start at $30)
If needed, green screens (prices start at $18)

If you’re running an event with a tighter budget, you may be able to skip some of the items above — just make sure that you’re checking speakers’ pre-existing setups ahead of time, and coaching them on how to optimize their lighting and levels of background noise during the event.

Virtual event hosting software

You can think of event hosting software as the virtual venue in which your event will take place. And just like physical venues, different platforms offer you a range of different features.

According to Markletic, here’s what you can expect to pay in virtual event platform costs each month:

Between $50 and $250 to host small virtual conferences with up to 100 attendees each.
Between $625 and $8,000 to host larger virtual events with 500 to 2,500 attendees.
Between $25,000 and $40,000 to host larger events with over 3,000 attendees.

Most virtual event platforms will charge per user, and charge different pricing tiers depending on your virtual event needs. (Think number of attendees, marketing and promotion features, and security controls, for instance.)

Take careful stock here of exactly what features your event platform provides you with. While some platforms may — at the surface level — seem more expensive than others, they may come with extra features that actually make them more affordable in the long run.

For instance, some platforms will literally only host your event. In that case, sending event reminders, running polls, building a landing page, and getting attendees registered will all require separate software. Others, however, have these features already built in, which can save you from spending on those features elsewhere.

Any other software needs

As we mentioned above, some event hosting platforms — including us here at Vimeo — will include advanced features like a landing page builder, event registration forms, automatic event reminder emails, and interactive elements like polls and Q&As in their pricing.

If you opt for a platform that doesn’t include those features, however, make sure you include the following costs in your budget as needed:

Landing page hosting: starting at $39/month for a landing page with your own domain. Enterprise plans, for companies hosting multiple large-scale events, can cost up to $469/month.
Event registration forms: free for free events, otherwise expect to pay a ticketing fee (for example, $0.99 and 2% of the ticket cost) per ticket or a monthly subscription starting at $39/month.
Email management software: starting at $3/month to send 500 emails per month. Premium and enterprise plans typically cost between $36 – 150 per user per month.
Audience engagement software: starting at $8/month for audiences of up to 50. Enterprise plan pricing ranges from $199/month to $1,000/month.

Speakers

Since virtual events require less time and travel than in-person events, most keynote speakers will charge about 50% of their in-person fee for virtual events. Exactly how much a speaker will charge you, though, will usually depend on their experience and how well-known they are.

According to Big Speak, you can expect to pay:

$2,500 to $5,000 for a relatively new expert in the space
$7,500 to $10,000 for an established keynote speaker
$10,000 to $30,000 for a thought leader with a large following or published books
$20,000 to $75,000 for celebrities
$100,000 to $200,000 for well-known celebrities

Content

If you’re pre-recording any content for your event, you’ll need to factor production costs into your budget.

For example, to pre-record in a studio, expect to pay anywhere from $375 to $500 an hour for filming. If you’re pre-recording remotely, this cost should drop to $125 to $200 an hour.

Either way, warns Zephan Blaxberg, CEO of video production studio ZMBMedia, expect your production costs to be about three times higher than what you’d initially expected. For post-recording edits, budget in $100 to $200 per hour.

Advertising and marketing

It can be hard to estimate the cost of promoting your virtual event, since many companies use their existing resources for marketing. However, you can get a better sense of what you’ll spend on marketing by coming up with a virtual event marketing plan.

Ask yourself (and your team!):

How much time will our marketing team spend on this event?
How will we promote this event to potential attendees?
Will we spend money on social media promotion?
What will our email marketing look like?
Will we work with influencers to get the word out about our event?
Where will we host event information and registration?
What about virtual swag and gifts for attendees?
What will our post-event marketing look like?

Keep in mind that marketing and advertising can be some of the costliest portions of hosting a virtual event.

“The biggest spend we have is on advertising and the thought leaders/experts we bring on as speakers,” says Miles DePaul, Director of Demand Generation at Superside. “This is where the value of the Superside brand comes in. As people become more familiar with our brand, and learn from our content, our participation improves, and the event budget can start to regress. We save on advertising since our cost-per-click goes down with better brand awareness, and more organic promotion pays off. We save on speaker fees because great speakers want to partner with us or are willing to offer discounts.”

Once you’ve come up with a plan, you’ll have a better understanding of where you can use your existing resources (such as your marketing team and existing email marketing software), and where you may need to spend extra (for instance, on influencer partnerships or landing page hosting).

Gifts or swag

One way to add a fun, in-person touch to your virtual event is to send attendees a swag bag ahead of time. Receiving a swag bag in the days leading up to your virtual event can boost attendees’ anticipation, boost social media buzz, and help you stand out from other events.

The cost of putting together a swag bag really depends, of course, on what you put inside of it. We’ve collected a list of 30 virtual swag bag ideas for you, but for the purposes of budgeting, let’s pretend your swag bag includes the following classic items:

A branded notepad for note-taking
A pair of custom socks
A custom tote bag
A plain mailer bag

While shipping will vary greatly based on attendee location, the materials within each of these swag bags would cost you $19.30, or just under $20.

Sponsors or partners

Fortunately, this is an area where you can deduct costs from your virtual event budget. (We love to see it.)

Sponsorship opportunities may look different for virtual events than they do for in-person events, but they absolutely exist. Before the event, sponsors can be highlighted across all of your pre-event marketing, including your event landing page, social media posts, company newsletter, and reminder emails. You can also send registrants emails detailing any special offers from partners or sponsors.

During the event, you can feature sponsor branding on transition slides, run sponsored polls for them, host a discussion with your sponsors, or feature their short-form videos. If they’d like to send sponsored products to attendees, you can include these in your swag bags.

Finally, don’t forget to feature sponsors in your post-event content — including on-demand footage, post-event emails and social media posts, and video snippets. This way, you’re actually providing extra value to your sponsors, since they continue to receive airtime long after the event has wrapped.

How to measure the success of your virtual event

As you can probably tell by now, there are plenty of expenses that go into hosting a great virtual event. To prove the ROI of your event and secure funding for future events, it’s critical to track and prove the success of your event.

A few metrics you might consider tracking include:

Brand awareness: measured through event registrations, website traffic, event impressions, and social media engagements.
Leads and customers generated: tracked through event sign-ups, responses to event surveys, and any actions taken by new leads (such as starting a free trial).
Audience education: measured through the average number of sessions attended by guests and the level of attendee engagement in discussions, Q&As, and chats.

“Our events strategy is at its best when it is delivering value across the full funnel, influencing buyers to not only become problem-aware but also to influence more sales engagements and, ultimately, revenue,” says DePaul.

He continues:

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