Live vs Recorded Demos [How to Pick + Best Tools]

What’s a live demo?

A live demo is a real-time product or service demonstration done by someone with a live audience, either in person or virtually. 

In the SaaS context, live demos are usually done through: 

• Webinars
• Live sales calls

Here’s a webinar example of a SaaS company hosting (Webflow) a webinar where they show how to use their software. 👇

And here’s a live sales call example of a salesperson (AE at Gong) doing a live walkthrough of a product on a Zoom call for a prospect.  👇

💡 Note: this is not a one-to-one sales call example with a prospect, as these recordings aren’t usually shared publicly.

Why people go for live demos (benefits)

✔️ Live demos are more engaging for the audience: Viewers can ask questions and get responses immediately.

✔️ Live demos allow for “detours”: Presenters can adjust the content of the demonstration based on how viewers are engaging.

✔️ Live demos can go in-depth: In live calls, presenters (i.e., account executives) can spend more time on a feature and show an entire workflow rather than breeze through it (common in pre-recorded demos).

✔️ Live demos can build trust: It’s hard to “fake it” in live calls. Showing live features helps prospects grow confidence in your solution’s ability to deliver real value. 

Live demo drawbacks

❎ Live demos can backfire: Live demos are risky. If bugs happen during the demo, the viewer’s confidence in your product can crash.

❎ Live demos aren’t scalable: You can pre-record and share a demo asynchronically with thousands of people. Live demos must be re-done every time, which is time-consuming for both the presenter and the audience.

❎ Live demos can cause administrative headaches: Every salesperson has been there, rescheduling a prospect call 12 times before having it canceled. Live demos involve scheduling back-and-forth and cancelations. 

When to use live demos

It’s best to run a live demo when ⤵️

→ The capabilities you want to showcase need real-time explanations.

→ You want to answer questions on the spot.

→ You need to gather feedback from viewers (harder to do with recorded demos). 

→ The deal size is large, and one-to-one personalization, or relationship-building, matters.

Are live demos risky? 

Short answer: Yes. 

Nuanced answer: it depends on ⤵️

• What you intend to showcase (which features, workflows, use cases, etc.)
• The presenter’s experience (your best product owner vs a new developer)
• The maturity of your product (does it have a lot of bugs?)

If any of these aren’t aligned, you can end up with this 👇

And live demo fails happen to even the best of us. Ask Google! ​​

What’s a recorded demo? 

A recorded demo is a pre-recorded video or walkthrough of a product or software, designed to showcase its features and functionality. 

There are two types of recorded demos: 

📹 Pre-recorded videos

🕹️ Interactive demos

Here’s a pre-recorded video example ⤵️

Here’s an interactive demo example ⤵️

Why people go for recorded demos (benefits)

✔️ Recorded demos are polished: Recorded demos have been edited and flow nicely without bugs or unexpected issues. 

✔️ Recorded demos have a “wow factor”: Since most recorded demos include animations and shiny effects, they can drive excitement from viewers, whereas a live demo might be considered “boring”. 

✔️ Recorded demos are scalable: Record once, share a million times! Recorded demos can help reach the masses.

✔️ Recorded demos offer an “on-demand” experience: Viewers can watch anytime, without scheduling.

Recorded demo drawbacks

❎ No real-time interactions: Recorded demos don’t allow for live Q&A, feedback, or special requests from viewers.

❎ Recorded demos aren’t as flexible as live ones: Pre-recordings can’t adapt dynamically like a live demo. However, including chapters and branches in your interactive demos can fix this 👇

‍

• What you intend to showcase (which features, workflows, use cases, etc.)
• The presenter’s experience (your best product owner vs a new developer)
• The maturity of your product (does it have a lot of bugs?)

When to use recorded demos

It’s best to leverage recorded demos when ⤵️

🎯 Your product is easy to comprehend.

🎯 You want to generate more leads from your demos.

🎯 (Interactive) Viewers prefer experiencing your solution first-hand.

🎯 You want to help new customers with guided walkthroughs.

🎯 Many people are interested in the same things (features, use cases, etc.).

🎯 You want prospects to be able to watch your demo anytime and share it with others.

And many more… (there are more use cases for recorded demos than live ones).

Hybrid approach: Use both 

Many companies use both—an interactive demo for lead generation, followed by a live demo for serious prospects.

How to bring the advantages of live demos to recorded demos

As an interactive demo platform (that’s us 👋), we believe that the best interactive product demos bring the best of live and recorded demos together: the engaging and hyper-personalized aspects of a live demo, combined with the high-converting, asynchronous scalability of recorded demos. 

Here are a few Arcade features you can leverage to build stunning, personalized interactive demos that prospects will prefer over traditional live demos ⤵️ 

Tip #1: Use HTML capture to quickly mimic your “actual” product experience👇

Tip #2: Leverage video splitting to turn videos into interactive demos👇

Tip #3: Build Collections to allow prospects to revisit demos personalized and tailored to them👇

Read more: How interactive demos can transform your sales process.

Our favorite tools for product demos (Live + Recorded)

🕹️ Read: Top sales demo software for SaaS in 2025.

1. Arcade (Interactive demos)

Why Arcade for recorded demos?

Arcade is an interactive demo platform that lets you easily create captivating product tours and interactive demos across devices.

Key features

Polished, on-brand experiences

Unlike live demos that can be unpredictable, Arcade ensures every demo is visually stunning and on-brand. With advanced customization options, you can craft a seamless experience that always reflects your company’s identity—without worrying about technical glitches or awkward transitions.

Personalized without manual Effort

Live demos require presenters to tailor their walkthroughs in real time. Arcade’s interactive demos offer built-in personalization through branching paths and custom variables, allowing prospects to navigate the product in a way that’s most relevant to them—without a salesperson guiding every step.

No need for re-recording

Live demos require preparation, and if product updates roll out, your sales team has to adjust every time. With Arcade’s HTML capture feature, you can update demo elements instantly without re-recording—ensuring prospects always see the latest version of your product.

Capture Leads as They Engage

‍Unlike live demos, where lead capture is passive, Arcade’s interactive demos actively reveal and capture leads while users explore. This makes it easy to qualify prospects early—before investing time in a live sales call.

Scalable Distribution 

Instead of scheduling one-on-one calls, Arcade lets you embed, link, or download demos in various formats for use across emails, landing pages, and marketing campaigns.

‍2. Loom (Recorded demos)

Why Loom for recorded demos?

Loom is an async video communication platform that lets people record themselves, their screen, or both through a Chrome extension and desktop app. It’s mainly used to share information internally but can also be handy when sharing product walkthroughs. 

Key Features

• Screen recorder: Record your screen and camera with Loom’s Chrome extension, desktop app, or mobile app. Record your entire screen, specific tabs or parts of your screen.
• Engagement and insights: Viewers can react to your videos with emojis. View where people are engaged and where they drop off.
• Immediate access & embedding: Once a recording is complete, Loom provides an instant link for easy sharing, eliminating the need for lengthy upload processes. Embed videos into emails, documents, or websites.
• Drawing tools: Emphasize key points during recordings with annotation features.
• AI summaries: Loom's AI can automatically generate video titles and summaries, streamlining content production.

• Fillers and silence removal: Improve video flow by automatically eliminating unnecessary pauses and filler words.

Why do people pick Loom for recorded demos?

According to public reviews, people choose Loom because of: 

• Time-to-value: You can sign up for a free Loom account, record a video, and share it with someone else in less than 5 minutes.
• Ease of use: Anyone within a company can record videos with Loom or watch videos shared with them. 
• Cost: Loom remains a very affordable solution if you don’t need too many editing capabilities. 

3. Saleo (Live demos)

Why Saleo for live demos?

Saleo is a live demo platform that helps sales teams create sandbox environments with real data to use in sales demonstrations or create product tours that convert prospects. 

Key features

• Saleo Live: Create live demos using your actual product, not just static images or recordings. It enables real-time text, graphs, tables, and image editing directly within the demo environment, ensuring data accuracy and personalization. 
• Personalization: Tailor demos to match the prospect’s needs, including editing live graphs, customizing text, and swapping images. 
• Saleo capture: Create interactive, guided demos that can be embedded in emails, websites, or shared as standalone experiences. These demos include tooltips, embedded videos, and other interactive elements to engage prospects.

• Real-time data: Saleo supports live data features like real-time traffic, GPS tracking, and interactive chat capabilities.
• Demo duplication: Duplicate your top-performing demos and data sets then easily adjust any element for the next use-case or target account.

Why do companies pick Saleo for live demos?

• Data: The ability to quickly populate data across demo environments. 
• Reduced prep time: Users report significant reductions in demo preparation time—sometimes up to 100%, allowing sales engineers to focus more on selling.

4. Fathom (Live demos)

Why Fathom for live demos?

Fathom is an AI recorder that sits in meetings and helps you summarize calls, pin highlights, automatically se taction items, and easily share recordings with others. It’s a top choice for customer-facing individuals running live demos.

Key features

• Real-time transcription: Fathom records and transcribes meetings in real-time, allowing presenters to focus on the demo without manual note-taking. 
• Highlights: Users can mark significant moments by clicking the highlight button, making it easy to reference or share these segments later. 
• AI-generated summaries: After a demo, Fathom provides concise summaries, capturing essential points and action items, which can be customized based on meeting types. 
• Clip sharing: Users can create and share clips of highlighted demo sections, facilitating collaboration and follow-ups with team members or clients. 
• Data sync: Fathom integrates with CRM systems, automatically syncing meeting summaries and action items to customer records. 

Why do people pick Fathom for live demos?

Fathom has thousands of 5-star reviews all across the internet. It’s a truly popular tool that does it’s job, and delivers AI-enabled capabilities that are actually helpful.

• Accuracy: Recordings are spot-on.
• Clips & highlights: Sharing whole recordings with colleagues isn’t optimal. It’s too time consuming for people to watch the entire things. Clips and highlights help demo presenters to record and share the most important moments. Fathom customers appreciate that. 
• Affordable: Fathom’s free recorder is generous. The platform doesn’t hold back on features. For teams, the paid plan starts at $29/user/mo.

Summary

The choice between live demos, recorded video demos, and interactive demos depends on your goals, audience, and resources. 

Here’s the jist of it ⤵️

• Live demos 🎤: Best for high-touch sales, real-time engagement, and in-depth explanations. However, they are time-consuming, require scheduling, and come with the risk of technical issues.
• Recorded demos (video) 🎥: Scalable, polished, and available on-demand, making them ideal for product awareness, lead generation, and onboarding. They lack real-time interaction but offer consistency.
• Recorded demos (interactive) 🕹️: A hybrid approach that allows users to explore a product at their own pace while keeping engagement high. Great for self-serve discovery and lead qualification.

All of these have their place in a company’s sales and marketing strategy. Live demos shine when human interaction and real-time adaptability are key, while recorded demos offer convenience and scalability. Interactive demos bridge the gap, providing an engaging, self-paced experience that combines the best aspects of both formats.

For maximum impact → adopt a hybrid approach—using interactive or recorded demos to generate leads and live demos to close high-value deals.