Neither format wins on its own. A webinar costs less per seat, and a widely cited US Department of Education review of online and in-person instruction found that learners did as well or better online, on average. Onsite training wins on something else: it runs on your files, at your desks, with an instructor who can change the plan when the real skill gap shows up. This guide sets the two side by side so you can decide which one your team needs.
There is no testimonial in it, because this business is new. Judge it on the reasoning and the two sources at the end.
The comparison at a glance
| What you are buying | Onsite session | Public webinar |
|---|---|---|
| Files used | Your workbook, your templates, your shared mailbox | The instructor's sample files |
| Who is in the room | Your team only | Attendees from many organizations |
| Where | Your boardroom or computer lab, anywhere in Ontario, or online | Each person's own screen |
| Date | Set with you; one six-hour day or two half-days | Set by the provider's calendar |
| Pricing basis | One price per session, published on each course page | Per seat |
| Can the plan change mid-session | Yes, when the instructor sees the real gap | Within a fixed agenda |
| Best for | Several people, same building, same files | One person, one skill, or a refresher |
What the research says, and what it does not
I want to start with the part that does not favour me. In 2009 the US Department of Education published a meta-analysis of studies comparing online and face-to-face instruction. On average, learners in the online conditions performed better. Blended courses did best of all, though the authors noted those conditions often included extra learning time and material. The studies came mainly from higher education and medical training rather than offices.
So I am not going to tell you a room beats a screen. The medium is not the argument. The argument is about what happens after the session, which researchers call transfer of training. A 2010 review of 89 studies found that a learner's motivation and a supportive work environment predict whether training gets used on the job. The same review found those effects weaker for closed skills such as computer software than for open skills such as leadership. That is a fair caveat against anyone selling software training on culture alone.
What that leaves is a practical question: which format makes it easiest to use the skill the next morning, on the work in front of them? That is where the files come in.
Your team does not have a problem with Excel. They have a problem with your files.
Nobody's staff struggle with Excel in the abstract. They struggle with the quarterly workbook that somebody built in 2019 and left, where the totals row is hard-coded, the dates in column C are text, and one tab feeds three others through links nobody understands. They struggle with the Word document that arrives from three authors in three heading styles, and with the shared mailbox that has never had a rule applied to it.
A webinar teaches against a clean sample file. It has to. The instructor has forty people from forty organizations and cannot open any of their documents. So the lesson happens in ideal conditions, and the learner goes back to conditions that are not.
Onsite training opens your files. Instead of a person who has seen a lookup formula demonstrated, you get a person who has written one, in your workbook, against your data, and watched it return the right number. The template we fix during the session is fixed after the session too.
The template we fix during the session is fixed after the session too.
Think of it like a cooking show. A very good chef in a studio kitchen, with everything pre-measured, will teach you something real. A cook standing in your kitchen, with your pans and your stove that runs hot on the left side, changes what you make on Thursday.
Nobody travels, and nobody loses a day to getting there
The per-seat fee on a public class is the number on the purchase order, and it is not the whole cost. If the session runs in Toronto and your office is in Niagara, Kingston, or Sudbury, every attendee spends time and mileage getting there, and for some of them that means a hotel the night before. A webinar removes the travel, which is its strongest practical advantage, and it is worth saying so plainly.
Onsite training removes it a different way. The team walks to the boardroom. When the session ends at three, everybody is back at their desk by ten past, and anyone who has to step out for something urgent can. The Excel training for employees guide walks through the arithmetic of per-seat fees against one session price.
The date is yours
Public sessions run when the provider schedules them, which works when their calendar lines up with yours. Public-sector and finance teams feel this hardest, because their calendar has immovable weeks in it: budget season, year-end, audit, the run-up to a council or board meeting, the first week of term.
An onsite session is scheduled around your work rather than around a catalogue, and that includes the shape of the day. The standard format is one six-hour day, but two half-days across a week works for a team that has to keep the phones answered. If you are planning around a school board or college PD day, the PD day software training guide covers that calendar specifically.
A recording cannot read a room, and a live instructor can
This is the difference I would put the most weight on. Forty minutes into a training session, the actual skill gap in the room reveals itself, and it is not always the gap named in the booking email. A team books Excel training for PivotTables and it turns out four of the six do not trust their own formulas because nobody ever explained absolute references. A team books Word training for formatting and the real problem is manual bold instead of Styles, so every fix they have applied has come undone.
A recorded course cannot notice that. A large webinar has a fixed agenda and an instructor who cannot see the faces. In a room of eight, I can see it, and I can change the plan.
That is where twenty-two years of delivering this material earns its keep. I have been teaching it since 2004; Lakeview Training is the new name on the invoice, not a new instructor. A course library knows every feature. What experience buys is pattern recognition: recognizing the confusion from the question someone asks, or from the way they hesitate before clicking. I have watched a confident PowerPoint user resize and realign forty text boxes across twelve slides rather than learn what a slide master does, because nobody ever showed them it existed. Nobody in that situation raises their hand, and nobody types it into a webinar chat. You have to be in the room to catch it.
Where a webinar is the better buy
- One person, one skill, right now. Buy a seat or a video. A whole training day for a single learner is not a sensible spend.
- A team permanently spread across four cities that will never be in one room. The travel argument inverts. I also deliver this material live online for exactly that case.
- A refresher for something learned properly once. A short video at the moment of need beats scheduling anything.
Onsite training is for several people who need the same skills, work in the same building, and use the same files. That is the case this business is built for.
Before you book either one
- Name the files. Which workbook, document, or mailbox is causing the pain? An onsite session can work on it.
- Count the people. One person needs a seat. Several people in one building are the case for a session.
- Check the calendar. Keep clear of budget week, year-end, audit, and the first week of term.
- Pick the level. Read the "who this is for" section on each training page.
- Describe the next morning. If you cannot say what a learner will do differently at their desk, the session is not scoped yet.
What to do next
Have a look at what is taught at each level, then tell me what your team does and what you want them able to do afterward.
- Browse the training topics: Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, and WordPress, with the price on every page.
- Booking training for a municipality or public agency: quotes, insurance, invoicing, and the vendor-list question.
- About Lakeview Training: who delivers this and where it comes from.
If your team needs a different level than the one you asked about, or no session at all, I will say so before you spend anything.
Checked against source pages on September 21, 2026: Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies (US Department of Education, 2009), Transfer of Training: A Meta-Analytic Review (Blume, Ford, Baldwin and Huang, Journal of Management, 2010)
