Zoom webinars
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Discussion

Cogcog

Original Poster:

11,838 posts

266 months

Thursday 19th March 2020
quotequote all
Anybody use Zoom?

My F-2-F training business has disappeared overnight with Covid-19, and it has got me thinking about remote delivery, in the mid to longer term (and to keep me off trains and planes).

I have looked at Zoom and I have seen the large capacity Breakout Rooms facility which I need to make it work.

But I am confused by the price plans which initially look attractive ( top package for £18.99 a month) but then they offer add-ons such as Zoom Rooms at a much higher cost.

jazzybee

3,056 posts

280 months

Thursday 19th March 2020
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My company moved from GoToMeeting (which I have been using for about 8years) to Zoom about 6 weeks ago. I find Zoom works very well. There does seem to be a little bandwidth issues the past week, but thats understandable. Usually I travel to Europe every other week for F2F meetings and the occasional web Conference. The past 3 weeks, I have been running 3-4 Zoom meetings a day.

I am afraid I can't help with the commercials (handled by our finance team), but as a user and meeting organiser, I would say its good.

wiffmaster

2,622 posts

229 months

Thursday 19th March 2020
quotequote all
As a consultant, over the last month I've had the pleasure of using:

- Skype
- Teams
- Jabber
- WebEx
- Zoom
- Slack (but that doesn't count, because it's not really designed for video conferences)

Zoom by far the best for video conferencing. Best interface, most feature-rich and generally best audio / video quality.

ChrisNic

654 posts

177 months

Thursday 19th March 2020
quotequote all
I use Zoom daily at work, although it’s provided via an enterprise licence so have no knowledge of costs.

If breakout rooms are prohibitively expensive what about having a few accounts so you can split groups up by getting them to drop off the session and join another?

We don’t use the webinar element very often, screen sharing via the standard platform works ok and you can still manage peoples muting and cameras to an extent via settings.

h0b0

9,090 posts

227 months

Thursday 19th March 2020
quotequote all
We switched to Zoom on Tuesday because Jabber couldn’t keep up. This is the first time we have had virtual backgrounds and we are still in the playing phase. I have 2 I use, the first is an Alcatraz prison cell. The other is a photo of me sat in my office so it looks like I’m still paying attention while I disappear to help the kids.

jazzybee

3,056 posts

280 months

Thursday 19th March 2020
quotequote all
h0b0 said:
a photo of me sat in my office so it looks like I’m still paying attention while I disappear to help the kids.
biggrin I need to try that

Hoofy

80,147 posts

313 months

Thursday 19th March 2020
quotequote all
If you pay extra, Zoom can host up to 1000 people for £83.99 a month.

Cogcog

Original Poster:

11,838 posts

266 months

Friday 20th March 2020
quotequote all
I think I will call them and see what they offer.

Munter

31,331 posts

272 months

Friday 20th March 2020
quotequote all
h0b0 said:
We switched to Zoom on Tuesday because Jabber couldn’t keep up. This is the first time we have had virtual backgrounds and we are still in the playing phase. I have 2 I use, the first is an Alcatraz prison cell. The other is a photo of me sat in my office so it looks like I’m still paying attention while I disappear to help the kids.
I've just started putting messages on my background.

"Your Company Name Here. Reasonable rates".

That kind of thing.

BigTZ4M

237 posts

202 months

Friday 20th March 2020
quotequote all
We use Zoom extensively and have done for years.

Zoom rooms is not something you’ll need. It’s for hooking up to physical meeting rooms and remote controlling cameras, telepresence and stuff.

If you need the webinar features (and check you do because regular Zoom has a lot of stuff that may be sufficient for your use case) then you’ll have to pay for a Pro or Business account and then a webinar account add on. A regular Pro account has up to 50 breakout rooms for example.

We run lots of training over zoom just with the regular zoom Pro account, but you may need more.

There are lots of price increments for things like more users per meeting/webinar, audio minutes if you want people to dial in on a free phone number, cloud storage space to keep recordings of your webinars etc. but honestly you may be fine with a regular Pro account. Sign up for a free one and test the features to see if it works for you. Most of the core features are in the free version - the biggest limit is a 40 minute ceiling on duration.

Edited by BigTZ4M on Friday 20th March 19:39

h0b0

9,090 posts

227 months

Friday 20th March 2020
quotequote all
I now have either a picture of a whiskey bar in Glasgow or a video with 1st person perspective of a roller coaster.

audi321

6,180 posts

244 months

Friday 20th March 2020
quotequote all
I don't know the cost, but we use Google Hangouts at work and I've gotta say it's fantastic.

Cogcog

Original Poster:

11,838 posts

266 months

Monday 23rd March 2020
quotequote all
BigTZ4M said:
We use Zoom extensively and have done for years.

Zoom rooms is not something you’ll need. It’s for hooking up to physical meeting rooms and remote controlling cameras, telepresence and stuff.

If you need the webinar features (and check you do because regular Zoom has a lot of stuff that may be sufficient for your use case) then you’ll have to pay for a Pro or Business account and then a webinar account add on. A regular Pro account has up to 50 breakout rooms for example.

We run lots of training over zoom just with the regular zoom Pro account, but you may need more.

There are lots of price increments for things like more users per meeting/webinar, audio minutes if you want people to dial in on a free phone number, cloud storage space to keep recordings of your webinars etc. but honestly you may be fine with a regular Pro account. Sign up for a free one and test the features to see if it works for you. Most of the core features are in the free version - the biggest limit is a 40 minute ceiling on duration.

Edited by BigTZ4M on Friday 20th March 19:39
That is just what I needed and I think I can get awat with the meeting package an dthen upgrade to webinar if I need to pay per seat. Many thanks.