Zoom Webinars Review: Is It Reliable in 2024

Thomas Conner
Last Modified: March 21, 2024

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Zoom became a household name when the world was forced to take every aspect of their lives online, and they’ve continued to deliver a suite of virtual products for businesses.

Zoom Video Webinar is one such product that allows users to host webinars from anywhere in the world with huge capacities and loads of features.

Is the Zoom Webinars product worth it?

Zoom Video Webinars has a lot of usable features in its product range, including sessions with up to 50,000 participants, branding opportunities, marketing tools, and ample opportunity for audience engagement. With both free and paid versions available, you only have to use what your business needs.

If your business is ready to step into the world of hosting webinars and increasing engagement, Zoom is a viable option with a lot to offer.

We’ll dissect its features, pros and cons, and what you can expect to pay when you use this platform for your business’ webinar hosting needs.

What Is Zoom Video Webinar?

Zoom is a multi-function platform that gives users the opportunity to connect with others through channels like webinars, chat, meetings, phone calls, and more.

Within the Zoom range are many products, each with dedicated purposes and intended users, and the Zoom Video Webinar is the ideal choice for businesses who want to reach out in a more personal way.

The Zoom Video Webinar product is a one-stop solution for hosting webinars and its shining feature is that it allows up to 50,000 participants on a session. Through this platform, you can add branding and customization to your presentation and materials, get help from Zoom experts about webinar hosting, look into data and analytics after it’s over, and utilize a range of marketing tools.

As far as webinar software goes, it’s one of the most comprehensive, and because it has the Zoom name attached to it, it only helps your brand further. Zoom has designed Video Webinar to be easy to use as well and it walks you through all the steps needed to get online and start hosting.

The Good and the Bad

No Zoom Webinars review would be complete without a look at the highlights and low points of this product.

To give you a better idea of whether Zoom is the right fit for your business, this is what it truly has to offer:

Pros

Ease of Use

Everything about Zoom is user-friendly from the user interface to the way you register people for the event. Not only is it simple for you, but it makes joining easy for your attendees, so you’re not going to scare anyone away with anything too technical.

Large reach

When you need to speak to larger audiences, Zoom is one of the only options that can help you do it in this capacity. With 50,000 participants being the maximum allowed, you’ll be able to share your message with minimal effort and still make everyone feel as though they’re involved.

Expert assistance

When you have an account with Zoom, you’ll be able to request help from their experts on how to create a webinar and make it more successful. They can walk you through the presentation and give you tips to keep the audience engaged.

Trusted name

Zoom has become one of the most popular web conferencing tools in the last few years, and it can help your brand further by partnering with them. They also offer loads of integration options with third-party apps and systems, so it’s a more cohesive way to run a webinar.

Cons

Security doubts

Zoom has long suffered criticism about its security and safety when issues were highlighted at the start of 2020 as people started using the software more frequently. Although they’ve made changes to increase security for users, it’s still a common concern that some have.

Analytics issues

Although Zoom offers a suite of tools designed to analyze the success of webinars and the behaviors of participants, they seem to need some fine-tuning. The data received from these tools is complicated and it’s hard to know what to do with it, so the feature felt a little wasted to some users.

Higher cost

If you plan on using Zoom for its 10,000+ attendees features, you can expect to pay a lot of money. Although it’s feature-rich, it’s also pretty expensive, and if you don’t need their other services, you might be able to find a cheaper way to reach this many people on a webinar.

Quality of Online Conferences

Zoom is proud to offer high-definition video and audio for participants and hosts in their meetings and webinars. Of course, this also depends on the quality of the user’s internet connection, but in most regards, Zoom has done a good job of keeping up with the high demand.

According to Zoom, if you want attendee’s feeds to be in 1080p quality, you’ll need to request this from their support team and it can take a few days to respond to the request. Otherwise, 720p is the standard resolution and still provides a quality HD picture for your attendees.

If you wish to record, this is all done via a cloud-based storage system and is available on all of the Webinar plans. You can then view back how a webinar went or send it through to others that request it, giving you another chance to check in with attendees and get feedback.

Extra Features of Zoom Reviewed

In addition to being a webinar platform, there are so many ways that Zoom aims to help hosts and their attendees to have a better experience.

Here are some extra features you’ll get when you choose this software:

Promotional tools: Promote your webinars through social media, add branding and customization to materials and registration pages and add a watermark to your streams.
Engagement tools: Q&A, live chat, polls, and hand-raising are all available mid-session. You can also add someone as a panelist at the last minute and have them share video and audio if they wish.
Marketing tools: Detailed analytics, capture webinar contacts in your CRM, automate marketing integrations, and request paid registration.
Registration tools: These allow your future attendees to get signed up for the webinar easily. They feature branding options, an opportunity to get contacts and leads for your business, and automated reminders when it gets close to the event starting.

User Friendliness and Ease of Use

One of the reasons for Zoom’s success in 2020 was how easy it was to use the platform for meetings and conferences.

When dealing with webinar services, they offer a wizard that lets you customize every step of the way to make the whole process easier.

Zoom is also rated highly among participants, and even those with limited experience online. It’s easy to join a webinar but also receive reminders, registration pages, and landing pages for when the chat is done. They have taken care of every step of the way and ensure audience engagement is as high as it could be.

How To Use Zoom:

Can You Use Zoom Without Downloading
Can You Use Zoom Without Wifi
How To Enable Video On Zoom Webinar
How To Join Zoom Meeting Audio Only
How To Mute Mic On Zoom Webinar
How To Mute Zoom Meeting Audio On Laptop
How To Turn Off Camera On Zoom Webinar
How To Use Zoom Breakout Rooms
How To Use Zoom Whiteboard
Zoom How To Blur Background
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Zoom How To Change Name

Pricing and Plans

Another area where Zoom is quite extensive is in their plan offerings. In addition to the number of plans you use with their standard service, they also have their Webinar plans that work a little differently These are the options currently available for Zoom Webinars:

Free: Zoom offers a free plan for basic users and gives access to unlimited one on one meetings, webinars for up to 50 minutes in length, and the ability to invite 100 participants. For a completely free offering, it’s quite exceptional what they’ve included in this package, but might not be right for everyone’s needs.
Video Webinars: This package starts at $1,960 a year which allows for 500 users at its most basic, and you can choose to upgrade to 10,000 attendees for $90,860 a year, with lots of options in between. Regardless of attendee size, you’ll benefit from live streaming, cloud recording, unlimited sessions and no limit on time, marketing tools, paid registration options, and audience engagement analytics.
Large Scale Video Events: If your business has serious needs for webinars, the Large Scale Video Events package might be better suited. This caters for up to 50,000 attendees and comes with all of the features available in the Video Webinars package. You’ll need to contact Zoom directly and speak with their sales staff to get a more accurate price, as it’s calculated on an independent basis.

In terms of free trials, there doesn’t seem to be one, as you get to test the waters with their free plan.

Although not technically part of the Video Webinars product, it shows you what Zoom is capable of and how user-friendly the experience can be, so it’s worth having a look before you commit.

Is Zoom Free To Use?

Zoom’s Customer Service

Trying to navigate a new system can be a challenge, and if you’re brand new to this specific software or webinars altogether, you’ll be pleased to know Zoom has lots of ways they can help.

Before you sign up, you can take a look at their Support Center to see how they assist, and when you make an account, these are the options available:

Phone: Zoom’s phone services are only available to select licensed account holders and there are country-specific numbers to make assistance easier.
Social media: There are many channels of social media you can use to reach out to Zoom representatives including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.
Chatbot: Zoom’s chatbot Bolt is a virtual assistant that uses AI to answer your questions. If the question can’t be answered by Bolt, you’ll be directed to a customer support agent who can hopefully fix the problem for you.
Web ticket: You can request a web ticket on the Zoom website and a technician will get in touch with you ASAP. This is a service only for licensed users with paid accounts and is a fast way to get help when you need it.
Help center: This is like an FAQ section that has the most common issues and their solutions, categorized in areas like “Messaging”, “Integration”, and Meetings & Webinars”.

Zoom for You

If your goal when searching for a webinar platform is to find the one that gives you the biggest audience reach in the easiest way, Zoom Video Webinars can deliver just that.

The virtual tools offered by Zoom in all of their products make it easy to communicate virtually, and whether you choose a paid or free plan, you’ll be impressed with how they transform your future webinars.

How Does Zoom Compare Against Its Competitors?

Alternative webinar solutions are available, let’s take a look at the most popular ones: