Zoom Meeting vs Webinar: What’s the Difference?

When to use Zoom Meetings vs Zoom Webinar

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CollaborationCollaboration Software Reviews

Published: July 28, 2021

Rebekah Carter - Writer

Rebekah Carter

Zoom skyrocketed into the spotlight during 2020, when the pandemic rapidly increased the need for video communication. As a simple and accessible solution for online conferencing, Zoom helped to keep people and companies connected during an uncertain time. Now, companies are beginning to see the value of having the right investment in tools like Zoom for the future of work.

As remote and hybrid working maintain their popularity, video-first collaboration solutions will help to keep people connected, engaged, and productive, wherever they are. The question for most companies isn’t whether they need a video solution – but what kind of package is right for them. 

Zoom, for instance, can support video collaboration via Zoom Meetings and Zoom Webinars. Here’s what you need to know about each option.

What are Zoom Meetings and Zoom Webinars?

Zoom Meetings is perhaps the most popular product from Zoom. The Meetings environment is where you can have conversations with employees, colleagues, and even friends and family. According to Zoom, Meetings is designed for group collaboration, team conversations, sales demos, online learning, and office discussions.

With Meetings, you get a collaborative environment where everyone can screen share, interact with video and audio, and “engage” in a virtual discussion. You can interact through chat and screen sharing alongside video, answer polling questions, and apply virtual backgrounds. 

Zoom Webinars, on the other hand are similar to virtual events. Webinars give you a digital environment where you can present ideas and content to a larger audience. A host (and sometimes some co-hosts) have complete control over what the audience members can do, including whether they can share video and audio. You can allow webinar participants to chat and share files, or they can be silent viewers of the event. 

When to Use Zoom Meetings

Zoom Meetings are collaborative environments intended to allow teams, students, and other groups to share content, communicate via audio and video, and contribute to a shared conversation. Zoom Meetings come with tools to make the experience as immersive as possible. For instance, you can apply virtual backgrounds to your meetings, or bring everyone together in a shared virtual space with an Immersive meeting. Zoom Meetings also offer:

  • Waiting rooms to ensure only the right people can join
  • Breakout rooms for deeper conversations between smaller groups of attendees
  • Registration and meeting passwords to better protect your discussions
  • Screen and file sharing for both the host and permitted users
  • Whiteboarding – a virtual space where people can draw, type, and annotate alongside other participants. 
  • Chat and discussion through Zoom Chat (this can include sharing emojis and links)
  • Reactions: Meeting participants can silently react by using an emoji in a meeting
  • Polling to collect information from groups of participants
  • Streaming via YouTube Live, Facebook Live, and other custom services
  • View management to spotlight a speaker or multiple participants
  • Integrations: Users can integrate Zoom Meetings with various tools, including calendar services, Salesforce, and more

Zoom Meetings are best for interactions when employees need to share ideas in an environment where everyone can have an opportunity to speak freely. While hosts of meetings can mute other participants and decide who can share video, meetings usually have multiple people interacting simultaneously. 

Within a Zoom Meeting, you can present ideas with a co-host or on your own, share your screen (or just a portion of it), engage participants through polls and chat, and even break your employees up into breakout rooms where they can discuss ideas. 

When to Use Zoom Webinars

Where Zoom Meetings are designed to support multiple people interacting at once, Zoom Webinars are more about “presenting” content to a specific audience. Many companies and educators use these webinars for large training sessions, lectures, or classes that don’t require as much constant input from other participants. Zoom webinars are also great for announcements. 

Webinars are available as an add-on to the paid Zoom Meeting license, and they allow people to connect with audiences around the globe. Like Zoom Meetings, webinars come with a range of great features, including registration, with custom branded pages where people can sign up for your webinar. You can also stream your webinar through various native and third-party tools. 

Some of the extra features available from Zoom Webinars include:

  • Source tracking URLs to see where attendees to a webinar come from (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Email, YouTube, a landing page)
  • Q&A: This goes beyond basic polls to allow attendees to send in questions during a webinar and get responses at the host’s pace. Admins can also enable attendees to answer the questions of their colleagues
  • Integrations: You can connect your Zoom webinars to EventBrite and PayPal, ideal if you’re planning on charging for online classes or creating digital tickets for events
  • Webinar surveys: You can set up a survey to appear after an event to collect information about your users
  • Attendee view management: Webinars come with a three-screen view, so you can watch an active speaker, presentation, and the audience at the same time
  • Reporting: Zoom webinars come with reporting features to help you track user engagement and keep an eye on when people begin to lose interest in your content

Zoom Webinars are less intimate video-focused interactions intended for announcements, lessons, and even certain kinds of online events. If you want to connect with a large number of people at once, webinars will allow you to do this. The Zoom Webinars environment even makes it easier to engage with your attendees through things like surveys and Q&A. 

Choosing Zoom Meetings vs Zoom Webinars

Both Zoom Meetings and Zoom Webinars are powerful tools for the future of collaboration and communication. However, each of these services from Zoom has their own specific purpose. Zoom Meetings are intimate virtual conversations. If you’re planning on discussing workplace projects, or you need to chat about upcoming changes to the workflow with your team, a Zoom Meeting would be a great way to do that. 

Zoom Webinars, on the other hand, allow you to share content with a wide range of viewers at the same time, with less input from your attendees. If you want to give a presentation or host a class for a lot of viewers at once, Webinars might be your best choice. 

 

 

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