What Is a Zoom Webinar?

Zoom Webinar is a separate product offered by Zoom that allows you to broadcast a Zoom meeting to up to 10,000 view-only attendees, depending on the size of your webinar license. Webinar licenses start at a capacity of 100 participants and scale up to 10,000 participants. As the host or a panelist, you can share your screen, video and audio in a webinar and attendees can use the chat or question and answer options to interact with the host and panelists.

If you are considering the Zoom Webinar product instead of a regular Zoom Meeting, we encourage you to first view the Zoom Meeting and Webinar comparison. Note: Zoom Webinars do not have breakout rooms and attendees will not be allowed to turn on the microphones to speak.

Zoom Meetings that are properly setup and managed can replicate most of the features Zoom Webinars offer and without any additional cost. For more information on setting up a Zoom Meeting for a large audience see:

Comparison Between Zoom Meeting and Zoom Webinar

Zoom Meetings	Zoom Webinars
Amount of Participants - 300	Amount of Participants - 100 , 500 or more depending on webinar license
Content Sharing - All Participants	Content Sharing - Host, Co-host and Panelists Only
Audio & Video - All Participants	Audio & Video - Host, Co-host and Panelist Only
Chat - Host to All Participants and Participant to Participant Privately and Publicly (Hosts can disable Public and Private Chat, if so desired)	Chat - Hosts, Co-hosts, Panelists and Participants can publicly (Hosts can disable chat completely for participants, if so desired)
Polling - Available	Polling - Available
Breakout Rooms - Available	Breakout Rooms - Not available
Q&A - Not available	Q&A - Available

Use Cases

Use Case	Considerations	Solution
Staff or team meetings	No more than 300 participants, video and audio of all participants, and ability to content share. More participant engagement.	Meeting
Regular meetings	Ability to see all participants, everyone has audio, video and chat (public or private).	Meeting
Class under 300	Ideal for interactive sessions where you’ll want to have lots of audience participation or utilize breakout sessions for small group discussions.	Meeting
Virtual conference	More than 300 attendees, better control for host, co-host and panelist. Audio, video and content can be shared by host, co-host and panelist only. Includes polling feature, to enhance attendee engagement.	Webinar
Town hall meetings	Large audience or event that is sometimes open to the public and expects little, if any, participant engagement.	Webinar
Class of over 300 students	A virtual lecture hall with a very large audience. Ability to use Q&A feature for attendees to ask questions during class.	Webinar

ND Studios Webinar Services

There are two types of Zoom Webinar services offered by ND Studios, Supported Webinar and Self-Managed Webinar. To schedule or plan a Zoom Webinar, contact ND Studios at: Studios@nd.edu or 574-631-2200.

Supported Webinar

With this webinar type, ND Studios will fully support your webinar event. This will include consultation, pre-event testing, configuration, security, event support and providing post-event analytics. This method will also make use of an appropriately sized webinar license. A Supported Webinar can either be integrated with the technology in the Martin Media Center for a professional quality production or the event can be supported remotely with engineers from ND Studios. ND Studios can also provide support for a standard Zoom Meeting, when it originates from the Martin Media Center. Costs for this webinar type are outlined in the Webinar Cost Structure.

An option is to also send the webinar to a live streaming platform, such as YouTube or Facebook, to share your content with a much larger audience. Additional fees will apply.

Self-Managed Webinar

With this webinar type, the requesting client will test and operate their own event, with an appropriately sized webinar license provided by ND Studios. Clients are responsible for the security of their webinar configuration. Costs for this webinar type are outlined in the Webinar Cost Structure.

Webinar Cost Structure

How much does a Supported Webinar Cost?

Single event with staff set-up and support
License is available for up to 1-week for testing, configuration, event operation, analytics or multiple day event.
Staff set-up and configuration cost is $250 for a single event. Additional set-up cost may be charged for a multiple day event.
Support staff charges are applied at $75/ hr.
There is no cost for academic class use with a course number.

Self-Managed webinar license rental (per week)

$30 (100-participants)
$50 (500-participants)
Webinar requests which need more than 500 attendees? We are happy to provide additional information

Purchasing a Zoom Webinar License

If, after a consultation with ND Studios staff, it is still determined that a dedicated webinar license is needed, based on demand, a license can be purchased.

Dedicated Annual License Rate (unlimited use for the year)

$350 / year (100-participants)
$1,215 / year (500-participants)
$3,400 / year (1000-participants)

Dedicated annual licenses are best if you wish to register participants or generate reporting in connection with your webinars.

To request the purchase of an annual Zoom webinar license, please contact Michael Ball, Zoom Product Manager (mball@nd.edu). Please be prepared to provide a FOAPAL and to specify the license type and size you'll require. The OIT requests a one week notice in advance for provisioning the license.

Training relative to administering a Webinar is available directly from Zoom

Training for administering a Webinar is available directly from Zoom, click here to register for training.

For self-paced tutorials, view Zoom video tutorials including Zoom Webinar.

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