Meeting and Webinar Comparison

Meeting

Webinar

Description

Zoom meetings are ideal for hosting more interactive sessions where you’ll want to have lots of audience participation or break your session into smaller groups.

Think of webinars like a virtual lecture hall or auditorium. Webinars are ideal for large audiences or events that are open to the public. Typically, webinar attendees do not interact with one another. Though Zoom provides options for you to get more social with your attendees, your average webinar has one or a few people speaking to an audience.

Best used for

Small to large groups (2+ participants) for:

• Customer-facing meetings

• Sales meetings

• Training sessions

Large events and public broadcasts (50+ attendees) such as:

• Town halls

• Quarterly updates

• Educational lectures

Typically used by

• General employees

• Training groups

• Event hosts

• SVPs and C-Suite

Cost

Free and Paid subscription options available.

Paid Add-on, available to Pro or higher subscriptions.

Feature

Meeting

Webinar

Participant roles

• Host and co-host

• Participant

Learn more about Meeting Roles.

• Host and co-host

• Panelist

• Attendee

Learn more about Webinar Roles.

Audio sharing

• All participants can mute/unmute their own audio

• Host can mute/request to unmute participants

• The host can set all participants to mute upon entry

• Only the host and panelists can mute/unmute their own audio

• Attendees join in listen-only mode*

• The host can unmute one or more attendees

Video sharing

All participants

Hosts and panelists

Screen sharing

✔

✔

Capacity

Up to 100 with free license, up to 1,000 depending on plan and large meeting add-on.

Ranging between 500-50,000 participants, depending on the license.

Participants list

Visible to all participants

Visible to host and panelist

Email reminders

N/A 

If registration is enabled

Chat

In-meeting chat

Webinar chat

Meeting reactions

✔

Only raise hand

Q&A

N/A 

✔

File transfer

✔

✔

Whiteboard

✔

✔

Annotation

✔

✔

Polling

Polling for meetings

Polling for webinars

Surveys

Surveys for meetings

Surveys for webinars

Livestream

Facebook, YouTube, Workplace by Facebook, Custom Streaming Service

Facebook, YouTube, Workplace by Facebook, Custom Streaming Service

Registration

Registration for meetings

Registration for webinars

Closed captioning

✔

✔

Recording

✔

✔

Breakout rooms

✔

N/A 

Practice session

 N/A

✔

Waiting room

✔

 N/A

Paypal integration

N/A 

✔

Require password to join

✔

✔

International dial-in numbers

✔

✔