What Is Zoom?

 Zoom is a cloud-based video conferencing service you can use to virtually meet with others - either by video or audio-only or both, all while conducting live chats - and it lets you record those sessions to view later. Over half of Fortune 500 companies reportedly used Zoom in 2019 and during 2020 has hit even greater heights, recently claiming 300 million daily Zoom meeting participants.

When people are talking about Zoom, you'll usually hear the following phrases: Zoom Meeting and Zoom Room. A Zoom Meeting refers to a video conferencing meeting that's hosted using Zoom. You can join these meetings via a webcam or phone. Meanwhile, a Zoom Room is the physical hardware setup that lets companies schedule and launch Zoom Meetings from their conference rooms.

Zoom Rooms require an additional subscription on top of a Zoom subscription and are an ideal solution for larger companies.

Best webcams: Top cameras for video calling

Zoom's main features

Here are Zoom's core features:

One-on-one meetings: Host unlimited one-on-one meetings even with the free plan.

Group video conferences: Host up to 500 participants (if you purchase the "large meeting" add-on). The free plan, however, allows you to host video conferences of up to 40 minutes and up to 100 participants.

Screen sharing: Meet one-on-one or with large groups and share your screen with them so they can see what you see. 

How does Zoom work?

Choose your plan

Zoom allows one-to-one chat sessions that can grow into group calls, training sessions and webinars for internal and external audiences, and global video meetings with up to 1,000 participants and as many as 49 on-screen videos. The free tier allows unlimited one-on-one meetings but limits group sessions to 40 minutes and 100 participants. Paid plans start at $15 per month per host.

Zoom offers four pricing tiers (not including a Zoom Room subscription):

Zoom Free: This tier is free. You can hold an unlimited number of meetings. Group meetings with multiple participants are capped at 40 minutes in length, and meetings can't be recorded.

Zoom Pro: This tier costs $14.99/£11.99 per month and meeting host. It allows hosts to create personal meeting IDs for repetitive Zoom Meetings, and it allows meeting recording in the cloud or your device, but it caps group meeting durations at 24 hours.

Zoom Business: This tier costs $19.99/£15.99 per month and meeting host (10 minimum). It lets you brand Zoom meetings with vanity URLs and company branding, and it offers transcripts of Zoom meetings recorded in the cloud, as well as dedicated customer support.

Zoom Enterprise: This tier costs $19.99/£15.99 per month and per meeting host (100 minimum) and is meant for businesses with 1,000+ employees. It offers unlimited cloud storage for recordings, a customer success manager, and discounts on webinars and Zoom Rooms.

Optional - Zoom Rooms: If you want to set up Zoom Rooms, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial, after which Zoom Rooms require an additional $49/£39 per month and room subscription, while webinars using Zoom cost $40/£32 per month and host.

Zoom app downloads

The desktop app is available for Windows and macOS, while the mobile app is available for Android and iOS.

All the apps let you join a meeting without signing in, but also let you sign in using a Zoom account, Google, Facebook, or SSO. From there, you can start a meeting, join a meeting, share your screen in a Zoom Room by entering the meeting ID, start Zoom Meetings, mute/unmute your mic, start/stop the video, invite others to the meeting, change your screen name, do in-meeting chat, and start a cloud recording.

If you're a desktop user, you can also start a local recording, create polls, broadcast your Facebook live on Facebook, and more. In other words, the desktop app is more fully featured, although, if you're a free user, you can still get a lot of mileage from the mobile app.

Zoom Outlook plugin

As well as the various other Zoom app downloads, it is also possible to use Zoom in other ways. For example, there's a Zoom Outlook plugin that's designed to work directly in your Microsoft Outlook client or as an Add-in for Outlook on the web. This Outlook plug drops a Zoom button right into the standard Outlook toolbar and lets you start or schedule a Zoom meeting with a simple click. 

Zoom browser extensions

Another tool for quickly starting or scheduling a Zoom meeting comes in the form of an extension for your favourite browser. There is a Zoom Chrome extension and Zoom Firefox add-on that let you schedule a Zoom meeting via Google Calendar. A simple click on the Zoom button and you can start a meeting or schedule one for later with all the information on the meeting being sent via Google Calendar to make it easy for participants to join.  

Using Zoom in your browser

It's fairly tricky to join a Zoom meeting in your browser without using the app. It is possible however. For example, you can join a meeting directly by using a Zoom web client link that looks something like this— zoom.us/wc/join/your-meeting-id. 

Some clever bods have also worked out a browser extension that let's you join a Zoom meeting straight from your browser without the hassle of the app. This is ideal if you're on a secure work laptop that doesn't let you install any apps for example.

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