- We have had so many questions about what is the difference
between the free and the paid versions of Zoom
that this video is dedicated to answering that question
which has been asked on our channel
I don't know how many countless times
over the past few weeks.
The difference between Zoom paid and the Zoom free version,
that's today on Dotto Tech.
(upbeat music)
Steve Dotto here, how the heck you doing this fine day?
And today, I wanna take on the topic of the difference
between the free version of Zoom
and the paid version of Zoom.
Now, it's important to recognize
that as I record this particular demo,
we're right in the middle of the,
I hope we're in the middle, of the COVID shutdown.
I've been staying at home now
for something around 40 or 45 days
and my hair is starting to show
the wear and tear of not having the attention
of a good barber, so I apologize for the Chia Pet type look.
Obviously, Zoom has become a very big story
as so many of us are doing our business meetings
and connections online now, so many people have a question
between the free and the paid version.
And that problem is kind of exacerbated
by the fact that we've done so many demos now on Zoom
and people look at the screens
that I show them on our channel
and they look at the screens
that they have on the options they have on their computer
and they think perhaps that some of the differences
are between the paid and the free version,
and that's not always the case.
Sometimes it's the case but not always the case.
So I thought, since I spend so much time answering questions
on the difference between the Zoom free,
or Zoom Basic as I call it, and Zoom Pro,
that we would cover it today.
And here's the best place for us all to start
is just go to the Zoom pricing page for your country.
I'm here in Canada so all of the pricing
is in Canadian dollars, but if you take a look here,
they'll have a list of all of the different services
that are included for free.
Now, as the epidemic continues, Zoom might be modifying
some of the different security settings that they offer
in the Free and the Pro version,
so some of these things might suddenly change,
but essentially, philosophically,
there is one major difference
between the free and the paid version.
As far as almost all of the functionality,
they are identical.
The difference is with the free version,
you can have unlimited calls one-on-one
if you're just having a conversation with one other person.
Unlimited time and unlimited number of calls.
If you're having more than two people in the call,
as soon as you have a third person in the call,
you're limited to 40 minutes on the free version.
You can have up to a hundred people
but you're still limited to 40 minutes.
If you upgrade to the Pro version,
you have no time, well, you have a 24-hour time limit now
on your Zoom calls, 24 hours with groups up to 100.
So that is the biggest difference
and that alone is what justifies paying for the Pro account
as opposed to the Free account.
That's the number one difference.
The number two difference is if we scroll down,
if you look through all of the different features here
and you go into the Web Conferencing Features,
you'll find that we have the ability
to record all of the calls in the free version
but you can only record it to your computer.
You can record the calls onto your computer.
With the Pro version, you can record into the cloud,
so you have a cloud-based recording
that you can more easily share
with other members of the meeting.
But you're limited to a gigabyte of space,
so you can save a couple of meetings
if they're not too long,
but you can't save that many meetings with one gigabyte.
You have to go in and constantly clean it out.
You can purchase more storage
if you choose to store more meetings online on the cloud,
but that's the second big difference.
The third big difference
you're not gonna see here all that evidently
but the third one is an upgrade that they've done
to the service to address the fact,
to address the security concerns that many people have
with Zoom calls being routed through different data centers.
A lot of privacy concerns and security concerns
indicate that we want to have our Zoom calls
routed through, say, North American
or European data services
and not through ones that are based in China.
So with the paid system, you can actually determine
what data centers process your calls.
Now, there will be a performance hit
if you turn off too many data centers,
which is basically load balancing your calls,
but you can increase the level of security
that you might have that you might desire internally as well
with the paid version.
And those are the biggest differences.
All of the rest of the differences
are very small and very subtle.
But people get a little bit confused, I think,
because when they look at their screen,
sometimes some of the features are not available.
And there's two sets of features
that they were specifically talking about.
The first set of features
are the features regarding green screen
and adding a virtual background.
Now, we've got a really nice video
where we show you how to add a virtual background,
a virtual video in the background, or use a green screen
to even improve the quality of the virtual background more.
Now, a lot of people don't have all of these options
in their version of Zoom and they think, erroneously,
that that's because they have the free version
and not the paid version.
In fact, it has nothing to do with it being paid or free.
Instead, Zoom actually looks at the capabilities
of the hardware that you're driving your,
that you're having your meeting on.
And if you don't have enough processing power
to properly resolve all the background
and key out that background
and put the virtual background in as a still or as a video,
then Zoom won't give you the option to do that.
It comes down to how much processing power you have,
whether or not these options appear.
So that is probably the point
where most people have confusion.
It's not whether it's paid or free.
It's how much horsepower you have on your computer.
Okay, let's do this.
I'm gonna launch my free version of Zoom here on my desktop
and my paid version here on my notebook computer.
And I'm gonna bring up the windows
and I'm gonna compare the two feature-by-feature
so that if we've missed anything
or so you can understand it better,
we can go through them here now.
So here we've got the paid version,
here on my notebook computer.
Now, this is an older MacBook Pro.
And on my new, very new Mac mini,
a very powerful system here,
I've got the free version running right here.
And if we take a look along the bottom,
we'll see that there are a few extra menu options
that I have on my paid version
which I can explain to you as we go through.
But let's start with the video story,
the business that I was talking about earlier.
If I go in and I open my video settings right here,
here it is on my free version,
and let's open it as well on the paid version here,
we can see that we've got all the same settings
until we go here.
Let's go into that Virtual Background.
Because this is an older MacBook
and this MacBook doesn't have
quite as much processing power as my new one
and we take a look here,
I have the ability to choose a virtual background
but they're all static backgrounds.
I can turn it on and off the green screen,
but I've got images that I can put in the background.
Let's take a look at my free version
which is on a more powerful computer.
I go into the Virtual Background
and I have the ability to add video backgrounds as well
because there's more processing power here.
It's not always gonna be the free or the paid version.
There are other parameters that might determine
the features and functions that you have available to you.
So that's number one.
Let's quickly go through a few
of the other features that we have here,
the most important ones.
Security is of course always important,
and almost all of the security features
are identical between the two.
Here, we have the ability,
if we look at the free and the paid version,
have the ability to lock meetings once they've started,
to have the meeting room in place,
to turn on and off access to the screen share and the chat
and allowing participants to name and rename themselves.
So the privacy settings, as far as security,
are identical in both the free and the paid version.
As we go along, our screen sharing options
are virtually identical.
The recording options are going to be different.
In the free version,
I'm only gonna be able to record to local computer,
whereas with the paid version,
of course I can record to the cloud
or to my local computer.
"Ah, Steve, here's something that you didn't mention.
"They have something called Breakout Rooms,
"this is very cool."
If you have a large meeting of, say, 25 people,
you can break those 25 people
into five breakout rooms for them to do group work,
and then bring them together at the end.
"That seems like a really advanced feature.
"Not surprising it's not available
"in the free version, Steve.
"I can understand that," you're probably saying
'cause here it is in the paid version,
but it is actually available in the free version.
It's just not enabled yet.
You see, if we go into our Zoom settings,
you have to go into your account settings in your browser
and you go into your Settings here.
If you scroll through,
you have access to all of the same settings, virtually,
as you do in the paid version.
And if I scroll down a little ways,
I will get to, somewhere down here, Breakout room.
There it is.
And you see, it's just not turned on.
If I turn that on, next time I launch a session,
it will be available to me there in the menu.
So there we have the same functionality available to me.
Now, I'm gonna show you one other thing
because this is another place that there's a difference.
When I'm running a meeting, I always like to enable this.
Go under the View menu
and turn on show and manage participants.
Now, there's only me in the room right now
for both of these meetings,
so you don't see a roster of individuals in the meeting,
but when you're actually doing a meeting,
this is a great window to have open
'cause you can manage the microphones and the cameras
of your participants, and actually get additional feedback
from your participants through this
if you're in the paid version.
Here, in the free version,
you can see that I can invite new people into the meeting,
and this is the same in both,
so this is how you create a link
to invite people into the meeting.
And take a look here, even in the free version,
it has, let me open both of them,
I'm gonna open the invite in both the free and the paid,
oh, the paid one has a few extra options,
automatic integrations with email,
whereas this is just gonna create a link.
Not quite as functional but it does include a password
if you choose to password-protect your meetings,
which is very cool, both of them include passwords,
so that is there.
But the other big difference here
is along the bottom in the free version,
you can mute all of your participants
or unmute all of your participants if you choose to,
but in the paid version,
everybody has access to these kind of comment buttons
where they can be clicking yes/no, showing their hands,
asking you to go faster or slower, repeat something.
So they've got those little icons that allow them
to give you some dynamic interaction during the meeting.
That's a nice feature.
Most people miss it, but that is something
that's not available in the free version
or at least I haven't been able to find in the free version.
That is available in the paid version.
So that is another one of the subtle differences
between the two versions.
But for the most part,
you're seeing the exact same functionality.
Other than the time limit,
they really are not missing too much
if you're delivering your meetings in Zoom
using the free version.
Of course that time limit is a huge issue.
Hold keeping your meetings to 40 minutes
is quite arduous for many people.
And for the price of the Zoom,
the functionality it gives us,
especially in this day and age
where it's becoming, for many of us,
our prime communication tool,
it's probably well worth spending
that little bit of money on a monthly basis,
at least I think it's worthwhile.
Are you there?
- [Liz] Yup, I'm here.
- Okay, I'm recording this and I'm having a video remorse
because I sent you the video yesterday,
which is the difference
between Zoom free and Zoom paid, right?
And I forgot this.
I'm recording this and I'm gonna send this to you.
So I forgot that in the paid version of Zoom,
you can broadcast live to Facebook or to YouTube
or to Facebook's Workplace.
So you can take-- - Oh, I didn't know that.
- Yeah, you can and I completely forgot to mention it.
Here I am looking like a,
well, looking like I just got up 'cause I just got up,
but here it is.
So can you take the video that I made you edit
that you were uploading to YouTube right now
and can you add this little bit
that I'm sending you right now?
And then can you find a way to fit it
in the video nicely for me?
- [Liz] Yes, of course I can.
- That's awesome.
That's just awesome.
Now, I would love to hear more
of your comments and questions.
Did I miss anything?
Did I misrepresent something?
I know you will tell me in the comments,
and I promise you, I read each and every comment
even if we don't have time to reply
to each and every comment,
but I appreciate you asking the questions
and letting us know how we're doing.
If you've not yet subscribed to this channel,
what the heck are you waiting for?
We have a whole series of videos on using Zoom,
which I encourage you to watch at your leisure.
Please, if you've enjoyed this video, give us a thumbs up,
Like the video, share it with your friends and family.
And until next time, I am Steve Dotto.
Have fun storming the castle.