Zoho Meeting Review – Pros & Cons [2023]

Top Features of Zoho Meeting

Zoho Meeting is packed with advanced features to make your online meetings engaging. Here is a quick overview of the top features.

Webinar Platform

A webinar is the latest trend in connecting with your audience and sharing whatever you want in an efficient way. Zoho Webinar is equipped with all the necessary features you will need down the lane.

• Live Video – Broadcasting live videos is just a few clicks away on the platform. Host and co-hosts can share their live videos and inject necessary presentations into the video stream. You can even do a quick practice session before going live. Attendees can also be co-hosts if they have permission from the host.
• Custom Registration Forms – Besides customizing the registration pages for the webinar with your company branding, you can add custom fields to the form to collect better leads. And understanding them better helps you prepare a more effective presentation.
• Embeddable Forms – Your target audiences don’t need to land on the registration page to join the event. You can embed these registration forms into any web page where your audience can go. And this increases the chance of participation to a great extent.
• Registrant Moderation – If you don’t want spammers to fill all the seats, moderating registrants is an excellent way to keep them at bay. Decide who can join the event and who can’t.
• YouTube Live Streaming – Zoho allows you to stream your webinars live on YouTube. This might attract a larger audience. But we don’t think it is a good choice for paid webinars.
• Share Session Materials – Sharing handouts during the webinar helps you keep attendees engaged and make them feel valued. You can share multiple documents, including PDFs and videos, with the attendees. This feature should be improved so that hosts can share other file formats too.
• Interactive Features (Polls, Q&A, Raise Hand, etc.) – These features make any webinar a lot more interactive and fun. You can conduct polls to know the opinion of the attendees. Q&A sessions allow you to answer their questions. And they can raise their hand or use the Allow to Talk button to grab the hosts’ attention.
• Analytics – From the percentage of attendees to how attentive they were during the webinar, you can have a look at the performance graph with the analytics feature. But this should be improved to track other important metrics as well.

Online Meetings

Zoho doesn’t require any downloads to host or join online meetings. You can use the tool on any browser, which lets you join discussions on the go. And the sessions can be synced to the calendar so that you don’t forget about them. Here are some essential features you should check out.

• Scheduling Tool – Besides hosting instant meetings, you can schedule meetings for later and invite participants with all the necessary details. Simply pick the meeting agenda and select the date and time for the meeting. Sharing the meeting link with invitees is also easy.
• RSVPs and Reminders – Hosting random meetings without the most important invitees may not be as effective as expected. Zoho lets you collect RSVPs from invitees to plan your meeting accordingly. Know who will be there and who won’t to modify or cancel the meeting. And you can send automated reminders to invitees in multiple stages.
• Embeddable Meeting Links – If your team members have a hard time finding email notifications for the meeting in their crowded inboxes, you can simply embed a meeting link on the website. Depending on the type of meeting security, they can join the meeting by clicking the link.
• Add Co-hosts – Once someone joins the meeting, you can assign them as co-hosts so that they can conduct the meeting in your absence. This lets you run the session without interruption if you need to take an urgent break. And you can remove their role anytime you want.
• Private Meetings – If you don’t want random participants to join a meeting, you can lock the meeting with Zoho. You will get a notification if someone tries to join the meeting.
• Virtual Backgrounds – When your room isn’t the perfect place to be the background in your meetings, you can choose from a collection of images and GIFs to make virtual backgrounds. They will continue to run throughout the meeting.
• Whiteboard – Whiteboarding can be a great way to share your unique ideas with participants. Use an array of writing and drawing tools to brainstorm ideas or create flowcharts. This will make your meetings much more effective than just sharing videos.

User Management

Other than hosting meetings or webinars, Zoho Meeting lets you manage various aspects of your online meetings. From dividing users into multiple groups to anonymizing your data, you can control almost everything to your liking.

• Departments – If you use Zoho for your company meetings, you can divide users into departments to organize meetings easily. For example, if you arrange a meeting for the HR department, only the employees in the HR department can join the meeting.
• Action Logs – Besides the analytics feature, you can keep an eye on every action taken in your meeting account. And you can export this log in CSV format. During our tests, we felt the action log should be improved so that the user can manipulate actions if necessary.
• Anonymize Data – If you don’t want anyone to track your personal data, you can anonymize them after a certain period. In such cases, you can anonymize things like your username, email address, or IP address.

Integrations

Besides native integrations, Zoho is compatible with a number of third-party applications. You can connect your Zoho account with multiple CRM and email marketing tools to make the best use of it.

Pros & Cons of Zoho Meeting

Like most other webinar tools, Zoho Meeting has its advantages and drawbacks. Let’s take a quick look.

Zoho Meeting Plans & Pricing

Zoho Meeting offers five pricing plans. But as you get everything with the Meeting Standard and Meeting Professional plans in the Webinar Standard and Webinar Professional plans, we will skip the first two. Let’s take a closer look.

• Free Forever – starting at $0/mo
  • 100 meeting participants
  • 100 webinar attendees
  • Unlimited meetings and webinars
  • Up to 60 mins for meetings and webinars
• Webinar Standard – starting at $8/mo
  • Everything in Free
  • Cloud recording storage for 25 webinars per organizer
  • Multiple co-organizers
  • Webinars for up to 24 hours
  • Phone & toll-free numbers
  • Co-branding
• Webinar Professional – starting at $16/mo
  • Everything in Standard
  • Source tracking
  • Registration form and email customization
  • Custom domain
  • Advanced preferences

Our Take on Zoho Meeting

Zoho Meeting allows you to host your online meetings and webinars in a secure way. Creating custom registration forms and embedding them on the web lets you attract more audience, and registrant moderation helps you choose credible participants easily. You can extend your reach through webinars by live streaming them on YouTube, which is a great way to connect with a vast audience. This platform makes interactions like conducting polls, allowing participants to talk, answering their questions, or sharing reading materials with them so easy. As Zoho Meeting is browser-based and supports all major operating systems, you can use the platform on the go. Though the UI is a bit shaky sometimes, and the analytics could be better, finding an all-in-one webinar tool at this price range is a great deal. Zoho Meeting offers a free plan, and other plans come with a 14-day free trial. Its cost starts from as low as $8 per month, which means it is definitely worth trying.