What happens if more than 1000 people register for your Zoom Webinar?

[aurasomaacademy]

Hello,

We use the Webinar 1000 people package, with the webinars regularly attracting approx 600-700 live viewers. What would happen if more than 1000 people tried to register for a Webinar? Would Zoom allow them to even register? And, if so, would people then be allowed to log onto the webinar on a first-come-first-served basis with the rest unallowed to watch?

Essentially, we are trying to gauge when we should increase our webinar package but are unsure how many people are registering for the webinars, versus actually attending.

Many thanks!

[Ray_Harwood · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Zoom Community, @aurasomaacademy.

For registration: You can choose to restrict registration, or leave it open ended. 

See this Zoom Support article for information:

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/202835649-Customizing-webinar-registration 

See especially this section, where you can restrict the number of registrants:

In the Other options section, configure other webinar registration options:

• Restrict number of registrants: Check this option to restrict the number of people who can register for the webinar. Once the webinar has the specified number of registrants, anyone who tries to register will be notified that the webinar is at capacity.

For attendance: The 1,001st person to attend sees a message that the Webinar is full. If you are also live-streaming, you can optionally include a message about hour to join the livestream. Consider live-streaming for over-capacity situations instead of paying the extra fee just to accommodate 1,010 attendees, for example. 

My experience is that a 75% attendance rate is pretty good. Many of the webinars I facilitate for clients get less than that – 50-60% on average. Many people sign up just to get the Recording notice and watch when more convenient.

You could restrict the number to something like 1,200 to be pretty sure that your expected attendance rate of 75% roundly create an overflow-capacity crowd. You might also consider including in your description that “Only the first 1,000 attendees will be able to enter the Webinar; if we reach capacity before you join, please watch the recording video or join the livestream” or something appropriate to your audience. 

[aurasomaacademy]

Thank you so much for taking the time Ray - that answers our question!

Love & light,

Aura-Soma Academy

[Dez2]

Hello and thank you for your answer above.  After combing the internet, I can't seem to find out HOW registrants are notified that the webinar has reached its limit and to go to our Youtube channel to watch the live stream.  Hoping you know.  We have 500 Zoom seats available for the Zoom Webinar.  I have set up and tested the Zoom to Youtube Livestream and enabled both.  I just want to know what exactly happens when the 501 person tries to join using their unique Zoom link.  Will a pop-up appear that says the webinar is full? Go to xxxxxx? Or will they just not be able to join? Or ??? Please advise.

[Ray_Harwood]

Welcome to the Zoom Community, @Dez2.

Normally I like to test things just to see how they really work... but getting 501 people to attend a test webinar just so I can see what that last person sees is tough!

But hopefully the section How attendees can access the live stream URL in this Zoom Support article is helpful; there's no visual, but it does describe the process:

https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0065442#h_01F62M9W3NMFB4FKJYPHWQY2...

I don't know if this pops up in an application message box or as a web page... but I'm pretty sure it will be obvious to the potential attendee.  I saw this happen once back at the start of the pandemic for a very large organization webinar... but I can't remember exactly what I saw!

[Dez2]

Hi Ray,

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply. I would like to test, but as you mentioned, it's not really an option.  The How attendees can access the live stream URL link gives me a little more peace - thanks!  Guess I'm going to have to trust the process.