Zoom sessions One-Time for 250 people.

[AVICC]

Here is the question I sent to Zoom Support:

I have Zoom sessions, and am planning a one-session event for the end of February. I have the monthly-payment plan (100 attendees max), because my next event won't happen until next November, and I will cancel my Zoom Sessions in March, and reinstate it in October. My February meeting is expected to have about 200 attendees - is it possible to add the "Large Meeting" add-on to "Zoom Sessions" specifically for my Feb event?

Their response did not actually offer a reasonable solution:

"I understand your concerns regarding the upgrade of your Zoom Sessions participants by purchasing the Large Meeting add-on. I'll be glad to assist you with this.

Please be informed the Zoom Events and the Large Meeting add-on are different plans. In order for you to increase your Zoom Sessions' participant capacity, you need to upgrade from Zoom Sessions 100 to Zoom Sessions 500."

I replied with the following:

I do not want to pay $4500 to have 250 people in one session.  This is a one-off session that likely will never happen again.  Typically any of our sessions are for less than 100 people. I do not need an annual subscription.

Is Zoom sessions 500 available on a monthly plan?  Does not seem to be... but can it be for me given my situation? What is the cost to stay on a monthly 100 sessions plan if there are additional people above 100 that join?

I am hoping that a literate human with actual hands-on experience would have a solution for me. I am willing to pay per person for attendees over 100, but no one will tell me how much that costs. I have unsuccessfully attempted to get answers through their chatbot, and then I believe the customer support module was also AI. No one seems to understand my request.  I don't want to switch to "Events" or "Webinars" but maybe I have to?  I like the production value features of sessions... 

Thank you for your advice!

[Ohkawa]

@AVICC 

Maybe a zoom sessions pay per attendees plan, etc. would be good.

Plans & Pricing for Zoom Events and Webinars | Zoom

This plan is a one-time ticket purchase; if 200 people plan to attend, you only need to purchase two 100s, which would be $360.

Purchased tickets are valid for one year if not consumed.

I will let Champion, who is familiar with Events, know about this posting and he will be able to give you more details.

[DeniseLahat]

Is there a connection between your session in February and November?  If not then you can cancel your montly subscription after your february event but you will loose all your content in the event.  Then for your event in November you start from scatch.  Any overage is charged at around $2.5 as per the attached article https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0063714#h_01GPHNG7X6AGEW767AG0J0G3....  If you buy a PPA 600 license then your Feb event will remain available.

[Ray_Harwood]

Welcome to the Zoom Community, @AVICC.

First: For anyone contemplating a Zoom Events or Sessions license, I offer a free 30-minute consultation to discuss your needs and advise you on the most cost-effective and flexible plan options. Please reach out to me via private message here on the Community, or contact me via LinkedIn at https://LinkedIn.com/in/RayHarwood 

Based on details you’ve described, I’d likely advise you to abandon the Subscription license (sometimes referred to as Annual, Unlimited, or SaaS). A Subscription plan is only effective if you are likely to have near-license capacity audiences for at least 8-10 sessions a year. If you are using the Monthly license – only available at the 100 attendee limit – you could start and stop your subscription, but I don’t recommend this for a variety of reasons. 

For anyone whose audience sizes fluctuate significantly, or those schedule for for less than 8-10 events a year, you’re generally much better off using the Pay Per Attendee license (often referred to as simply PPA, sometimes referred to as the Consumption plan). Here, instead of paying for a full year for a fixed max capacity, you buy “seat allocations” – like a roll of tickets you can use one at a time as people join your event. Have a session with only 25 attendees? Only 25 tickets are consumed.

Have a large session with 275 attendees? Just 275 tickets are consumed.  In this case, “Attendees” also includes your Special Roles attendees – speakers, hosts, etc., and you are not charged for registrants who do not attend. Have an event but you have no idea Hire many will attend? Set the PPA event to allow you to admit more attendees than you have tickets for, and Zoom will bill you for the amount used after your purchased seats are consumed, at $2/seat for Sessions and $2.50/seat for Events. 

The trick to being most cost effective is to estimate how many tickets you will likely use in the year after purchasing. This is because your unused PPA tickets expire one year after purchase.

All Zoom Events and Sessions license prices (including Monthly, Subscription, and PPA) are located on this page:

https://zoom.us/pricing/events 

Zoom Sessions licenses only allow you to have single-session, recurring-session, or “Session Lite” sessions. The most you will be charged per ticket is $2.00 USD. The minimum purchase of 50 tickets is at this price, for a total of $100.  Buying in larger quantities reduces the cost per ticket. For example, a 1,000 ticket purchase costs only $1,500, amounting to $1.50 per ticket, a savings of 25%.

When using the Events pricing page, be sure to pick the correct licensing model, Events vs Sessions, and Monthly vs Annual Subscription vs PPA:

If you are located in the US, reach out to me and I’ll assist you with your purchase. I am a Zoom Partner Reseller, and able to help most US based customers with their purchases.

A Zoom Events license allows the same types of events that a Sessions license allows plus multi-day, multi-session events like conferences. The max cost per person for Zoom Events is $2.50 per person. 

One more note: If you are making use of the Hub that comes along with your license, note that a PPA license will come with its own Hub – you can’t use the Subscription license Hub with the PPA license. And if you purchase both PPA Sessions and PPA Events licenses, they also have to be managed separately. 

[AVICC]

Thanks @Ray_Harwood , @DeniseLahat  and @Ohkawa for your replies.  I am still confused.

I have two events a year, typically always under 100 attendees, and the plan was to cancel my monthly sessions 100 subscription in March, and then reinstate it in October.  The events are not linked.  

This year I happen to have one event in February that I am anticipating to have 200-250 people attend.

Please answer the following questions:

1. If I keep my Zoom sessions 100 monthly subscription, and 250 attend, will Zoom charge me $2.50/ additional user ($375) for my one event?  OR will people be told they cannot attend?

2. If #1 is not an option, and I have to get a PPA Sessions license, is the only way to do this by buying PPA 600 and then only actually using a maximum of 350 attendees over my two sessions before it expires in one year?  OR can I stack 100 PPAs by buying 3 of them to be used in the same session? 

3. If I  change to a Zoom Events license (from Zoom Sessions) do I still have access to the production studio and backstage feature from Zoom Sessions?  AND If I get a Zoom Events 100 monthly subscription (that I would plan to cancel in March), can the Zoom Large Meetings add-on be applied?

Planning to start building my session next week to open registration the following week.  I greatly appreciate your help!  

[Ray_Harwood]

Question 1 - Subscription Plan Overage Charges

No.  For a Subscription/Annual/Unlimited/SaaS license, Zoom will force-limit your attendance to the subscription level.  There is no "overage" capability other than upgrading your Zoom Events/Subscription license to a higher level... which, by the way, can't be done on a Monthly Subscription, due to it only being available at the 100 user level, and primarily intended as a way to "get in" at low cost and try it out.  In my opinion, Zoom does not intend to allow Monthly Subscriptions at any higher level.

Question 2: PPA License Approaches

Purchased PPA licenses are "pooled" as they are purchased, with a "first in, first out" seat decrementing and expiration policy.  As a brand new PPA user, buy the Zoom Sessions PPA 50 for $100, and develop your Session content.  If you hope to have 1,000 seats for your event, but want to be sure you don't spend more than necessary, my recommendation is to open up registration and market the $*#& out of it, see how many registrants you have.  PPA decrementing only occurs after your event lobby is open, and only when someone visits the lobby and/or the live event directly.  (See Using Zoom Sessions lobby section " How to join a Zoom Sessions event lobby" for the various ways lobbies can be "joined":
https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0058217.)  People who register but never join do not decrement your PPA seat count.

Thinking you might have 1,000, but seeing that you only have 250 people registered, I'd consider buying two Sessions PPA 100 licenses, for a total of 250 (you bought 50 at first, now 200 more).  If, as often occurs, you get a lot of registrations the last couple of days, buy a Sessions PPA 600 license, bringing you to a total of 850.  If your total attendance reaches 700, you'll have 150 licenses left, available for your next event as long as it occurs within the 1-year expiration date of the latest purchase.  (More exactly... the lobby visits must occur before the license expires - it's a small detail which wouldn't affect a second event 5 months down the road.)

If you are buying your licenses on the Zoom Events Pricing page, these are the only options you have.  If you go through your Zoom Account Exec or through a Zoom Partner Reseller (like me!), you can specify exactly how many seats you want at the time of purchase.  If you wanted to buy 350 seats, you would pay the per-seat price of the next lower level (100 seats at $180 = $1.80 per seat) times the number of seats you want (350 x $1.80 = $630).  If you wanted another 75 seats, that price would be based on the per-seat price of 50 (it's a new purchase transaction), not based on the price of the last purchase you made.

Question 3: Zoom Events vs Sessions

I just learned the answers to these the hard way recently.  All of my prior clients have wanted Zoom Events, with multiple days and multiple sessions in a conference-like experience.  A new client wanted only a single-session Zoom Session.  If I ran her event on my existing Events PPA license, her attendees would take an Events PPA seat for each attendee - basically a 25% premium cost to have a Session attendee use an Event PPA seat allocation.

Think of your PPA purchases of Events PPA giving you a roll of green tickets, and purchases of Sessions PPA giving you a roll of blue tickets.  If the event (lower case) is a single-session event created in a Zoom Events PPA Hub, attendees subtract one green ticket, regardless of the fact that the event itself is like a Session event; it's in an Events Hub, and only Events PPA tickets are used there.

Purchasing Sessions PPA tickets forces you to use a separate hub, which only uses the blue tickets.  WORSE YET... One Zoom Workplace licensed user cannot be assigned both a Zoom Events PPA License and a Zoom Session PPA License!  You have to assign the second PPA license to another licensed user on your account - and if you are the only person on your account, you will need to add a second licensed user to make use of it.

My advice in this case is to stick with Zoom Events PPA licenses, if you are planning to produce a mix of multi-day/multi-session events and single/recurring/Lite events.  The extra expense is worth not having to deal with "which license goes where and is owned by whom."

[AVICC]

Thanks @Ray.

I will never have 1000 attendees (nor do I want that). The event we are offering is complimentary to our members so we will see a lot of attrition between registration and actual attendance. 

I think your recommendation to switch to a Sessions PPA and stack them 100 at a time once I know how many are coming makes the most sense. Is it possible to add more PPA seats after the session start time/date passes?

I have only used Sessions, and not Events. Is the production studio/branding functionally the same in both? 

If I switch from my current monthly 100 Sessions subscription to a Sessions PPA, I assume I can take over the ownership /admin on it? I am indeed the only user on our account (and the only person who works at the organization).

I have no plans to produce a mix of multi-day/multi-session events and single/recurring/Lite events - I just want my one small single session event to look good 🙂

Thanks again!