Standard Event Size

Larger Events

*Webinars vs. Meetings

License Usage: Short-Term vs. Long-Term

Reserving a Large Meeting or Zoom Webinar

Purchasing a Long-Term License

Standard Event Size

Rice Zoom Licensed accounts for Rice faculty, staff, and students are provisioned with licenses to host Zoom meeting* format sessions for 

• Zoom Meeting: 300 participants

Larger Events

If you need to host an event (meeting or webinar*) for over 300 participants, you can reserve an add-on license at no cost. There are a limited quantity of these "add-on" licenses that are shared by the Rice community, including:

• Zoom Large Meeting: 1,000 participants
• Zoom Webinar: 500 participants
• Zoom Webinar: 1,000 participants
• Zoom Webinar: 3,000 participants

If your event is larger, OIT can contact Zoom for pricing for Zoom Webinars for 5,000 or 10,000 attendees. These sizes are not part of the Rice licensing agreement.  

*Webinars vs. Meetings

Webinars are different from meetings in the following ways:

• Host can assign video panelists
• Host must specifically turn on audio/video for attendees
• No breakout rooms
• Question & Answer (Q&A) tool
• Webinar attendees receive video and audio content by default but cannot share their video/audio or screens.
• See also Zoom Help Center's Meeting and Webinar Comparison.

License Usage: Short-Term vs. Long-Term

Short-Term

The Rice OIT Zoom add-on license pool is intended to accommodate requests for short-term usage, meaning single, scheduled events (although multiple dates can be entered into reservations).  Rice does not charge users for short-term use of the license. 

Add-on licenses must be reserved.  Rarely is there an issue with availability when requested, but it could happen if all licenses have already been reserved for a particular date.  Licenses are available on first-come, first-serve basis.  Entering your request into the reservation process is key to ensuring webinar license availability for your event.

Long-Term

Rice does not have sufficient availability in our loaner license pool to dedicate add-on licenses for an extended period. If a dedicated license is needed for long-term usage, purchase of the desired dedicated license will be necessary.  A purchased license is dedicated to the user’s account for the duration of the Zoom annual contract period. The annual rate for the license is as follows (although pro-rated to sync with our annual contract renewal date of August 27):

• Zoom Large Meeting 1,000: $1,080
• Zoom Webinar 500:  $566
• Zoom Webinar 1,000: $2,720
• Zoom Webinar 3,000:  $7,920
• Zoom Webinar 5,000:  OIT can obtain quote from Zoom
• Zoom Webinar 10,000: OIT can obtain quote from Zoom

Reserving a Large Meeting or Zoom Webinar

Submit a Help Desk Ticket to request a reservation. Please provide the following information: 

• Date of the Zoom event
• Type license requested
• Anticipated number of attendees:
• Host of the Zoom event (Zoom user account)

Process  

• The desired add-on license availability is checked for the requested event date and reserved. Or, if license is not available, the requester will be notified.
• If the request for the Large Meeting 1000 license is available, the license will be placed in the host's account in advance of the event date.
• If the request is for a webinar license, and available, two weeks in advance of the event date a webinar license will be placed on user account to facilitate scheduling of the webinar, sending invites, practice, etc.
• Before the event date, the webinar license will be ‘right sized’ to the requested Webinar license attendee size.  Because we have fewer of the larger webinar 1000 and 3000 licenses, pre-event tasks may need to proceed with a webinar 500 license. The requested larger webinar license only needs to be in place at the time of the event.  The only change with the various webinar license sizes is the attendee capacity.  Links do not change.  Any pre-event work done with the smaller license remains unchanged when exchanged for the larger license (in advance of the event date).
• After the event, the license will be reclaimed, to be returned to our loaner license pool.

Purchasing a Long-Term License

Submit a Help Desk Ticket to get the process started. Please provide the following information: 

• Type license requested
• Zoom user account
• Questions