Zoom – Licensing Overview & Enterprise Pricing

This article is the third in a series about how to get started with Zoom in an enterprise environment. This includes understanding Zoom Licensing & Enterprise pricing.

Zoom’s product is sold in the classic software/cloud, as a service model. Fundamentally this service is based and consumed primarily at the user level. This means that you will need to buy a license for each user that will use Zoom. Just like a mobile service plan, Zoom offers both a number of premium add-ons to enhance the standard user license. Of course these add-on’s are combined into a bundle with the core user license when buying licensing at scale as well. The Zoom Room license can be thought of just like a user license, where each room needs its own license and potential add-ons. Zoom also has additional account level based licenses that are only applied globally at the account level. This additional level can be used for global features as well as professional services you can purchase. In order for you to get all enterprise management, SSO, and branding features, you need to have at least 10 user licenses on the account.

Zoom User Licensing

The great news about Zoom is that there is really only one type of license for a user. Which as of today is called a “Licensed User” (formally called “Pro)”. This user license gives you all the capabilities of hosting standard meetings up to 100 people with the base user license, and expands depending on bundles you are in. What is the “On-Prem” user license? A On-Prem user license (formerly called “Corp”) is the same as a standard user expect for that all meetings are hosted on-premises inside your company running on your own hardware using Zoom provided virtual machine Multimedia Router (MMR) servers. This is only for customers that have strict business requirements around keeping communication traffic on their own internal network (this only applies for meetings). The free license is called “Basic” and has the limitations that If three or more participants join, the meeting will time out after 40 minutes.

On top of the core user license, Zoom currently offers three distinct add-on’s for a user: Webinar, Large Meeting and Zoom Phone. These features can be enabled via provisioning of the user as well.

Webinar – Ability to give webinars – A user can only have one of these assigned at once.

• 100 Participants
• 500 Participants
• 1,000 Participants
• 3,000 Participants
• 5,000 Participants
• 10,000 Participants

Large Meeting – Increase the maximum number of participants in a meeting – A user can only have one of these assigned once.

• 500 Participants
• 1000 Participants

Zoom Phone – Cloud PBX Phone System

This product is licensed to be able to make and receive external calls. If a user only needs to make internal calls, there is no charge for Zoom Phone. The calling plan for the user or common area phone/analog needs to be picked based on where the telephone number is located. Meaning if a user wants a phone number in the USA and the UK, they will need two different calling plans with Zoom. If all your phone numbers are routed via your own ‘BYOP’ SIP Trunking, then you only need a single calling plan for each user.

• Metered Calling Plan – Includes a single DID for the user. All calling will be charged per minute based on your account rate plan /bucket of minutes.
• Unlimited Calling National + Metered International – Includes a single DID for the user. All national calling for the user will be unlimited from where the user is based, International calling is based on your account rate plan
• BYOP – ‘Bring Your Own Phone’ – Which means Bring your own SIP trunk (via internet or direct peering via internet). This allows you to send PSTN calls via your own infrastructure.
• BYOC – ‘Bring Your Own Carrier’ – Pay for you plan via your Carrier SIP Trunk (usually purchased in the channel. The idea is for a large company that has existing contracts, you can continue to use them for calling, and zoom will peer with them on the phone company side.

Zoom Room Licensing

Zoom Rooms – Licensed based on the type of functionality you need for a room. A room can also be enabled with a Zoom Phone number to make outbound/inbound phone calls using the same calling plans purchased for users.

• Zoom Room – The Primary paid Zoom Room Software License.
• Scheduling Display Only – ‘Basic’ free Room Scheduler display only. For spaces that need to be booked, but don’t have a Zoom Room inside.
• Digital Signage Only – ‘Basic’ free digital signage display.

What about Zoom Room meeting capacity? For meeting started from a Zoom Room, the number of participants the meeting can hold uses the Meeting Capacity account level setting. You can see this number under Account Profile section of Account Settings. You can also license a Zoom Room with a large meeting add-on plan, individually.

The great thing about Zoom is the more you buy, the more value you get . The only exception to this rule is that if a company has less than 10 user Zoom licenses, you do you not get any advanced admin/sso/branding features, and is not considered enterprise.

The bundles names really do not matter technically. In practice what Zoom bundle you buy is just a SKU bundle at different price points containing a bundle of a user licenses & add-on’s. Meaning you do not get 50 ‘business’ user licenses then 600 ‘enterprise’ user licenses, instead you will just have 650 total user licenses. With 600 ‘500 participant Large Meeting & 600 ‘500 participant Webinar’ add-ons. The good news is picking which bundle will get you the best deal is your account manger’s problem. What you really should focus on is caring about is what features you want for your users. With any bundle licenses, when you actually go to provision users, you will need to provision the add-on as part of the enabling process as well.

Zoom Account Licensing and Additional Options

Along with named user/room licenses, Zoom also offers a number of features that are purchased at the account level. Account level licenses are features that are not directly tied to an individual user. These licenses we don’t have to worry about provisioning via SSO as you can’t assign them directly to a named user. I have also included some of the professional services that Zoom offers as well.

Meetings

• Enhanced Zoom Meeting Audio Conferencing Options enabled at the account level
  • Toll Free (all users)
  • Premium International and dial-out options.
• Dedicated Dial-in Number – A dedicated dial-in number lets your attendees join the audio conference without entering a meeting ID. Priced per number/Meeting ID.
• SIP Connected Audio – SIP Trunking so you can bring your own conference numbers.
• Cloud Recording Storage – Expand the size of your stage for recordings.
  
  • 100+ GB with $1.5 per GB extra
  • 500+ GB with $0.5 per GB extra
  • 3+ TB with $0.1 per GB extra
• PSO – Meeting Event Services – Zoom Offers Operator & Events support services that will help you in your large events for a per event fee.

Zoom Room

• H.323/SIP Connector – Enabled on a per concurrent call port basis Interoperability using H.323/SIP. This is to enable and using legacy equipment from Polycom/Cisco/Lifesize the ability to dial into the meeting.
• PSO – Design, Consulting, and Install of certified Zoom Room Equipment. Zoom will help you get setup with Zoom Rooms using their template designs.
• PSO – Managed Services – Zoom is beginning to offer Managed services that will proactively monitor rooms and maintain your zoom room footprint remotely (must be using template designs)

Zoom Phone

• Common Area Phones / Analog Gateway licensing.
• Additional DID’s – Every Zoom Phone user license included a DID, however if you need more you can request them.
• Telephone Minute Packs – Zoom offers bundles of minutes or per minute rates depending on usage.
• Direct Connection Phone – SIP Trunking over private networking for Zoom Phone connections. Note this will always use public IP Addresses. This requires a real network team that knows things like BGP and can use ECX or setup cross connects to get connected.
• PSO – Zoom Phone – Zoom will help you migrate from your existing PBX via Professional Services.

MISC

• Zoom for Telehealth – Custom skills based routing software for telemedicine use.
• Direct Connection Meetings – The ability to directly peer with Zoom to have 100% QOS to Zoom Meetings. This requires a real network team that knows things like BGP and can use ECX or setup cross connects to get connected.
• Training – Zoom offers In-Person and remote training for your user base.

Pricing

Zoom does not advertise its real enterprise prices on their website. As with all enterprise software, where there is mystery, there is margin. This brings us to one of my favorite quotes from a top voice in the business:

PROTIP:
If you want to get the price of a product without public pricing, search:

<product/company> price gsa

General Services Administration of the federal government makes this public.

If you want to go hardcore, you can also FOIA contracts from their government customers.

— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) August 29, 2018

The great news is that Zoom is now certified for government use, and you can easily google their GSA Pricelist for Zoom by searching for their contract number: GS-35F-0578Y or GS-35F-303DA + Zoom + .PDF. This will give you a great idea on how Zoom structures their pricing and where to start negotiations for volume licensing.

A few notes on pricing for Enterprise

• Do your total cost analysis on a per user basis either per month, or per year.
• Zoom Room pricing will be the same monthly price as your user license for large enterprise.
• Make sure you bust chops on DID pricing as they are crazy to charge more than 50 cents per extra DID a month for Zoom Phone.
• You are a high profile customer when you are negotiating for 100K+ a month contract from what I hear. They also like more than 100k yearly customers as that is what they put on their SEC fillings. Not a big as the 100k MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) tier but still important to the sales team.
• Again you are starting a relationship at the enterprise level, and unlike Microsoft. Zoom will listen to your needs and help you.
• If you are in education, you will get education pricing and might be eligible for free accounts.

Licensing overview documentation:

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201363173-Account-Types

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/207278726-Plan-Types-

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362823-What-is-a-Large-Meeting-

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115005474943-Meeting-and-Webinar-Comparison

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360037814012-Renamed-user-types-January-2020