Zoom Interactive Demo
Explore a demo of Zoom, the video conferencing platform used by millions of teams for meetings, webinars, phone calls, and async video clips.
What is Zoom?
Zoom is a video conferencing and communication platform founded in 2011 by Eric Yuan, a former Cisco WebEx engineer. At peak adoption during 2020, the platform logged over 300 million daily meeting participants. It expanded from a meeting tool into a broader communications stack covering phone (Zoom Phone), team messaging (Team Chat), webinars, whiteboarding, and async video (Clips).
AI Companion, Zoom's generative AI layer, provides meeting summaries, suggested chat replies, and in-meeting question answering without requiring participants to take manual notes. The feature is included at no additional cost on paid plans, which distinguishes it from some competitors that charge separately for AI meeting tooling.
Zoom's free plan covers unlimited one-on-one meetings but limits group calls to 40 minutes — a constraint that has pushed many teams to paid tiers starting at $15 per user per month. Integrations with Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce, Calendly, and Microsoft 365 make Zoom a connective layer in most enterprise tool stacks.
How to get started with Zoom
- 1
Create a Zoom account
Sign up at zoom.us with your work email. The free plan is functional enough to evaluate the product. If you need cloud recording or longer group meetings, start a Pro trial before committing.
- 2
Download the Zoom desktop client
Install the Zoom app for Mac or Windows. The browser-based version works but the desktop client offers better audio controls, background blur, and access to features like Clips and Whiteboard.
- 3
Schedule your first meeting
Click 'New Meeting' for an instant call or 'Schedule' to create a future meeting. Add it directly to Google Calendar or Outlook via the calendar integration. Copy the invite link to share with participants.
- 4
Configure audio and video settings
Set your default microphone, speaker, and camera in Settings before your first call. Enable background blur or a virtual background if needed. Test audio with Zoom's built-in speaker test to avoid delays at the start of meetings.
- 5
Connect your essential integrations
Link Zoom to your calendar, CRM, and scheduling tool from the Zoom App Marketplace. Calendly, HubSpot, Salesforce, and Slack are the most commonly installed. Connecting these tools ensures meeting data flows automatically without manual logging after each call.
Explore more Zoom guides
Step-by-step interactive demos and tutorials for Zoom.
Who is Zoom most useful for?
Distributed teams running recurring standup meetings, one-on-ones, and cross-functional reviews. The combination of video quality, reliability, and widespread name recognition means external calls with clients or candidates rarely require explanation or technical troubleshooting on the recipient's end.
Sales and customer success teams use Zoom alongside tools like Calendly for scheduling and Salesforce for logging call activity. Zoom's integration with those platforms means call notes, recordings, and AI-generated summaries can flow into the CRM without manual data entry after each call ends.
Training and enablement teams delivering live sessions to large groups benefit from Webinars mode. Sales teams showcasing a product for the first time can pair a live Zoom call with a Supademo interactive demo — letting prospects click through the product themselves during or after the call rather than watching a screen share they cannot control. This approach tends to increase engagement and reduce the number of follow-up questions about specific features.
Alternatives to Zoom
Zoom dominates video conferencing but these four tools each take a different approach to meetings and async communication.
Records your screen and camera and generates a shareable link in seconds. Replaces many status updates and demo calls with a watch-at-your-own-pace video format that recipients can comment on frame by frame.
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Zero-friction for teams already using Google Calendar. No download required for guests. Lacks the webinar depth and async video features of Zoom, but the price (included with Workspace) is hard to argue against.
Deeper integration with Office apps, SharePoint, and Azure Active Directory than any other platform. Better suited for organizations running Microsoft 365 as their primary productivity stack.
Purpose-built for webinars, virtual events, and product demos with a browser-based experience requiring no downloads for attendees. Registration pages, email reminders, and post-event analytics are all included natively.
FAQs on Zoom
Commonly asked questions about Zoom. Have more? Reach out and our team will be happy to help.
Is Zoom free to use?
Zoom's free plan supports unlimited one-on-one calls and group meetings of up to 100 participants, but group meetings are capped at 40 minutes. Pro plans start at $15 per user per month and remove the time limit. Business plans at $20 per user per month add managed domains, SSO, and larger meeting capacities.
What is Zoom AI Companion?
Zoom AI Companion is an AI assistant built into Zoom that generates meeting summaries, drafts chat replies, answers in-meeting questions, and creates action item lists after calls. It is included at no additional cost on all paid Zoom plans. Meeting summaries can be shared with participants who could not attend or used to populate CRM notes automatically.
How does Zoom compare to Google Meet?
Zoom offers more features for large-scale webinars, breakout rooms, and async video through Clips. Google Meet is included with Google Workspace, making it cost-effective for organizations already in the Google ecosystem. For teams prioritizing video quality, recording management, and integration breadth, Zoom generally edges out Meet. For pure simplicity and Google calendar-native scheduling, Meet is the easier choice.
Can I record Zoom meetings?
Local recording is available on all plans including free. Cloud recording is a paid feature that stores recordings on Zoom's servers with shareable links, searchable transcripts, and AI-generated summaries. Enterprise plans offer longer cloud storage retention. Recordings can be shared directly from the Zoom web portal or pushed to connected storage platforms.
How does Zoom integrate with Calendly and HubSpot?
What is Zoom Clips?
Zoom Clips is an async video messaging feature that lets you record short screen and camera videos and share them via link — similar in concept to Loom. Clips are available on paid Zoom plans and keep async video within the same platform your team already uses for live meetings, reducing the need for a separate tool for recorded walkthroughs and team updates.