Webinar Platforms with Breakout Rooms and Zoom Alternatives

Microsoft Teams is a platform with chats and video conferencing features for teams. Virtual breakout rooms feature in Microsoft Teams can come in handy for businesses that already use this software for work. 

Should you host Webinars with virtual breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams?

We’d recommend using Microsoft teams if it’s already deeply integrated within your tech stack. If not, you may choose a platform from this list that best suits your needs. 

Like other platforms on the list, Microsoft Teams allows you to divide your team meeting into sub-meetings. Participants can join and hold conversations amongst themselves. Like Zoom breakout rooms, you can set up 50 breakout rooms for a single conference.

Here is the feature list of the platform:

• The meeting organizer can allow attendees to go to their breakout rooms anytime. 
• Participants can pose questions without interfering with the breakout room conversations.
• The setting can recreate breakout rooms inside the same conference. 
• Pre-assigned rooms
• Organizers can assign participants to breakout rooms with different configurations.
• The meeting organizer can create, delete and change a breakout room name as needed.
• Meeting organizers can attend any of the breakout sessions if available.
• Organizers can move attendees between breakout rooms.

Some other perks

• Filters available to adjust the appearance
• Up to 10GB of cloud space for recordings
• Meeting transcripts available with paid plans 

5) Webex breakout rooms as an alternative to zoom webinars with a breakout room

While Zoom webinars are jack of all trades, Webex is built keeping hybrid and remote teams in mind. The use case of Webex is better suited for team collaboration. However, it can also be used for meetups and internal conferences. 

Can you have breakout rooms in Webex?

Short answer – yes. Webex calls it breakout sessions for teams. This allows teams to split into smaller video conferencing sessions in a hybrid or fully virtual setup. Webex also supports whiteboards, a virtual assistant, and live multilingual translation. 

Here are some features of Webex breakout rooms:

Webex has added some extra moderation options to their platform to ensure smooth sailing events: 

• The hosts and co-hosts can set up, rearrange, and participate in breakout rooms anytime.
• Participants can join sessions automatically or manually (at their discretion).
• Hosts and co-hosts can split the participants and assign the participants to the room.
• Messages can be broadcasted to all breakout sessions at the same time.
• Participants can ask the host to join their breakout session if they need assistance. 
• Hosts can set the breakout sessions to end automatically after a certain amount of time.
• Breakout rooms can also be recorded in Webex.

Some other perks of Webex breakout rooms:

• Stream to Facebook live
• 10GB of cloud space

Other webinars with breakout rooms

So earlier in the list, we mentioned famous webinar platforms like Airmeet, Zoom, Webex, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams that offer breakout rooms. However, there are some more platforms that offer this feature. So let’s begin with the list! 

6) GoTo webinar breakout rooms

GoTo offers a suite of products for different use cases, such as for example, GoTo Webinars, GoTo Trainings, GoTo Meetings, and more. You can find breakout rooms in the GoTo pro plans for training purposes. 

Besides breakout rooms in GoToTraining, you also get handy features like polls, Q&A, tests, and evaluation. There’s also a feature to manage training materials like videos, pdfs, and documents that come in handy during a training session.

It makes a great alternative for a zoom meeting with a breakout room for training purposes. 

7) Remo Breakout Rooms

Unlike Zoom webinars, Remo breakout rooms focus more on creating humanized experiences with their virtual event platform. They claim that their feature suit works well for remote teams as well.

Here are some perks of Remo breakout rooms: 

• Cloud-based
• Claims to foster interactions in a humanized manner
• Allows up to 20 participants to breakout rooms
• Allows you to connect and share virtual cards
• Allows you to schedule meetings
• Networking countdown timer
• Options to shuffle table 

8) Brella for virtual breakout rooms

Brella offers a suite of features that allow you to host nice virtual meetings for networking purposes. 

Brella offers a feature that allows you to create either closed or open virtual rooms during a webinar. These individual rooms can gather up to 200 attendees, which includes the moderators.

A feature to test these rooms beforehand ensures that the whole virtual event or your webinar goes smoothly, and participants get a frictionless experience.

9) Hopin virtual meetings with breakout rooms

Hopin is a virtual event platform that promotes a customizable experience for the event organizers. As a part of their feature suite, you can host multiple rooms and smaller sub-sessions depending upon the use case of your virtual event.  

Unlike other webinars with breakout rooms, you can get more control over the look and feel of your event with a virtual event platform. 

However, for virtual events, Airmeet offers a robust mobile app and a glitch-free experience. Other than that, features like in-house gamification, full brand customization, customizable lobby and a virtual reception, more sponsor tiers, sponsor booths, essential CRM integrations, and robust 24/7 support make Airmeet a top-rated virtual event platform on G2. 

Which platform is best for large-scale webinars with breakout rooms?

Airmeet is best suited for large-scale events due to its scalability, interactive features, security & reliability, focus on engagement, networking, and integration capabilities. 

The platform can efficiently accommodate a large number of attendees without compromising performance quality. Plus, It offers a high level of customization so you can tailor your webinar experience to your specific needs and brand. 

With their robust breakout rooms feature, you can split attendees into smaller groups for a more targeted discussion. Their built-in high-engagement elements, including live chat, polls, and Q&A sessions, will significantly elevate your webinar attendees’ engagement.

With Airmeet, you will not only host a large-scale event but also broaden your webinar reach to a larger audience and create an engaging environment in a virtual space. 

What additional capabilities should I look for in a webinar platform with breakout rooms?

You need to look at the following highlights of a webinar platform with breakout rooms to guarantee a flawless productive experience for both hosts and attendees.

• Customizable Room Setting Feature: Customized breakout rooms allow you to cater to diverse interests and have a meaningful discussion. You can adjust the number of participants per room and make a balanced group of people for discussion. 

With these capabilities, you can set different room sizes, topics, or even time limits so each group can meet their unique requirements effectively.

• Screen Sharing Option: As with the main session, make sure breakout room attendees have access to screen sharing so they can better collaborate and share expertise during the discussion. 

By sharing screens, attendees can present information directly with their group or team members, leading to deeper collaboration. 

• Recording Option: If you want to capture breakout room discussions make sure the platform has a recording feature. 

By documenting guest conversations, you can get detailed insights into the participants’ thoughts, ideas, and points of view on a particular topic so you can customize your next event to your attendees’ needs and interests.

• Collaborative Interactive Tools: Interactive engagement tools are important in order to make the webinars engaging and captivating for your attendees. 

Live polling, chat, and Q&A are robust interactive tools that foster two-way communication, making it easy for attendees to actively participate in webinars with ease.

• Integration with Other Platforms: Ensure the webinar platform has integrated external tools such as CRM systems, marketing automation platforms, and email marketing software. 

This capability helps streamline workflows such as creating personalized content based on attendee interests & needs, capturing quality leads, and analyzing attendee behavior and engagement.

• Multiple Breakout Rooms Capacity: Breakout sessions allow event participants to discuss similar topics, share ideas, and build relationships. If the platform offers multiple rooms, you can split your audience into several rooms to have more focused discussions. 

With multiple group functionalities, you can provide a customized experience for every group with ease.

• Smooth Room Transitions: Prioritize smooth breakout area transitions when hosting large-scale webinars to provide a seamless experience for your guests. For networking and diverse interaction, event attendees should be able to effortlessly move from one room to another.
  
  
• Host and Co-Host Capabilities: Webinars, especially those with large numbers of participants, are best managed if there is more than one host or co-host. A co-host can assist the main host in various tasks such as managing the chat, answering audience questions, and leading breakout sessions.

As an example, If the main host experiences some technical difficulties during the session then the co-host could step in and keep the attendee engaged by taking over the presentation. 

• Responsive System: The webinar system must be responsive as it allows attendees to access the event from their preferred devices such as mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and computers. 
  
  You can certainly attract more attendees and also expand the reach of your webinar if the platform supports a wider range of devices.
  
  
• Analytics & Reporting: With this feature, you can simply evaluate the impact and effectiveness of each of your breakout rooms. Metrics like engagement, attendance rates, and time spent in each room can be monitored. All these insights will help you gauge the success of your webinar breakout rooms.
  
  

Are Zoom webinar breakout rooms any different from other platforms?

Zoom, like others, is just another virtual platform with the capabilities to host webinars with breakout rooms. Over the years, Zoom has become synonymous to the phrase “webinar breakout rooms.” However, many different platforms offer virtual rooms for every use case. In short, there are several alternatives to Zoom that you can explore. 

What makes a great webinar platform with breakout rooms besides Zoom meetings?

“Zoom fatigue” was a trending topic in 2020 and 2021. So much so that folks at Harvard Business Review had to cover it. The reason for fatigue: back-to-back meetings with interactions that lacked a human touch. 

Don’t get us wrong. Zoom Webinars are great, and the world quickly shifted to using Zoom webinars and their breakout rooms for several use cases. But there’s definitely some room for improvement. 

So when you ask which virtual platforms with breakout rooms are best for your next event, we would say that a platform that comes with a breakout room feature but also offers features suited to foster more natural interactions. 

Airmeet and some platforms like Remo do a great job at that. 

The best webinar platform should be capable of keeping your audience connected and engaged. Some excellent features are polls and Q&A, leaderboard, and quizzes, to do that other than breakout rooms.

Moreover, your platform should offer a seamless hosting experience, both for you and your attendees. Outages and glitches offer a negative experience to your attendees, which negatively impacts your ROI. Platforms like Airmeet, Google Meet, and Teams are great for stability. 

Added features like host, co-host management, and event moderation abilities make the deal even sweeter. 

Final thoughts 

There are multiple webinar platforms with breakout rooms to choose from. But the ones that work best for you would depend on your use case. 

Generally, platforms that offer interactive elements and engagement-driven features work well as they keep your attendees gripped by the sessions. 

Airmeet is one such platform that has features to humanize your webinars and virtual events and spark deep attendee engagement. 

Others in the list, like GoTo webinar breakout rooms and Webex breakout rooms, work well in their niche. 

Still, the best breakout room for you depends on your specific requirements. So, remember to review the information above to figure out which webinar platform is best for you and how to facilitate a breakout room, or talk to our expert here.