Zoom Hosting problem - concurrent meetings

#1

Hi,

First of all, we love SmoothBook! I spent a good week looking for the right ‘back end’ for us to use, and I believe this is it for many, many reasons. Thanks James!

I’m struggling to get my head around something with Zoom.
My friend and I are going to start offering small group classes to children on Zoom soon.
The classes will only last 30mins and be no more than 6 children generally plus one of us (we’re both teachers!)
It looks like if Jenny starts one at 10am, I can’t start one until 10.30am as one user (we’ve signed up with our business email to Zoom for the free account) can’t host more than one meeting concurrently.
This obviously limits our potential income!
If we were to get a Pro account rather than just the free one, I believe that we could then have multiple users, being hosts at the same time.
What are the implications on SmoothBook for this scenario? Would it matter that there are two or more users? Is it a case of simply needing to edit the meeting in Zoom to assign a host?

I really don’t want to go down the paid route. I’m actually wondering if it might be a better idea to split Jenny and I, have a SmoothBook each so that we wouldn’t have the Zoom problem! But then we’d have to have separate Stripe accounts, and could we merge our SmoothBook calendars?! So many potential problems here, even naming our SmoothBook account, having to create another email (we’re just on a gmail one) etc. Also, looking to the future, we’d like to add other ‘guest teachers’ to our booking calendar, such as a friend who is a photography specialist so that we can offer a broader range of subjects.

Thank you to anyone who can offer advice, my brain is mush at the moment over it all! Thank goodness it’s sunny today!

Sharon

#2

Spoke with my hubby, I think I’m going to have to do the Zoom links manually… I think it’s the easiest option as we don’t want to create two SBook accounts or we’ll have problems with the calendar!

#3

Hi @Sharon_W1,

Thanks very much for your message and the positive words!

I hate to say it (and I could be wrong) but it seems the only way to have concurrent meetings in Smoothbook is with an upgraded Zoom account. It’s certainly possible to do things with two Smoothbook accounts (and two zoom accounts).

The alternative, as you say, is to manage the links yourselves. You can easily email a class with the link from the dashboard (and you can re-use links for regular classes). I will have a think about how Smoothbook can do this better!

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#4

Thank you for your prompt response.

I don’t even think it’d be possible (ever, because it’d be up to Zoom not yourself?) to assign a Zoom account to a resource. Which would be the perfect way for us! Especially as each event would have a named resource.

Anyway! Yes, I don’t mind paying for a package with Zoom, I still wonder about the hosting though. I’m going to read through their docs and get help from there… There’s lots about Alternative Hosts and Co-Hosts but they have fewer privileges. Plus then if Zoom was integrated, how would it know which host to assign?!

And with the upgrade, it’s still max. 2 hosts, so guest teachers would be a problem again.

Ugh, there’s always something isn’t there?! LOL

2 SBook and 2 Zoom accounts, I think we’d struggle. The Facebook book now button would need to be on one account only, we’d have 2 calendars, our buy 5 get 1 free would be limited to 1 teacher’s classes rather than pick ‘n’ mix etc. Far too complicated :laughing:

Thanks again!
Sharon

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