Forum Discussion
Microsoft Teams Meeting, Webinars or Live Events - Confused ??
Have you ever been in a situation where you are confused what solution to use for your upcoming virtual event ?
I was in a similar situation last week, where we had to choose the right solution to cater to all our requirements, and honestly it was hard considering Microsoft Teams has lot of features to choose from.
Below table helped me take a decision, hope this helps you as well. Note this is not the full list of features, refer to official document for details information.
| Teams Meetings | Webinars | Teams Live Events | |
| Limit | up to 1000 | up to 1000 | up to 10,000 ( Temporary 20,000 ) |
| View-Only | Yes | No | NA |
| Registration | No | Yes | No |
| Q&A | No | No | Yes |
| Recording | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Chat | Yes (up to 1000) | Yes | Only for Event Group |
| Custom Production | No | No | Yes |
| Raise Hand | Yes | Yes | No |
| Reaction | Yes | Yes | No |
| Participant List | Yes | Yes | No ( Only for Event Group ) |
| Attendance | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Closed Caption | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Mute audio\video | Yes | Yes | Only for Event Group |
| External speaker | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Lobby | Yes | Yes | Only for Event Group |
| Breakout rooms | Upto 300 | Upto 300 | No |
| Polls | Yes | Yes | No |
| 2 -way communication | Yes | Yes | Only for Event Group |
| Gallery view | Yes | Yes | No |
| Together Mode | Yes | Yes | No |
| Spotlight \ pin | Yes | Yes | No |
To summarize, Webinar has all the feature of a regular Teams meeting additionally it provides registration capability. The only place where it falls short is view-only mode.
Live Event is for Broadcast where attendee are only consuming the video feed with interaction through QnA only. Custom Production tools and RTMP could be used to create layout for broadcast.
Resources for reference :
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/view-only-meeting-experience
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/schedule-a-webinar-0719a9bd-07a0-47fd-8415-6c576860f36a
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2021/05/11/introducing-webinars-in-microsoft-teams-easy-professional-webinars-to-engage-customers/
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-analytics-and-reports/meeting-attendance-report
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-live-events/what-are-teams-live-events
3 Replies
Dexterous365 This is a great table - the effort you put into creating it is much appreciated.
I did notice an error though - Q&A is available in Teams Meetings, Webinars and Live Events, though your table indicates it's only for Live Events.
Thanks!
- I think that it can generally simplified
Is everyone considered a peer and can talk?
Is this mostly a few to many meeting where you have leaders and listeners?
Is this a broadcast to many people where more than a single video source is used? Thanks for sharing, but the Tech Community Ideas space where you originally posted is specifically for ideas for the Microsoft Tech Community website, not about individual products.
I'm moving your post to the Microsoft Teams space. Please post about Microsoft Teams there in the future.
