Host Webinars Like a Pro with Zoom & WooCommerce

Whether it’s workshops, courses or one-off events, if you’ve always wanted to host your own webinars, you can—for free!

In this guide, we’ll get you started with the right tools to start hosting and selling tickets to your webinars—no code, no cost.

An Introduction to Zoom and WooCommerce

If you’ve been running a WordPress business for a while, you will likely have at least a passing familiarity with both Zoom and WooCommerce. But there’s much more to these programs than meets the eye.

Zoom

Zoom is the preferred video conferencing platform with advanced functionalities such as chat, screen sharing and whiteboards. Zoom users can host intimate and secure virtual meetings or massive webinars with 1000s of attendees, partake in live Q&As and break off into meeting rooms. With addons and integrations, you can seamlessly slip Zoom into your workflows and enhance your virtual product offerings.

Zoom Meetings is free for everyone to get started—all you’ll need is an email address. More advanced users and medium to large sized businesses can take advantage of Zoom Webinars for enhanced functionality at economical prices. Visit https://zoom.us/pricing for more details on features and prices.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is the leading e-commerce plugin for WordPress businesses—trusted by more than a quarter of the top digital retailers worldwide! With WooCommerce, you can build, customize, advertise and operate every aspect of your online store, from landing pages to checkouts.

With dozens of themes, ready to go with just a click, you can get started selling right away. Or take the time to edit every pixel of your store to stay on-brand and maximize conversions.

Online retailers can get started with WooCommerce without, themselves, spending a dime. And, as an open-source platform, there are plenty of free extensions and plugins to pair with WooCommerce for enhanced functionality at no additional cost.

Whether your WordPress business is a hobby that pays or a multi-million dollar enterprise, or whether you’re shipping your products globally or strictly offering digital downloads, WooCommerce has a solution for you.

Connect WooCommerce to Zoom

Before you start filling virtual auditoriums, you’ll first need to connect Zoom to your WooCommerce store—and polish up your presentation! There are a few ways you can do this, each with their own advantages.

Option 1: The Events Calendar

The Events Calendar is the most popular calendar and scheduling plugin for WordPress—and with a bevy of features, it’s not hard to understand why. Users can quickly create their events, add and manage event organizers and style their calendars to match their website and branding. As the most popular plugin of its type, The Events Calendar comes equipped with a ton of free and paid addons so that you can seamlessly integrate it into your existing workflows.

In order to start selling tickets to your Zoom webinars with The Events Calendar and WooCommerce, you’re going to need a few additional plugins. First, you’ll need the core Events Calendar plugin, Event Tickets and Event Tickets Plus so that you can sell your tickets with WooCommerce. Finally, the Virtual Events addon will allow you to integrate your Zoom account with your calendar.

To ensure ease-of-use, The Events Calendar offers great step-by-step tutorials for connecting to Zoom and for selling your tickets with WooCommerce.

Cost:

Events Calendar: FREE

Event Tickets: FREE

Events Tickets Plus: $99/year

Virtual Events: $69/year for 1 website or click here for the full Pricing Schedule

Option 2: Zapier

Zapier is a web-based automator that allows its users to integrate various web applications and tools. With Zapier, users can create “Zaps” that automate “tasks” between various applications whenever specified events occur. For example, users can create a “Zap” that registers attendees in a Zoom webinar (the task) whenever they purchase a specific product in your WooCommerce store (the event).

Zapier offers a free version but this has a limit of 100 tasks per month across all Zaps, meaning that you’ll have a limit of 100 meeting/webinar attendees per month unless you add them manually. Additionally, to integrate with Zoom, users will have to purchase the WooCommerce Zapier plugin.

Cost:

Click here for Zapier’s Plan & Pricing Schedule

WooCommerce Zapier: $59/year

Option 3: Uncanny Automator

Uncanny Automator is the most powerful and cost-effective WordPress automation plugin on the market. Users create “Recipes” with triggers and actions that connect plugins, websites and external apps to automate their workflows and save time. Automator requires no code or programming knowledge, making it easy for anyone to get started.

In addition to its no-code guarantee, with Automator, users can get started selling tickets to their Zoom webinars through their WooCommerce store for free! Free account holders receive 250 credits, meaning that you can sell 250 tickets to your webinar without having to spend a single dollar. When you’re ready to connect more of your favorite plugins and web apps, Automator Pro gives you access to an unlimited number of app credits—that’s a lot of webinars!

Cost:

Uncanny Automator: Click here for the FREE plugin

Uncanny Automator Pro: Click here for Automator’s Pricing Schedule

Start Hosting Professional Webinars—For Free!

Of the examples above, Uncanny Automator is the only one that allows you to connect your Zoom account to your WooCommerce store for free. So put your wallet away and follow this simple walkthrough to start hosting your very own professional webinars.

Click here for a detailed step-by-step tutorial on connecting Zoom to Uncanny Automator. Alternatively, find the abridged tutorial below:

• Step 1: From your browser, head to the Zoom App Marketplace page and sign in to your Zoom account. Click Develop in the upper right-hand corner and select Build App then click Create in the box labeled JWT.
• Step 2: In the following screen, follow the instructions and fill out your app’s information.
• Step 3: Open a new tab and sign in to your WordPress website. From your Admin Sidebar, navigate to Automator > Settings > Zoom Meetings. Click Connect Zoom Meetings account.
• Step 4: Return to your Zoom account tab, find App Credentials and copy and paste the API Key and API Secret into the corresponding fields in your WordPress account tab.

You will use the same JWT credentials to set up Zoom Webinars.

Now that you’ve connected Zoom to Automator, all that’s left for you to do is to start selling your webinar!

Step 1: Create Your WooCommerce Product

From your WordPress Admin Sidebar, navigate to Products > Add New. Scroll down to the panel labeled Product data and select Virtual but not Downloadable.

Under Inventory, select Sold individually. This will restrict users to purchasing one ticket at a time but it will also prevent them from being registered for the event multiple times.

Important: If you would like to allow your users to purchase tickets for others and still have their friends register automatically, you can. Simply remind your users at checkout to use their friend’s email address as the billing address in each separate transaction.

Configure the rest of your product details, including title, price, etc. to your satisfaction then click Publish.

Step 2: Select Recipe Type

From your WordPress Admin Sidebar, navigate to Automator > Add New. Select Logged-in users in the window that appears.

Step 3: Name Your Recipe

You may want to come up with a naming convention for your recipes to make them easier to identify. A simple convention is to name the recipe based on the integrations involved and its purpose. Applying that convention to this example, we’ll name this recipe WooCommerce-ZoomMeetings: Webinar Registration.

Similarly, you can categorize your recipes to keep them organized.

Step 4: Configure Your Trigger

In the Triggers panel, select WooCommerce.

In the drop-down list that appears, select A user completes, pays for, lands on a thank you page for an order with a product.

Automator will then prompt you to select a specific trigger. i.e., one of: pays for, completes or lands on a thank you page for. For our example, pays for is a sufficient trigger. Click Save then select the product you created for your webinar and click Save once again. When you’re finished, your trigger should look like this:

Step 5: Configure Your Action(s)

In the Actions panel, click Add action then select Zoom Meetings. If you have already upgraded your Zoom account to include webinar access, you can select Zoom Webinars instead.

From the drop-down list, select Add an attendee to a meeting. The Actions panel should expand to look like this:

In the Email address field, click on the asterisk on the right-hand side and select your WooCommerce trigger.

From the drop-down list that appears, select Billing email. This is the email address to which Zoom will extend an invitation. You can repeat this step for the First name and Last name fields. Finally select your meeting or webinar in the Meeting field then click Save.

When you’re finished your action should look like this:

Step 6: Go Live!

Congratulations! You’ve just successfully completed your first Uncanny Automator recipe. All that’s left for you to do is to toggle your recipe from Draft to Live and watch your webinar become a web-sensation!

It should look like this:

Augment Your Automations

With your first recipe up and running, it’s time to start promoting your webinars and building a loyal customer base. When you’re ready, you can upgrade to Uncanny Automator Pro and unlock your full potential.

Did you know that you can record your Zoom webinars? Why not offer your recorded webinars as downloadable products in your WooCommerce store? Then send custom coupon codes exclusively to your users to encourage registration and repeat sales. With Automator Pro, it’s easier than you think.

Step 1: Create Your WooCommerce Product

From your WordPress Admin Sidebar, navigate to Products > Add New. In the Product data panel, select Virtual and Downloadable.

Configure the rest of your product details, including Sold individually under Inventory. You can create the product ahead of time then schedule a publish date by clicking Edit in the upper right-hand corner next to Publish. Whenever you’re finished recording and editing your webinar, upload it to your product in the Downloadable files field.

Step 2: Configure a New Action

From your WordPress Admin Sidebar, navigate to Automator > All Recipes and select WooCommermce-ZoomMeetings: Webinar Registration, the same recipe we created earlier.

In the Actions panel, select WooCommerce then Generate and email a coupon code to the user from the drop-down list.

Automator will then allow you to configure your coupon details, including price, product and usage restrictions.

You can use the email editor to customize your message and stay on brand.

Once you’re finished, click Save.

Step 3: Time Your Promotion

Next, you’ll want to make sure that your users only receive their coupon when it becomes relevant, i.e., after you have recorded, edited and then uploaded your webinar for purchase. To do this, Automator allows you to create delayed actions.

Hover over the three dots in your Actions panel and click Delay.

Automator will prompt you to either create a time-delay for your action or to schedule a specific day and time for the action to fire.

Once you’ve configured your time-delay, click Schedule. Lastly, toggle your recipe from Draft to Live and sit back as your memberships grow.

Now that you have Uncanny Automator Pro, you can make use of the advanced features. If you would like to open up your webinars to all of your site visitors, not just your users, you create a separate recipe for Everyone. Encourage your site guests to sign-up and become users by telling them about the great coupon that your existing users receive when they purchase a ticket to your webinar!

Make the Most of Zoom and WooCommerce with Automator

With Zoom and WooCommerce, you can sell your webinars with ease. Once you connect these tools with Automator, however, you can unlock their true potential—and your own.

How do you host and promote your webinars? What are some of the automations that would make your workflows easier? Let us know in the comments.

Until next time, happy automating!