Free for everyone

We're making it easier for everyone to collaborate with each other by offering free basic meetings to all organizations, no matter what type of subscription you have. When you sign in to Control Hub, you can click on the Learn more link in the New offers card to get started on how to set up basic meetings licenses for your organization.

Basic Meetings card in Control Hub's overview page

You can also navigate to the New offers page by selecting Account > New offers.

Basic Meetings in New Offers page

Differences between paid meetings vs basic meetings

Users that only have a basic meetings license enjoy the same in-meeting experience and capabilities as users who have a Free Webex plan. For example, during a basic meeting, a pop-up window will let participants know that there are five minutes left before the meeting reaches the time limit.

Pop-up warning when a basic meeting is about to end

The following table outlines the features available for basic meetings and how it differs from paid meetings.

FeatureBasic meetingsPaid meetings
Meeting duration limit40 minutes per meeting. Meetings automatically end at 40 minutes.24 hours
Meetings participant limit1001000
Webinar participant limit Unavailable N/A5000
Webinar 10k+ Unavailable N/A Available Add-on purchase
Local recording Available Available Available Available
Cloud recording Unavailable N/A Available Available
File transfer Unavailable N/A Available Available
Join before host Unavailable N/A Available Available
Schedule on behalf Unavailable N/A Available Available
Alternate host/co-host Available Available (Unavailable N/A for online meeting sites) Available Available
PMR link change Available Available Available Available
Lock room setting Available Available Available Available
Schedule PMR (calendar plugin) Available Available Available Available
Webex Assistant for Meetings Unavailable N/A Available Available
Closed captioning Unavailable N/A Available Available
Toll dial-in Unavailable N/A Available Add-on purchase
Included NBR storage Unavailable N/A Available Available
NBR storage overage Unavailable N/A Available Available
Retention period for NBR Unavailable N/A Available 1 year standard. 10 years with Pro Pack.
Real-time translation Unavailable N/A Available Add-on purchase
Simultaneous interpretation Unavailable N/A Available Add-on purchase

Basic meetings is a great way to let users try out what the Webex Meetings experience is like. If your users would like to experience all the advanced features, you can assign them a paid license if your organization has a Webex Meetings subscription.

Users can also talk to their admins to see if they can get a paid meetings license if they find that they're enjoying what Webex Meetings has to offer for them.

Admin experience in Control Hub

Organization with a Webex Meetings subscription

Basic meetings is automatically included in all available enterprise Webex Meetings site URL. Step 1 shows you the site URLs that now support basic meetings.

Webex Online meeting sites (e.g. sitename.my.webex.com) don't support Basic Meetings.

You can choose to assign those licenses:

Existing organization without a Webex Meetings subscription

If your organization doesn't have a Webex Meetings site URL yet, then you can create a URL in Control Hub. After you create the site URL, continue following the steps to assign basic meetings licenses to your users.

Creating a new Webex Meetings URL for Basic Meetings

New organization without a Webex Meetings subscription

When you first provision a new subscription that doesn't include a Webex Meetings subscription, you'll have an additional setup flow to create a Webex Meetings site URL. This is because basic meetings is now included for free in all subscriptions. Once you set up the site URL, you can start assigning basic meetings to your users so they can see what Webex Meetings is like.

Sites with only Basic Meetings can't be deleted. You can set up a license template if you want to manage access on who receives a Basic Meetings license.

Admin experience in Site Administration

Basic meetings is also available to all enterprise Webex Meetings URL in Site Administration.

Webex Online meeting sites (e.g. sitename.my.webex.com) don't support Basic Meetings.

To assign a basic meetings license to a new user:

  1. Sign in to Webex Site Administration and go to Users > Add User.
  2. Under Account Information, check the Basic box next to License type.
Basic meetings license in Site Admin.

Basic and Advanced Space Meetings are going away

With Basic Meetings now available for all organizations, Basic Space Meetings and Advanced Space Meetings will be removed from Control Hub to streamline the meeting experience. An obsoleted tag next to both licenses show that admins should assign Basic Meetings or Webex Meetings Suite licenses to all users going forward.

License assignment window showing Basic Space Meetings with obsoleted tag in Control Hub

Frequently asked questions

Q. What happens to recurring meetings if my organization's paid Webex Meetings subscription expires? And what happens when I renew my subscription?

A. Users who have recurring meetings set up already will still be able to host those meetings, but will downgrade to only support features in Basic Meetings, such as a time limit of 40 minutes. Once the subscription is resumed or renewed, users will return to hosting the full-featured Webex Meetings as they did before.

Q. Can I schedule Webex Webinars with a Basic Meetings license?

A. Webex Webinars isn't included with a Basic Meetings license.

Q. How can I turn on Basic Meetings for my existing Webex Meetings URLs?

A. All Webex Meetings URLs support Basic Meetings by default. You can see an additional license for Basic Meetings next to your URL when assigning licenses to your users.

Q. Can I assign Basic Meetings licenses to users outside my organization?

A. No. You must claim the users into your organization to assign Basic Meetings licenses.

Q. What is the difference between Basic Meetings license and Basic Space Meetings license? And why is Basic Space Meetings marked as "obsoleted"?

A. Please see this article for more details.

Q. Can I assign both a Basic Meetings license and a Webex Meetings Suite license to the same user?

A. Yes. When you assign both of these licenses to a user, then meetings hosted by that user will have all the full features of Webex Meetings.

Q. I don’t currently have Webex Meetings for my organization. How do I get access to Basic Meetings?

A. Sign in to Control Hub at admin.webex.com and click on New Offers on the Overview page (see the screenshots in the beginning of this article). You can get a Webex Meetings URL by clicking on Create a URL in that section.

Q. Do users with a Basic Meetings license get sent a special welcome email?

A. Users only get one welcome email from Control Hub, and that's when they're first created. After that, no new emails are sent out to existing users whenever they're assigned with a license. You can notify existing users with your own emails after you've assigned them with a Basic Meetings license.

Q. Is Basic Meetings included in partner-led trials?

A. No, Basic Meetings isn't included in partner-led trials. Basic Meetings will be available once the customer purchases a paid subscription.

Q. If I don't want to assign Basic Meetings licenses to users, what's the best way to do that?

A. You can use groups- or organization-based templates and uncheck the Basic Meetings option.

If you plan to use group-based license templates to not license users with Basic Meetings, make sure to also uncheck the Preserve licenses when a user transfers to another group setting.Preserve licenses setting for group-based templates in Control Hub