A better room than Zoom breakouts
If you have ever spent the first ten minutes of a workshop assigning rooms, broadcasting "two minutes left" and pulling stragglers back to the main session, this page is for you. Here is the most useful thing we can offer. Not a demo. Not a trial you have to figure out alone.
Send us a session you actually have to run. We'll build it in Kolab for you.
Pick something real from your calendar. A workshop, a cohort kickoff, a strategy day, a retro. Send us the agenda and whatever boards you already have. We will build the whole thing in Kolab, walk you through it on video, and hand it over. You run it. There is no charge for the first one and no card required.
Here's exactly what happens: you send the agenda, we reply within one business day with any questions, and within about a week you get a built Kolab space plus a short video walking you through it. Then you run it, or you don't. Either way the space is yours to keep.
How Zoom breakouts actually work
Capacity is not the problem. Movement is.
Zoom breakout rooms are reliable and they scale. The friction is in how people get into them, move between them, and what gets lost along the way. Here is what Zoom's own documentation says.
100 rooms
The maximum number of breakout rooms Zoom can run at once in a meeting. Plenty of room. The question is how the facilitator sees what is happening inside them, and Zoom's answer is to join them one at a time.
Main room only
Zoom cloud recording captures the main session, not the breakouts, regardless of which room the host is in. In most workshops, that means the best conversations are the ones that go unrecorded.
App required
Self-select has to be switched on by the host, and participants who join from a browser cannot use it. In a group of forty, someone is always on the web client, so someone is always waiting to be moved.
See the difference
Fifty people into breakout groups, without clicking a thing
This is the part that is hard to explain in a comparison table. In Kolab the canvas, the video and the breakouts are the same room, so people move themselves instead of waiting to be assigned. Two minutes will tell you more than the rest of this page.
Real Kolab spaces. Participants join by link in the browser, with no account and nothing to install.
Read this part before you switch
Kolab is not a replacement for Zoom
We would rather tell you this now than have you find out three weeks in. Zoom is a meeting tool with breakouts added. Kolab is a facilitation room where moving between groups is the whole design. Plenty of teams use both, and that is usually the right answer.
Stick with Zoom if this is you
- You are running a webinar or all-hands for hundreds of people
- Many of your participants join by phone or on very weak connections
- The session is mostly presentation, with little group work
- Your organization mandates Zoom for security or compliance
- You rely on Zoom's integrations with your calendar, LMS or CRM
Look hard at Kolab if this is you
- You facilitate live, and the session is the product
- Breakouts are the core of your session, not an aside
- You run Zoom plus a whiteboard tab plus a polling tool to get through one workshop
- You run cohorts, fellowships, or programs that repeat on a cycle
- Participants get lost switching tabs, and energy drops every time they do
- You want the space to still be there between sessions, not rebuilt each time
Why people move
One room instead of four tabs
The reason facilitators end up on Kolab is rarely a feature. It is that the stack they have been holding together stops needing to be held together. Most people running live sessions are paying for a video tool, a board, a polling tool, and some workaround for breakouts, then spending the first ten minutes of every session getting forty people into the right places.
In Kolab those are one thing. The canvas is in the room with the video. Breakouts are places on a map that people walk into rather than assignments you administer. Spatial audio means a group of five can talk without anyone being muted or moved. Your agenda, timers and templates sit in the facilitator's view, not in a second window you are alt-tabbing to.
The compounding part is that spaces persist. A cohort that meets for twelve weeks comes back to the same room with last week's boards still on the wall, instead of a fresh empty link every Tuesday. If you run programs rather than one-off workshops, that is the difference that shows up in how people behave by week four.
And the prep gets shorter. 200+ templates designed to be run live, plus Kola, an AI co-facilitator that can see your canvas and help you build and adapt the session while it is happening.
Side by side
Where each one is stronger
Written as honestly as we can manage. If you spot something out of date, tell us and we will fix it.
| Kolab | Zoom breakout rooms | |
|---|---|---|
| Video | Built in. Video lives on the canvas, in the room | Best in class. Reliable at scale, with phone dial-in |
| How breakouts work | Places on a shared map. Participants walk into a group | Separate rooms. The host assigns, auto-splits, or turns on self-select |
| Moving between groups | Anyone can move at any time, like walking across a room | Only if the host enables self-select, and only from the desktop or mobile app |
| Facilitator visibility | See every group at once on the map, and drop into any of them | Host joins one room at a time to check in |
| Spatial audio and mingling | Yes. Small conversations happen without anyone being moved or muted | No. Everyone in a room hears everyone in that room |
| Shared canvas | The canvas is the room, so work from every group is visible when you come back together | Zoom Whiteboard, or a Miro or Mural board in another tab |
| Facilitator controls | Agenda, timers, presence signals and pulling everyone to a board, in a dedicated facilitator view | Broadcast messages, timers and closing all rooms at once |
| Between sessions | Spaces persist. A cohort comes back to last week's boards still on the wall | Each meeting starts fresh |
| Scale | Designed for interactive groups. Standard session price covers up to 50 participants | Hundreds to thousands in meetings and webinars |
| Pricing model | $499 per session, or from $5,000 per year per program. Participants are never a seat | Per host license. Most organizations already have one |
Trying it without disruption
You do not have to cancel Zoom
Most teams keep Zoom for the webinar and the all-staff call. What moves is the interactive part: the workshop, the cohort session, the strategy day. Here is how that usually goes.
Pick one session where breakouts matter
The one where you currently spend ten minutes assigning rooms and broadcasting time warnings. That is the fairest test.
Send one link
Participants join Kolab in the browser with no app, no account and no version check, which removes the thing that most often breaks Zoom self-select.
We build it with you
Send the agenda and we build the space, breakout areas and boards included, as part of the free session build. You run it.
Testimonials
What our users say
For organizations, not just individual facilitators
Running programs on Zoom across your organization?
Different conversation, and worth having properly. Most program teams do not need to replace their Zoom license. What they need is a better room for the sessions where participants are supposed to talk to each other: cohort calls, peer learning circles, trainings and strategy days. That is where Kolab fits, priced per program so it matches how grant funded teams actually budget.
Priced per program, not per seat
Grant and program funded teams budget by program. Our organizational pricing is built to match how the money actually arrives.
Security review, handled
We have a data protection and privacy overview written for IT and procurement, ready to send the day you ask for it.
We build your first program with you
Not a sandbox login. We design and build one real program cycle alongside your team so you are evaluating the actual thing.
Trusted by teams worldwide
Got it. We're on this.
Someone from our team will reply within one business day to ask any questions we need, then we'll get building. In the meantime, the easiest way to feel how a Kolab session actually runs is to sit in on one: see what's coming up.
Not ready to hand over a session yet?
Fair enough. Come sit in on a live one instead. We run open sessions for facilitators most weeks, you join as a participant, and you get to feel how a Kolab room actually works with no sales conversation attached. It is the lowest commitment way to answer the only question that matters.
Questions we get from people making this decision
Also comparing: Miro · Mural · Butter
What does Kolab cost?
A single standalone session is $499 for up to 50 participants, no subscription. Programs and cohorts start at $5,000 a year on our founding rate, with unlimited participants. Full details on the pricing page. Participants are never a seat, which is the main difference from per member pricing.
Do I have to stop using Zoom?
No. Most teams keep Zoom for webinars and all-hands and run their interactive sessions in Kolab. Try one alongside what you use now, then decide. Switching tools is a decision worth making after you have felt the difference, not before.
Do my participants need accounts?
No. They join by link, in the browser, with nothing to install. That matters when you are facilitating for an org whose IT team blocks new software.
What about participants with weak internet?
Honest answer: Zoom is more forgiving on poor connections and offers phone dial-in, which Kolab does not. Kolab runs in the browser with nothing to install, which removes a different barrier, the IT block on new apps. If a large share of your participants join by phone, keep Zoom for those sessions.
I came from Butter. Is this the same thing?
Not the same, but you will recognize the DNA. Several of the facilitators in our network ran their practices on Butter and now help shape Kolab. If you want to talk to one of them before you talk to us, say so in the form and we will connect you.
What about security and data protection?
We have a security and privacy overview you can send to your IT or procurement team. Ask for it in the form, or read the summary at getkolab.ai/security.