How To Sign Up for a Free Zoom Account and Start Your Own Zoom Meeting

Open the Zoom app on your device.

Next, click on the “Sign Up” link near the bottom to sign-up for a free account.

Note, if you already have a Zoom account, you don’t need to sign-up for another one. Just click on the “Sign in” link instead.

For age verification, Zoom will ask you for your birthdate, since their Terms of Service require that anyone who signs up for an account using this method is a minimum of 16 years of age (not applicable through a Zoom for Education account).

Enter your birthdate and click on the “Confirm” link.

Next, enter your “Email Address” in the first field.

Then, enter your “First Name” in the second field, followed by your “Last Name” in the third field.

Click on the “Sign Up” button to proceed.

Zoom will next send an “Activation Email” to confirm your email address.

Check your email and you should have an email from Zoom asking you to “activate your account”. Click on the button in the email to activate your account.

Once you click on the button, a website will open showing the below.

Fill out your First Name, Last Name and a Password you want to use for your Zoom account. It is recommended to use a unique password that is hard to guess, and is a mix of letters (uppercase and lowercase) and numbers.

Then, click on the box next to “I’m not a robot“, and then click on the “Continue” button.

On the next screen, you do not need to “invite” anyone, so just click on the “I’m not a robot” box, then click on the “Skip this Step” button.

Your Zoom account is now setup!

Let’s now go back to the Zoom app on your device.

In the Zoom app on your device, you should now see the “Sign in” window. (If you don’t, click on the “Sign In” link at the bottom of the screen).

Enter your “Email Address” that you used earlier into the box.

Next, enter your Zoom “Password” that you specified earlier into the box.

Then, click on the “Sign In” button.

You may get prompted that Zoom would like access to your Calendar (on your device), which is necessary for Zoom to make new appointments on your calendar. Click on “Ok” to allow and continue.

On Apple devices that have Face ID, you may get prompted if you want to use Face ID fo logging into the Zoom app. This will simplify the login process, so I would recommend to click on the “Yes” option.

If choosing the “Yes” option in the previous step, you might get a prompt asking permission for Zoom to use Face ID. Click on the “Ok” button to continue.

Congrats! You are now logged into your Zoom account.

From here, you can start a new meeting by clicking on the “New Meeting” option.

Or you can join an existing meeting by clicking on the “Join” option.

For our example here, we’ll start a new meeting by clicking on the “New Meeting” button.

When starting a meeting, you will be asked if you want to join with your video on. If you do, tap on the slider to “enable” that option and it will turn green. You can also skip enabling your video on this screen and you can always enable your video later.

The “Use Personal Meeting ID (PMI)” is an optional setting where you can use your unique personal meeting ID for this meeting, which is a meeting ID that is assigned to you and does not change. This is useful for when you want to keep the same meeting ID for recurring meetings (eg: a bible study, or a weekly call). If you don’t enable this option, every Zoom meeting that you start will be randomly generated, which you will need to share with anyone who you want

Next you will be asked how you would like to join the audio portion of the Zoom meeting. Click on “Wifi or Cellular Data“.

On phone devices, you may have another option, however I would still recommend using the “Wifi or Cellular Data” option.

You are now connected to your Zoom meeting.

Here you can mute/unmute, start/stop your video, see the participant screen, or any of the other features that you normally use during a Zoom meeting.

Inviting someone to join your Zoom meeting is pretty simple and can be done in just a few steps. Note: If you are using your “Personal Meeting ID (PMI)” as we discussed a few steps ago, then that is the meeting ID that you can give someone to join your meeting. If you are not using your PMI, then follow the steps below.

First, click on the “Participants” icon (1), then choose “Invite” (2).

Here you can choose how you would like to invite someone to your meeting. Using one of the methods below will send a meeting invite link which the attendee can click on (or tap on) from their own device in order to join your meeting.

You can click on “Send Email” to send a meeting invite link to someone through your email program.

Or you can click on “Send Message” to send an iMessage/Text Message with an invite link to someone.

Or you can use the “Invite Contacts” option to send a meeting invite to several of your contacts that are already in your device.

The “Copy Invite Link” will copy the invite link so that you can paste it somewhere else, in case you need to use a different option than the ones listed (eg: pasting a link into WhatsApp, etc).

Once an attendee joins your meeting, you will see them in the Gallery view (if you select that option), or under the “Participants” window.

To switch your view to the “Gallery View“, click on the icon on the left side of the screen.

In the gallery view, you will see yourself, as well as the other person(s) in your meeting.