Zoora versus BigBlueButton
BigBlueButton is an open-source conferencing server that you install and maintain yourself. Zoora is a ready-made online classroom system that brings live classes, quizzes, assignments, and gradebooks together, and the upkeep is ours. This page explains the difference between the two choices without overselling either.
Where BigBlueButton is the right call
If you have an infrastructure person, someone who knows Linux, watches the server, and keeps upgrades moving, and your internal rules say the data has to stay on your own hardware, then BigBlueButton is the right choice and you should not come to us. It is mature software, it ships under LGPL version 3, it costs nothing to license, and no vendor can take it away from you. And if your Moodle genuinely works and only the live class is weak, adding a BigBlueButton server is cheaper and less painful than moving everything. Zoora is for the school that does not have that person and does not want to.
| Zoora | BigBlueButtonBigBlueButton | |
|---|---|---|
| What the product is | ZooraA ready-made system for schools: live classes, quizzes, assignments, gradebooks, messaging, and files in one account and under one username. | BigBlueButtonAn open-source conferencing server. It delivers the live class in full and at good quality. Lessons, grades, and exams are the job of Moodle or another system you put next to it. |
| Setup | ZooraYour school's space is created on your own subdomain in a few minutes. You buy no server and install nothing. | BigBlueButtonPer the official install docs: a dedicated Ubuntu 22.04 server with 8 CPU cores, 16 GB of RAM, and 500 GB of disk for recordings, plus a domain, an SSL certificate, and IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. The server has to be used for nothing else. |
| Live class | ZooraVideo and audio, screen sharing, a shared whiteboard, slide and PDF upload, polls, raise hand, Q&A separate from chat, host and presenter roles, mute, and remove. | BigBlueButtonIt has all of these, and is ahead in two places: breakout rooms and an infinite whiteboard. Zoora has no breakout rooms yet. |
| Quizzes and anti-cheating | ZooraGraded quizzes with a question bank. Question and option order is shuffled per student on the server, the question itself arrives as a noisy image, and the time limit, negative marking, and no going back to a previous question are enforced server-side as well. Leaving the page, unusually fast answers, and several students signing in from one location are only reported, not blocked. | BigBlueButtonIt has no graded quiz of its own. The version 3 quiz is a short check inside the meeting and does not connect to a gradebook. The real exam is run in Moodle: Moodle shuffles questions and options and sets time limits, but rendering the question as an image and getting one report of the cheating signals in one place is something you have to put together yourself. |
| Gradebook, assignments, and attendance | ZooraAttendance fills in automatically from how long each person stayed in the room, and quiz and assignment scores land in that class's own gradebook. A written answer can also get a suggested AI score, but the teacher's grade always has the last word. | BigBlueButtonThe learning analytics dashboard shows each person's time in the room and their participation for that one session and exports to CSV, but it keeps nothing between sessions. Gradebooks and assignments are Moodle's job. It is doable, but with plugins and a bit of integration work. |
| Messaging and announcements | ZooraGroups, channels, and private messages outside class hours, with mentions, pinning, and search. Announcements also go out over Telegram, Bale, SMS, and browser notifications, with delivery reports. | BigBlueButtonIt has public and private chat inside the meeting, and version 3 added editing and reactions. There is no chat outside the meeting, and to reach families by SMS or an Iranian messenger you have to provide that tooling somewhere else. |
| Connecting to other systems | ZooraIt has connectors for Telegram, Bale, SMS, and notifications, and reads users, classes, and class enrollment from an Excel file. There is no LTI and it does not embed inside Moodle. Zoora takes the place of the learning system itself. | BigBlueButtonThis is its strong point. A Moodle plugin (in Moodle core since Moodle 4, switched off by default) and LTI support that connects it to any compatible system once you install two separate components on the server. |
| Scale, upkeep, and upgrades | ZooraOurs. Updates happen without you, and your plan sets the live class capacity and how many classes can run at the same time. | BigBlueButtonEach server carries around 200 concurrent users. More than that means Scalelite and a cluster: a load balancer, a database, Redis, at least three conferencing servers, and shared storage for the recordings. For moving to the next major version, the docs themselves recommend installing on a fresh server and migrating the recordings across. |
| Persian, right-to-left, and the calendar | ZooraWritten in Persian and right-to-left from the ground up, with the Jalali calendar and Persian digits on every page. | BigBlueButtonThe BigBlueButton interface has Persian too, it is translated into more than fifty languages, and it supports right-to-left. The weak link is the Moodle layer: Moodle's Persian language pack is about two thirds translated and the rest of the strings stay in English. |
A ready-made system versus a stack you assemble yourself
One system, or a stack you assemble yourself
BigBlueButton has never claimed to be a learning management system. It is a live class engine and it does that one job well. Which means lessons, enrollment, the question bank, gradebooks, and assignments all have to come from Moodle, while Greenlight, the project's own simple front end, only creates accounts and rooms and has no lessons or grades in it. What you buy, or build, is in practice BigBlueButton plus Moodle plus the glue between the two: two systems, two user lists, and two update schedules. Zoora is one system from the start, so classes, quizzes, and grades have no seam to fall through.
The real cost of ownership
BigBlueButton's license is free, but the license is not the part that costs money. A dedicated server for every 200 or so concurrent users, a large disk for the recordings, recording processing that wants a quarter to half of the session length in CPU time, an SSL certificate and monitoring, and for every new major version a fresh server and a recording migration. On top of all of that you have to pay someone to do this work. If you have that person, we will say it plainly: at large scale, the per-head cost of self-hosting can come out below any subscription. But if a teacher is meant to do these jobs after class, that is the most expensive option there is. Zoora's cost is a single monthly number you know in advance.
Quizzes: what is enforced and what is only reported
No system, not Zoora and not any other, can say it has stopped cheating. Here is what Zoora enforces on the server, where it cannot be worked around: question and option order differs for every student, the text of the question is never sent to the browser at all and arrives as a noisy image, and the time limit and negative marking are applied server-side. Against that, leaving the page, unusually fast answers, and several students signing in from one location are only signals, and they are reported to the teacher. The decision stays with the teacher. With BigBlueButton this discussion is not on the table at all, because graded quizzes are not part of its job and the exam has to be run in Moodle. There you get question shuffling and time limits, but the rest you have to put together yourself.
Persian, not translated
Fairness demands that we say here that BigBlueButton has a good Persian translation and that right-to-left works in it. The interface is not the problem. The rest of the road is: Moodle's Persian pack stays incomplete, the documentation and the support forum are in English, the Jalali calendar needs arranging for, and paying a foreign host from Iran is not simple. Hosting outside Iran also adds latency to the class for a student inside Iran. Zoora is built for Iran and hosted in Iran, the dates are Jalali, the digits are Persian, and support answers in Persian during your own working hours.
Moving from BigBlueButton and Moodle
A move does not happen in one night, and it does not need to. The path that works is to run one term in parallel and then retire the old server.
- 1
List what actually gets used: which classes hold their sessions on the server, how many recordings you have and how much space they take, and what Moodle does for you beyond quizzes and grades.
- 2
Export the users and classes from Moodle to Excel and import them into Zoora. Zoora reads users, classes, and class enrollment from an xlsx file, and for every row with a problem it hands you a result file with the reason.
- 3
Set up the roles: manager, teacher, and student are ready from the start, and you can build a custom role if you need one, such as a colleague who only writes quizzes or only sees the gradebook.
- 4
Build the question bank. Zoora does not read Moodle quiz files. Either you enter the questions yourself, or you hand over a PDF handout and the questions are drafted for you to approve or correct.
- 5
Run one real class on Zoora for a term, with one full quiz with the anti-cheating measures on and one assignment, and keep the BigBlueButton server running for that whole time so the way back stays open.
- 6
Pull the recordings you still need off the old server and put them in the school's files or in an offline class. The rest can stay on that server under your own policy until it is decommissioned.
- 7
After the trial term, train the teachers, connect announcements to Telegram or Bale and SMS, and then shut the server down. Before you do, keep an archive copy of the recordings and the Moodle database.
Run one real class on Zoora
Book a free demo and hold one real session and one real quiz with Zoora. If you conclude afterward that your own server does the job, that is the right answer. At least you will have decided with numbers and experience behind you.
09999931289Common questions about Zoora and BigBlueButton
Because the part that costs money is not the license, it is setup and upkeep: a dedicated server for every 200 or so concurrent users, disk and processing for the recordings, an SSL certificate, monitoring, and a fresh server for every new major version. If you have an infrastructure specialist, all of this is doable and may well come out cheaper for you. If you do not, you pay for it in teachers' time and half-finished classes.
Zoora is built for Iran and hosted in Iran. Files and recordings stay in the school's own storage space and are seen only by the people you have given access to. Session recordings are kept for up to 365 days depending on the plan. There is one exception: if you turn on the AI features, the text of questions and answers goes to an outside service for processing, and that service may be outside Iran. Turning it on is entirely optional. Zoora is not installed on your own server. If your rules say the data must not leave your own rack, the right answer is self-hosted BigBlueButton.
If your Moodle genuinely works, with structured courses, standards-based content, and plugins you depend on, and only the live class is weak, it is reasonable to keep Moodle and put BigBlueButton next to it. Zoora does not connect to Moodle over LTI and is not meant to sit underneath it. But most of the schools we see use Moodle for nothing but quizzes and the gradebook. In that case Zoora takes the place of both systems and needs one server and one admin less.
No, not yet, and this is one of the places where BigBlueButton is ahead. If group work in the middle of class is an inseparable part of how you teach, that one thing can be reason enough to stay. What you can do today is create parallel sessions for the groups and carry the group conversation on in Zoora's messenger.
Creating the school's space and the first class takes a few minutes. Importing users and classes from an Excel file usually takes an afternoon. What really takes time is the question bank and the teachers' habits. That is why what we suggest is one term in parallel, not one night. We work through the data import and the teacher training with you.
Run your next class on Zoora
Take a short demo and see how it handles your own classes.
Book a free demo