Both Zotero Lab and Zotero Institution subscriptions provide members of your organization with unlimited personal and group cloud storage.

Zotero Institution subscriptions are designed for larger organizations where a significant number of users are expected to use Zotero. It will automatically provide any Zotero user with a verified email address from your institution's domain with unlimited storage, with no management of specific users necessary. The price is based on the total number of full time equivalent (FTE) employees or students in your organization. They are priced at a very large discount compared to our other plans, as we know that likely only a minority of people at a large institution would be Zotero users.

Zotero Lab subscriptions work best when you have a smaller number of users you know will be using Zotero. These are managed using a simple interface to maintain a list of the email addresses for users that should be provided storage.

We have a page explaining why we believe people should choose Zotero over similar tools. A Zotero Institution subscription allows everyone at your institution to use Zotero without limitations, helping individuals better manage their research and encouraging greater collaboration via group libraries. Finally, in addition to providing value for your users, purchasing a Zotero Institution subscription supports the continued development, maintenance, support, and infrastructure costs for all of Zotero’s free software and services, which benefits the global academic and research community, including many people for whom commercial tools are out of reach.

When you first purchase your Lab subscription, you'll see a link to manage the subscription.

From then on, when you're logged in to the Zotero account that manages a Zotero Lab subscription, you'll have a link in your storage settings to “Manage storage for <Lab Name>”. That link will take you to the management interface show here where you can maintain the list of emails that should be provided storage, as well as change the lab's name and renew your subscription when it expires.

All Zotero user accounts are registered the same way on zotero.org. Users can bring Zotero accounts that they already have, as well as keep the Zotero account and their data after your subscription ends or they leave your institution.

Users can add additional email addresses to their Zotero account at any time from their account settings. If any of their verified email addresses are covered by a Zotero Institution subscription, they will see unlimited storage reflected in their storage settings.

There is no need for an organization to remove users. Since Zotero Institution subscriptions are priced based on the total FTE of the organization, there is no cost to the organization to leave users covered until they are removed.

We may periodically require users benefiting from a Zotero Institution’s unlimited storage to re-verify their email address.

There is no management required for Zotero Institution subscriptions. Once the subscription is activated, any Zotero user with a qualifying email address associated with their account will then see that they have Unlimited storage provided by your organization in their storage settings on zotero.org.

Unless specified, all subdomains are automatically included with your domain. For example, student1@dept.university.edu is included under the university.edu email domain.

If any of your users registered with a different email address, they can add their institutional address to their account when they're logged in at https://www.zotero.org/settings/account and the unlimited storage will be applied to their account.

Each Zotero account belongs to the user that registered it, and is covered by our Terms of Service and Privacy policy, even if it has storage supplemented by a Zotero Lab or Institution subscription. In accordance with our privacy policy, we do not share any information on specific users.

Zotero Lab and Institution subscriptions are not automatically renewed.

Zotero Lab subscriptions can be renewed from the management interface using a credit or debit card. If you have a Zotero Lab subscription and can’t pay by card, you can email storage@zotero.org to request an invoice that can be paid by bank transfer.

For convenience, Zotero Institution subscribers will be sent an invoice each year that can be paid by card or bank transfer. This does not obligate your organization to continue your subscription.

Zotero Institution subscriptions are designed to be seamless and require no management. We can always answer questions about your subscription by email at storage@zotero.org. For Zotero support generally, we provide the same world-class level of support to all users.

If your institution already has a Zotero subscription, all you need to do to qualify is add your institutional email address to your Zotero account from your account settings. If your institution already has a subscription, you'll see that you have unlimited storage in your storage settings with a note that “<Institution Name> provides unlimited storage for <qualifying email address>”.

Otherwise, you can let your university library or other appropriate contact know that you would benefit if they purchased a subscription and they can get in contact with us if they're interested.

A Zotero user can keep their account regardless of changes to institutional affiliation. Users should make sure they have a personal email address associated with their Zotero account so they can access it even if they lose access to their institutional email address. Additional emails can always be added from their Zotero account settings.

If a subscription expires or a user is no longer covered by their institution's subscription, their storage subscription will revert to their previous personal storage subscription or the free storage level. The user can either purchase a personal storage subscription to fit their needs, or stay at the free level.

A Zotero user can always download all of their files to their computer to maintain access on their device by setting their Zotero application to “Download files at sync time” in their sync preferences and making sure a sync completes without errors. After downloading all their files, if a user does not want a storage subscription to cover cloud storage, they can disable file syncing in their sync preferences to prevent ongoing errors while still syncing metadata for free.