Chances are you use video calling regularly for business meetings, online classes, gym sessions, or similar cases. Video call applications have become a substantial part of our lives, some of these are Skype, Google Meets, Whatsapp, and Facebook Messenger (to name a few), but there’s one that stands out above the rest: Zoom.
Zoom continues to leverage its tools to become, in several countries where quarantine is mandatory, the favourite teleworking program along with virtual school classes. Since its popularity grew, its competitors have been correcting and increasing their various tools to increase the interactivity between calls, video conferences, and every video call. In this article, we will analyze only a few platforms that are compatible with all types of devices to make a fair analysis.
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Facebook Messenger
The first company to react to Zoom’s peak usage was Facebook. They have launched a platform so you can make a video call with up to 50 people, even associating it to your WhatsApp or Instagram account so you don’t miss any conversation.
Messenger users can create a video chat through the Messenger app and invite 50 people to join the call, even if they don’t have a Facebook account. It’s free, it’s extremely easy to integrate and share, and there is no time limit for the calls.
Although Zoom was primarily created for businesses, the most frequent users were customers during the pandemic. Whereas Messenger is firmly aimed at customers who want to connect with their friends and family. Still, this app has features like screen sharing, scheduling a meeting and seeing all participants in a grid view, opening a room for a specific group of people, or an entire list of friends. So anyone can join at any time.
Google Meets
Google did not want to be left behind and fancied its platform to be the most used on the internet. Meets is a platform to create virtual meetings with a capacity of up to 100 members per video call, just like Zoom. Meets also proposes the option to raise your hand on a call and best of all: adding subtitles to participants speaking in other languages.
The Pro version of Zoom permits up to 1000 participants. On the other hand, the Enterprise version of Google Meets only permits up to 250 simultaneous participants. Because it is a practically similar service, it would be worth thinking about which is more convenient concerning the price and the activity to be carried out with the platform of your choice.
The biggest reference for Google Meets is, without a doubt, Zoom. The great improvements they have developed are features that originally could only be found in Zoom, such as polls, gallery view among all participants, and even filters for the background of each user in the video call.
Zoom presents many interesting integrations with Salesforce, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, Skype for Businesses Facebook Workplace, and more. While Google Meet makes integration with Google services a bit easier, Zoom concedes that and many more integrations.
Skype
Skype supplies video calls and instant chats. The application is compatible with all devices, as is Zoom. It offers multiple subscription plans and provides the option to call a cell phone or even a landline. Otherwise, it is free to use. Skype can handle up to 50 people on a single video call, which can be useful for business meetings.
If you’re looking for a quick way to conduct your educational/small business video meeting, or if you want to chat with friends, Skype is a good choice. But remember that Zoom is better suited for small and large business scale meetings due to its generous number of participants, business features such as meeting scheduling, third-party integrations, and webinar tools.
In the end, both Zoom and Skype are excellent platforms for video conferencing. With their comparable tools, features, and reliability, it is difficult to choose one of them as the best video call application.
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams grew very quickly as working remotely became indispensable. They added a lot of functionalities to Teams, which makes it an all-in-one application, beyond what you have seen in Zoom and other video call applications. This makes Teams an interesting competitor to Zoom. The virtual calling feature is only a small part of their architecture. They have chats, groups, calls, file storage, calendar, etc.
Teams supports up to 100 participants for one hour. Zoom on the other hand lets you support up to 100 participants for 40 minutes if you use their basic package of services.
Their free service does not authorize you to record virtual meetings. But Zoom authorizes you to do so by storing your recordings locally. If you have a paid plan, your recordings will be stored in the cloud, which is an attractive choice for the user’s wallet.
How is Zoom different from its competitors?
According to some of its users, Zoom’s simplicity and speed in organizing meetings are some of its strong points. In addition, they point out the large number of components that its free version allows, being able to bring together up to 100 video conferencing participants at the same time. This makes joining a videoconference or video call room very simple and intuitive.
Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications. It has an easy and reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, collaboration and chats. As well as webinars on mobile devices, desktops, phones, and room systems.
Worldwide video call traffic has been boosted by the pandemic. Zoom has thus positioned itself as the most widely used worldwide. Major technology companies such as Facebook and Google began to develop different strategies to try to dethrone the platform. And they continue using it as a primary reference to enhance their products.
After all that has been said, why would you think Zoom is the best app overall among its competitors? Or do you think other apps surpass Zoom’s services?
For Zoom and other calling platforms to work at 100%, you must have your computer in perfect shape. Check out some recommendations in this article.
