Managed IT Support Microsoft Teams vs Google Meet vs Zoom: The Conclusive Videoconferencing Battle

The COVID-19 pandemic forced employees to work from house, however the program had to go on in some way. Overnight, videoconferencing platforms turned into the lifeline that held businesses together. Even as operations go back to regular, videoconferencing service providers are putting resources into their items.

The two primary partnership suites, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace deal videoconferencing abilities, however we would be remiss not to include one of the most popular videoconferencing apps in the market today-- Zoom.

At this point, your business is almost guaranteed to have a videoconferencing platform already. If not, or if you are wanting to alter platforms, continue checking out listed below for a breakdown of functions and choices that will assist you make your decision.

Are your conferences long or short? Are you mostly meeting internally or with leads and customers? Will you be hosting webinars?

It goes without saying, if your company is currently subscribed to Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, and you more than happy with the platform, you ought to utilize Teams or Meet respectively. If you are not subscribed to either and simply need a standalone videoconferencing app, Zoom has a free version that needs to fix the majority of your needs.

In the sections listed below, we will compare all 3 major videoconferencing platforms based upon numerous metrics you should consider before selecting the right one for your organization.

Groups vs Meet vs Zoom: Integration with your other apps/services

Before diving into the full list of features for each platform, it is essential to comprehend just how much you receive from the entirety of what you are paying for.

Groups and Meet belong to larger productivity suites, whereas Zoom is a standalone product with all the videoconferencing-specific features you might need. While Teams and Meet can be acquired individually, they are best bundled with their bigger suites, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.

Case in point, a Zoom Pro membership only gives you videoconferencing capabilities. For less than Zoom Pro, the M365 Business Standard and Workspace Business memberships include a full suite of company applications.

With Microsoft 365, you get a completely integrated experience with desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more. The most significant selling point of Microsoft is how quickly the apps work with each other, and the greatest distinction in between Teams and its competitors is how centralized the suite is.

Groups jumps effortlessly from instant messaging to video calls, with the capability to switch back and forth in between them.

Google Meet is independent of Workspace's chat app, Google Chat. While users can make use of both Workspace apps concurrently, the separation of the 2 is a bit counterintuitive.

With M365 and Teams, all chats, recorded meetings, and files are all housed in the same main location, making searchability far much easier.

With Meet and Zoom, you will have to look for saved chats from old conferences, or in the case of Meet, head over to Google Chat.

This is also the case when working on collaborative files. Any files connected in a Teams chat will appear under its files tab at the top of the window, indicating you don't have to lose time chasing them down when you need them.

Microsoft offers a lot more applications in their plans than Google, however numerous go unnoticed.

For example, Microsoft Sway permits you to rapidly get and cut a taped Teams meeting that you can then house in your area within Teams itself.

In the event that somebody gets here late to a conference, or a staff member records the same meeting and lets it run for hours after its conclusion, you can rapidly grab the part of the meeting you require and wait.

This bypasses the storage that would be eaten up by business it support an hours-long video, as well as the time it would require to submit, trim, and export stated video from a video modifying platform.

In addition, all 3 platforms do have integrations with different other organization applications, so make sure to check on compatibility with any apps you already use, and these platforms.

Groups vs Meet vs Zoom: Features

Comparing Free Versions vs. Paid

Microsoft, Google, and Zoom have actually all adjusted well to the need for particular functions on their platforms, therefore the majority of the exact same features overlap across plans for all 3 suites. This includes screen sharing, video recording, live captions, and everyone's favorite: custom backgrounds. When it comes to some other features, they differ across each business's offerings.

A table portraying the different plans and features of Microsoft Teams vs. Google Meet vs. Zoom Audio Conferencing On-the-Go

While present across the board, dial-in capabilities vary across plans. Meet provides dial-in for free with any of their paid plans, among the greatest benefits that the platform has over its competitors.

Groups uses its dial-in ability for $4 additional per user, each month; while Zoom's dial-in is toll-based.

Both Teams and Meet offer internet-based PBX services that can replace your in-house phones, while Zoom's toll-based setup is not practical.

Microsoft 365 Business Voice integrates perfectly with Teams, allowing employees to take company on the go, all with complete connection.

Video Quality-- Who Supports the Best?

As of the time of this post, each platform shows video in HD, however the quality varies. Teams is capable of 1080p video at 30 frames per 2nd if you have 1.5 Mbps of bandwidth.

Zoom likewise has 1080p video, however it is limited to the platform's business or enterprise strategies. 1080p can likewise be enabled by Zoom assistance in particular cases. Zoom's 1080p performance requires 1.8 Mbps of bandwidth for 1-on-1 calls and 2.5 Mbps on group calls.

Meet will default to 360p video, however it can send out and receive as much as 720p video.

Audio quality throughout platforms depends on microphone and speaker quality, as well as the quality of your internet connection.

Spaces and Workspaces-- Breaking Things Down

Breakout spaces are essentially conferences that run at the same time to the initial videoconference. These were specifically required for virtual education, so teachers might break students out into different groups to discover.

There is a clear utility for breakout rooms in professional spaces, too. If a bigger group is satisfying about a job, breaking down tasks into smaller sized groups, breakout rooms might be a fantastic option.

Both Teams and Zoom have actually breakout spaces native to their base platforms, throughout all plans. These spaces are basically conferences that are running all at once to the initial videoconference.

Meet enables breakout spaces through their standard and plus strategies, but not in the totally free or basic strategies. Like a lot of Google functions on more affordable plans, you can include Google Chrome extensions, however this might be more of a headache than it is worth in the end.

Recently, Microsoft also rolled out Together Mode, which uses AI to position video individuals in numerous digital settings, together. While the energy is light, Together Mode could be a strong spirits booster.

Groups vs Meet vs Zoom: Privacy and Safety

To its credit, Zoom responded quickly to the "Zoom battle" of the early days of the pandemic, adding end-to-end file encryption and boosting their personal privacy policy. Sadly, over 500,000 Zoom accounts were taken and posted for sale online soon afterwards.

While Meet has not had any popular events of personal privacy breaches, Google has actually had plenty of personal privacy issues and a track record of collecting information for use in advertising.

Microsoft has the best performance history of security and they also have the most transparent privacy policy.

All three platforms support two-factor authentication. Thinking about that 99% of cybersecurity attacks involve a password aspect, two-factor authentication is a need to if you want a legitimate defense against cybercriminals.

As a part of the larger M365 suite, all chats, notes, and files are secured and saved within OneNote and SharePoint, respectively.

Furthermore, Microsoft Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) is offered on its Business Premium and E5 strategies, obstructing potentially harmful content from being accessed by those in your business.

Microsoft also uses Data Loss Protection (DLP) to catch sensitive information being shared (like social security numbers), and automatically block it from being sent out.

Along with eDiscovery and legal holds within channels, chats, and files, Teams ensures you remain certified with all information storage guidelines.

A graphic showing the path of information as it is secured from Microsoft Teams through Microsoft 365.

Google does provide eDiscovery in their Business and Enterprise strategies and DLP in their Enterprise strategy only, but these are only restricted to Drive and Gmail. From what we can see Meet has actually no particularly listed DLP abilities.

Zoom does not offer any of these features on its primary platform.

In general, Zoom has reacted well to its personal privacy difficulties, but the changes are largely cosmetic.

End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is excellent to have, but its addition was more of a response to a problem than a complete option. It is not likely that E2EE protects most users from