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

The COVID-19 pandemic forced employees to work from home, however the program had to go on in some way. Overnight, videoconferencing platforms became the lifeline that held services together. Even as operations return to typical, videoconferencing companies are putting resources into their products.

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

At this moment, your organization is almost ensured to have a videoconferencing platform already. If not, or if you are wanting to alter platforms, continue checking out below for a breakdown of features and alternatives that will help you make your decision.

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

It goes without stating, if your company is currently subscribed to Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, and you more than happy with the platform, you need to use Teams or Meet respectively. If you are not registered for either and simply require a standalone videoconferencing app, Zoom has a totally free variation that needs to solve the majority of your needs.

In the areas listed below, we will compare all three major videoconferencing platforms based upon numerous metrics you must think about prior to choosing the right one for your organization.

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

Before diving into the full list of functions for each platform, it is very important to comprehend how much you obtain from the whole of what you are paying for.

Groups and Meet become part of larger performance suites, whereas Zoom is a standalone product with all the videoconferencing-specific functions you may require. While Teams and Meet can be procured independently, they are best bundled with their larger suites, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.

Case in point, a Zoom Pro subscription only gives you videoconferencing abilities. For less than Zoom Pro, the M365 Business Standard and Workspace Business memberships consist of a full suite of organization applications.

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

Teams leaps flawlessly from immediate messaging to video calls, with the ability to change back and forth between them.

Meanwhile, Google Meet is independent of Workspace's chat app, Google Chat. While users can make use of both Workspace apps all at once, the separation of the two is a bit counterintuitive.

With M365 and Teams, all chats, taped meetings, and files are all housed in the same main area, making searchability far simpler.

With Meet and Zoom, you will need 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 do not have to waste time chasing them down when you need them.

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

For example, Microsoft Sway enables you to rapidly get and trim a recorded Teams fulfilling that you can then house locally within Teams itself.

In the case that somebody arrives late to a conference, or a worker records the same conference and lets it run for hours after its conclusion, you can quickly get the part of the conference you need and wait.

This bypasses the storage that would be consumed by an hours-long video clip, along with the time it would require to submit, cut, and export said video from a video modifying platform.

Additionally, all 3 platforms do have combinations with various other company applications, so be sure to look at compatibility with any apps you currently utilize, and these platforms.

Teams vs Meet vs Zoom: Features

Comparing Free Versions vs. Paid

Microsoft, Google, and Zoom have actually all adapted well to the need for particular features on their platforms, therefore most of the exact same functions overlap across prepare for all three suites. This consists of screen sharing, video recording, live captions, and everyone's favorite: custom-made backgrounds. As for some other features, they differ across each company's offerings.

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

While present across the board, dial-in abilities differ across plans. Meet provides dial-in free of charge with any of their paid strategies, among the most significant benefits that the platform has over its competitors.

Teams uses its dial-in capability for $4 extra per user, each month; while Zoom's dial-in is toll-based.

Both Teams and Meet deal internet-based PBX solutions that can change your internal phones, while Zoom's toll-based setup is not practical.

Microsoft 365 Business Voice integrates perfectly with Teams, enabling workers to take business on the go, all with complete continuity.

Video Quality-- Who Supports the very best?

Since the time of this post, each platform displays video in HD, however the quality differs. Groups can 1080p video at 30 frames per second if you have 1.5 Mbps of bandwidth.

Zoom also has 1080p video, but it is restricted to the platform's organization or enterprise plans. 1080p can likewise be allowed by Zoom support in certain cases. Zoom's 1080p performance needs 1.8 Mbps of bandwidth for 1-on-1 calls and 2.5 Mbps on group calls.

Meet will default to 360p video, but it can send out and get approximately 720p video.

Audio quality across platforms depends on microphone and speaker quality, in addition to the quality of your web connection.

Spaces and Workspaces-- Breaking Things Down

Breakout spaces are basically meetings that run at the same time to the initial videoconference. These were particularly essential for virtual education, so instructors could break trainees out into different groups to discover.

There is a clear energy for breakout rooms in expert spaces, too. If a bigger group is fulfilling about a task, breaking down jobs into smaller groups, breakout rooms could be a terrific option.

Both Teams and Zoom have breakout rooms native to their base platforms, throughout all plans. These rooms are essentially conferences that are running concurrently to the original videoconference.

Meet enables breakout rooms through their standard and plus strategies, however not in the complimentary or standard strategies. Like a lot of Google functions on less expensive strategies, you can add Google Chrome extensions, however this could be more of a headache than it is worth in the end.

Recently, Microsoft also presented Together Mode, which utilizes AI to position video individuals in different digital settings, together. content While the utility is light, Together Mode could be a strong morale booster.

Groups vs Meet vs Zoom: Privacy and Safety

To its credit, Zoom reacted swiftly to the "Zoom bombing" of the early days of the pandemic, adding end-to-end encryption and boosting their personal privacy policy. Over 500,000 Zoom accounts were taken and posted for sale online soon afterwards.

While Meet has actually not had any famous occurrences of privacy breaches, Google has actually had lots of privacy issues and a track record of gathering data for usage in marketing.

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

All 3 platforms support two-factor authentication. Thinking about that 99% of cybersecurity attacks include a password element, two-factor authentication is a need to if you desire a genuine defense versus cybercriminals.

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

In Addition, Microsoft Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) is readily available on its Business Premium and E5 strategies, blocking possibly destructive content from being accessed by those in your company.

Microsoft likewise uses Data Loss Protection (DLP) to capture delicate information being shared (like social security numbers), and immediately obstruct it from being sent out.

Together with eDiscovery and legal holds within channels, talks, and files, Teams ensures you remain compliant with all data storage regulations.

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

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

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

Overall, Zoom has responded well to its personal privacy challenges, however the modifications are mainly cosmetic.

End-to-end file encryption (E2EE) is fantastic to have, however its addition was more of an action to an issue than a total solution. It is not likely that E2EE protects most users from more than file encryption in transit and