Have a hard time choosing between Zoom and Microsoft Teams for your video conferencing needs?
Managing a remote team can be difficult without a proper communication tool. That’s why you need a good video conferencing platform to help your teams communicate and collaborate, ensuring a smooth workflow for optimal productivity.
But, which is the right tool for your organization?
In this article, we give you a detailed comparison of two leading video conferencing platforms - Zoom and Microsoft Teams, including their prices, features, security, user-friendliness, integrations, plus many more, to help you determine the best fit for your needs.
Let’s get started, shall we?
Zoom is a cloud-based unified video communications platform that allows audio and video conferencing, webinars, and chat functionality, among other things. It comes with an easy-to-use interface making it great even for novice users.
Microsoft Teams is a Microsoft 365/ office 365 team collaboration software that serves as a primary center for workplace interactions, collaborative teamwork, video conferencing, and document sharing in one unified set of tools. It also has a mobile app allowing users to access and work anywhere.
There are no major differences in terms of core collaboration features for Zoom and Microsoft Teams as shown in the table below. Both have video and video conferencing, whiteboard, screen sharing, customized background, etc. Though Zoom is better for external meetings and Teams excels in internal meetings.
The table above gives you a quick glimpse of what Zoom and Teams offer as video conferencing platforms. The following is, however, an in-depth analysis of the various aspects of both, including their similarities and differences to enable you to pick your best fit.
Teams limit you to 300 viewers per meeting (100 for free accounts), but Microsoft 365 members can have up to 10,000 view-only participants.
Zoom Meetings’ free plan allows you to start video calls with up to 100 participants, but paying up can get that number up to 300. If you have a large company, you can purchase a Large Meeting license to increase the video meeting capacity to 1000 participants.
Regarding participant limits, Zoom carries the day as it supports up to 1000 participants with its add-ons, while Teams allows the addition of up to 300 participants per session.
Both Zoom and Teams provide good video quality.
To achieve the HD resolution of 1080p, Microsoft teams recommend a minimum connection of 2mbps while zoom requires 3mbps.
There is no clear winner in video quality as the two apps have very slight differences, and both provide high quality.
Both Teams and Zoom have screen share, cloud storage, file sharing, whiteboard, meeting recording, join via call, and other features.
However, Team is an all-in-one collaboration tool and thus offers more features compared to Zoom. Teams chat functionality, for instance, is more advanced than Zoom, which is more basic.
Due to its tight integration with Microsoft 365 software stack, Teams exceeds Zoom’s core capabilities and offers everything you need for business communication under a single roof.
Integrations are important for business as they allow you to centralize your information and work and include various collaboration tools, boosting productivity.
Microsoft Teams integrates well with Office 365 and therefore comes with web versions of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. The platforms Business Basic and Business Standard plans even have desktop versions of Access, Powerpoint Outlook, Excel, and Publisher. Other third-party integrations available for Microsoft Teams include Salesforce, Trello, SurveryMoney, GitHub, etc.
Zoom has over 1,000 integrations, including Asana, DropBox, Smartsheet, Slack, Calendly, Marketo, Vimeo, Airgram, and HubSpot.
In conclusion, Zoom offers more integrations than Teams. However, Teams is more suitable if you use the Microsoft Office suite as it offers multiple collaboration features with its apps.
Microsoft teams come with many functionalities that make first-time users difficult or even overwhelming. It may thus take quite a bit to familiarize yourself with and use its many collaboration features.
On the other hand, Zoom has a simple, easy-to-use user interface that excels in the Microsoft Teams vs. Zoom debate. It hides all of its extra features in the Settings, leaving only the essentials on the main screen. Additionally, Zoom employs a visual hierarchy in size, color, and position to make it easy for you to locate what you need.
While Microsoft Teams does not offer built-in support for its free version; the paid plans come with 24/7 phone and web support, an extensive knowledge base, a community forum, and a financially backed 99.9% uptime guarantee.
Zoom offers support for the free plan users via an online help center, while the paid versions come with phone support and the Zoom Enterprise plan with a dedicated customer success manager.
Both Teams and Zoom provide extensive documentation in the form of online webinars, customer forums, and training videos.
Microsoft Teams offers a secure collaboration platform as it employs security measures such as end-to-end encryption, multi-factor authentication, real-time transport protocol technology, rights management services support, and in-transit encryption. Teams also offer advanced threat protection (ATP) for shared content across all integrated apps.
On the other hand, Zoom features 256-bit TLS and AES-256 encryption, ensuring that all voice calls, video chats, and screen sharing are encrypted. It also offers optional end-to-end encryption. These measures ensure that no third party, Zoom included, can access your sessions.
In matters of security, Microsoft is no doubt the winner as it offers more security measures without setting a minimum user requirement.
Teams allow you to enter a room or create one easily with a few clicks. You can also add a channel for every department in your organization, providing them a space where they can work independently and host exclusive meetings.
Moreover, Teams allows you to schedule group or individual meetings on a calendar or hold one on demand. The additional features in Teams include live events, screen sharing, whiteboards, webinars, and live captions in various languages.
Like Teams, Zoom allows you to assign a room for each virtual team in your organization. It also allows you to integrate with default calendars such as Microsoft Outlook or Google calendar to schedule meetings.
The host can record a meeting with Zoom and store the recordings on their PC or Zoom Portal. A link or Zoom meeting ID plus a password is required to join a meeting. Members can also join via the phone number given in the invitation link.
Microsoft Teams is more budget-friendly compared to Zoom, especially for large teams.
Zoom’s pricing plans are as follows:
The following are the available pricing plans for Microsoft Teams:
After a detailed Zoom vs. Microsoft Teams review; you may have already made a choice. Irrespective of the video conferencing you opt for, having video meeting recordings, transcripts, and minutes can help make your meetings more efficient as they provide a point of reference when needed. And that's where Airgram meeting assistant comes in.
Microsoft Teams and Zoom are both top video conferencing platforms. Each comes with its own set of strengths and weaknesses. As such, your choice is dependent on your organization's needs.
According to our analysis, Zoom is suited to individuals or small organizations that are seeking good video conferencing and collaboration features. It is more user-friendly.
Microsoft teams may be preferable for large organizations or those who are already Microsoft 365 users. It offers more budget-friendly paid plans together with better security that you use for your business.
