With the dramatic rise in remote and hybrid working over the past few years, it’s no surprise that we’ve also seen a huge increase in the use of video conferencing apps, with two of the most common being Zoom and Microsoft Teams. But which one wins in the mighty Zoom vs Teams battle? Which app is right for you and your business will depend on your specific structure and needs, so read on to learn about the key differences, advantages and disadvantages between the apps to help you decide whether Zoom or Teams is right for you.
1. Affordability
There are a range of plans available for both Teams and Zoom:
Microsoft Teams Pricing
Teams offers users four plans: Free, Essentials, Microsoft 365 Business Basic and Microsoft 365 Business Standard.
Free plan: The free plan gives users unlimited one-to-one meetings for up to 30 hours, unlimited group meetings for up to 60 minutes, hosting up to 100 participants per meeting and up to 5GB of storage per user.
Essentials plan: This gives users everything in the free version, plus unlimited group meetings for up to 30 hours, can host up to 300 participants per meeting, up to 10GB of storage per user and around-the-clock phone and web support. The cost of the Essentials plan is £3.30 a month per user.
Microsoft 365 Business Basic plan: This plan includes all the benefits of the Essentials plan, plus live captions for meetings, access to Microsoft Whiteboard, the ability to transcribe meetings and an upgrade of 1TB of storage per user. The cost of the Microsoft 365 Business Basic plan is £4.90 a month per user.
Microsoft 365 Business Standard plan: Finally the Microsoft 365 Business Standard plan includes all the benefits of the Business Basic plan, plus Desktop versions of office apps, webinar hosting, attendee registering and the ability to manage customer appointments. The cost of the Microsoft 365 Business Standard plan is £10.30 a month per user.
Zoom Pricing
Zoom also offers users four plans: Basic, Pro, Business and Business Plus (along with an Enterprise version which pricing is available on request)
Basic plan: The basic plan gives users unlimited meetings up to 40 minutes, can host up to 100 participants per meeting, automated captions, editable whiteboards, team chat and mail and calendar.
Pro plan: Just going one up gives users everything in the free version, plus unlimited meetings up to 30 hours, up to 5GB of storage per user and free premium apps for a year. The cost of the Pro plan is £12.99 per month per user or £119.90 per year per user.
Business plan: This is more suitable for business (as the name suggested) and gives users everything in the Pro plan, plus hosting for 300 attendees per meeting and extras including SSO, managed domains and more. The cost of the Business plan is £15.99 per month per user or £159.90 per year per user.
Business Plus plan: The final package Zoom offers will give users everything in the Business plan, plus 10GB of storage per user, Zoom phone and workplace reservation. The cost of the Business Plus plan is £18.50 per month per user or £185.00 per year per user.
Chat Function
With remote and hybrid working the norm, a solid chat function is imperative to keeping colleagues connected.
Microsoft Teams Chat Function
Teams offers a range of chat functionality including individual chats, group chats, chat in a channel for professional teams and chat in real-time during a meeting.
Zoom Chat Function
Zoom is different to Teams in that it doesn’t offer a standalone chat service outside of a Zoom meeting – to do this you will need to download the Zoom Chat platform.
Within Zoom meetings you can send messages to all participants and also send private messages to individuals during a group video call. Zoom also allows a meeting host to disable the chat function during a meeting.
User Interface and Ease of Use
One of the most important considerations when purchasing software for business is how easy it is to use.
Microsoft Teams UI
One of Teams’ greatest strengths is its huge amount of features, however, with this comes a less-than-easy-to-navigate and sometimes complicated interface. Employees may require more time and training in order to get to grips with Teams.
Zoom UI
Zoom’s strengths lie in its simplicity. It’s an easy-to-use app and is accessible to anyone. Regardless of technical ability. You also don’t even need to have any software installed to join a video call, so participants from outside your business won’t be required to download an app.
Integrations
Zoom and Teams’ ability to integrate with a variety of other apps can help improve productivity and efficiency and help centralise work.
Microsoft Teams Integration
Unsurprisingly, Teams integrates seamlessly with the desktop versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft Office tools. Free Teams users can also integrate with the basic Microsoft apps. Away from Microsoft, Teams also integrates with a variety of apps including the Adobe Creative Cloud.
Zoom Integration
Zoom offers over 1000 integrations in the Zoom Apps Marketplace that are available to free and paid users. Some of the popular apps Zoom integrates with include Asana, Dropbox, HubSpot and Slack.
Participants and number of meetings
Microsoft Teams
The free version of Teams allows you to create a group of 100 participants with a duration cap of one hour.
All of the paid Team plans support meetings of up to 300 participants. Teams also has the ability to accommodate webinars with 1,000 attendees and virtual events broadcast to 10,000 users. All paid plans also allow users to host meetings of up to 30 hours.
Zoom
The free version of Zoom allows you to create a group of 100 participants with a duration cap of 40 minutes. In the most expensive version of Zoom (Enterprise), you can add a maximum of 500 participants.
There are no meeting restrictions for anyone with a user licence – any user can host an unlimited number of meetings. And if there are people within your team who are only required to attend meetings and don’t need the ability to host them, then you don’t even need to purchase a licence for them.
Teams vs Zoom: The key takeaway
Whether your winner is Teams or Zoom will depend largely on what your business requirements are. If you are simply looking for an easy-to-use video conferencing app, then you might find that Zoom is the right choice for you. However, if you are looking for an app that combines both video conferencing with a chat functionality and integrations that will help improve team productivity then Teams is a fantastic all-around solution and especially useful for businesses that already use the Microsoft suite.
If Microsoft Teams wins the battle of Zoom vs Teams for you and your business then please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team. Mintivo is an accredited Microsoft Cloud Partner so we can help answer any questions you might have about the right video conferencing tool for you.
