Review: 6 top videoconferencing services put to the test

Fifteen months after the US and Europe went into lockdown for the first time, many office-based employees have still not returned to their pre-pandemic workplaces. During that time, videoconferencing apps have continued to see an unprecedented — and unsurprising — level of popularity. And as conversations about what the workplace of the future might look like gather steam, organizations are increasingly looking to firm up their collaboration technology stack to support a shift to hybrid work.

Since we first reviewed the major videoconferencing platforms last year, Zoom has posted its 2021 first quarter total revenue at $956.2 million, up 191% year over year; Microsoft Teams has 145 million daily active users, up from 75 million last year; and Cisco Webex has rolled out more than 400 new capabilities since September.

During the initial rush to remote work in early 2020, many companies turned to whatever video app was most convenient. Now it’s time to reassess whether your organization is using the best videoconferencing platform for its needs. Here at Computerworld, we’ve tried to take some of the headache out of your decision-making process by trialing and evaluating several leading videoconferencing platforms.

For last year’s review we tested five major platforms: Cisco Webex Meetings, Google Meet, LogMeIn GoToMeeting, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom. For this year’s updated review, we added another leading platform, BlueJeans, into the mix. With help from colleagues across the US, we conducted a series of group video calls via the six apps to try to discover which system provides the best service for meetings with remote workers.

The main criteria we used to evaluate each platform can be boiled down to user experience, audio and video quality, and management considerations, including admin tools and security. We paid particular attention to each platform’s user interface, its in-meeting features, and how easy it was to use without the need for prior training. The good news is that all six platforms provided us with solid audio and video, along with a good range of features that helped to enhance the experience of each video call we conducted. 

Not all videoconferencing platforms are created equal, however, and as a team, we favored some products over others. While our opinions are subjective, we hope the following reviews and side-by-side feature comparison table help any organization struggling to find the right videoconferencing software make an informed investment decision.

Note: All meeting screenshots were provided by the vendors. For privacy and security reasons, we opted not to show screenshots with Computerworld staffers in their homes. 

BlueJeans Virtual Meetings

Founded in 2009 as Blue Jeans Network, BlueJeans launched its cloud-based service in 2011 with the goal of making videoconferencing available to anyone with a video-enabled device. In addition to its main video meeting platform, Virtual Meetings, BlueJeans offers products for conference rooms, telehealth, webinars, and other events. The company was purchased by Verizon in 2020.

Plans and pricing

Standard: $10/host/month; up to 100 participants per call

Pro: $14/host/month: up to 150 participants per call

Enterprise: $17/host/month; up to 200 participants per call

Enterprise Plus: custom pricing; up to 200 participants per call

A 14-day free trial is available for the Enterprise plan. (See plans and pricing details.)

User experience

As with all the other platforms included in this review, our BlueJeans test call was undertaken on the free version of the platform, with call participants joining from a variety of different devices and locations.

When I first downloaded the desktop app to set up the meeting, I was immediately put off by the fact that my webcam was automatically turned on and my face became the background of the log-in screen. At no point was I warned that this would happen or asked if I wanted to toggle this setting on or off before my camera turned on. Once logged into the app, I was able to disable my camera, but having my face unexpectedly staring back at me while I entered my username and password was not something I welcomed.

Setting up a meeting inside the app should theoretically be very simple: there’s an option to link either a Google calendar or Microsoft Outlook calendar. However, when I tried to integrate BlueJeans and Outlook, I was informed that this wasn’t possible, as Outlook wasn’t installed on my device. (It is.) As with most of the other platforms, the workaround thankfully wasn’t that taxing; you simply copy the pre-generated personal meeting info into a calendar invite and send it out to all the participants.

Once on the call, another quirk we came across was the fact that all participants had moderator permissions turned on by default. Again, this might be something the host can toggle on or off when setting up the meeting, but when I organized the call, it certainly wasn’t obvious to me. Thankfully, no one on our test call abused this newfound power, but this could definitely cause an issue if meeting with third-party users.

Besides those initial issues, the in-call features offered by BlueJeans all seemed to work as intended. Although the version we tried was not feature rich, all participants were able to share their screens, view and annotate the whiteboard, and enable a virtual background. There’s also an option to add a name plate to your video tile; however, that can only be seen by other participants if they are in gallery mode.

BlueJeans

A colleague who tested the ability to join the meeting via various web browsers was happy to discover that BlueJeans supports Firefox, Safari, and Opera in addition to Chrome and Edge. Additionally, another colleague who used the BlueJeans iPhone app to access the call was “pleasantly surprised” by her experience.

Audio and visual quality

Unfortunately, one platform is always going to have to come last in the audio and visual quality test, and this year it was BlueJeans.

One colleague had problems getting his microphone to work with the platform, but even after this issue was resolved, the picture quality for many of us was noticeably pixelated, and the audio had a tendency to drop out at times.

It should be noted that at no point was it bad enough for us to abandon the call; however, multiple participants did comment that this call was the worst in terms of overall picture quality.

Management considerations

BlueJeans offers four Virtual Meetings plans, providing more advanced administrative capabilities with each tier. With Pro plan and above, the platform offers integrations with dozens of enterprise productivity, collaboration, marketing, and IT management and security apps.

All content in transit is encrypted using AES-256 GCM; recordings are stored in secure containers, protected with AES 256-bit encryption, and accessible only by the recording originator. Meeting IDs are randomized, and hosts can enable passcodes, lock meetings, and remove participants. The platform also supports two-factor authentication and single sign-on.

In terms of meeting features, it’s undeniably one of the more basic platforms we tested — although as I’ve already pointed out, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If you want a platform that allows you to check in with your team without any bells or whistles, then this might provide you with the answer.

Additionally, while BlueJeans does offer a free trial, it only lasts two weeks, so if this is a platform you are considering, you will need to opt for a paid version for long-term use.

Bottom line

Pros: Easy-to-use platform

Cons: Limited free trial; not very feature rich; initial camera settings are a bit invasive

While the platform is simple and easy to use, the issues we had with video quality mean it’s unlikely to be the best choice for important meetings or those with large numbers of participants.

Cisco Webex Meetings

A granddaddy of the web meeting space, Webex (formerly WebEx) has been around since 1995. WebEx Communications was acquired by Cisco in 2007 and its web- and videoconferencing software subsequently rebranded as Cisco Webex Meetings. Cisco now offers other Webex-branded products such as Webex Events and Webex Contact Center, but when people say “Webex,” they typically mean Webex Meetings.

Plans and pricing

Free: up to 100 participants per call; 50-minute call limit

Starter: $13.50/host/month; up to 100 participants per call

Business: $27/host/month; up to 200 participants per call

Enterprise: custom pricing; customizable number of participants per call

(See plans and pricing details.)

User experience

When we tested Cisco Webex last year, organizing a meeting was extremely simple. On your user profile page, you would select Schedule, then input the meeting title, date, and time, plus the email addresses of your participants. Webex then auto-generated a meeting ID link and password and sent out a calendar invite that included a dial-in number for participants joining by phone from the UK (where I am based), plus a link to international dial-in numbers for about 50 countries. 

I assumed that this would still be the case a year on, but unfortunately, clicking Schedule this time around brought up this error message:

IDG

Instead, I had to create a separate invite in Outlook, invite the meeting participants, and provide a link to my personal meeting room. (Note that I used the free version of Webex for testing.) While this workaround did work and we were all able to join the meeting successfully this way, it overcomplicated what had previously been a smooth process.

The web, Windows, and Mac application interfaces are relatively standard. You can opt to view all the meeting participants at once or have the platform toggle between the most recent speakers to help you keep track of who’s talking. Along the bottom of the screen are icons to enable and disable your microphone and camera, to share your screen, and to open the chat and participant list panes — the last two will appear on the right-hand side of your screen when selected.

As expected, the mobile interface is more limited; users who joined the call via smartphone rather than a computer said that they could see only up to four people on the screen at any one time — a criticism levelled at most of the platforms we tested. One colleague who joined the Webex call via her iPhone experienced an issue with the breakout room function. Instead of entering her assigned room, her mobile app crashed, and she was forced off the call and unable to join the breakout room.

Furthermore, a colleague accessing the meeting via a web browser was unable to see any other participants’ camera feeds or hear what they were saying. Their names were still visible in the corner of the video squares and would continue to light up to indicate who was speaking, but said colleague was forced to leave and rejoin the meeting in order to get sound and video back.

The chat features we tested all worked as expected. The chat window allows you to send messages to the whole group or privately to an individual in the meeting, which is a nice touch, and the whiteboard capability is available to participants on both the Cisco Webex desktop and mobile app.

Cisco

Users can also express their feelings through a variety of emoticons: icons including clapping hands, a thumbs up, and a heart will appear in bottom left-hand corner of a user’s video when selected. On Cisco Webex paid plans, these emoticons are powered by gestures, meaning if I were to clap my hands on camera, the clapping hands icon would automatically appear on my video tile. Other newly available features on paid plans include background noise cancelling, live transcription and translation, and customizable meeting layouts that go beyond speaker and gallery view.

Cisco Webex has spent a lot of time over the last year improving the platform in an effort to “deliver a Webex experience that is 10x better than in-person [interactions],” according to a company announcement. While it’s understandable that the free version would be limited in terms of features, I was disappointed to see that the recently rolled out closed captioning and live translation abilities weren’t available on our call. Cisco has talked a lot about the importance of accessibility, and I don’t think that should come with a price tag.

Recording the meeting provides a full audio and visual playback that can be downloaded and shared. A record of the chat log and a list of meeting attendees is also available when you watch the recording. 

Audio and video quality

Besides the issues mentioned above, both the video and the audio were mostly clear and remained relatively consistent throughout the entirety of the call, with no one dropping out at any point. We couldn’t hear one colleague at the start of the call, but this was sorted relatively quickly when he adjusted his system settings.

There was an obvious degradation in the quality of some participants’ video feeds when there was a larger number of participants on the call, and some people noted that they experienced a minor lag when the call switched to a different speaker; however, this was not so bad that it impacted overall quality.

Unfortunately, a colleague who joined the meeting via the app on his Android phone experienced some significant audio issues. Despite all the in-call indicators showing he was not muted, we couldn’t hear him for the entirety of the call. It’s unclear whether this issue was caused by a hardware or a software error, but that participant did not experience similar issues with any of the other products we tested.

Management considerations

Cisco offers a free plan and three different paid plans for Webex Meetings, with each tier supporting more meeting hosts and participants. The platform was ahead of the curve last year, being the only one in our previous review to offer end-to-end encryption. While this is no longer a unique offering from Cisco, it illustrates that the platform has long had security at the forefront of its development.

For example, Webex automatically locks virtual meeting rooms when a meeting starts. It also provides hosts with the capability to screen users before they enter a meeting, stopping any unauthorized personnel from joining a call they shouldn’t be a part of.

By default, the service uses an ISO-certified, multi-layered security model, as outlined in its 2021 Webex security white paper. End-to-end encryption is available for users of all plans, but administrators with paid accounts must enable it. (Users of the free plan can file a help ticket with Webex to request that E2E encryption be enabled.) Note: when E2E encryption is enabled, features such as network recordings, breakout rooms, and the ability to join before the host are disabled, and the web app and video endpoints are not supported.

Currently, the paid plans offered by Cisco Webex are some of the most feature-rich available, with more than 400 new capabilities having been added in the last nine months alone. However, while it’s understandable that the free version would be limited, stripping the platform back so much does detract from the heights its other tiers have reached.

While Webex worked well enough for our test call, if you’re looking for a platform that can host both large and small meetings, the drop-off in video quality we experienced as the participant list grew might be worth keeping in mind.

Bottom line

Pros:  Offers end-to-end encryption; ample in-meeting tools for participants and hosts

Cons:  Not great for large meetings; free tier is missing some features offered by other platforms

Cisco Webex was ahead of its competitors last year by offering E2E encryption, and the company continues to make security a priority for its users. Audio and video quality are generally good, although I wouldn’t recommend this platform if you needed to regularly host calls with large numbers of people.

The sound issues our colleague using the Android app experienced were certainly an issue; however, another colleague who attended the meeting via the iPhone app commented that it offered some of the best customization options compared to the other platforms we tested.

Cisco has clearly worked hard over the last year to make Webex a leader in the videoconferencing space, particularly under its paid plans. While the free option we tested certainly allowed us to have a (mostly) successful video call, it just doesn’t feel as polished as some of the other free services we tried.

Google Meet

Google Meet is included with Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), the vendor’s office suite. As such, it is tightly integrated with the other Workspace applications, including Gmail and Google Calendar. Meet is also available for free to anybody with a Google account, with fewer features than are included with the paid Workspace plans.

Plans and pricing

Google Meet only: free; up to 100 participants per call; 60-minute call limit

Google Workspace Business Starter: $6/user/month; up to 100 participants per Meet call

Google Workspace Business Standard: $12/user/month; up to 150 participants per Meet call

Google Workspace Business Plus: $18/user/month; up to 250 participants per Meet call

Google Workspace Enterprise: custom pricing; up to 250 participants per Meet call

A 14-day free trial is available for all paid plans. (See plans and pricing details.)

User experience

Since our last review, my office has transitioned from Google Workspace to Office 365, meaning that setting up this meeting wasn’t quite as convenient as it was last year. However, despite my lack of access to Google Calendar, scheduling a meeting in Google Meet was still relatively pain free. You simply go to Google Meet in your browser, click “new meeting,” and select “create a meeting for later” from the drop-down menu that appears to receive the meeting link. You can then copy this link into a manually set-up calendar invite in your email provider of choice. Google Workspace users (or individuals who use Meet and Google Calendar) can still schedule meetings directly in Google Calendar.

Although Google has recently rolled out a slew of new features for Google Meet – significantly later than many of its competitors – the platform is still one of the most basic on offer. In keeping with Google’s web-first philosophy, it’s the only platform we tested that doesn’t provide desktop users with the option to access meetings via an app instead of a browser. (Android and iOS apps are, however, available on mobile devices.)

Once on the call, the in-meeting capabilities allow users to mute and unmute themselves, turn their webcam on and off, share their screen, turn on closed captions, and communicate via text chat with everyone. Paid Workspace users have access to a wider range of features, including breakout rooms, polls, noise cancellation, live streaming, and the option to record the meeting.

One big improvement from last year is the ability to see more than four people on screen at any one time, alongside the ability for users to change between different layout settings and set virtual backgrounds, all features that weren’t available when we tested the platform last year. We also continued to be impressed by the accuracy of the real-time closed captioning Meet offers. Individual users can choose whether to run the service or not and can toggle it on and off throughout the meeting. During our test calls, we found the level of accuracy the AI-driven feature provided was outstanding.

Google

Google has recently added in-meeting, real-time translation in five languages. When I turned on the French translation, however, the feature picked up hardly any of our in-meeting speech and instead of providing a seamless translation experience, random and seemingly inaccurate French words were sporadically displayed. The whiteboarding feature was also a bit hit and miss: although it worked well for those accessing the meeting via the browser, mobile participants couldn’t use the whiteboard without downloading a separate app first.

Additionally, while the screen share feature worked as expected and gives you the option to share your entire screen, a window, or a tab, as the presenter I couldn’t see what I was sharing within the call, which I didn’t like. Google has since said that it is updating Google Meet’s UI, allowing users to simultaneously see other participants alongside their in-call presentation.

Audio and video quality

Throughout the call, the audio and video quality of all the participants held up relatively well, and overall, we experienced no major technical issues. No one had any issues getting their microphone or camera to work – most likely because we’ve all used the platform previously, so all our settings had already been configured.

A colleague of mine did say that he’d been on a Google Meet call with more than 60 colleagues based in India and had noticed a serious degradation in call quality during that meeting.

Management considerations

If the meeting host and all the participants are already hardwired into Google Workspace, then Google Meet is the easiest and most obvious videoconferencing choice to use. As previously mentioned, Google has recently rolled out a host of new features for Google Meet, and the platform is better for those changes.

Despite this, the free version of Google Meet continues to be one of the more basic platforms in this roundup; however, that isn’t necessarily a criticism. While features like background noise suppression, in-meeting emojis, and the ability to customize your face during the call might be nice, not having them doesn’t infringe on Google Meet’s ability to host a successful video call. Additionally, offering a limited number of features means that users of the free version don’t have a noticeably poorer in-meeting experience, as was the case with some of the other platforms we tried.  

Meet does not offer end-to-end encryption, but Google says that it adheres to Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) security standards for Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) and Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP) and that Meet recordings stored in Google Drive are encrypted at rest with “at least AES 128.” (Google has provided a blog post with information about Meet security.) Google Workspace offers the usual array of management features including an admin portal and analytics reports. 

Bottom line

Pros: Simplicity of the platform makes it easy to use and doesn’t over-complicate meetings; excellent real-time transcription

Cons: Doesn’t offer as many in-meeting features as other platforms

If your organization is a Google Workspace customer, Google Meet is a solid videoconferencing option, especially if you regularly use the other communication and collaboration tools Google offers. Setting up meetings is straightforward, the call quality is decent, Google’s security is enterprise-ready (but omits E2E encryption) — and you’re already paying for it as part of your Workspace subscription. However, if you need advanced in-meeting tools, consider looking into a more sophisticated videoconferencing product. 

LogMeIn GoToMeeting

GoToMeeting was first released back in 2004 as an online meeting, desktop sharing, and videoconferencing software package. After LogMeIn and Citrix’s GoTo unit merged in 2017, GoToMeeting officially became a LogMeIn product and now heads up the GoTo catalog of products, which also includes GoToWebinar, GoToTraining, and GoToRoom.

Plans and pricing

Free: up to 4 participants per call; 40-minute call limit

Professional: $12/organizer/month; up to 150 participants per call

Business: $16/organizer/month; up to 250 participants per call

Enterprise: custom pricing; up to 3,000 participants per call

A 14-day free trial is available for all plans. (See plans and pricing details.)

User experience

When undertaking the testing of all the platforms in this review, the plan was to access each one via a range of devices and apps in order to give a well-rounded overview of the experience each one offers. Like almost every other platform, LogMeIn offers desktop users the option to download an app. Unlike with the other platforms, however, none of us could successfully download and install the Windows or macOS app.

The app would start downloading, but when near completion, an error message would surface saying installation had been blocked due to our firewall. The only workaround a colleague found was to source an older version of the software and download that instead — but when he tried to launch the desktop app, it opened the web app in a browser instead. So, all the desktop users ended up using the web app, and only in Chrome or Microsoft Edge; the GoToMeeting web app doesn’t support Safari or Firefox.

As we were using the free version, it’s understandable that our meeting options would be limited. Our meeting could only hold four participants at a time, although strangely we did have six people on the call at the beginning, despite a large banner at the top of the screen reading: “This session has reached its maximum number of participants (4).” When participants dropped off the call, they were then denied entry back into the meeting because we were still over capacity.

Additionally, my colleague who joined via the iPhone app described her meeting experience as “horrible.” Holding her phone in portrait mode meant she could only see two participants in full, with the third cut in half and no option to scroll up. Her face was also covered by the microphone and camera buttons. When she tried to change some of her settings, the app took a long time to respond. She’s unsure if this lag was an issue caused by her phone, her connection, or the GoToMeeting app.

That being said, the in-meeting features available with the free trial are basic but work well. Sharing my screen was an easy and glitch-free experience, as were the controls available to me as a host, such as muting and unmuting participants and giving them presenter status. GoToMeeting offers Business and Enterprise plan users additional features such as drawing tools, note taking, and a smart assistant that detects action items. Also available to the Business and Enterprise plans is the ability to record a meeting either locally or to the cloud.

LogMeIn

Audio and video quality

GoToMeeting offers users the option to have their camera either in 4:3 or widescreen mode, depending on their preference. The video quality offered by GoToMeeting seems to have improved since we reviewed the platform last year, with one colleague commenting it was perhaps the clearest he’d ever seen me on video. However, another colleague’s video wasn’t working — an issue he wasn’t aware of until we asked him if he’d intentionally turned his camera off.

There were also a few issues with audio. One colleague’s audio was muted the entire time, even though the in-meeting settings indicated that wasn’t the case. When she left and tried to rejoin the meeting to see if that would solve the issue, she was told the meeting was at capacity, so never got a chance to solve the issue.

Management considerations

Not being able to download the application on the desktop was a big issue, and although it could probably be fixed by talking to our IT administrator, having to make changes to security and firewall settings to access a video call isn’t ideal. It could also cause potential issues for meetings with external participants.

In addition to the free version, GoToMeeting offers three paid plans, with increasing numbers of users supported and admin controls added. While it’s understandable that limits will be imposed on free trial versions, unless you opt for a paid GoToMeeting plan, the platform would not be ideal for anything other than very small internal team meetings.

That said, GoToMeeting does offer toll-free dial-in phone numbers for more than 50 countries (for an additional fee). That’s an important consideration if you need to meet with people who live in areas of the world with poor internet connectivity.

When it comes to GoToMeeting’s security credentials, the platform does not offer end-to-end encryption. However, all three paid plans provide users with TLS 1.2, government-grade AES 256-bit encryption, and a risk-based authentication system that automatically determines if suspicious behavior is taking place, such as a login from an unauthorized device from a remote location. And meeting organizers can lock meeting rooms to stop participants from starting a call before the host has joined.

Bottom line

Pros: Uncomplicated and unfussy; large range of toll-free dial-in numbers available

Cons: Meetings limited to 40 minutes and 4 participants with free plan; app download may be blocked by some firewalls

Although GoToMeeting isn’t the shiniest videoconferencing product we tested, it does more or less everything you need in an uncomplicated and unfussy way. Setting up a meeting and dialing in is easy for both established and first-time users. The audio and video quality, however, was not as good as the others we tested, and unless you’re using the very limited free plan, you only have two weeks to use GoToMeeting for free before you need to make a financial investment in the platform.

Microsoft Teams

Unlike the other platforms in this roundup, Microsoft Teams is meant to be an always-on collaboration tool that centers around group messaging and shared workspaces, with video meetings as an added component. Launched in 2017, Teams has now largely replaced Skype for Business as the communications hub for its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suites, although legacy customers may still use Skype for Business. 

Plans and pricing

Teams only: free; up to 100 participants per call; 60-minute call limit

Microsoft 365 Business Basic: $5/user/month

Microsoft 365 Business Standard: $12.50/user/month

Microsoft 365 Business Premium: $20/user/month

Office 365 enterprise plans: start at $8/user/month

Microsoft 365 enterprise plans: start at $32/user/month

All Microsoft 365/Office 365 plans allow up to 300 participants per Teams call or up to 10,000 attendees for a live-stream event. Some M365/O365 plans offer a 30-day free trial. (See small business and enterprise plans and pricing details.)

User experience

Since undertaking last year’s review, my office has moved from Google Workspace to Office 365, making the process of scheduling a Microsoft Teams meeting through Outlook exceedingly simple. I have the Teams plug-in in Outlook, which means all I have to do is click New Teams Meeting, fill out all the necessary information, and hey presto, the meeting is scheduled.

It’s also worth noting that for users of the Teams app, a notification appears in the right-hand corner of your screen letting you know when a meeting has started. I’ve found this useful on several occasions in the past where meeting invites have gone awry.

Last year, I wasn’t overly impressed by my Microsoft Teams meeting experience. My biggest annoyance stemmed from being able to see only four participants on screen at a time — or one at a time if using the browser instead of the app. Since our original review was published, Microsoft Teams has undergone a lot of changes, all of which have significantly improved the in-meeting experience.

Users can now see up to 49 participants on a single screen and have the option to toggle through different viewing modes — including the informal Together Mode that groups participants as if they’re sitting together in an auditorium, coffee shop, or other settings. As the host for our test call, I tried out several Together Mode layouts. Despite being notified that this would change the view for all users, however, no one else could see the participants in that view. I found out after the call that each participant individually has to enable Together Mode in order for it to work. Custom backgrounds are also available, and participants can choose to upload their own backgrounds or pick from a selection of stock images provided by Microsoft.

Microsoft

Similar to the other apps we tested, Teams provides a toolbar along the bottom of the screen for actions like turning the microphone and camera on and off, sharing your screen, and accessing the chat pane and participants list. The screen-sharing feature lets you share your whole desktop, a specific app window, or a PowerPoint presentation. You can also browse to a file or open up an interactive whiteboard. Another new feature Microsoft has added to Teams is the option to form breakout rooms, which worked seamlessly on our trial call.

A “More actions” button allows access to extras such as taking meeting notes and using a background image or the background blur effect. Participants are notified when the meeting is being recorded, and the recording is saved to OneDrive or SharePoint, depending on the type of meeting. And like Google Meet, Teams provides an impressive live closed-captioning feature that my colleagues could turn on and off as they liked; they all praised it highly for its accuracy. However, closed captioning is still not available to users dialing in via a browser.

One permissions quirk we found odd was that the other meeting participants could start and stop the meeting recording, with no way for the host to stop this from happening during the meeting. According to Microsoft’s support documentation, this is as intended: when an organization has an Office 365 Enterprise E1, E3 or E5 license and when approved by IT admins, internal users have start/stop recording permissions. (Meeting policies are applied to meeting organizers and to users, rather than controlled on a meeting-by-meeting basis.)

Audio and video quality

On the whole, we didn’t experience any serious issues with the audio or video quality on our Microsoft Teams call. Although the picture quality dipped in and out at times, at no point was it so bad that it affected our ability to have a successful call. Additionally, last year, some call participants experienced issues getting external hardware to work with the platform, but no such issues occurred this time around.

Management considerations

For organizations already using Microsoft 365 or Office 365, Microsoft Teams is the easiest and most obvious video call platform of choice. The changes Microsoft has made over the last year have vastly improved the platform, making for a much better overall user experience. Whether you need to host small team meetings or whole department calls, Microsoft Teams can now support a much wider range of use cases with relative ease.

However, if you’re planning to use Microsoft Teams to conduct video calls with external participants who aren’t team members, you need to consider how much their lack of access to some in-meeting features will affect their overall experience of the call. Also note that for those accessing the web version, Teams only supports Google Chrome and Chromium-based Microsoft Edge fully; other browsers have limited or no support. Again, this might not be a deal breaker but is something to keep in mind depending on who’s going to take part in your meetings.

Microsoft does not offer end-to-end encryption for Teams video meetings. (Its product road map says E2E encryption is coming in July for 1-to-1 VoIP calls only.) The free version does provide data encryption at rest and in transit but not the enterprise security, compliance, and administration features that come with Office 365/Microsoft 365, such as enforced multi-factor authentication, advanced auditing and reporting services, and configurable user settings and policies. For more information, see Microsoft’s security and compliance documentation for Teams.

Bottom line

Pros: Excellent real-time transcription; plentiful in-meeting options for participants in the host organization

Cons: Non-Office 365 members have limited in-meeting capabilities, which could hamper the call experience for external participants

My colleagues and I were pleasantly surprised by our experience with Microsoft Teams this time around. The improvements Microsoft has consistently been rolling out over the last 12 months have made for a much better UI.

As with Google Meet for Workspace users, Office 365/Microsoft 365 users who already make use of the other products Microsoft offers may find Teams to be a perfectly adequate go-to platform for internal video calls. However, if you’re looking for a platform to enable better collaboration with both internal and external partners who aren’t already invested in the Microsoft universe, you might want to consider a more agnostic platform.

Zoom

Zoom Video Communications was founded in 2011 by Eric Yuan, a former Webex executive, with the goal of making videoconferencing easy and accessible. Now the 800-pound gorilla of the videoconferencing software market, Zoom has become the face of the pandemic, with “Zoom” entering the mainstream vernacular as a synonym for a video call on any platform.

On the downside, “Zoom bombing” has come to mean uninvited attendees in any online meeting, while “Zoom fatigue” is the new catch-all buzzword for most forms of remote work burnout. Despite those negative connotations, the platform’s business has continued to boom, with its 2021 first quarter total revenue standing at $956.2 million, up 191% year on year.

Plans and pricing

Basic: Free; up to 100 participants per call; 40-minute call limit

Pro: $150/license/year; up to 100 participants per call

Business: $200/license/year (minimum 10 licenses); up to 300 participants per call

Enterprise: $250/license/year (minimum 50 licenses); up to 500 participants per call

The number of participants per call can be raised to 1,000 for any paid plan with the Large Meetings add-on. (See plans and pricing details.)

User experience

Setting up a meeting in Zoom is easy. If you want to initiate a meeting there and then, you log on to the website, select Host a Meeting — you’re given the choice to have video on or off — and away you go. Zoom also offers an Outlook integration that allows users to schedule a call directly from their inbox, rather than using Zoom’s website.

If you want to schedule a future meeting, it’s the same deal, only you’re taken to a form where you fill in the basic meeting details — cameras on or off, enable meeting recording, set up a waiting room, etc. Once you’ve scheduled the meeting, you can share it via your Google, Outlook, or Yahoo calendar and input the participants’ email addresses. The invite is emailed to them, complete with dial-in number for the host’s country as well as a link to a list of dial-in numbers for more than 50 countries. 

Joining a meeting is similarly easy. You click the link in the invite you received, and if the host hasn’t joined yet, you sit in a waiting room. If the host is already on the call, they accept you into the meeting, and you’re in.

Zoom

When we tested the platforms last year, Zoom already had a number of beneficial features in place that other platforms had to play catch up to. However, the company’s “move fast, break stuff” mentality that had made it a market leader wasn’t without consequence, as the platform came under fire for a number of privacy and security issues in 2019 and early 2020. Zoom appears to have slowed things down in the last year, working on fixing and strengthening existing features rather than adding gimmicks just for the sake of it.  

For users on a call, the in-meeting features are easy to find, easy to use, and work how you would expect. As the host I could mute and unmute participants, turn off screen sharing for attendees, make other people joint-hosts and rename people once they had dialed into the call. Zoom also gives users the options to share individual desktop windows rather than an all-encompassing screen share, which is definitely preferable for privacy.

When the host or another user records a meeting, both an audio and a visual notification appear on-screen alerting users. (The host must grant permission for other users to record the call.) Zoom automatically gives users who record the session a version with both audio and video, an audio-only version, plus a transcription of the chat log. Meetings can be recorded either locally or in the cloud, and both the audio and the video in our recording were of high quality.

When we tested Zoom, it didn’t offer in-meeting closed captioning à la Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, but the company does have a partnership with AI transcription service Otter.ai that brings real-time transcripts and interactive meeting notes to users of Zoom’s paid plans. The two companies have also recently launched Otter Assistant, an AI tool that will automatically join Zoom meetings, take notes, and share them with meeting participants.

Zoom also offers a lot of great in-meeting participation tools, including a whiteboard, a chat window where you can send messages to the group or individual attendees, a “raise hand” option that lets the host know if one of the muted participants has a question or a comment, and reactions so meeting attendees can silently express their agreement via one of two basic emojis.

The platform has also beefed up its background customization capabilities. Alongside the ability to set virtual backgrounds, users can touch up their appearance, readjust their video for low

Audio and video quality

When entering a Zoom meeting, you’re asked if you want to use your computer’s audio, microphone and camera, and if you select yes, it works as you’d expect. This made joining meetings stress free. 

Zoom lets users know if they’re experiencing bandwidth problems by flashing a notice across the screen, which can prove useful if you’re unsure why your colleagues are having a hard time understanding you. Although the picture wasn’t quite as sharp as it was on other platforms — Zoom appears to soften the video of every participant to the same degree —at no point did the video or audio drop below a quality that meant we couldn’t continue with the meeting.

Something else to note with Zoom is that the platform automatically provides a much tighter video crop than other platforms. There is, however, the option for participants to select between different camera crops.

In addition to our test call, I’ve also attended Zoom calls in recent months with participant numbers ranging from 50 to 150 and have not experienced any major video, audio, or bandwidth problems.

Management considerations

Zoom offers a free plan plus three paid plans that tick off the standard boxes for administrative tools, including user management, feature control, reporting, and more. However, last year we couldn’t fully recommend the platform due to a number of security and privacy issues. As we noted at the time, some of the security issues arose from users not understanding how to configure the Zoom software to protect their meetings, but industry watchers have argued that security settings should be enabled by default, especially for a platform that has made its name on ease of use. 

It appears that Zoom took those issues seriously and has worked to fix the problems and rebuild trust with its customers by taking measures such as implementing AES 256-bit GCM encryption to secure data in transit, tightening up security options by default, beefing up hosts’ in-meeting controls, and offering optional end-to-end encryption. (As with Cisco Webex, using E2E encryption with Zoom means that features such as cloud recording, breakout rooms, polling, and meeting reactions are disabled.)

More recently, the company rolled out privacy notifications to its app that let users know who can save and share their content and information. That said, Zoom’s popularity makes it a tempting target for hackers, and concerns persist about private or sensitive data leaking through the app.

Bottom line

Pros: Easy to use; lots of in-meeting features and participation tools; can view up to 49 people at one time

Cons: Meetings limited to 40 minutes with free plan

Of all the platforms we tested, Zoom was the easiest and most self-explanatory to use. Unlike other calls where a lot of time was taken up collectively trying to work out how to find a specific feature or solve a technical issue, on this call we were able to test everything easily and have fun with features such as the whiteboard and screen sharing. While the 40-minute limit on meetings for free users can sometimes be a bit frustrating, it’s hard to argue against the platform’s ease of use and ability to do all the things you’d expect a video call to do — and do them well.  

Choosing a videoconferencing platform

Across the board, we were pleased with the audio and video quality, in-meeting features and management tools for these platforms. However, it should be noted that local infrastructure plays a big role in A/V quality, and typically there was more lag between participants located far away from one another. Having all participants use headphones often improves the audio, as does the practice of having participants mute themselves when they’re not talking.

Of all the platforms we tested, Zoom is arguably the easiest and most intuitive to set up and use, and it offers the largest range of in-meeting features. While the security issues the platform faced last year were a genuine cause for concern, the company has taken solid steps over the last year to address them. Zoom now uses 256-bit TLS encryption, and meeting, webinar, and messaging content can be encrypted using AES-256 encryption and optional end-to-end encryption.

Furthermore, meeting hosts are now provided with lots of additional in-meeting security capabilities, including the ability to disable recording, temporarily pause screen sharing when a new window is opened, and use a passcode to protect meetings. Currently, Zoom appears to be no less secure than any of the other platforms we tested this year, although its popularity makes it an alluring target for attacks.

Cisco Webex was ahead of the curve last year, being the only platform in our previous roundup to offer end-to-end encryption as an option. While Zoom now offers E2E as well, Webex remains a solid, secure, feature-rich choice. With a reported 400+ new capabilities having been added to the platform since September 2020, Webex users can now do everything from cancel out background noise to access live, in-meeting translation from over 100 languages. However, these features are only available with paid plans, so if you don’t have the final say over budgetary decisions, you need to make the use case to whoever does.

If E2E encryption isn’t a necessity, the other platforms in our roundup do offer enterprise-grade security and management options including Single Sign-On, diagnostic reports, and admin portals.

GoToMeeting might not be the fanciest videoconferencing platform currently on offer, but if you’re unbothered about bells and whistles, this could be a good option for your organization. It provides a solid set of in-meeting tools for hosts and offers a good range of toll-free numbers. BlueJeans offers a similarly basic but functional experience and could be the platform of choice if your organization doesn’t have a heavy reliance on long meetings with a large number of participants.

However, the video quality offered by these platforms wasn’t of the same caliber as some of their competitors. Additionally, both platforms only offer a two-week free trial, with the free version of GoToMeeting limiting meetings to four participants.

For quick internal catch-ups with your team, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams are logical go-to options for Google Workspace and Office 365/Microsoft 365 customers, respectively. Before it rebranded to Google Meet, Google Hangouts was very aptly named, as the simplicity of the platform gave it an informal feel, like you were hanging out with friends. Because Microsoft Teams integrates chat and a shared workspace, its interface is more complex but still informal.

Both platforms have made some significant changes to the user experience over the last year, and if we were handing out a “most improved” award, Microsoft Teams would be the winner. Everything I remember disliking about the platform last year seems to have changed for the better, from the number of on-screen participants to how easy and intuitive the app is.

Similarly, while Google Meet continues to offer a basic experience, it manages to so in a way that isn’t clunky and doesn’t make you feel like you’re being punished for having opted for a free version. While it’s perhaps not the best platform for large-scale, formal meetings, it works really well if you need to have an impromptu catch-up with a small number of colleagues.

Of course, these reviews are subjective, and the features my colleagues and I look for in a videoconferencing platform might not be the same as those your organization needs. We’ve included a table below to help you compare the key features and capabilities offered by the six products we tested. We hope this guide allows you to make a more informed decision about which software is right for your business and to improve the productivity and collaboration of your employees.

Feature comparison: BlueJeans, Webex, Meet, GoToMeeting, Teams & Zoom

(Scroll or drag the table to see more columns, or download the table as an Excel file.)

This article was originally published in April 2020 and updated in June 2021.

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