Microsoft Teams vs Zoom: Which video conferencing and collaboration service is better?


While there are many different video conferencing and collaboration tools on the market, two in particular have gone sky-high in the past year: Microsoft Teams and Zoom. As many companies prepare to transition to a hybrid work model, where employees split their time between the office and home, services like Zoom and Teams will continue to play an important role in work life. However, choosing between the two is easier said than done, as Teams and Zoom offer equally high levels of quality and a comparable feature set. In this guide, we've gathered all the information you need to decide which service is best for your business, by comparing plans and pricing, features, security, and more.

Packages and prices

First of all, it's worth noting that Microsoft Teams and Zoom offer generous free tiers. The main difference is that Teams offers video calls, 2 GB personal cloud storage, and unlimited chat, while Free Zoom is limited to video conferencing. The two free versions also differ when it comes to call times. Zoom allows participants to meet for up to 40 minutes, while the Microsoft Teams limit has been temporarily increased to 24 hours (it is unknown when the original 60-minute limit will be reinstated). Microsoft Teams
If you want to upgrade your subscription to Microsoft Teams, there are three options available: Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Microsoft 365 Business Standard, and Microsoft 365 Business Premium. Microsoft 365 Business Basic is available for €5.00 / €3.80 / AU €6.90 per user per month and includes the ability to schedule and record Microsoft Teams meetings, increase file storage capacity to 1TB per user and includes security features additional. Microsoft 365 Business Standard, on the other hand, costs $12.50 / £9.40 / AU$17.20 per user per month. It offers all the benefits of the cheapest plan, but also includes desktop versions of Microsoft productivity apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) and business apps like Reservations, Billing, and MileIQ. Finally, Microsoft 365 Premium adds advanced security and privacy features, as well as a greater variety of device management options. This package will run your business €20.00 / €15.10 / AU€27.50 per user per month. Zoom
Zoom's pricing structure is a bit more complicated, with multiple product lines offering different sets of features. The company offers just three video conferencing plans, but the closest point of comparison is the Zoom United range, which includes collaboration facilities similar to those available with Teams. The most basic paid Zoom United plan costs $250 / £200 / AU$350 per user when billed annually or $25 / £20 / AU$35 per month. It offers unlimited video conferencing with up to 100 participants, 1 GB of storage for meeting recordings, unlimited chat, and unlimited calls to local phone numbers. The Business plan (for companies that need 10 to 99 licenses) offers the same features, as well as meetings with up to 300 attendees, custom URLs, company branding, single sign-on, transcription, and more. It costs €300 / €159.90 / AU$420 per user per year or €30 / €15.99 / AU$42 per month. Finally, the Enterprise plan raises the maximum number of participants to 500. Pricing is identical to the Enterprise plan, but requires businesses to purchase at least 100 licenses. Listed prices do not cover add-ons such as webinar facilities, large meetings (up to 1,000 attendees), and additional cloud recording storage, which will increase the price.

Features

Unsurprisingly, Zoom and Microsoft Teams share many of the same basic collaboration features, from high-quality video conferencing to phone calls, text chat, and group messaging. When it comes to the meeting experience, both offer useful options like custom and blurred backgrounds, a variety of display modes, chat rooms, and text chats. Users can also share their screen during presentations, making it easy to keep track of audience members. Zoom and Teams allow meetings to be recorded, which means people who can't make it can catch up on anything they missed. Since the start of the pandemic, the two have also introduced important accessibility features such as live captioning and transcription features. Where Microsoft Teams shines is in its integrations with the broader set of Microsoft 365 apps and services. For example, Teams is closely tied to OneDrive and Sharepoint, making file sharing simple and intuitive. In the meantime, a forthcoming PowerPoint integration should make managing notes during presentations and interacting with audiences less difficult. That being said, Zoom offers hundreds of third-party integrations through its app marketplace, which greatly amplifies the sound. Some people will also prefer Zoom's brighter, less-cluttered user interface, which is easy to use for even the least tech-savvy employees. Anyone who uses Zoom exclusively for conferencing, perhaps in conjunction with another collaboration service (for example, Slack), probably won't miss out on the features that set Teams apart.

fullfilment of security requirements

Cybersecurity is a paramount consideration for modern businesses; especially since many employees now operate outside of the traditional security perimeter. When it comes to video conferencing security, end-to-end encryption (E2EE) is considered the holy grail. In this system, communication between meeting participants is encrypted using cryptographic keys stored only on users' devices. This means that no third party, including the service provider, has access to the keys to decrypt the private meeting data. At the start of the pandemic, Zoom found itself at the center of controversy after claims that its calls were protected by E2EE were proven false. After issuing a public apology, the company vowed to spend the next three months focusing solely on improving the security of the platform. Communications through Zoom are now encrypted with 256-bit TLS encryption as standard, and users have the option to turn on full E2EE. Microsoft Teams is just steps away from E2EE. Recently, Teams users had access to this extra level of protection, and even then only for 1:1 calls (as long as both users remember to turn the feature on). In recent months, Microsoft and Zoom have also taken steps to prevent a practice known as "Zoombombing," whereby an uninvited person invades and disrupts a meeting. Zoom introduced mandatory meeting passwords, waiting rooms, and easier methods to weed out disruptive attendees. The teams, for their part, recently unveiled similar meeting controls to guard against intruders, along with a video mute feature that should help limit disruption. In terms of compliance and data management, Zoom and Microsoft allow customers to choose the location of the data centers used to process their data in transit.

Support

When it comes to customer service, it's hard to separate Zoom and Teams, both of which offer just about every support possibility you could hope for. The former has a great Help Center, which has plenty of video guides and tutorials, as well as email and live (chat or phone) support. Microsoft Teams also has an extensive knowledge base, and users can request additional help through Microsoft 365 support channels, including an online form, phone support, and a dedicated app for help. However, there doesn't seem to be a live chat facility. Both services offer native clients for all major operating systems, including Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS. Participants can also join sessions via a web browser in any case.

Verdict

Microsoft Teams and Zoom have seen massive growth during the pandemic for good reason; They are two high-quality services that are constantly improving. Choosing which of the two is better is all about identifying the specific needs of your business. If price is your main concern, Teams is by far the cheapest option, even if you opt for Zoom's video-only plans. Teams also benefits from its position in the larger Microsoft 365 ecosystem, which may be enough to tip the scales in its favor. However, Zoom is undeniably great at what it does best: video conferencing. The user interface is clean and intuitive, and call quality is almost always excellent. With Zoom so widely used for personal and business purposes during the pandemic, the platform is now familiar to almost everyone as well, which should make platform adoption easier.

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