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 vs. Microsoft Teams: A Comprehensive Comparison
What is Zoom?
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.
What Is Microsoft Teams?
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.
Microsoft Teams vs. Zoom: At a Glance
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.
| Microsoft Teams | Zoom | |
|---|---|---|
| Participant Capacity | Up to 300 | Up to 1,000 |
| Video Quality | HD 1080p by default | HD 720p by default but 1080p available in video quality settings |
| Maximum Meeting Duration | A maximum of 60 minutes on the free plan and up to 24 hours on paid plans | Up to 40 minutes on free plain and 30 hours on paid plans |
| Meeting Transcription | Transcripts available for scheduled meetings on paid plans | Transcripts available for meetings on Business and Enterprise plans |
| Cloud File Storage | 10GB per license on all plans; 1TB per organization on paid plans | 1GB to unlimited |
| Integrations | Over 250, including the Microsoft Office suite | Over 1000 apps |
| Pricing | Ranges from free to $20/ user/ month | Ranges from free to $30/user/month |
Zoom vs. Teams Comparison Breakdown
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.
Participant limits
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.
Video Quality
Both Zoom and Teams provide good video quality.
Teams come with an AI-based video optimization that adapts video quality dependent on the user’s network quality. It supports full HD 1080p and bandwidth limits for high-quality viewing.
Zoom, on the other hand, uses 720p default. It, however, allows you to manually change your video settings from 720p to 1080 if you are on the Zoom Business plan or zoom Enterprise plan.
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.
Conferencing features
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
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.
Ease of use
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.
Support
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.
Security
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.
Room Systems
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.
Pricing plans
Microsoft Teams is more budget-friendly compared to Zoom, especially for large teams.
Zoom Pricing
Zoom’s pricing plans are as follows:
Free plan: This is suitable for personal meetings and allows up to 100 participants per meeting with a 40-minute time limit, unlimited 1:1 meetings, video and web conferencing, group collaboration features, online support, and much more.
Zoom pro: Costing $14.99/user/month, this plan is ideal for small businesses and allows you to host up to 100 participants in unlimited group meetings and a 30-hour limit for group meetings.
Zoom business: This goes for $19.99/user/month and supports up to 300 participants per session with a limit of 30 hours.
Zoom enterprise: At $19.99/user/month, this plan supports up to 500 participants with a minimum of 50 licenses, unlimited cloud storage, and much more.
Microsoft Teams Pricing
The following are the available pricing plans for Microsoft Teams:
Free plan: This offers 60- minute, 100-participant group meetings, collaboration, unlimited chat, and 5GB of file storage.
Microsoft Teams essentials: With this, you’ll get 30-hour meetings with 300 participants, unlimited chat, 24/7 support, and 10 GB storage, all at $4 per user per month for up to 50 users.
Teams Business Basic: This costs $5/user/ month, allowing 300 participants, 10GB storage per user, 1TB cloud storage, breakout rooms, email hosting, plus much more.
Teams Business standard: At $12.5/month/user, this plan will offer you webinars, Microsoft bookings, and premium desktop versions of office 365.
Teams premium plan: This comes at $20 per user per month and 1TB of cloud storage per user, advanced security, cyber threat protection, and advanced device management options.
Improve Zoom/Teams Meetings Efficiency using Airgram
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.
Live transcription with automatic speaker detection allows you to remain engaged throughout the meeting.
A wide range of transcription languages, including French, English, Germany, Russian, Japanese, and Spanish.
Export the transcripts and meeting notes to Notion, Google Docs, or Microsoft Word, thus keeping every team member updated.
Built-in meeting agenda template to better organize your meeting.
Airgram’s AI-based entity extraction allows you to quickly review crucial information and allow your team to concentrate on them, increasing their efficiency.
Teams vs. Zoom: Which Is Better for You?
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.
Michael started his career as a product manager and then developed a passion for writing. He has been writing on technology, remote working, productivity, etc., hoping to share his thoughts with more people.
