Google Hangouts [EOL] Reviews

I use Google Hangouts for both chat and online meetings.

The most valuable feature is the seamless integration with Google Suite. For example, in Google Calendar, if you set a meeting then it will automatically prepare the google Meet or Google Hangouts meeting for you.

It gives you the ability to make online presentations, and there is a little-known tool that allows you to use it as a remote desktop.

It is very easy to use and is available as soon as you open a Google account.

The recently added noise-cancellation feature works well.

I would like to see support for showing virtual backgrounds.

A better resolution that is capable of showing hi-resolution videos would be useful.

The capability of transferring files through chat, other than just images and videos, would be useful. There are some workarounds for it, but they are not as robust as the other features. Most other messenger allows you to send files through chat.

I have been using Google Hangouts for several years, since 2012.

I use it every day and the stability is pretty good. It has never quit on me except in the case where my internet connection was down. Basically, if you have a working internet connection then it's up.

I have not tested the scalability, but I have been part of meetings with more than 100 participants. My understanding is that it can handle up to 250 concurrent users in a meeting. For our purposes at work, it has been good.

I have never been in contact with technical support.

I also use Zoom and Microsoft teams, although not as extensively as Hangouts. Zoom allows you to show a virtual background, which is a nice feature. Also, most other messengers support sending generic files through chat, whereas Google Hangout supports sending images and videos only.

One problem with Zoom is that you can only have chats when you're in a video conference, whereas with Hangouts, it's real-time. The chat box is always there. I have never used the chat feature in Microsoft Teams.

I have not explored the integration between Teams and Microsoft Office.

Running Hangouts for the first time is pretty seamless. Once you have a Google account, there is no setup that is needed. You simply log in and it's there.

It was easy to set up on my own.

This solution is available for free with the opening of a Google account.

My advice for anybody who is looking to start using Google Hangouts is that it is plug-and-play, and comes free with Google Suite. The minute you have a Google account, it's already there. It is easy to use and works right out of the box.

Having more than 100 people in a meeting is pretty good.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The most valuable features are the chat features and the video conferencing features that enable more than two or three people to be connected at a time.

There should be more space for multiple users at a time so that multiple people can connect, can share, and even transfer control to another colleague, employer, student, etc. 

Another feature I want to add is a meeting date to schedule meetings or if I want a meeting after two days, I would like to have a reminder and a note.

I have been using Google Hangouts for ten years. 

The current version is stable.

It is scalable. We have around 1,500 users.

We don't use technical support. We are multiple users and we have more features than other colleagues. 

We also use Zoom. Zoom has more control options than Google Hangouts because a presenter can give control to another colleague or student. If anyone wants to ask any question, they can raise their hand to ask a question, can send a message or can ask the presenter to give them control, or they can annotate at a certain time. They have more features. We can also send voice messages with Zoom.

I would rate it a six out of ten. The security is already there but there should be more ability to share features. The other feature they should include is Zoom control; if one colleague wants to give control to another, there can be two, three or four sharing their presentations.

We use Google Hangouts as our major mode of communication. I'm a senior executive and we're a user of the solution. 

I like the voice and video calling options because I feel that Google Hangouts has more voice clarity and video clarity than Skype most of the time. It may even be better than Zoom which sometimes lags and tends to crash quite often. 

I'm not completely happy with the message options in Hangouts because for now it's only possible to send pictures, which is unfortunate because I would also like to be able to send documents and other things. I also think that because we've all become very used to using WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, I think they could also include a reply option. 

I sometimes find that the topic that I want to speak to a particular person about, or the topic that we spoke about gets lost among all the words. A reply button would enable me to physically save certain information. 

I've been using Google Hangouts for a couple of years. 

It's a stable solution. I'm enjoying using it. It's all part of Google, so I'm seldom disappointed.

I believe scalability is excellent. They should continue the way they have been and maybe developing some of the features mentioned earlier but scalability is good. 

Like most people, we also use WhatsApp. We've become used to using it for personal and professional purposes. We have lots of groups in our company and among our colleagues where we use WhatsApp for a specific department or specific project. We use both, but I believe Google Hangouts is the perfect place for professionals to come together and work. It's a perfect collaboration space.

I would give this solution a perfect score if they could tweak some of the issues they have such as the messaging. Other than that, I think it's a great product. 

For now, I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We have been using Google Hangouts for video conferencing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Google Hangouts is very quick and easy to use, and the quality is very good.

I would like to have a whiteboard feature, where I can draw a sketch or diagram and show it to the people in the meeting.

Support for recording meetings would be helpful.

We have been using Google Hangouts for about three months.

We have been using this solution approximately twice a week and it has been very stable.

Google Hangouts is a scalable system. We have had meetings that include at least ten members and it has been fine.

I have not been in contact with Google's technical support.

Prior to Google Hangouts, I have used Cisco Webex for web conferencing and meetings. I found that the voice and image are much more clear in Hangouts, compared to Webex. In fact, I think that the biggest difference between them is that the voice in Google Hangouts is better.

This solution is quite easy to set up. You can create a meeting using the calendar and it starts working. It can be started in a matter of seconds.

We are users of Google G-Suite, so we did not consider other options.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are using Google Hangouts for video meetings and group chat sessions.

All of our employees are using this solution and it allows them to easily catch up and keep in touch with each other.

What I like best is that once a person starts speaking, you will see immediately who it is.

The group chat is a very good feature, where you can see all of the participants on cameras.

Online sessions are reliable and there are almost no glitches.

I would like to see more focus on features for interacting with the participants in a group chat, such as screen sharing. This would be great.

Having an option for participants to ask questions, like a "raise hand" feature, would be helpful because as it is now, they have to send a message and I have to watch for it. The message might be private for me or sent to the entire group but either way, I have to watch the list of participants all of the time for these messages.

I have been using Google Hangouts for more than six months.

The reliability is very good because there are almost no glitches.

It is more stable than other products.

We have 130 employees in the company and all of us use Google Hangouts. However, I have only used it for sessions with 12 participants. With this number of people, it was fine. 

I have not been in contact with Google's technical support.

I have been working extensively with products like Google Hangouts, Zoom, and Webex to finish various projects. I find that Google Hangouts is more reliable than Zoom. On the other hand, Webex has more features available for interacting with the participants.

We are using the free version of Google Hangouts.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We're a very distributed environment. We are a group of trucking companies and we're spread out across Western Canada. We've got about 20 offices with about 250 people right across 20 offices and communicating with each other is very important and so we use Google Hangouts. It provides inter-company communication, primarily for meetings and things like that. It has reduced cell phone bills and all those sorts of things.

The screen sharing is the most valuable feature. It ties in with Google docs and Google sheets so that we can work on a single document as a whole group at once. That's the biggest feature we rely on. Other than that, it's quick communication. You can send a quick chat message if you need or you can have a long video call conference if you need as well. It is flexible. It's a very good all-around solution.

The way it works with anonymous users should be improved. That could be strengthened to let anonymous users do more.

If we could get the person that we call that doesn't have a Gmail account and to screen share would be helpful. There have been times when I actually wanted to do remote control through Google and that would be really helpful too. That would help support a lot too. 

We have been using it for around five years. 

It is stable. 

The scalability is very good. We have around 150 users who use it every day. 

It's at least half of our company that uses it pretty regularly. Our users range from data entry clerks who use the chat function to ask quick questions of their counterparts, dispatchers who communicate with other dispatchers inside that company. Managers use it for their weekly calls. It's really every level of our organization uses it.

Before Hangouts we were using a regular teleconferencing solution where we would dial the number of a code and we would pay a bill every month for the number of minutes we used. We've never used a solution like Hangouts.

The setup is complex. There are many settings buried in the Google Admin that are hard to find. It can be a pain. 

It took about a year to get people into it and to set it to the way we wanted it. It required constant tweaking.

We have seen a return on our investment and we're all very satisfied with it. I just prefer to pay what I used to.

This time last year I would've said the pricing is fantastic but Google increased their pricing recently and so our costs doubled. I don't think it's as cost-effective as it used to be. I would say it's sort of in the middle as far as cost-effectiveness now. It's the other things that come with Hangout that make it valuable. Part of its value is that it's got a whole suite of tools. I do in fact recommend it to people because of that. 

The one piece of advice I would is to be prepared regarding who else is going to use Hangouts outside of your organization. If you want people to be able to use a phone number, you have to pay for a whole different license with Google, your whole Google license has to be upgraded. Granted it has lots of other features. The dial-in feature to Hangouts is only accessible in the business class of G suite. 

If it's only your company that is going to use it, then you're great at the regular license level. But if you think you're going to have people who are required to dial in, then you need to be prepared to pay more.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

The screen-sharing feature is the most valuable feature. 

I have been using Google Hangouts for one year. 

I haven't had any problems with stability. 

It is definitely scalable. 

I haven't needed to contact customer support because there haven't been any problems. 

Google Hangouts is wonderful in order to communicate with the rest of the world. 

I would rate Google Hangouts an eight out of ten. Not a ten because there's room for improvement. Sometimes there is disconnectivity. 

We have a group of people that uses Google Hangouts. We chose Google Hangouts because most of the users are on Google and we don't want to use WhatsApp. We publish things like documents for all the members who are on it. I can use WhatsApp, but I prefer Google Hangouts because with Google Hangouts we can directly share our screen. If you have two or three on Google Hangouts directly, someone can share their screen, and you can see what he's doing.

The ability to share a screen during a meeting is one of the most valuable features. You can also be directly connected to the computer and on the phone with the same account. It is flexible.

We purchased a videoconference system called Zoom. We want to see if Google Hangouts has the ability to integrate our Zoom device to use it with Hangouts and meet directly. I would like for Hangouts to have a professional cloud service in which people will be able to connect the device up to and need not to go through another competitor. I'd rather just use one single service. 

I have been using Google Hangouts for five years. 

It is stable. 

If someone is using Zoom and is using Skype, the two devices can be connected directly, there is no need for a license. If someone is using Skype and issues a Google Hangouts conference code or a Meet conference code, you are not able to dial with the two devices. Skype and BlueJeans, also work together but Google and Skype directly do not. 

We have around 100 users using Hangouts in our company. 

Our support is based out of Kenya. They're good. If you have any issues, it will take them around two days to resolve it. 

Per user, we are paying $50 a month. 

Most of the companies are going to Microsoft products but Google is easier to use.

Google is a good product but it'll be better if they fix some videoconference issues. With Microsoft, you can integrate all of your devices. With Logitech and other companies, you can connect it directly through the cloud and you can use it directly, no need to go for another supplier. But with Google, you need to go with another supplier.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

In the next release, I would like the ability to videoconference with a connectivity plugin.