Zoom Reviews

It works. It's easy to use and it's easy to set up.

I like that it is easy to record. 

To me, it's like using your iPhone. It's not a big deal. It's not a big deal to set up a meeting. 

Screen sharing is important. Being able to pull up spreadsheets, system presentations, PowerPoints, whatever, is very helpful. The tool's pretty effective that way.

People like it to be light. They like it to be not so technical that it's hard to learn or hard to use. One of the reasons Zoom grew so fast is that kids could learn it, old people could learn it, workers could learn it. It takes a little more learning curve to have the license and host meetings. Set up meetings, to host, there's a little bit more there, however, even that's pretty simple.

One thing I do wish was that there was more visibility. Sometimes I have to click into a reply-all to find out who is in the meeting and whether they've accepted or not. It's not convenient to check on that while you're in a meeting.

Teams is better about that. Teams is better about posting up right in front of you so you can see who was invited, who clicked in or not, who's on the call. 

Also when people are talking, you see either their image, if they've got an avatar, or at least their initials, and a little round fake avatar that's blinking when they're trying to talk, or they're raising their hand. That is the only thing I'd say that's really a frustration for me with Zoom, is I'm not always sure who got invited.

I've used the solution for a while. I use it every day.

I'm working virtually and my clients are all over the country. I don't visit them more than maybe once every six weeks each. I'm on the phone in Zoom or Teams probably 15 to 20 hours a week.

The stability is quite good. I haven't dealt with bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The scalability is good. Expanding it is not a problem. 

As consultants, there's only usually a few of us that are engaged with a client. We don't send an army in. We're very senior consultants, and our rates are really high. We're like hiring an attorney or something. We're not a bunch of bodies coming in to do all the leg work. We're advising them on how to do a lot of things properly in terms of ERP selection and implementation.

That said, we're engaging with a lot of people though. For example, in this one client I have, they're in Baltimore, I'm often on a call with 20 people. I may be the only one on my side and there's all of them. I have to know who they are and get familiar with their voices. A lot of the time, more people aren't necessarily doing the video thing where they're displaying themselves. It's just is less common that people do that. That's because more people are working virtually and maybe they're still in their t-shirt or you haven't taken a shower that day. If people aren't displaying themselves, you use the tool more like a phone in a sense, as you have to know, "Okay. That was Jackie speaking. That was Lisa speaking. That was Alice speaking."

We get familiar with each other, we get to know each other. However, we typically deal with maybe 10 or 12 people on a call. They may be in different locations. With one client I have, they're in 23 states. Various key people are in different places. Other kinds of meetings I have oftentimes been a three or four-way, where you've got a client and you've got a vendor who's maybe doing something for them. We can have essentially three or four companies represented in a call, and we're having maybe calls two or three times a week.

I've also used Microsoft Teams.

The larger the client, the more likely it is that they're going to use Teams instead of Zoom. Oftentimes, they're setting up the meetings and they prefer to set them up. I have this one large client where we're recording every one of our sessions, as they're reusable then for walking back through and revisiting deep discussions we've had and requirements and so on.

I don't happen to like Teams, it's clunky. Teams is clunky and it's also just harder to use. Particularly if you're using it also is a repository for documents, folders, recording, and so on. It's just not as usable.

The initial setup is very simple. 

I have a subscription to Zoom.

I am a customer and an end-user.

What my partner and I typically would do if we are in control of that is we use Zoom. We'll use Box for our repository of the artifacts, requirements, recordings, and so on. Box is also very, very easy to use. However, we find Teams clunky on both sides now. However, even though we prefer Zoom if a client prefers a different conference system, and they've got dozens of people inside that are married to that, well, we'll go with what they use.

We are on the latest version of Zoom. Zoom actually forces that. If you get a Zoom subscription, it pops up a patch or an update or whatever, and it's no big deal to click that and update.

What Zoom is, is it's a very convenient, easy to use, quick to set up, simple to learn tool. It works pretty effectively. 

However, people aren't using it so visually anymore as they used to. A lot of times it's really just a meetup where you're all on the same call, and people won't even post their videos too much anymore. Sometimes, if we're at a first-time meeting, we'll have our visual presence there, however, then we'll hide it away behind an avatar. People just aren't in need of that facial thing too much.

The main thing for me was just knowing who's scheduled for a call. Sometimes I don't know who's going to be on the call until I get on the call. There's a list there, however, you don't know who's accepted. We need a clear list. That would be an improvement.

Keeping it light is important. Everything is getting more and more like that. Even the system designs, major ERP systems, most of them when you log in, you feel like you're in a box. It feels boxy. That's the way Teams feels. It's got a structured menu architecture and so on, and frames around everything. The way things are going - and this is how Zoom is - it feels like you're in an open space. It doesn't feel like a box of things. It's an open flow. Keeping it that way is going to be important.

If you add more features, you have to keep it easy to find, easy to hide. Don't throw them on your whole menu. Don't throw everything at me. Just what I'm using is all I need. I'll give you another example of that. There's a system called CRM, Customer Relationship Management, such as Salesforce. Salesforce made a major strategic mistake. They built the thing that is a very complex functional solution. It's expensive due to the fact that it's so overbuilt. I don't know where Salesforce is at, however, I've got a lot of clients that I've run into that say, "Yeah, we put in Salesforce a few years ago and we're going to replace that now as too costly and we don't use it all."

They didn't do a very effective job of layering functionality so that you only see what you use, and make it simple, make it easy. Also, they didn't scale the pricing to what they're going to use. Salesforce is probably still pretty ubiquitous, however, it's probably going to get beat out by a bunch of these smaller, lighter, more open solutions. The challenge for Zoom would be to stay Zoom, and don't fix what isn't broken. It is a great tool. I really have very little, almost nothing but praise for Zoom. The only thing I'd say is that competitively, they're going to have to think about, well, what else does it have to be able to do?

In my opinion, it's going to be making the visual collaboration, not from people to people, and instead, the people to content, whether it's websites, systems, logins, spreadsheets, whatever, making that so easy to do that it's almost natural. We can more quickly say, "Oh, okay, let me pull that up."

Layer number one is, it ought to be as natural as sliding your fingers across the screen in some magical way to be able to show what you want to show. The next layer is going to have to have more social collaboration from inside and outside of the system.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten so far. In comparison, I might rate Microsoft Teams at a six or so. 

I used Zoom for some training programs that I conducted for younger children in school. The version I am using is for the Mac.

I used Zoom when I was doing an assessment. I did a waste management audit for an energy company, which has a large presence in 15 countries, because of the COVID pandemic. I had done a virtual audit of the waste management process of their production facilities. I did a comprehensive audit for all their 15 operating countries, for example, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Wuhan in China, South Korea, Japan, and India. I had used Zoom to talk to people.

Zoom had served as a handy tool to connect and communicate with the world, especially my client organizations during the COVID phase. The fact that I could establish a seamless bridge is attributable to Zoom. Be it Online training sessions or Business Assessments, Zoom has served as a handy tool. So business sustenance served well.

The most valuable features of Zoom are voice and camera clarity. The time latency of the response is good. The facility to view all the participants who are online is a benefit. In most of the other similar solutions, they too have this feature. However, since I have used Zoom, I find it as an advantage because you can see all the participants online and you can choose. 

When using Zoom for a training program, seeing the participants online and then the latency is very good, it is more in real-time. Additionally, the security features are good.

My only concern in Zoom is the stigma associated with being a Chinese product. However, it has been acquired by the US government or a US counterpart has taken over it. There is not any issue with respect to data security. This being said, there is a little bit of apprehension when it comes to the data security aspect. It's better if they give a public statement that we are compliant with the GDPR requirements. It will be helpful for them in promoting their solution in a much better way.

The internet infrastructure in India is not as good as in other places, such as the USA. Zoom could benefit by optimizing the connection to allow better operation of the solution under low bandwidth. Management of the latency time will give them an edge for data calls over other products.

If I want to do a recording quickly, the way we should be able to do it should be slightly easier for the author. For example, if you are conducting a program and you are hosting it with a trainer that is subcontracted to your organization. In this case, the trainer, when you're giving me access to Zoom, I am using Zoom as the bridge to train your audience. 

In such a situation, as an author, or trainer, should have the facility to record it myself, I should be able to gain a copy of my training session for later usage or for a review. If they could add some feature to accomplish this it would be helpful. It would be very motivating for the trainers and auditors to do self-reviews and then later on they can review themself for improvement areas to work on. 

When I take a look at my own recording, I can have a better idea of how to improve for the next session or training program.

I have been using Zoom for approximately 10 years.

Zoom is highly stable.

I never had connectivity issues where suddenly the line went off, and despite my internet bandwidth issues, I never faced a blackout. I had conducted training programs, for example, using zoom with several trainees in the session. Conceptual clarity is only possible when the bridge with the participants is clear enough to comprehend for the participant. I guess Zoom was good enough to connect well despite constraints, peak times and bandwidth issues which are often the challenges associated with online presence.

I had no problems with the scalability of Zoom.

Since the COVID pandemic, this is the new way of communicating for many people. Many people are carrying out business, training programs, and virtual meetings. Many things that are happening, Zoom has a huge potential. If they can make their offering more attractive, easier to use, with beautiful dashboards, it is a big market for them. They can have their share value going up in the market.

I have not needed to contact Zoom's technical support.

Positive

I have previously used Webex and Microsoft Teams. 

I have been using  Microsoft Team prominently. A lot of people are preferring Microsoft Team because it is more reliable than most of the other solutions. Zoom is slightly less popular because of the data security issues associated with it and has been taken over by a US company. China does not own it anymore but there is still a stigma associated with data security and privacy when using Zoom, in my opinion.

I do not remember how the initial implementation was but when the Zoom is implemented there is some waiting time when the login happens. Sometimes we are not sure if the connection is happening or not. There's a waiting time but happens also in Microsoft Team. At times it is as if we are blindfolded and waiting for the meeting connection to happen, you don't have a clue whether the connection is happening or not. I don't know if the issue is because of my internet connectivity, Zoom tool version, the other side of the connection is ready, or if the other party is joining or not. There are many question marks that are there that could be answered with some dashboard of what is the status is similar to tracking of a courier. It has gone somewhere and, midway, it is stuck, and then the other side is still yet to join.

 If Zoom can manage this delay and make it more creative in reflecting the participant and have the ability to inform the organizer of whether the connection is in place or not, it would be really helpful. 

Implementation and usage of Zoom are very user friendly. Sometimes when the meeting is arranged by the client the system admin of the client organization would extend support to share a document or share screen or other maneuvers. Support was good enough to enable the business discussion further without breaks breaks and interruptions.

Seamless integration with the business processes and timely communication with the clients adds huge value to the sustenance of Business. In a Virtual world of an evolving and fast emerging tomorrow, Zoom would be playing a pivotal role in supporting and enhancing the Business Performance of Corporates across the world. My RoI is a small piece of a similar experience and experimentation with the Virtualization of the business ecosystem with Zoom.

There is a free version of Zoom which allows you a certain limited amount of time usage and there is a corporate version of the solution where you have to pay.

They could improve the free version by allowing more time to use, it could benefit sales in the future. For example, let's say some students are using it or a certain kind of some CEOs or non-profit organizations are using, they can extend free access to such people.

The Microsoft Teams solution is more expensive than Zoom.

When evaluating other solutions to Zoom, they all have similar functionality. For example, the dashboard icons are at the bottom of the screen. There is standardized functionality in most of the solutions.

I would recommend this solution to others. 

They need to remove the Chinese stigma attached to the solution and then it would be better in the market for sales.

If a customer comes to me and asks if Zoom is a good solution I highly recommend it.

I rate Zoom a nine out of ten.

Zoom has been a complete substitution for the personal face-to-face interview. Everything we have been doing through Zoom. Every work meeting, every customer meeting, every interview for jobs. Everything that has to do with the interactions with another person. We only use Zoom due to the fact that, even though we could use some other technologies like Teams or even WhatsApp or anything like that, we prefer to use Zoom as we have the control of what is recorded and exactly what is going on in the meeting. We have been using it for every internal and external meeting - everything that we do. My agenda is just full of Zoom meetings. That is my life.

The most valuable aspect of the solution is the controls that you have for security. They have been enhanced a lot in the recent versions. When you are the owner of the meeting, you basically have control over everything. It is really important when you are in a situation in which someone tries to enter your meeting and he doesn't belong or doesn't identify him or herself. You can just easily remove them. 

Understanding the different options you have is easy. The identified users have to be allowed in with authentication. You will have people that are from the organization or from some other organization and you can ask for authentification or you can have a meeting in which anyone can join. Even so, at the moment you have the option of doing something that will give you control over the meeting. For me, that's one of the most useful things.

It's very simple to manage.

The solution is stable.

The scalability is good.

The solution is easy to set up.

We are entering into these meta universes of applications in which virtual reality is going to be very, very important. They're starting to explore some of those things by having options of creating templates that visualize a meeting room, for example. There are visualizations that give you the illusion that you are in the same place. However, there are many more things that they can do, and the room there is endless in terms of improvements.

There are ways that you can get information from the cameras and try to map something that could be more 3D and try to make it much more virtual in terms of creating a virtual world. That is an area that Zoom has been just been scratching the surface of. In the future, I expect they will have better UI.  

It would be great if there was a bit more camera control. For example, cropping the image, and improving the background remover features, which can be buggy right now.

I've been using the solution for five years or so.

It is very stable, even though it has issues such as dropping meetings occasionally. That said, that's anecdotal. It's something that might happen once every a hundred meetings or something like that. There have been glitches, however, it's not something that we are worried about.

In the beginning, scalability may have been an issue, as the pandemic hit and they went from zero to one million quite fast, however, that's mostly been resolved. 

Everybody in our company uses it right now.

We have tested for almost 2000 people internally as we have users on the webinar mode directly. The webinars that we are now doing for customers are on Zoom. That is in the tens of thousands of people. There is a limit for the meetings that we could hold in our version as the employee, however, there are versions within the company that is unlimited in terms of the people that it can hold. We have been doing very well with that technology in terms of the number of people we can handle. 

We used to use Cisco WebEx, however, everyone wanted to switch over to Zoom.

The problem we had with WebEx was the version that we were using was not up to date. There was always a requirement for a call with a phone for the audio, and for the video and the interaction was online. That was a big problem as there were no international calls. There was a way for you to receive a callback, however, that doesn't work all the time. The quality of the sound was not good for WebEx when you were using the phone. Zoom had a very good quality of sound. You can also stream music and have high-quality audio.

I also used Microsoft Teams in the past. I didn't care much for Teams. There are things that annoy me from Teams. I use it sometimes still as some customers are required to use Teams instead of Zoom. There is this situation in Teams in which you are not actually seeing all the pictures of the faces of the people. When you enter a meeting, you're just seeing a couple of them and then you have to go to participants to see them. The interface is also not as easy as Zoom in many ways. For me to get to the chat part is like a mystery.

I've used Goot Meet occasionally too. There are some lacking features and it's not as easy to use. Sometimes the share screen or the share sound for the computer doesn't work at all. Sometimes [you have to install plugins. It doesn't have a client install on the computer. It is not very useful for me. In that area, still Zoom is more advanced than the others.

The initial setup is really easy. In the beginning, they had some issues with the ports and some things. We had some issues with some customers in that, due to security reasons, they were not able to use Zoom. That was an issue, however, that was two years ago, and, largely due to the fact that it was such a massive problem at the time, it caused headaches for many people. Right now, however, it's one of the easiest solutions to deal with. 

Since it is a managed solution, a software as a service, everything seems to be completely taken care of by Zoom.

We are using the paid version of the solution. The exact costs are handled on a corporate level, however, I understand that if you just want to own a license for your small business or something like that, it's around $300 a year, which is very reasonable. It gives you a lot of features that are good for you, such as the storage of the meetings if you recorded on the cloud, which is something that you cannot do if you have the free version.

We're using the solution as a customer. It's our main tool right now.

We are using the most recent version of the solution.

I'd advise people that the change in the process of your work will be impacted by how you plan things. For instance, there are easier ways, when you apply best practices, to make your life easier. There is a button, for example, in Outlook in which you can just insert all the information for the Zoom meeting without having to plug in a link. Or you can actually create a specific unique meeting ID and you will not have any worries if you are always using your personal meeting room, that you will overlap with people entering into the meeting that you don't want.

I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

I use Zoom when speaking about some topics in my community. I am currently trying to set up my own business, but when I was working for a company, I used Zoom for meetings with my coworkers when I needed to talk to multiple people at the same time. I've used Zoom for calls with 2,000 to 3,000 people and also audiences of 30 people or one-on-one conversations. 

I like Zoom because of the quality of the image and the resolution. Of course, I know that depends on the hardware you're using. But, still, the image and sound quality are excellent. If you use the free version of Skype, sometimes the screen gets blurry, so you can't see everything well, then you have to check if the connection is okay, or maybe you need to restart the application. But with Zoom, I didn't have that kind of problem. Zoom is also more intuitive and accessible to new users.

One thing that Zoom can improve is the chat. You can send messages to a specific person without messaging everyone. But everyone sees the whole chat if the administrator lets them see the chat. Maybe they could add an option to let you open a private conversation on the side with a person. And for example, let's say you are chatting with another person and you want to select two or three more people to have a private chat. Zoom could add a feature that lets you create a breakout room in the chat where you can collaborate. I think that would work fine because it's like being in an office where you can also start some other conversations. Even though there isn't a speaker in front of you talking, you can also have some further discussions with the coworkers at the same time. But none of the tools has that feature that I know of, or if they do, I haven't used it.

Zoom could also maybe add some integrated storage that could be allocated according to your requirements, or it could be a subscription that you pay for. And the interface could possibly use some fancier colors or a more modern look. Sometimes everything on the screen is in black, but you can change the background, and that's good. But for example, the aspect of the screen is old-fashioned on Zoom. The design, screens, and layouts of the forms could all use an overhaul. If you have software that looks much better than the competitor, maybe it could be positioned better than the leader, probably, perhaps because you have your experience, I'll say. An end-user may be suitable. So, as I said, for example, you could also be in a conversation.

And Zoom could add some integrated note-taking features. So when you are listening to a speaker, you can jot something down really quickly, or if you're the speaker, you can have some notes to help you with your presentation so you don't forget to say something. It would also be helpful if you could record the session yourself. Only the administrator can record the meeting not all the parties in the meeting. But I think it may not be possible because of the bandwidth, I guess.

I have more than 30 years of working as a software director, product manager, and director of software development. So in terms of product development, you always want to envision the real goal you want to achieve in a given amount of time and how you want to differentiate from other products that are out there in the market. And you think about what kind of innovations you want to introduce in the product, so you start managing a roadmap and engage in version planning to release those new versions at a specific time. 

I've never had to contact Zoom support.

Each company has its own preferred toolset of its preference. For example, some users or companies use Webex or GoToMeeting. Others use Skype, Meet, or Teams. But Zoom is the one that comes to mind when I am talking about these tools. In the past, for example, Skype was one of the first tools in the market that let people have virtual meetings for free.

Zoom's strategy is to let everyone use the tool for at least 40 minutes without any restrictions, and when you reach the time limit, you restart the tool and continue the conversation. So that led so many users to adopt the tool. 

Installing Zoom is pretty straightforward. I haven't had any problems. It practically installs itself and takes about a minute, I believe. It updates and installs in that time, but there is also a web-based version so that you can work with it, and you don't need to install anything at all. The only problem I've had recently was a video issue. Everybody could hear me, but I couldn't share my video. I don't know why. I got out of the application and started it again, and I still couldn't show my screen. Maybe it's because I haven't installed the latest version or because I am working with Windows 7 instead of Windows 10 perhaps. 

I've never paid for Zoom. When I worked for other companies, they had already bought a subscription or perpetual license. Aside from that, I've only ever used the free version.

I rate Zoom nine out of 10. I say nine because all products have room for improvement. For instance, it would be a great idea if Zoom could provide APIs and a way to embed their products in third-party applications. Let's say I'm working in BPM or RPA tool and need to ask a question, so can I call someone, see their face, and have a little conversation without leaving the app. That would enhance the experience of using the BPM or RPA tool because you wouldn't have to leave your environment to collaborate with some others immediately. Zoom could be more like WhatsApp, where you can chat about something and get the answer from someone else. You can see all the conversations and search them. But you never see the same integration with a tool like Zoom, Skype, or any other tools in the market. And that would be terrific because it increases and enhances collaboration between people.

And right now, because of the pandemic, we don't know when we'll be working together again at the same office. In some jobs, that could be indefinite. There's going to be a mix of people who like working from home or at the office, and they're going to need to interact, so you need a way for people to talk face to face. You need to see each other and feel a sense that you are close to that person. Even though you're not right there in front of the person, at least you have the chance to see them, not just some words written down in an instant messaging system.

Everyone in the company uses it, so it's about a few dozen. I use it for interviews and group discussions but very rarely for meetings because there are security issues on that level. So I don't share proprietary information on Zoom, but I use it frequently for normal discussion. Obviously, now that people are getting back to work, we're not using it as much, but it's still useful.

Zoom is more accessible for people without a lot of tech knowledge. So let's say you're setting up a Zoom call with your parents, and they don't have the hardware or other things you need on their computer. It's easy to Zoom with them over the phone rather than inviting them to a meeting and getting them to a place with a microphone and a screen. It's highly mobile and easy for them to join the conversation.

I like Zoom's ease of use and how easy it is for non-tech people to interface with it. Other video conferencing solutions can be somewhat challenging for non-tech people, so you often end up waiting for people to connect. Although Microsoft Teams is probably a better enterprise product overall, it's not as good for people who don't have that kind of tech history. Also, I've had some microphone issues and connection issues with Teams. 

Security is something Zoom lacks. If you're trying to get proprietary buy-in and enterprise buy-in, security is the top priority. And even though the user interface is simple, every solution could use a tune-up in that department. I found it easy, but those things are not difficult for me. Of course, I can't speak for older adults who might not have experience interfacing with these things. Maybe Zoom could be made easier for them. 

But again, when it comes to ease of use, Zoom is on the lower and higher-end, depending on how you look at it. We don't use Zoom for presentations, so I'm unsure if it already has this feature. But if Zoom could enable you to present directly, that's something that would add a lot of value. 

We've been using Zoom for over a year.

I haven't had any issues. However, once you get beyond a certain number, it becomes very dependent on the admin to figure out who should be talking. The more people you have, the more difficult it will be to keep track. But I suppose that's a function of any meeting.

Zoom's scalability depends on whether people are following Robert's Rules of Order or how amenable your staff is to have those kinds of meetings. If they're not used to that kind of thing, then you have people speaking out of turn, so it depends on how good your moderator is. Generally speaking, though, the more people on a call, the more difficult it is to manage who's speaking or keep track of who is who. 

Hopefully, we won't be expanding our usage any time soon because that would mean things have gone south in terms of the pandemic. For now, our usage will remain steady, and I don't see it expanding to that extent. Even if you have customers across different markets, it won't be expanded on one end because the user base on the proprietary end won't increase.

You really didn't need tech support for Zoom. Something terrible would have to happen before you called Zoom tech support. Even then, you have your internal IT team for stuff like this, but it's not a cumbersome app. People have security issues. They get hacked. I know of a few people who had their Zoom meetings interrupted with frat-boy antics, racist trolling, and all kinds of crazy things. We've never had those kinds of issues, but if your password gets out or something like that, you may have to call tech support and see if they can block some IP address. But we've never had to deal with that kind of issue.

People at this company use Skype and Webex fairly frequently, but Webex is more of an onsite on-prem thing. For example, Webex is used when you don't want to go upstairs to talk to your coworker or you can't fit that many people in a conference room. Webex is more appropriate for direct presentations. We don't use Zoom for that kind of thing. But Zoom is easier to use overall than Webex, Teams, and Skype.

Setting up Zoom is incredibly easy. Let's say you're told that you need to go to a Zoom conference that starts in five minutes. You can set yourself up in that time and not be late. With some of these other solutions, you're doing mic checks, interface checks, internet checks, etc. It's easy to set Zoom up right away.

I rate Zoom seven out of 10. Again, I would say seven because of ease of use, how widely available it is, and how easy it is to adapt. But I don't know how well it can work at the large enterprise level. For our normal usage, I think it's solid.

At the same time, I wouldn't present via Zoom unless I had an experienced presenter. You have to keep the audience's attention or use Webex so the presentation is onscreen. When using Teams or Webex, you're sharing screens, so it's a direct kind of thing. In Zoom, you have a camera, and you're presenting. In my experience, it's not a direct-to-screen presentation. It's more of the audience watching you present from a screen. So that requires a little bit more attention. If you're having a town hall or something along those lines, I would say Zoom is the way to go. On the other hand, if you're trying to do something that involves specifications and very minute details, use Teams or Webex.

I use the solution for meetings and calls. 

In Zoom, I don't have a preference for any of the features. If you know the application well, then you can use all the features. I'm using most of the features, including file sharing and sharing screens. 

The possibility for chat is very handy sometimes. The chat is very useful due to the fact that sometimes you have to run formulas and those kinds of things and to pronounce it is not enough. You have to write it down so that the person or people can see exactly what the formula is.

The whiteboard capabilities are great.

I use Zoom not so much for business, due to the fact that the problem with Zoom is the restriction that you have where there are only 45 minutes allowed for a conference, and then you had to log out and start a new meeting. 

They should remove any restriction of time. Sometimes the time that you planned for the meeting is not enough. Sometimes it goes more than an hour, an hour and 10 minutes. 

That said, they may have already fixed this issue.

When you start the Zoom meeting, at first, it didn't start directly, the meeting. It'd go to the web browser, then it asks you to open the zoom application. After it opens, then you can start. That it's a little bit too much of a problem for beginners. It would be easier and more user-friendly if you can go directly to the meeting without the hassle of starting up and waiting. It could just be a bit more user-friendly. 

The problem originally was that when Zoom started, they had most of the market. The problem that they had, is that with the COVID pandemic, a lot of people started using conferencing solutions and you had a paid version and a free version. The paid version had more features than the free version. That was confusing for people. They said, “okay, why do I have to pay for certain features?” A lot of people I know looked for free versions and there were other free versions. For example, I use Whereby also, and Whereby does all the things that Zoom can do.

The solution is stable.

I know a lot of IT, and therefore, most of the things that come up I can fix and if I can't fix it directly, I go and I look on the internet for solutions. If I run into a problem, I'm not the first person that has run into the problem. I look for a solution myself. Most of the time I get the solution. I don't deal with technical support.

I use Zoom, MS Teams, and Google Meet. 

I also use Whereby, which is free to use.

I used MS Teams first, then Zoom. I use MS Teams due to the fact that I have a Microsoft account and a Microsoft company account. I started using Zoom when a lot of people started using Zoom. Using MS Teams is more difficult than using Zoom. 

I am tech-savvy. I'm not afraid to use applications and I can understand the logic behind the application. That said, I know that non-tech-savvy people had problems with starting up the Zoom meeting. The typical user doesn't understand the logic that's behind it. When you start it on the web, it's supposed to work directly on the web and not go to the application that is on your desktop and launch that. That is something that I can understand, however, it is not logical for people who are not accustomed to using IT so much.

All that is to say that, for me, the initial setup is not complex, however, I'm not an average user. I work daily with 10 or 12 applications. I switch from one to another. For me, it's not difficult. For non-technical people, it might be.

The deployment is fast and only takes a few minutes. It's maybe ten minutes or less.

I'm using a personal account, which is free. To use a company account, I have to go to the administration and fix that they pay the year account. I don't want to go through all of these procedures and all the hassle. That's the reason I use a personal account.

I'm using Zoom on occasion. It depends on what the person I will have a conference with wants to use. I am flexible. I use various solutions. I pick the one that is better for the other side.

I tend to use the most up-to-date version of the solution.

I'd advise users to use the solution as it's a good product. In the beginning, it scared me off because as there were a lot of rumors about privacy. For a few months, I didn't use it until I knew that they had fixed that problem. Now security is fine.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

We use Zoom in two or three ways. One is for regular meetings. Most of our meetings are done over Zoom because people work from home due to COVID. A cloud meeting is the best way to go. People can initiate a meeting and invite people for one hour or two hours at a specific time.

When people want to do that, they have to buy Zoom's cloud meetings and licenses. If you want to conduct a cloud-based event, Zoom has a solution for events, and you have to buy an event license from them. 

The third thing is Zoom rooms or Zoom video communications. Suppose you want to have a video conferencing device in your office, and you want to use that to connect via Zoom. You're in a boardroom where you have done the A/V integration. You can buy a Zoom room license and connect that solution to your Zoom meetings.

Mostly, we like Zoom meetings and Zoom rooms.

We started using Zoom last year.

Zoom has an email address. You write to them about any issues, and they respond.

Every solution has its special features because they're all competing with Zoom now. Zoom has started cornering the commercial market. WebEx was already in the enterprise market. Since the COVID outbreak, things have changed. Everybody's competing to update looks and features. I've been selling WebEx for a long time and Zoom also. I've used BlueJeans. All of the solutions are doing well, but Zoom's main benefit is that it's easy to manage.

Zoom is orienting itself to the commercial market. They are considering allowing users to start with a hundred participants per meeting, and then if you want to increase, you pay more. Webex allows a thousand participants to start. You can join from any video device. With WebEx, if you want to join from a video device, you have to buy additional licenses.

Most of our customers use Webex, but the government offices can't because of security issues. Banks also limit cloud applications to general meetings. Official meetings are on-prem only because they don't want to leak data on the cloud. Every major meeting must be recorded, so they won't do any cloud calling. If it is an urgent corporate meeting, they will not host it online. They only use Zoom or Webex for customer meetings or outside meetings.

Zoom costs less and offers more features if you're going for the lower versions. Zoom will be cheaper if you want to have a general meeting, but if you want a real enterprise version, Cisco will be cheaper.

Everything is easy with Zoom. You don't need to do anything but order it and tell the admin for that organization, and they will give one ID. For the remaining IDs, the admin will add the rest of the users. It's the same for any service, be it WebEx, BlueJeans, etc. You'll get one ID assigned to the administrator, and they can assign the rest of IDs to anyone in the organization. If you have 10 licenses, one ID is configured for the administrator, and they distribute the rest. We give a training on how to do it. It's all cloud-based, so nothing needs to be implemented in the office or anything.

Any cloud-based service offers a lot of benefits for customers. They don't have to invest in any on-prem infrastructure and they can use it on the go. They can be in the office, at home, traveling, at a hotel, or wherever, and they can start a meeting. There is no investment or recurring costs aside from the annual licenses.

I rate Zoom nine out of 10. It always works, and they try to appeal to what the user wants. They added features like background music for those people who use Zoom for online church services. They try to make the solution more useful for the user. For example, I tried to sell WebEx to a church, but I also gave them Zoom for a trial. They were impressed with that because that was the feature they were looking for. Zoom got most of these churches globally because of one feature.

It all depends on what the customer needs. Some people come along and say, "I want Zoom" just because they've heard of Zoom. However, it might not be a good fit when I tell them about the features. I speak to the customer, understand the requirements, and recommend they try this or that. Some people don't even need Zoom, but they ask for it. 

We are a market research firm.

We use Zoom for a few instances.

I used to use Zoom on a regular basis for meetings for both my business and my office work. However, as the project has evolved over the last three years, we are focused on Microsoft Teams.

It would be 70% to 30%.

It was similar to password-based security when connecting to anyone. When a large number of people join in, there is a lot of noise. Random people become accustomed to receiving these invitations. They can also join without invitations, as they used to. As a result, there was a lot of noise earlier. Right now, I'm not dealing with that problem. But, in and out, there may be a few security web issues with Zoom.

I'm not sure if it makes a difference, but connectivity frequently drops when we are connected to Zoom compared to other logins or chat boxes. We are dealing with that issue. The voice quality could improve, and there are issues with the background.

I believe the background has changed in the last two to three months, or even in the last year. In Teams, we have the ability to change our own backgrounds. We can get a background that is unique to us. I believe Zoom does not yet support this feature. Or, if it is enabled, it is not functioning properly.

Its background does not function properly.

Noise cancellation should be available. Both noise cancellation and voice cancellation should be included. The number of people who attend the interviews or webinars, combined with those who join in suddenly, creates a lot of chaos. That can be minimized. Background options, such as customized backgrounds, should also be provided.

I have been working with Zoom for three and a half years.

I'm not sure what version it is, but I recently updated to the latest version of Zoom.

Stability is always an issue with Zoom. I am not sure if it's going well right now or not because I'm only using it 30 percent of the time. I am not sure if they are on the right track with stability or not.

When I used to connect, it felt a little that if you are a paid Zoom user, you can invite as many people as you want to that meeting. However, if you have a free version, you can only connect a limited number of people. I believe the maximum number of people is 15 or 25.

That makes sense because if it's paid, then you have a lot of security policies in place. which is good for data security and network security because you have a passcode that is being generated. However, if you have the free version, you do not have a passcode. That is open to everyone.

I have some experience with CloudEndure Disaster Recovery.

I don't have much experience with technology. But, I have worked with cloud-based technologies. On the basic front, I have the knowledge.

We are a firm. We use the Amazon cloud for everything, including data storage and other things, but I'm not an expert in that area. That is the IT person who will be in charge of that. I don't have any direct experience with the Amazon cloud. That is entirely handled by the IT department.

We are using Microsoft Teams and Zoom. We primarily use Teams for communication.

When compared, I believe Microsoft Teams is more stable than Zoom.

With new features come new services in the Teams. And because we use Outlook, we are linked to a variety of other services. We can connect to users using various other services or various apps. We can work on a variety of other things when we are connected to Teams and directly connected to Outlook. 

When we are connected to Zoom, and we want to schedule a meeting, we must log into Zoom separately and then connect to the meeting, or we must schedule a meeting.

The initial setup is straightforward.

There are both free and paid versions available.

I looked into CloudEndure Disaster Recovery for a project that required a few bits of data here and there.

We had a business relationship with Zoom, we were partners.

I would rate Zoom a seven out of ten.