We just did an evaluation of Zoom, Webex and GotoMeeting to use for remote training/classrooms.. Zoom killed Webex on price.

Fun fact, the chief engineer at Webex left and started Zoom

Has a free tier, works cross platform in any browser and is simple to use

Just gonna drop here that Zoom was installing an [undocumented local web server](https://www.zdnet.com/article/zoom-defends-use-of-local-web-server-on-macs-after-security-report/) on Macs up until recently. Some people were demonstrating exploits that silently enabled the webcam by getting the user to visit a random website. Apple removed this with their anti-malware infrastructure, and Zoom later patched it and made amends. So while they are aggressively pursuing a simple and reliable user experience I think they may be taking some security risks.

have you ever seen a C-level or mid manager try to start a meeting? Even with Zoom being derp proof it's still not as difficult as GTM or WebEx.

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We were WebEx 50 seats. We were able to get Zoom with 100 Seats + Zoom Rooms for the same price. We discovered that Zoom had better functionality. End of story on that.

Not requiring Java is a big one. Getting WebEx to work at all on Linux is a monumental pain in the ass, and usually neither sending nor receiving video works. Zoom at least has a native client for Windows, Mac and Linux and generally just works.

Price, especially if you are providing licenses for the whole company. Ease of scheduling and joining a meeting. Zoom makes it *very* easy to change audio settings, see if your sounds is picking up etc - doesn't completely remove the "can you hear me? I can hear you" stuff, but does make it easier to diagnose/fix.

At my old job, where I was tasked with selecting this type of product, WebEx and GoToMeeting were much more expensive per-user than we felt comfortable paying for all staff. We sort of had a reverse "network-effect" issue: the product is not useful [for intra-office communication] if there aren't enough people using it. In order to supply it to enough people to make it worthwhile at all, we needed licenses for large groups of employees. However, probably only 10% of users would use it more than a few times a year. So despite needing a license for a lot of people, we would lose about 90% of the investment due to lack of use. Our solution was to use Google Meet (so we bought $5/month G-Suite accounts for users). However, Zoom is another well-priced alternative. The free tier really helps with similar situations, as an organization doesn't need to worry about wasting money on users who need it once in a blue moon.

They just make everything so easy. I've been doing videoconferencing in an education setting since 1995. Zoom is really a game changer for regular users. I setup 5 new Zoom Rooms last week. One instructor was worried about having to learn a new system and prepared to take notes. Once I went over it, she couldn't believe how easy it was. Her notepad just said: Turn TVs on, switch to HDMI1. She wrote down nothing about Zoom itself.

Does Zoom install under AppData? My biggest issue with the GoTo software was that it always installs under app data and since it updates versions pretty much weekly it makes it impossible to run software restriction policies out of AppData. I have found most crypto viruses install on end user systems without needing elevated installation credentials from AppData so I always like to lock it down.

I'm gonna leave it here that all of these are amazing compared to Skype for business. I die a little inside whenever I have to join a meeting with that.

Well for starters, managing the app on users computers doesn't make me feel like I need a drink at 9AM. The G2M installer is among the worst software I have to work with.

Also, Zoom came with a free, hidden web server on each Mac client

We replaced webex with....bluejeans.....

It should be noted that very recently a 0 day exploit was found for the zoom Mac client. Haven’t followed up if it’s been patched or not, but any company that treats valid security concerns the way zoom did I can’t support. I’ve switched all of my clients away from zoom.

There is a subtle but noticeable bump in quality of the audio on zoom calls.

Pro: I’m in university IT support. We had a lot of issues with our AD federated WebEx accounts. Not a single problem with AD federated Zoom accounts. Pro: We had professors and students who couldn’t figure out WebEx to the point that some online classes spent the first week in WebEx 101. Zoom is simple AF. Pro: the students actually use the phone app for mobile attendance to online classes (with WebEx, they’d dial in and get charged for it if they did it wrong). Pro: we get roughly 1/3 of the support calls for Zoom than we typically got for WebEx. Pro: Zoom can do local meeting recording to mp4 without the need for a converter. Con: WebEx meeting recordings can be customized more before exporting from their format to mp4 Con: the WebEx LMS plugin for Canvas is a lot more configurable than the Zoom LMS plugin for Canvas. For most businesses, the pros outweigh the cons.

I feel like I worked for _exceptional_ idiots after reading this thread. One director kept saying Zoom was a pain and difficult when he needed it to work most. I didn't agree, but I put it down to users being idiots... but considering everyone here says their directors find it a piece of piss, my view on my past has changed.

Gotomeeting and goto assist don't support Linux. Neither does Webex. Zoom does and Bomgar does, not that many people use Bomgar in comparison to Zoom therefore it's definitely the way to go.

Anyone used Google meet? It's really been killing it for us at work. No installing software outside of your browser works on any os. Any comparison's with zoom. I mean natively doing conferencing on FreeBSD with no downsides has been awesome and really first time I've seen it just work.

Zoom > GoToMeeting Zoom > WebEx GoToAssist/RescueAssist > Zoom I like zoom for meetings, but dislike it forvtech support purposes

My thought would be simplicity. In a past life operations used go to meeting a lot because we had pretty regular scheduled meetings. HR preferred zoom because they had to do a lot of one offs.

Zoom works really well. Although there was a recent security flaw that has people rightfully upset. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/7/8/20687014/zoom-security-flaw-video-conference-websites-hijack-mac-cameras

webex doesn't seem to want to work on linux so there's that

Its cheaper, with a nice clean UI and very easy to use. It also has recording and transcripting features. I use it every single day.

Price, the "free under 45-minute meetings" model, and the fact that it's dead simple and just plain works.

I setup and administered Zoom with a 200 person company with Accounts, outlook addins, desktop clients, mobile app users and 11 Zoom rooms (basically a dedicated PC controlled by an iPad for users to run fancier meetings in a conference room for those of you not in the know). Was able to manage updates of the iPads and rooms from the web console, integration with 365 (USING MODERN AUTHENTICATION!!) customize the install and deploy it with gpo via a smb share and a batch file for workstations. Their documentation, and support staff are fantastic to work with. All at a competitive price (basic users are which was all but 14 of our users are free). TL DR In short, excellent from an admin perspective, easy to adopt from a user perspective. 10/10 would Zoom to get Zoom again.

Back when it first came out it had the lowest latency, i was shocked when i demoed it. Now find pretty even but back then it was fastest, cheapest, prettiest by far.

Zoom ‘just works’ and has some awesome recording and transcription features

1. Price. GoTo\* is a cash grab from customers locked in at this point and is not trying to compete. That's how they lost our business. Also "open voice" conferencing is garbage AND expensive. 2. Just works. Zoom has a much lighter weight client. Users don't have to manage much and it feels like it's built into the OS. They also have replacements for the addons for every competing product (webinars, meeting rooms, voip phones, even the dreaded call-in conference line) 3. API. Started building a project on GoTo's API before our company switched to Zoom. The API is XML-based, poorly documented and flaky. Zoom's API is inconsistent in some regards but they have been updating it every month with increased transparency and it is getting more powerful. Did you know you can run Zoom purely in the browser without a client? 4. Swag/Marketing... they invested heavily in getting their name out there. It is easily memorable, easy to spell, (WebX? Go2?) and it had underwriting on NPR for at least a year or two before they really got popular.

Zoom is very insecure, so its obviously loved by everyone.

Have you ever used Zoom? Also, don’t have the time at the moment to elaborate, but WebEx has gone downhill so badly.

I mean every call I'm ever asked to join is GTM or WebEx, I've never been on a Zoom call

It is just stupidly easy to use and works well. I can join a zoom meeting via my phone in just a few seconds, select to use the devices audio and boom, I am in. Same with the PC. Just click and go with no heavy Java that takes forever to load.

In my opinion zoom video quality is far superior

As someone who was given the hellish task of trialling and testing the top ten commercial solutions on the market currently, Zoom won hands down for me. Give any moderately tech literate person 10 minutes with it, and they will have worked it out. Requires next to no admin management. Sadly never got to give the Google offerings an honest go, but hope to.

"Skype is so reliable and easy to use though what about skype?" -- said no one ever. We went zoom price was good and the ease of use and reliability was great, no more messing around and last minute calls from C-E level employees saying "we have a call in 5 minutes and we NEED Skype working!"

I work for a MSP that has 50+ clients. Everyone uses zoom people even ditched google hangouts it’s amazing. We use it too internally.

Better product. Better price.

Until someone comes up with something that is truly interoperable between all of the VC options it doesn't really matter which is best, just which one most of your externals also use. For my workplace that's Skype4B, though that does not stop certain teams (otherwise known as the "we know better than IT team") trying to use Zoom, which is great for them until they ask other areas of the business to use it who then end up with having multiple apps for everything installed, it's got out of hand with Teams, Zoom, Slack, Skype4B, Webex plus no doubt others sprinkled around, it's a bloody mess.

We use Webex still. It’s Cisco in a nutshell. Feature rich with the price tag to match. Zoom feels like it just wants to host the online meeting, maybe share some video.

User experience is simple enough out of the box that 95% of users know how to start or join a meeting, but has some nice settings under the hood for more advanced users. For me, the single greatest feature is being able to set your own meeting ID - I set it to my own phone number so now I'll never forget the long random one it assigns by default. Oh, and also each meeting invite generates this one click mobile dial in, so from the calendar on my phone I just tap it and it dials the line and enters the meeting code without having to do anything

I don't think this has been mentioned, but Zoom is the only service I've used that lets you share video content (youtube, local mp4's) via their screen share. I don't know if any of the other services allow you to do that now, but when I was going through different providers a year ago, nothing worked as well as Zoom.

Last two jobs I had I was in charge of rolling it out. Hardware requirements are very low. To get the full experience it’s just buying a tablet with desk case, a computer, TV, mic, speakers. Put it all together, install zoom room agent. Configure in the dashboard, you now have a conference room ready to go. I think one of the coolest features is adding a Magwell USB to HDMI adapter to the room. User walks in, plugs their laptop into the HDMI cable and the magwell mirrors the users laptop and is essentially sharing the screen in the presentation. No need to hit share or open any app on the computer. It’s a $300 add on but worth it. The other cool thing I like is the audio pairing to share the screen. If you have the right tablet set up for a room, a user can open the zoom app on their computer, click share, their computer sends an inaudible pairing sound and the tablet picks it up which then triggers the screen sharing. It’s like a cross platform way to do Airplay/Chromecast stream. GTM is a pain to manage. WebEx is too expensive and too complicated. I’ve been happy with Zoom.

This is a PERFECT example of a software product (WebEx) that comes along, is revolutionary, leads the market, becomes huge and then stops innovating. The WebEx platform is outdated and expensive. I have also noticed that more and more vendors we deal with are using Zoom. Better pricing, better UX, much better support.

Super easy to use. But we are going to drop them because their devs are blockheads. They basically installed a virus on Macs to save the users a click.

MacOs became popular, zoom has better portability. Webex and GTM suck on everything not windows (it sucks on windows too, just less) that said, Microsoft Teams is pretty cool but skype for business is the Boris Johnson of confcall software

Zoom is cheaper and better quality. It also seems to have less hiccups. I like that it does not need to install a client.

No idea. I only started hearing about it right before their IPO. We use WebEx at the bank I'm at and it's so easy to use. Not sure why zoom is used by a few. It essentially looks the same as WebEx but less professional.

Zoom is the Apple of meetings and VoIP management: everything plays well together and is simple and clean to use. We have gotten most of our clients to switch over to zoom and we have had exactly zero complaints about it. Management lauds the ease of use and decent set of functionality. Also, Zoom Rooms is awesome. In case somebody doesn't know what that is, a Zoom rep will come to your office and set up Zoom hardware on the conference room TV that interplays with an iPad or other tablet that has the Zoom Room app running on it. You manage meetings and whatnot all through the tablet. We have been using it for years and most of our clients have switched over.

It's cheap, has poor security and insanely pushy sales people. So if course users like it.

I love all the “zoom is super easy”, yet I had to follow a 10-step process just to uninstall the virus it silently enabled on my computer.

All colleges using zoom

My theory...many companies are scrambling to find telework solutions that their IT staff isn't prepared to support. Employees go rogue and find their own solutions. Zoom appeals to this demographic because it's one of a few conferencing/collaboration solutions that doesn't tie into a suite of other products.

Very easy to use, sound quality is great, screen sharing and recording features, price isn't too bad

It had a free easy entry model.

Compared to hangouts I think it handles more people better and when it lags the voice is still intelligible but maybe little delayed. In hangouts lags seem to cause unintelligible scramble.

We are choosing to use Teams over Zoom since my university already pays for 365.

Just beware https://protonmail.com/blog/zoom-privacy-issues/

It's because it's the easiest to use out of all the telecommuting apps. Everything else requires bullshit installing of crap, or it doesn't work well. For zoom, you click a link and it works in your browser if you don't have it installed. If you do have it installed, it opens up quickly. It just works.

Less set up required as far as enabling certain settings or making sure people are using the correct audio inputs or outputs.

They got a lot of free publicity last year https://www.wired.com/story/zoom-bug-webcam-hackers/

Not sure but zoom was easy to use even as a first timer, screen share was vital for us.

Zoom has a free plan, and it is technically better. The only true limitations with the free Zoom account is that [video calls](https://www.rhubcom.com/) between more than 2 participants are limited to 40 minute sessions. People continue to use *Zoom* because it's easy and free, but its competitors are making moves to catch up.

Boomer alert boomer alert

Marketing

Skype is old, google hangouts nobody is using. Why use facebook instead of myspace? Its the same thing, new shit come and old go.

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SS: Where the fuck did Zoom come from and why is it a standard for work convos?

One non conspiracy reason is that the application can be installed on a windows device without administrator privilege.

Because China is in control of Zooms data.

As a fully remote consultant, Zoom has been my go-to and most of my clients’ platform of choice for nearly 3 years. It’s clean, usually speedy, and has default playback options that are more intuitive than other platforms

Skype has too many security issues

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