Last week, the founder of Get Support IT Services, James Craddock, was being asked the question: Which is better Teams or Zoom? His video response, breaking down some of the main differences and advantages of both Microsoft Teams and Zoom, on LinkedIn has sparked a debate.
In the video
Last Tuesday in the LinkedIn video James says:
“Yesterday I posted about Microsoft Teams, the most common question I got asked was: “Which is better? Teams or Zoom” Heres my answer in 60 seconds.
“Zoom provides excellent video conferencing.
“Teams does video conferencing as well, but that’s only part of the package. Teams makes collaborative working easy.
“If it’s just video conferencing you’re interested in, both products will support hundreds of users on a call, but when you get over about 10, Zoom has the edge.
“However, that comes at a cost. Teams is bundled in Microsoft 365 Business Basic, which is about a third of the price of a Zoom licence and includes a whole host of other services – but that’s for another video!
“When you have projects and documents to work on, Microsoft Teams blows Zoom out of the water!
“Organise your teams and projects into Channels.
“Remove the need for round-robin emails.
“Share files and work on them together, at the same time, in real-time.
“Invite external users – to join in and collaborate with your team securely…
“If you have a team of people – You need to check out Microsoft Teams
“My time is up! Thank you for watching, if you fancy a chat about Microsoft 365 or Teams mention it in a comment. “
The Responses
The responses are still coming in over a week after posting. Many businesses across the United Kingdom and the world are choosing to use both Teams & Zoom.
Koroush from Ibex Recruitment says “Interesting James Craddock, at Ibex Recruitment we’ve been using both quite a lot. Zoom is great for when we are catching up with a lot of people or clients, however internally we’ve enjoyed teams for meetings due to the ease of sharing internal content and docs etc. Also really liked using the mobile app for teams.”
Sara from The Southey Way comments “They seem to have different IT ‘personalities’ I use both. Zoom for working with individual clients. Teams for corporate work!”
At Get Support we use both platforms, Teams is great for collaborating on projects, especially with so many of us working from home. We can share files, discuss them and work on them together, at the same time.
Many users are finding Teams is becoming a major tool for their business. Jane from Face2FaceHR comments “Great video really helpful. I am now defaulting to Teams!”
With the recent feature upgrades such as The 3×3 Grid View for Microsoft Teams, a video call with 9 participants on the screen now comes as standard.
For those who like to disguise that they’re working from home, Microsoft Teams Custom Background Effects allows virtual background replacement. You can use your own branded background, a photo of the office or even come live from the beach.
All these new features for Microsoft Teams are great and make the product better, but if we’re honest, on the video front, Microsoft is playing catchup to Zoom.
With Zoom’s gallery mode, up to 49 people are shown on your screen at once.
As for the custom virtual background, Zoom had this feature long before lockdown. What’s more, you can play a video in the background, whereas Teams supports just an image or photo.
For both 49 x gallery mode and virtual backgrounds in Zoom you’ll need a powerful processor in your computer.
There’s undoubtedly place for both tools in the world of video calls and conferencing.
Most business will find massive value and extra functionality with collaborative working from Microsoft Teams. With the ability to add external users and guest in to your Teams – you can work with 3rd parties and freelancers with ease.
Teams is cheap! At the bargain price of just £3.80 ex VAT per month per user as part of Microsoft 365 Business Basic.
For that price, which is about a 3rd of a licence for Zoom, you get a whole host of other services along with Teams including email, calendar sharing, 1TB of storage to store files, and the ability to share your data and files with your team.
Get Support’s Verdict
Our verdict: well, if its large video meeting with over 10 people – Zoom is our go-to. For smaller video meeting and collaborative working, Microsoft Teams wins hands down.
If you haven’t tried using Teams to collaborate on a project, ask us for a demo.
For help and support for your IT or Microsoft 365 please contact our team using the contact for below or calling on 01865 59 4000. Our pandemic offer of free expert IT advice is still running. We can easily organise you a demo.
