Microsoft Teams vs Zoho Meeting: Which is a better fit?

Rick: My name is Rick. I'm the executive director of Marketing and Technology for Chapel Hill Academy. I give Microsoft Teams a rating of 5 out of 5. Before Microsoft Teams, we didn't really have any sort of management software. We would just do things manually over email using on-device storage and using the phone to call people. We didn't really have an instant chat way to communicate with people instantly, or unified file storage or project management option. We chose Microsoft Teams because of its compatibility with the whole Microsoft ecosystem. We had been using Microsoft tools and apps previously, the Office Suite, OneDrive, or SkyDrive even before that, Outlook, et cetera. So it just seemed nice to have a unified experience and not have too many different systems that ended up being siloed, but something that's a unifying platform. Overall, it was a good experience getting started with Microsoft Teams. I will say as we continue to onboard new staff from time to time, it is a little bit of a learning curve, but Microsoft does provide some phenomenal resources to help get people started through their Microsoft Learn program and also through online videos that guide people to getting familiar with how to use Microsoft Teams. I would recommend for anyone considering Microsoft Teams, first of all, it's great. Definitely do it. But I think the key is just when you get started and onboarding, is to make sure you equip yourself with the proper training and understanding and organization of the platform, and then also carry that on to your team or staff so that everyone has a pleasant experience as they continue to grow and learn how to leverage and maximize teams to be more efficient.

Susan: Hi, my name is Susan. I'm a Tech Ninja. I give Zoho Meeting a five out of five rating. For more reviews like this, click link below. Probably, most everybody else was Zoom. I switched primarily because I was using Zoho One and it was integrated with that. So one of the reasons I chose Zoho meeting is because it's integrated with Zoho CRM, so everything's in one place. But actually, I found a lot of features within Zoho Meeting that I like better than Zoom. One of the features was that when I was using Zoom, if I wanted to share a video with someone, I would have to download it and then email them because my storage on Zoom was getting filled up. With Zoho Meeting, once I record a video, it sends me an email with the link embedded, and all I'll have to do is forward that email link to my customer and they can just click on it. So, it was a lot less steps for me to do a meeting share like that. The other thing I like is there's actually a lot of features within Zoho. They had a chat area where I can take notes, besides the chat, and share that with people on the call. So there were just some features that Zoom may have integrated since I switched about a year ago, but there's some things in Zoom that I had never seen in Zoom... Or Zoho that I had never seen in Zoom before. So, that was really good. As far as integrating Zoho Meeting, it was pretty easy for me because I have been in tech for a while. It was a little disconcerting for my customers, because they were so used to Zoom that there was a little bit of a learning curve, but not much. Once they realized this was very similar to Zoom, it worked really well for them as well. So if you're looking for something else besides Zoom, I recommend Zoho Meeting as an alternative. One of the reasons I really made the switch is because I'm using Zoho One, I'm paying a fee of $37 per month for all the tools within Zoho One. And there are a lot. Zoho Meeting is just one of them. But one of the other things was just by integrating my invoicing and my meetings into Zoho, I was paying initially with Zoom and FreshBooks, $40 a month, and I'm only paying $37 a month with Zoho Meeting. So if you're looking to consolidate not only your tools as well as your cost into something, I recommend Zoho One as an alternative. But test it out.