Welcome to Advisor Tech Trends
My name is mosmo and I’ll be walking you through what we’re talking about today. Today I’m going to be talking about the best meeting software, virtual meeting software I should say. Obviously this is an opinion.
How This Episode Is Structured
What I’ll do throughout this episode is go through certain variables or metrics. I’m going to talk about price. I’m going to talk about features, then quality, then integrations, and then end with who each one is best for.
Why Virtual Meetings Became Essential
Ever since covid, which was 2020 or 2021, meeting software has become very popular. The reason is that people were at home and didn’t need to meet in person anymore. I think it really opened our eyes to the possibility of still doing work and still being productive without being in person.
These software companies saw massive booms during that time. I’m probably on a meeting software for two to four hours a day, so I’m very used to them. I hope I’ll give some honest feedback. I definitely do use one of them that I’ll talk about today, and I’ll give that as a disclaimer near the end. Depending on the point in your business, some of these will be more favorable than others.
The Three Main Competitors: Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet
The ones I’m going to go through today are Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet. All three of those are very large software companies.
Zoom
Zoom has been around for quite a while now. They were a unique company in that they started as a meeting software, they went public around covid, and they were very profitable and focused on that from day one. Now they’ve turned into a behemoth since they’re publicly traded. They have telephony software, they’ve got boardroom software, they’ve got email and a calendar, all kinds of things. They’re basically trying to do what Teams did, where you log into Zoom and you’ve got everything.
Microsoft Teams
Then behind that we have Microsoft Teams. It’s a Microsoft product and it’s included in Office 365, so a lot of people get it out of the box. Great software. It’s got chat features as well, which Zoom didn’t have when it started (it does now). I think Teams is often used for chatting with your colleagues, but it also has video software built in.
Google Meet
The last one I’ll talk about today is Google Meet, so that’s Google’s product. It’s an audio and video conferencing software built right into Gmail. It’s really handy and I’ve used it many times. So those are the three, all from very large companies, all with millions of users, and all proven and tested.
Price
I’ll start with price.
Zoom
Zoom’s price point, as I know it, is $15.99 per user per month, and with that you get unlimited meetings. The free tier is limited, and that’s good and bad I guess. The price point isn’t high enough that you’re scared of it per se, but the free version caps how long a meeting can run. I believe it’s 30 to 40 minutes, so if your meetings are less than half an hour it could work for you. When you join, it tells you the meeting is going to end in so much time, and it has Zoom branding. So there is a way to try it out, but out of all the ones I’ll talk about today, Zoom is the most expensive tool once you go to the premium plan, so that’s something to keep in mind.
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is $4 per user per month, or it’s free if you have Office 365. That’s one of the things a lot of people talk about with Teams. I think there were all kinds of lawsuits and some fun stuff around it, because when Microsoft brought out Teams they gave it to the hundreds of millions of users already on the Microsoft suite. So many companies during covid just started using Teams because it was free and included and they didn’t have to do anything. Distribution is king I guess. Most people that do business have Microsoft, and if you don’t, it’s $4 a user, so it’s very inexpensive.
Google Meet
Google Meet is included in Google’s business bundle, and you can even use a free version if you just have a Gmail account. If you want a paid version outside of the business bundle, it’s $6 per user.
Price Comparison
In terms of price point, Zoom starts with a free model where you can start or join a meeting for free, but it’s not ideal, and then they quickly go to 16 bucks a month. Teams is included in your Office suite or it’s four bucks a month, and Google Meet is included in your Google Suite or it’s six bucks a month. None of these are astronomical costs, but Zoom is definitely the highest, and there are some reasons for that.
Features
A lot of advisors take client facing calls.
Zoom
In my opinion Zoom is the best one for client facing calls, and there are a couple of reasons for that. You can tweak a lot of camera settings and a lot of audio settings. You can do blurred backgrounds, virtual backgrounds, even animated backgrounds if you want, so it’s a really good tool for that. It’s been used for many years and it’s very stable. In my experience it also has the best screen sharing technology, and it works in very low bandwidth areas. You could do a screen share while you’re on a train tethering from your phone. When I talk to a lot of advisors they really like Zoom because of that. They’ve figured out a really good way to compress the data when it goes from your computer to the other person’s computer, so I almost never see lag in Zoom.
Webinars
Zoom also has a webinar feature. All of them do, or a few of them do, and Zoom’s webinar feature is great as well, for the same reasons as before. So from a features standpoint, I personally find Zoom has the most relevant ones for financial advisors.
Microsoft Teams
Teams has a different set of features and skills. It’s not the best for client facing calls. It doesn’t have the best backgrounds and it doesn’t have the best latency, but it’s really good for internal meetings. It’s super easy to launch, it integrates really well with your calendar if you’re using Outlook, and it’s deeply embedded into the Microsoft suite. So if you’re in Excel and Outlook and Word all day and you need to pop into a meeting really quick or send a message, Teams is great. It’s just integrated into your everyday flow, whereas Zoom is more of a separate standalone app made for one thing. If you’re looking for features that help you collaborate and work with your team via chat or video, Teams might take the cake for you, so it depends on your wants and needs.
Google Meet
Google Meet is probably the simplest feature-wise, but it’s great for quick meetings. You don’t need to download any app. It works in a browser, and most people use Google Chrome, where it works great. With Zoom and Teams you both have to download an app, so that’s something to keep in mind. With Meet there’s no app needed, and it’s great if you’re already a Gmail user.
Which Is Best for Advisors
In my opinion, if you’re an advisor meeting with clients quite a bit and you value the client facing features I talked about, like the virtual backgrounds and the great quality, Zoom is just going to take the cake. If you’re an advisor looking for something that makes collaboration with your internal staff better or easier, then Teams is probably going to take the cake. If you’re on the Google Suite, Google Meet is going to be great, and if you’re on the Microsoft suite, Teams is going to be great.
The way I think about Zoom from a features standpoint is that it’s kind of the Cadillac of features, for better or for worse. Zoom grew up by itself and had to differentiate on features first and foremost. They were a video conferencing app and they weren’t an add-on to anything, whereas Teams and Google Meet were add-ons to the Microsoft and Google suites. All Zoom did was meetings, so they made the app really good. You have different needs, and there are different ways to win this battle I guess.
Quality
The third thing I’ll talk about here is quality.
Zoom
Zoom is the best for video quality, even in low bandwidth like I mentioned. I’ve tested it quite a bit while riding on a train and it’s great. It’s even great in other locales.
Microsoft Teams
The quality on Teams is solid but it can definitely be less stable. I think they put less effort into quality and more effort into the internal features for your company or your team.
Google Meet
Google Meet is great, but the image quality is lower. They focused a lot on stability, mostly because I think they have a large contingent outside of North America using it, maybe with lower bandwidth internet, and it only works in a browser so they had to make it lightweight. Like I said before, it’s really easy to pick up and jump into. The quality is good in terms of audio, but the video quality is going to be lower so that they can make sure the video is stable, so it depends on what you want there. I think Zoom takes the cake on quality, that’s just my experience.
Integrations
As for integrations, it depends on how you see an integration, but all three of these are really good.
Zoom
Zoom doesn’t have as many integrations as you might like. That might be a byproduct of them being a meeting software first and foremost and then branching out into other software internally, like their own email and their own calendar. In general it integrates with a lot of the modern CRMs, for example Salesforce, Zoho, Pipedrive and HubSpot, all the big ones. It also integrates with Google Calendar and Outlook calendar. In general it has enough of the integrations that you would need.
Microsoft Teams
Teams also has integrations, but it’s more focused on Microsoft, and that’s just how Microsoft rolls. They build things for their internal suite to get more people on Microsoft. So I would say from an integration standpoint Teams is the worst, Zoom is kind of medium, and Google Meet is the best.
Google Meet
They’ve really opened it up. You can integrate just about anything into Google Meet, and there are all kinds of apps in Google’s app marketplace that integrate with it. So if you’re the type that really wants to look for integrations and build tools into Google, whether it’s note takers or CRMs or email or whatever, Google is the best there in my view.
Final Verdict:
Which One Should You Use?
It depends on your needs. It may seem a little biased, but I personally do use Zoom and I’ve used it since very early on. I think I’ve got a five or four digit account with them, and now they’re in like the nines and they started at one, so I was a very early adopter. I started using them in 2017. If I’m meeting with someone I want to make sure I can hear them, I want to make sure I look good and they look good, and I don’t want to screw with any of that stuff. That is super important to me. Based on these categories, the only one Zoom loses in is price. They are the most expensive, but there’s a reason for that, as I explained.
If price is not a huge issue and these aren’t big dollar signs per se, I would recommend Zoom. But if your main goal is internal team collaboration, or price is something you’ve got to keep in mind, go with Teams. If you’re looking for integrations and something really good on the Google Suite, go with Google. In general, if you choose any of these three they’re great. They integrate with all the CRMs, your clients are going to be fine and will be able to join, and the audio and video are great. They’ve been around for so long that you’re splitting hairs a little bit on quality.
Zoom is the best one in my opinion, but the difference is small between them all, so you’ll probably be happy with any of the three.
