What users think of web conferencing leaders Teams, Zoom, Hangouts and Webex

Latest Computing Delta research finds the leaders pulling away from the competition

If there's one application whose star has risen during the 2020 pandemic it's Zoom. Prior to the lockdown, Zoom was one of many similar collaboration tools that people generally used to make audio-only conference calls, but when people suddenly became desperate to catch up with colleagues' sprouting haircuts, Zoom, which was quick to install, free in its basic form and easy to use for video calls, really came into its own.

And Zoom's fortunes have continued on the same trajectory as we find ourselves locked down once again, with 48 per cent of 215 IT leaders polled in mid-November saying it was used in their organisation, compared with 40 per cent in April, a 22 per cent increase.

"It's a great, reliable video experience," enthused a solution engineering manager in an energy supplier. "Easy to use and I like the fact you can have a meeting and then break off into smaller groups in a different Zoom room," added network administrator in a local authority. "Reliable even with poorer network links," chipped in a systems engineering manager in media.

Other plus points included the fact that Zoom works in China (Teams and Hangouts generally don't), the optional simultaneous translation function and the application's small footprint.

N = 215. Other options in the survey included: RingCentral Meetings, Atos Unify Circuit, Zoho Meeting, Lifesize, Big Blue Button, Fuze and Starleaf.

However, Zoom was not the most widely used web conferencing tool, that accolade belonging to Microsoft Teams (lumped together for this analysis with predecessor Skype for Business which is still quite widely used). The main reason for this is that Teams comes as an add-on to an O365 subscription, and O365 has a huge installed base; there's also a free version. The other factor is security. While Zoom is now (as of November) end-to-end encrypted for all, it had falsely claimed to be so long before this was a reality, and has attracted a steady stream of negative headlines around other security issues too.

"Zoom has a bad reputation," said an IT manager in finance. The head of IT of a research institution explained why this organisation doesn't use Zoom by default: "Initial security issues and the need to use lots of options to ensure security of meetings."

Teams has seen a 15 per cent rise in the numbers of organisations using it since April, to 86 per cent, according to our research.

See also Working from home, keeping connected: 17 video conferencing and collaboration tools to consider

"It's simple and included in our O365 subscription and works with Sharepoint," said a systems manager in retail. "You can paste small images into chat," added a technical manager in higher education. "As a charity the licences are low cost and the quality is good," stated an ICT manager in the third sector. Others commented that Teams is easy to use and maintain, and security is better than Zoom. Appreciation did not extend to all aspects though, with some saying integrations to non-Microsoft services are lacking and others claiming teams has a significant footprint: "It's very memory hungry for teams and performance can be slow", said a support manager. Others simply didn't trust Microsoft: "We don't know who is listening in," said one respondent. Meanwhile, some preferred the UI and ease of use of Zoom and - a little embarrassingly for Microsoft - old-school Skype: "Teams UI is painful and not fluid. Skype is very simple," said one.

Other web conferencing tools that have seen their stock rising with our respondents, albeit from a lower base, were Cisco WebEx (up 40 per cent) and Google Hangouts (up 47 per cent).

Webex users appreciated the application's pedigree, solidity, security and integration with Jabber and other Cisco tools. "It's simple, non-intrusive, and uncomplicated. It doesn't try to be all things to everyone but is focussed on doing one thing well and simply just works." said an IT project manager. But not everyone was a fan of the UI, saying it can be slow and it lacks some of the whizzy features of Zoom and Teams.

Hangouts was seen as a good fit with G-Suite apps, free for users in the education sector and easy to use. "It's a good solid platform with functionality being added constantly," said a head of infrastructure in education. But as ever with Google, there's the trust factor to consider ("too much data going to Google") and hangouts requires a Google account if you want to set up a meeting.

The leading web conferencing systems are all evolving rapidly, adding new features and expanding capabilities as they compete for market share, but the main deciding factor was incumbency: Microsoft houses will tend to choose Teams, those on G-Suite Hangouts, and so on. Collaboration solutions that are not connected with major vendors must be as platform-agnostic as possible and focus on ease of use and performance to stand out. Some are standalone apps like Zoom or BlueJeans, recently purchased by Verizon.

UCC vendors such as Mitel and Avaya offer their own solutions that could make sense for their customers. However, these would appear to be falling further behind the web-based leaders who are investing heavily in pushing new features and supporting more simultaneous users. Smaller teams may be adequately served by the video features of Slack or WhatsApp, or FaceTime if they are all Apple users.

What to look for in web conferencing software

For more on web conferencing tools, including what users think of them, see the Computing Delta Unified Communications and Collaboration report.