
Many businesses are hosting webinars - but if Zoom is out of the picture, what is the best option?

HANGOUTS FOR MAC WITH MORE THEN ONE EMAIL AT ONE TIME FREE
This makes it very easy to connect face-to-face with potential customers, as Skype is a free and popular service. Microsoft teams also gives businesses the ability to call contacts outside of their organization - through teams you can call any phone number, and Skype and Skype for Business accounts can be used to access Teams as well. Unlike Google Hangouts, however, it boasts much more functionality - including file sharing, the ability to host up to 10,000 participants in a single meeting, and collaborate on Word docs, and Excel and Powerpoint files in real-time. Just like Google Hangouts, Teams offers organizations a platform for instant messages, audio calls, and video calls. In addition to these paid plans, Microsoft Teams also offers a free option, but as most businesses already rely on the Microsoft365 suite, price isn’t usually an issue. Due to this, it is very likely that your business may already be running Microsoft365 (formerly Office365)- of which Microsoft Teams is included in all plans.Īs Microsoft’s basic plan costs $5 per user per month, and gives you access to Exchange, OneDrive, Sharepoint, Teams, and 1TB of storage per user - and Microsoft365’s Standard plan (which costs $12.50 per user per month) gives additional access to Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, and Access, it is a great all-in-one solution for businesses’ communicative and collaborative needs. It’s no secret that most businesses operate in a Microsoft-heavy environment. Google Hangouts is also a great way to reach out to contacts outside of your organization, as many people have a Google Account - and as they are completely free, it is usually not a difficult process to create an account for the purpose of a Google Hangout call. While a business Google Account does cost a monthly fee, Google Hangouts is still completely free to use - meaning all your business needs to budget for is the cost of your user accounts. Since most businesses that use Gmail as their email client pay for a custom domain name and business-level inbox, and employees tend to (and should) use their business email to reach out to potential clients, it’s not often that your business will use the GSuite entirely for free. It is worth mentioning that while a Google Hangouts account is free, a business account through Google and GSuite is not. And if your business has less than ten employees, Google Hangouts can be used as a standard collaboration service - with instant messaging and video calls capable of hosting up to ten individual callers, Google Hangouts can handle all of your communication needs without the need to spend a single dollar.Ĭompound this with the rest of the GSuite (which at lower levels is also completely free), and your organization will have the capability to fully collaborate on almost any business operation. First, let’s start with businesses that employ no more than ten people. That depends mainly on the size of your organization. Luckily, there are other virtual meeting services available - Google Hangouts, GoToMeeting, Cisco WebEx, Skype for Business, and Microsoft Teams.īut which of these is best for your business?

Just to name a few, these risks include lack of end-to-end encryption, vulnerable cloud storage, Zoom gaining access to computer permissions without user knowledge, and hackers being able to hijack meetings and secretly record users’ screens without their knowledge.

Some of us even find ourselves saying it when we’re not even using Zoom itself - just like how we tend to say Google in place of search.Īnd while Zoom is undoubtably a powerful platform, with an easy-to-understand user interface, and plenty of functionality, there are too many security risks associated with it to keep track of. When we think of virtual calls and meetings, we tend to think of Zoom.
