Video conferencing has become indispensable at the moment because of the huge demand for online remote work and distance learning. There are some other purposes where video conferencing integration is required.
It makes huge sense for such video communication tools as google meets, zoom, and others to accelerate the online video conferencing experience and make it flexible for people of all stages.
Video communication tools like google meet and zoom make our day easier. With these tools, we are making live discussions, and video conferencing with more than 100 participants, and we can do it through mobile and computer.
Due to the huge demand for video communication, there are so many tools that have been discovered in the last few years. But google meet and zoom earn more familiarity because of their user-friendly features and flexibility.
Currently, there are millions of people around the world collaborating on these two video communication tools to organize family, friends, colleagues, and employees.
If you have got some serious reasons to use online video communication tools, you can surely choose any of them to meet your demand.
Since both of them are better than the rest and so you are looking for suggestions to choose one. This article will give you a close comparison of the two integrations about Google meet VS zoom software’s features and pricing plans. So, let’s jump into it.
Contents
Introduction to google meet
Google meet is developed by Google and comes as a part of Google’s workspace. Google workspace includes a collection of collaboration software and applications for business, education, and productivity purposes.
Google meet was initially released in March 2017. At that time, Google made it available only as the paid version but recently google made it free to use for all.
As a first-time user, you don’t have to spend to use google meet. All you need is a google account to sign up in meet and you can certainly make video calls with anyone who has google meet accessibility on their device.
Google meet was formerly known as Hangout Meet. While Google Meet introduced some features to upgrade the original Hangouts application, some standard Hangouts features were deprecated, including viewing attendees and chatting simultaneously.
However, Google has made significant changes to the Hangout meet to capture the present online communication demand of people. Recently google integrates AI to enhance the online meeting experience in so many aspects.
However, Google has launched its web app, Android app, and iOS app.
All about google meet features
Let’s start with google meet first. Google meet includes a rich amount of video conferencing and other interesting features that make it highly considerable.
The get at able use interface can make feel comfortable with anyone once started to use it. Even if they don’t have experience using such video communication tools before, they can feel relaxed communicating through google meet.
If you are interested in integrating google meet for your video communication purpose, you may be looking for the features that come with this. Here are all the google meet features described so that you can get a clear view and make your own comparison with zoom.
We will also show you all the zoom features in the next part of the article. But before that, let’s get the meet’s features first.
- Easy to use interface
- Flexible user experience
- Has both free and paid version
- Video preview option to check how you are looking on the screen
- Multiple screen layout
- change the layout
- screen sharing
- mute participants
- real time captions
- send a message to any participants in the video meeting
- Share documents in the chat area
- take polls
- view a gallery layout
- use video filters
- noise cancellation
- dial-in phone numbers for every meeting
- Integration with Google Calendar and Google Contacts for one-click meeting calls
- change the video background
- integrated with google workspace
- record meetings
- control for the hosts
- allows up to 250 participants in a single meeting
- meeting time limit up to 24 hours
- great device accessibility
- includes cheaper plans
As you can see, google meet is a feature-rich integration that includes everything you want and some extra that you might not think of before.
Introduction to zoom video calling application
You must hear of zoom as it is another popular video calling application dominating all over the world. It was founded long ago before google meets entered the scene in 2012.
There are approximately 300 million zoom users around the world. It is mostly used by governmental activities, big industries, schools, and colleges, and also for personal video communication.
Zoom is a cloud-based video-conferencing application that is available in both free and premium versions. The free plan allows up to 100 concurrent participants, with a 40-minute time restriction. Users have the option to upgrade by subscribing to a paid plan. The highest plan supports up to 1,000 concurrent participants for meetings lasting up to 30 hours.
Anyone can use it to make free video calls with individuals or a group of people. To get started, users have to sign up with an email account and set a strong password. It sends a confirmation mail to the email which needs to be confirmed by the users.
After creating an account, users can access all the free features of zoom. Zoom includes a very compatible and user-friendly interface. It has exclusive features to support remote work, distance education, and online social relations.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a major increase in the use of Zoom which led it to be the 5th most downloaded mobile app worldwide in 2020 at 477 million downloads.
All about Zoom Cloud Meeting features
In addition to features and specifications, zoom proves itself as a perfect online video conferencing tool that comes in handy in all types of video communication requirements.
Zoom facilitates video conferencing, zoom rooms, and other exciting features that make it a great asset for collaborative working, training, internal and external linking, sales and board meetings, etc.
Because of the high-end features zoom includes, zoom becomes widely popular as a free and paid video conferencing tool.
To get started with zoom, you don’t have to pay at first. You can go with its free version which also offers a bunch of interacting features.
As you are interested to know about google meet vs zoom. We have added all the features of zoom to help you compare these.
- HD video and audio conferencing
- Powerful collaboration tools
- Record meetings and upload them to the cloud instantly
- Cross-platform messaging from video to audio, to instant messaging
- Dynamic voice detection
- Screen sharing
- The Whiteboard feature allows users to draw amidst the video conference
- Password protection
- 256-bit TLS end to end encryption
- Easy content sharing that is protected by AES-256 encryption
- Schedule meetings with its built-in scheduling feature
- Schedule through third-party calendars like google calendar and outlook
- Personal meeting room
- Waiting room feature that keeps attendees in a specific place to wait until you finish the current meeting. It feels like your real-life office
- Host controls
- Breakout rooms to manually or automatically break classes into small groups
- Change background
- File sharing
- Polling
- Virtual hand-raising feature
- And so on
Zoom VS Google meet: Feature comparison
In the above, we have seen all the possible features of zoom and google meet. You may already notice that both of them are huge in features and plans so it is quite complicated to choose one of them for your purpose.
Therefore, we have made a quick comparison of zoom and google meet features to make the job easy for you. Now let’s see what the comparison says in this regard.
Google meet vs zoom: security
Security comes first when you are in the situation of choosing one application between two of these. Whatever your purpose is, you must have to concern about security issues as you don’t want any third-party interference in your personal or business communication.
Moreover, you may need to record videos and store them in the cloud. If the service isn’t secured enough, then hackers can easily get your resources.
So, security is a highly concerning issue if you are a big organization and you need video communication tools on a regular basis.
In the security aspect, both google meet and zoom include encryption to protect your meetings, data, and privacy. But google meet is more significant than zoom in this regard.
It is because google meet includes all data in Meet is encrypted in transit by default and Meet recordings stored in Google Drive are encrypted at rest by default.
Meet adheres to Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) security standards for Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) and Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP). And it also includes 2 step verifications for user security.
On the other hand, google meet includes separate encryption systems for video communication and video storing that ensures secure video calling and provides secured cloud service.
Meet uses 256-bit TLS encryption for communications and AES-256 encryption for the meeting, webinar, and messaging content.
You can lock a meeting, use a passcode to protect a meeting, create waiting rooms, and also have other controls with zoom.
Google Meet vs Zoom: User Interface
Overall good user interface ensures a swift experience using the application for both host and meeting participants. People use video communication applications like zoom and google meet to get together hundreds of audiences on a platform.
Like offline meeting conferences where all the attendees express opinions, the online meeting also goes through the same. If you are hosting a webinar, you have to consider a seamless experience for all participants and that’s why you have to choose the best platform which is good in interface and layout.
According to this, zoom has earned appreciation for its gallery view that used a grid pattern to display thumbnails of all the participants.
Google meet used to have a sidebar that displays only the active speaker in a larger view and the attendees will display in a smaller window on the left side of the screen.
While starting a meeting on google meet, it can automatically choose the layout, its spotlight feature always keeps focus on the active speaker. Also, google meet uses a tiled view where both speaker and participant appear in particular tiles.
In this regard, zoom includes a different interface function that is a floating thumbnail window. It allows users to minimize the main zoom window, hovers over the video on other applications, and also move or hide the zoom window if they want.
You can use its custom gallery view to drag videos to create a customized group of participants easily.
Finally, zoom displays up to 49 participants on a single screen while google meet allows only 16 participants in a meeting.
Google meet VS Zoom: meeting time
Total meeting time on a single meeting makes a huge difference between zoom and google meet. If you consider free plans, then google meet is the best option for you.
Because it offers up to 60 minutes for a meeting when you are a free user. But if you purchase any of its paid plans, the total meeting time will increase up to 24 hours.
On the other hand, zoom offers only 40 minutes to its free users. And for paid users, it has up to 30 hours of continuous video meetings.
Google meet VS zoom: Total number of participants
The number of total participants that you can host in your video meeting really matters in online video communication. Specifically online events, webinars, live streams, and huge participants will join in such online events.
Also, if you are a large organization with hundreds of employees, you have to choose the platform that allows a large number of participants in a meeting.
According to the participant limit, zoom is considerably better than google meet. Zoom allows up to 1000 participants, which is huge.
But that’s for the max business tire. Before that, zoom includes up to 100 participants on the Basic and Pro plans, up to 300 attendees on the Business plan, and up to 500 on the Enterprise plan.
In this regard, google meet is far behind zoom as its highest number of meeting participants is only 300 for the max paid tire. With the google meets free plan, you can connect up to 100 participants in a meeting. But its enterprise plan offers a white-level opportunity to create customized plans with a negotiating price.
It proves that zoom is the best option for online events, webinars, and meetings that will conduct more than 300 participants. But if your demand is less than 100 participants, you can go for google meet.
Google meet VS Zoom: screen sharing
Both google meet and zoom have a screen-sharing feature that works in the same way. The screen sharing function allows the host to share the screen with meeting participants. In some cases, it becomes a vital activity in virtual communication when you have to show the specific procedures of anything.
In google meet, you can share the screen by the ‘Present Now’ option that instantly shares the entire screen, window, or tab as your command.
And with zoom, you can specifically choose what you want to share and keep hidden what you don’t want. Besides Zoom allows screen sharing by multiple people at the same time that google meet doesn’t have included.
Google Meet vs Zoom: File sharing
File sharing is allowed in both zoom and google meet but it appears in different ways. You can share all types of documents including PDF, word files, images, videos, presentations, and spreadsheets, while you are in a meeting.
In google meet, you can attach files to a scheduled meeting and every participant in that meeting can access the files.
Similarly, in zoom, you can share files through the chat with a single participant or a group.
Google Meet vs Zoom: video recording
Video recording is allowed to all zoom users whether you are a free or paid users. You can record videos that also cover the chat and transcript of audios. Although, it has limitations for free users as they can save up to 1 GB of video recording and can only save to the computer.
On the contrary, google meet doesn’t allow video recording for its free users. But the paid users can enjoy this feature and directly save recordings on google drive.
Video recording comes of great importance in distance learning. Because here teachers need to record online lectures and classes to help students further when they need. That’s why for educational purposes, it is better to go with paid plans in any of them google meet or zoom.
| Feature | Google meet | Zoom |
| Device compatibility | Windows, Android, iOS | Windows, Android, iOS, Linux |
| Meeting time | 60 minutes per meeting for free users | 40 minutes |
| Participant limit (free) | 100 | 100 |
| Total participant limit | Up to 250 | Up to 500 (1000 with large meeting add on) |
| Screen sharing | Yes | Yes |
| Real-time Caption | Yes | Yes |
| Recording (free) | Yes, 1 GB limit on save | No |
| Security | Secured | Secured |
| Multiple participants on a single screen | Yes | Yes |
| Integration | Google workspace applications as well as Microsoft 365, calendly, slack, discord, Nest, etc | Google Workspace and Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce, Dropbox, and others |
| Background customization | No | Yes |
| Call ins | Free | Starts at $100/month |
| Email integration | Gmail, Outlook | Outlook |
| Instant messaging | Yes | Yes |
| Person to person message in a group meeting | No | Yes |
| Whiteboard | Available with third party integration | Available |
| Storage | Huge storage (5TB) comes with google workspace integration | Limited storage |
As a video conferencing applications, both zoom and meet have the same features and specifications. Although we have seen a few differences in some aspects that can make differences for users who are highly interested to make a comparison between them.
In the next, we will see a comparison of zoom and google meet pricing.
Google meet VS Zoom: Price and plans Comparison
Google meet and zoom, both include free and a variety of paid plans with different prices and features. You should focus on the price and available features of all the packages to decide which one is best to go for you.
Here is the price discussion of both zoom and google meet.
Google meet plans
With a free plan that is available for everyone who is just starting with google meet, google meet offers 4 individual plans with different price ranges.
Its free version includes limited options such as,
- Up to 100 participants
- One hour meeting time limit
- No recording
So, it is easy to understand that its free version isn’t so perfect for organizational virtual meetings. Rather it is good for person-to-person video communication and meetings where you have less than 100 participants.
Google meets paid plans are more versatile than its free plan. Here is an illustration of all its paid plans.
| Plan | Price | Participants | Time |
| Business starter | $6 per month | Up to 100 | 24 hours |
| Business Standard (Best for small businesses) | $12 per month | Up to 150 | 24 hours |
| Business plus | $18 per month | Up to 250 | 24 hours |
| Enterprise | Customizable | Up to 250 | 24 hours |
| Google Workspace Essentials | $8 per month | Up to 250 | 24 hours |
Zoom price plans
Same as google meet, zoom offers a basic plan that is completely free to use but limited in some aspects. With its free option, you are allowed to host meetings of up to 100 people and the meeting time is limited to only 40 minutes.
However, its pro plan includes live transcription, social media streaming, 1 GB of cloud recording, and a personal meeting ID. The pro plan is best for small teams to integrate and connect with group members to stay organized with their work.
Zoom business has all the required options to support online and offline businesses. It allows up to 300 meeting participants which can increase up to 1000 with a Large meetings add-on. It also includes single sign-on, recording transcripts, managed domains, and company branding.
And the max tier is called an enterprise tier that is ready to use for large enterprises with a great offering of unlimited cloud storage.
Here is a showcase of zoom plans and pricing at a glance.
| Plan | Price | Participants | Time |
| Zoom basic | Free | Up to 100 | 40 minutes |
| Zoom pro | $149.90 /year/license | Up to 100 | 30 hours |
| Zoom business | $199.90 /year/license | Up to 100 | 30 hours |
| Enterprise | $240.90 /year/license | Up to 100 | 30 hours |
Who can use google meet?
Seeing all the features and price plans of google meet, we can say that google meet is the best for small organizations and businesses. It is also good for quick meetings when you are a web user as you don’t need to download and install any software.
Just create a google account, go to meet, and sign up to start making your virtual meeting with google meet.
So, if you are a small business, group, or team that consists of less than 300, then you can go with google meet.
However, it isn’t preferable for large-scale meetings, webinars, live events, and in such cases where there are more than 300 participants.
Who can use zoom?
Zoom is the best option to choose for large-scale video meetings, online groups, conferences, live events, etc. as it allows up to 1000 participants in a virtual meeting, you can go seamlessly without any limitation.
Besides, its enterprise tier offers unlimited cloud storage that is considerably helpful for large organizations, schools, and colleges to store everyday meetings and lessons.
So, if you are a large organization or you have got some purpose to host online events which will include a wide number of participants, then you should choose zoom instead of google meet.
Final verdict, analyzing all the features and pricing plans of google meet, now we can come to a final verdict on which one is best to use for which purposes. The above discussion will help you to compare and choose one of them based on your requirement. It is better to consider your purposes for using such video communication tools and then pick any of them you think is best for you.