Teams vs Zoom: Which One Should You Use?

If you have been alive and online for the past two years you have probably had the Microsoft Teams vs Zoom debate at some point with your coworkers or classmates. Many businesses switched from Zoom to Teams and back again during the pandemic, and everyone and their dog had an opinion on which software was superior.

Both Teams and Zoom are top-notch video conferencing tools, but which program is best for organizing your remote meetings?

An Overview of Teams vs Zoom

Debating whether the two video conferencing apps are superior is somewhat unnecessary as they are two different software. Zoom is an app that focuses completely and totally on video conferencing, while Microsoft Teams is an all-in-one tool for video conferencing, text chatting and productivity features.

Different users may prioritize different features over others depending on their needs and their profession. An internal company meeting, say between different departments, would definitely do better with a Teams meeting. All the participants are known and accounted for within the application.

Here is how Teams vs Zoom compare on several fronts:

Microsoft Teams is Superior in Productivity

Teams provides a fairly comprehensive collection of capabilities to boost productivity because it is an all-in-one application. Imagine it as a combination of Zoom, Slack, and Google Docs. Microsoft Teams wins this one by far. While Zoom is an excellent tool for video meetings, having a basic whiteboard, screen sharing, and chat features, it can’t compare to Teams’ robust set of collaboration features. Microsoft Teams comes with an arsenal of work including calendars and shift tracking, as well as a robust chat feature, action items list, and much more.

For instance, while you’re in a meeting, you can create meeting action item lists in the chat window using a Teams chat feature called loop components. Everyone participating can track work progress by adding due dates and sending notifications to the appropriate individuals in the team conversation. This is great for maintaining focus and streamlining the meeting agenda if you are worried about being forgetful or inattentive.

Both Zoom and Teams provide video recording and transcripts—basic capabilities for a video conferencing app—but Teams goes a step further with some integrated productivity features. For instance, with Teams, the recording is sent to everyone who was invited and saved in the meeting chat window, making it simple to find without your intervention. With Zoom, you need to go out of your way to send the tape to whoever needs it. There are software that help with that, but teams has it built in.

Because Teams is supposed to integrate into the day-to-day of running a business, it also includes above-and-beyond tools like 1,000 GB of space—per user—to store company documentation and a Wiki for processes. To make all of our process documentation accessible from everywhere, we moved it from shared folders to the Teams Wiki. Simply put, Zoom isn’t made to accomplish this kind of thing.

Teams Offers More Sophisticated Meeting Collaboration Tools

Because Teams is an all-in-one collaboration platform, it makes sense that its meeting collaboration tools are very robust.

For starters, Teams offers a lot more than Zoom where chat capability is concerned. The screenshots below make it evident that, while perfectly adequate, Zoom chat is a little more simplistic than Teams.

Emojis are available in Zoom chat, but what if you want to send GIFs or stickers to your perfectly professional coworkers? You may go above and above in Teams by creating customized stickers to point out individuals, projects you’re actively discussing, or both. Whiteboard functionalities are included in Teams and Zoom.

The templates tool includes anything from SWOT analysis tables to affinity diagrams that you can share with your teammates. It looks nice and has all the features you could possibly need to feel more a part of a remote team meeting.

Both Teams and Zoom have rather extensive screen-sharing features. Both of them even provide remote screen control, which comes in handy for working together on a whiteboard or if someone is experiencing technical difficulties during a meeting – which is always a looming threat when presenting remotely.

What Zoom Does Better

In any Teams vs Zoom debate, there will be that one person that points out two very important things

Firstly, Zoom is much better at handling large number of participants. Being an application that focuses all its capabilities solely on video conferencing, it can dedicate much more capacity to that task. Which is why the cap for participants in Zoom is around 1000 while that of Teams is only 300. For their respective uses, both numbers are great.

The second  thing that Zoom does better than Microsoft is that is out the fact that Zoom is much easier to use when dealing with external meetings. All participants have to do it receive a link and click it from any device – No usernames or passwords required.

Zoom also copes much better with slow internet, which is ideal for meetings taking place internationally where some participants’ internet connection may not be as

Teams vs. Zoom: Final Thoughts

Different tools for different purposes. Both video conferencing applications are good at what they do but are built for totally different use cases. If you have a big event with hundreds of people you don’t know from all over the world, use Zoom.

If you and your work team are looking for an all-in-one tool for task management on company meetings, go with Teams. Both apps have a free version so you can test them out with no cost.