Man with a black coffee and his hand on a laptop that shows a video conference with four people. Bright ball of elastic bands next to the laptop.
April 10, 2020 Video Conferencing Software 0 Comments

Video Conferencing Comparison April 2020

Man with a black coffee and his hand on a laptop that shows a video conference with four people. Bright ball of elastic bands next to the laptop.

This blog is a quick comparison of Video Conferencing technology available as at April 2020.  Our main criteria to be evaluated in this post was that the software needed to give each participant the option to join the conference by video.  The focus of this blog was for business use and isn’t an exhaustive review of all the options available.

This blog doesn’t look at the ‘broadcast’ style video conference where a small number of people present via video conference to a large number of attendees (often marketed as Video Events or something similar).

Price Overview

We conducted a price comparison for Video Conferencing software based on the published website pricing as at 10 April 2020.  The chart below includes two examples to show the pricing in as ‘like for like’ format as we could:

Chart of Pricing which is also included as a table.

Notes on the chart:

  • BlueJeans offers a plan for up to 150 participants but the pricing was not advertised on the website and we didn’t want to raise an unnecessary request for pricing during the Covid-19 crisis.
  • Zoom has a free version for up to 100 participants with a 40 minute limit.
  • GoToMeeting has a limit of 25 video feeds

Detailed Pricing Comparison

Approximate Pricing – Prices Rounded
(April 2020)
Zoom
  • Free plan (up to 100 participants, 40 min limit on group meetings).
  • £144 per host per annum for Pro (up to 100 participants, 24hr meeting duration limit). Extend to up to 500 participants with an add on for an additional £52 a month (£768 per annum in total).
  • £1919 per host per annum for Business including up to 300 participants (at the minimum of 10 hosts).
  • £2591 per host per annum for Business + Large Meeting Add on for up to 500 participants (at the minimum of 10 hosts).
Microsoft Teams
  • £113 per user per annum for Office 365 Business Premium.   Video conference participants do not have to be Team users.
Google Hangouts Meet
  • £50 per user per annum (Basic plan, up to 100 participants)
  • £100 per user per annum  (Business plan, up to 150 participants)
  • £240 per user per annum (Enterprise plan, up to 250 participants)

(Until 1 July 2020 all Gsuite customers can have up to 250 participants at no extra cost)
GoToMeeting (by LogMeIn)
  • £114 per organiser per annum for Professional plan (up to 150 participants)
  • £152 per organiser per annum for Business plan (up to 250 participants)
  • Note: GoToMeeting has a limit of 25 video feeds
Cisco Webex
  • Free edition (currently up to 100 participants as at April 2020)
  • £1350 per annum for the Business edition up to 250 participants (price for the minimum of 5 host licenses required at this level)
BlueJeans
  • £96 per host per year on Standard plan (billed as $120 USD for up to 50 participants)
  • £135 per host per year on Pro plan (billed as $168 USD for up to 75 participants)
RingCentral
  • £240 per user per annum for the Standard Plan (up to 4 participants)
  • £300 per user per annum for the Premium Plan (up to 100 participants)
  • £360 per user per annum for the Ultimate Plan (up to 200 participants)

Rating

The right system for you will depend on your specific requirements.  We conducted some desk based research to give readers a sense of the average rating per system.  We also conducted a small sample LinkedIn survey to supplement our knowledge and built that into our rating per system.

Average Rating
(based on various review sites)
Zoom 5.0
Microsoft Teams 4.5
Google Hangouts Meet 4.0
GoToMeeting (by LogMeIn) 4.0
Cisco Webex 4.0
BlueJeans 4.0
RingCentral 4.0

Maximum Capacity

 

 

 Maximum Number of Participants in the Video Conference
(April 2020)
Zoom 100 on Free plan
500 with Large Meeting add-on
Microsoft Teams 250
Google Hangouts Meet 250
GoToMeeting (by LogMeIn) 150 on Professional
250 on Business
3000 on Enterprise

Note: limit of 25 video feeds
Cisco Webex 100 on free plan (increase from 50)
200 on Business Plan
BlueJeans 25 on Standard plan
75 on Pro plan
100 on Large Meeting Plan
150 by agreement
RingCentral 4 on Standard Plan
100 on Premium Plan
200 on Ultimate Plan

Which video conferencing software offers Breakout Group / Breakout Room functionality?

  • Zoom
  • Cisco Webex
  • BlueJeans

Considerations

Zoom has been in the news a lot recently given the huge growth in usage and some criticism around security.  Several improvements were made to Zoom security after the release of these articles.  With all these systems it is worth considering security and what you may need to include now in your privacy notice and employee contracts.

Useful Links

If you would like to explore more about each of these options, these resources are helpful:

What is your experience?

What has your experience been of video conferencing software recently?  We’d love to hear your views.

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