Great Online Meetings, Great Price

The Chatbox provides a valuable written transcript of the comments. We also use the chatbox for Board voting so we know if there are differences of opinion that need to be discussed. Recording is easy, so we can review the discussion or allow people who missed the meeting to view it. We love the new Breakout Rooms, and Polls are great for maintaining interest.

Pros

We just pay for a simple "Pro" plan, but it allows our association to do what we need to do. Our webinars never have over 100 present, so the low-level plan is fine for us. All of our meetings are international, and we are really impressed with the global performance. We recently used a technician in Azerbaijan to display slides for presenters in India, Australia, and Canada and the presentation was seamless. We use "Gallery Mode" when meetings are small enough not to exceed bandwidth. But for more than 8, we need to turn off videos and use Speaker View. We are delighted that attendees can share their screen if they want to, and the delay is minimal. Controlling the videos and microphones of attendees is easy.

Cons

It takes time to learn to navigate the new features. It is time well-invested, because the new features are very helpful.

Decent solution for online meetings

We are using Zoom for our daily meetings for website development. We use the screen share features to discuss on the project and to work on the source code together. We share our ideas with whiteboard feature. Zoom handles weak internet connection very well - which makes it our on-the-go app for online meetings.

Pros

Zoom can be used both on PC and smartphone. The app is quite easy to navigate. Connecting to meetings is easy using meeting links. It has the options to chat, share screen, documents and whiteboard - everything needed for team meetings. The Driving Mode is quite handy when only voice communication is needed.

Cons

The meeting interface is kind of old-ish. Lags quite a lot sometimes. Disconnects and reconnects again and agin on weak network. It doesn’t have advanced features like auto-connecting to meetings according to the schedule.

Great Product for Every Day Office Use

Being able to host weekly meetings with all of our staff and volunteers has been so easy with Zoom. We have also used it for interviewing potential candidates. Having the recording feature so that we can go back and listen to the audio or watch the video playback has been crucial to take notes on things we may have missed for candidate interviews or meeting minutes.

Pros

Zoom makes it easy to set up meetings of all kinds, whether it's call conferencing, presentation-style meetings, or just face-to-face chats. Being able to have a standard meeting ID that you can use time and again allows us to easily share the link and password to our participants, rather than having to hunt for the unique link every time.

Cons

The biggest issue we have had with zoom is in its breakout rooms feature for large audiences. The idea is simple and logical, before the event, you can pre-assign individuals based on their email address to specific rooms. We used this feature for our first virtual Gala dinner in September of 2020. We purchased the large audience upgrade as well as the breakout room feature. We set up around 10 rooms each with at least 8 people in them in hopes to create the "table" feeling during our gala event where our room hosts could have their own invited guests join them. Unfortunately, when the event began, the breakout room feature failed and no-one was pre-assigned. With 2 people running the back-end, we had to try to assign everyone to their rooms on the fly, causing a delay in our event stream.

Zoom Meetings and Chat Review

We've used many different software programs to deliver our monthly webinar content and Zoom has proven to be the best program yet. It's ease of use and interactive functions are far beyond what we've used in the past and it allows us to successfully connect to our management teams monthly to deliver timely updates.

Pros

Zoom has been a great resource for our team when delivering our monthly webinars to our management teams. With over 50 people on each call, Zoom allows us to manage the groups audio and video components, display polls and whiteboards for interaction and monitor the chat box when questions arise. It's intuitive when new employees access webinars or other calls and usually they have no problem connecting and interacting during the sessions. It's been better than other meeting softwares we've used in the past and the interaction functionality has proved to increase audience engagement.

Cons

There are times that the connectivity lags but we never know if it's the software or our own connectivity issues. We do find that it does freeze resulting in some content being shared to be missed or audience members are behind.

Zoom Meetings - The Best Virtual Classroom

We have been looking for a software that will allow us to carry out our virtual classes and Zoom meetings just fit the description. So far twice a week we have interactive classes that carry over 100 students. Through this app, students can join via computers, tablets or even phones which makes it a flexible mode of learning. Through this, we have been able to even cater for the needs of the hearing impaired through spotlighting of sign language interpreters which was not possible via Microsoft Teams.

Pros

I have been using zoom Meetings for my classes and webinars. I like it that I can raise my hand to object, ask a question or give feedback. Through the chat session, I have been able to connect with my classmates. Clarifications on class assignments have also been made via chats. I am also able to give my contribution in class through both audio and video which gives the real classroom feel. Through screen sharing the lecturer can be able to bring various issues to our attention. Break out rooms, help in intimate group discussions. With host being in control of the audience, they are able to mute and remove those who seem to contravene the rules. Given that we had classmates who were hearing impaired, spotlighting of sign language interpreters helps in making it easier for them to understand the class proceedings.

Cons

It is very sensitive with internet connection, a slow internet connection leads to interruptions with audio and video. The basic subscription, which allows for 40 minutes is barely enough for a meeting. It reaches a time, when the app freezes, which makes it difficult to know if its the connectivity has issues or its the app. If at all screen sharing is happening, it leads to the audience lagging behind and missing out on important information.