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As more businesses transition to remote and hybrid work architecture, the demand for reliable video teleconferencing solutions has skyrocketed. Webex by Cisco and Zoom are the most popular solutions. So, which is better?
Here is an in-depth review of Webex vs. Zoom covering their core features, pricing, and pros and cons of each to help you make a more informed decision for your team.
Zoom and Webex are highly rated web conferencing platforms, and both offer a range of features, such as whiteboard, screen sharing, cloud charting, and mobile apps. However, there are some notable differences between their feature functionalities.
Zoom has some fun features that are conspicuously missing from Webex and provide a better overall experience than the latter. For instance, breakout rooms and Virtual backgrounds elevated Zoom’s popularity during the pandemic. Webex is working to replicate these features and has promised to “release them soon.”
The chat functions of both tools are similar, but Zoom is a step ahead on two fronts. First, it has more emojis, and second, Zoom has introduced a Meeting Chat hub allowing users to save in-meeting chats and continue the conversation post-meetings.
Security is perhaps one area where Webex has one calling card over Zoom. Zoom’s reputation took a hit during the pandemic days when the company had widely publicized security issues. Since then, Zoom has taken measures to address the security flaws. Webex has been rock solid over the years, never suffering any major security incidents. Today, both platforms have:
While video quality can be quite challenging to achieve depending on the internet's reliability, both platforms offer similar and standard video specs of 720p and 1080p. Free video conferencing tools like Skype and Google Meet can’t compete with Zoom and Webex in the quality department.
Zoom and Webex also have features to reduce background noise and in-depth guides to improve audio quality. Webex even offers the option of recording MP4 audio so you can transcribe them for future notes.
Both Webex and Zoom post their pricing plans online. So, we won’t burn through a lot of column space highlighting prices that often change over time. Needless to say, it’s worth mentioning that Zoom offers five pricing plans to Webex’s four. Also, both platforms have the same bundled price for calling, so there are no actual cost savings when using either.
In general, Zoom appears to go heavy in offering more features (overall) as you move further away from the free basic plan. Does this translate into better value? It depends on your specific needs. It’s hard to definitively state whether you’ll get better value for every extra dollar you spend.
Zoom doesn’t have many drawbacks apart from the fact that it once had a bad rap for security (but that’s already been addressed). Other than that, Zoom paid plans can accommodate meetings for more than 24 hours if you need such capability. Zoom also offers a higher capacity for meetings than Webex, a fact that you’ll love.
Webex is easier to learn and has a better reputation for meeting security (although Zoom has caught up). The only downside is that It is less widely used, which can make it tricky to find other Webex users.
For all intents and purposes, Zoom and Webex have much to offer in terms of feature-rich online conferencing facilities. However, Zoom is the clear winner in terms of the total number of features and overall ease of use. But this doesn’t mean you can’t leverage the capabilities of both tools to get the best of both worlds.
