Zoom Meetings

In a capitalistic system where winners and losers are declared in every tragedy, Zoom got the bittersweet luck of the draw when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Zoom Meetings (typically just shortened to Zoom) went from being a video conferencing app that hardly anyone outside the tech industry had heard of to a household name and verb. No one Skypes anymore; everyone Zooms. With or without its boost in popularity, Zoom shines for its ease of use, excellent features, and phenomenal stability. Long before the pandemic, Zoom's mission was to master the backend technology needed to make video calls less glitchy and more reliable, and the company has succeeded. For its stability alone, it's an Editors' Choice winner among video conferencing software. The app's generous, free version also makes it a top choice for non-business, online get-togethers.

Background on Zoom's Controversies

The more people use Zoom, as so many have while working from home, the more it's come under scrutiny, which is probably for the best. We at PCMag believe users should be not only aware of the criticisms, but also informed of the facts before deciding whether to use Zoom. 

Several of Zoom's controversies have centered on encryption. First was the company's statement that Zoom used end-to-end encryption (E2EE). It had to amend that claim to clarify that end-to-end encryption is used only for calls among Zoom apps and Zoom Rooms, provided no one is recording the call. E2EE is not available for Zoom via other devices, such as when you dial in via telephone.

In June 2020, the company announced it would not provide E2EE to free account holders. After some backlash, the company reversed its decision saying it would encrypt all calls, but only if free users verified their accounts with a phone number. The company then rolled back that decision, too.

Another controversy was related to encryption keys. Zoom owns some servers located in China. These China-based servers had been generating encryption keys that were given to users in other countries, which is considered a security risk. The company addressed the issue, so paying customers can now control through which countries their video conferences are routed.

Another problem was Zoom-bombing, which refers to people hijacking in-progress meetings with inappropriate content. It mostly occurred when meeting hosts did not know that they had to opt into using certain features to fully protect their calls. Zoom subsequently changed its default settings and made security tools more prominent so people would know to use them.

Overall, the company has been quick to issue clarifications and fixes when problems have occurred. In some cases, people have not found the solutions acceptable, however. Additionally, the more problems that have come up, the more some have felt their trust in the company has deteriorated. 

If you use Zoom, we recommend taking a moment to get acquainted with the tool's key features. There are plenty of alternatives to Zoom should the app or company not meet your standards.

How Much Does Zoom Cost?

To join a meeting via Zoom, you do not need an account. To host a meeting, however, you do. There are four tiers, plus upsells for each tier to add more features and functionality. Zoom's base prices are in line with other, comparable video calling services.

Basic is the free version. With a free account you can host up to 100 participants, but calls are limited to 40 minutes unless you have only one other person on the call, in which case the limit is 30 hours.

Pro costs $14.99 per month or $149.90 per year. Calls can have up to 100 people on them, and the time limit for any call is 30 hours. If you need to have more people on a call, you can add on a Large Meeting feature for an extra fee. You also get social media streaming and 1GB cloud space for call recordings. This account type is limited to nine licenses.

Business accounts, which are targeted at small businesses, cost $19.99 per license per month ($199.90 per license when paying annually), with a minimum of 10 licenses required. You can host up to 300 people on a call, with the option to add on the Large Meeting feature for a fee. This plan also includes company branding, the option to record transcripts, and single sign-on for users.

Enterprise accounts are for large businesses and cost $19.99 per license per month ($240 when paying annually), with a minimum of 50 licenses required. You can host 500 people on a call and get unlimited cloud storage for call recordings.

Zoom offers other types of business-grade plans for specific use cases, such as a voice-over-IP service called Zoom Phone and a subscription for hosting webinars. Those services are sold separately from the core Zoom Meeting account types.

Other business communication software packages, such as Webex by Cisco often roll together video calling with VoIP phones, webinar functionality, and other communication tools. Zoom has become more fractured by comparison, though you may be able to cobble together the services you need and want through add-ons.

For use in the health sector, Zoom Meetings offers compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), but you must sign up for a Zoom for Healthcare account, and those plans cost more, though Zoom has added an option for small clinics with a $14.99 per month starting rate. Similarly, government agencies interested in Zoom should look more closely at its Zoom for Government plan.

Getting Started With Zoom

If you're invited to a Zoom meeting, you don't need to create an account. However, you will see a prompt to download the Zoom Meetings application. Downloading the app is optional, as you can connect via a web app just fine. The installed app does give you an optimized experience, however. Zoom Meetings has apps for Android, Linux, macOS, Windows, and the web. If you're new to the app, I highly recommend picking up a few Zoom tips before your first call.

The locally installed app and the web account contain slightly different settings, and it's in your best interest to explore both. We highly encourage new users to spend time going through the settings before using Zoom, not only for privacy and security reasons, but also to get the most out of what Zoom has to offer. For example, there are options to put attendees on hold, give remote control of your keyboard and mouse to another person while you give a presentation, touch up your appearance, and automatically adjust your picture in low light. It's in your best interest to be familiar with these tools in advance of a call.

If you want to host a session in Zoom Meetings and invite others to join, then you need to create an account. Doing so gets you a Personal Meeting ID (PMI), which you can use at any time to start a meeting. You can use the same PMI meeting link multiple times, which is convenient for small groups that meet regularly. In other words, you never have to generate a fresh link to meet. You always have the option, however, to create a unique meeting ID and link, which may be preferable for security reasons.

The Zoom Meetings Experience

I've used Zoom as both a participant and host frequently, starting around 2017. Joining a meeting takes little effort. Connecting takes a few seconds if you already have the app installed and only about two extra clicks if you choose the web app instead of the desktop app. The mobile apps work fine, too, though I prefer to join meetings from a computer.

One convenience that's relatively new is how and when Zoom updates. Instead of checking for updates upon launch (when you might already be running late), Zoom checks for available updates when you're about to quit the app. It's a nice detail.

Setting Up a Zoom Meeting

To set up or start a meeting using Zoom, you have several options. As mentioned, you can copy your Personal Meeting ID directly from the app and send it to participants. They either click the link or launch Zoom and enter the PMI, and you're off to the races.

Alternatively, you can schedule a meeting in advance from the Zoom app or directly from a connected calendar—Google Calendar, iCal, or Microsoft Outlook. Doing it from an integrated calendar is better because you can add an agenda or meeting description. When you set up a meeting from the Zoom app, you can't. Choose a date, start and end time, time zone, and a few other preferences, such as whether you'd like your video camera to activate automatically when you begin the call. If you give participants the option to join by phone, you can choose which country dial-in numbers to display. A link to all the dial-in options appears on the invitation, too. Your scheduled meetings and all the details for how to connect automatically show up on your connected calendar.

Password Protection, Registration, Waiting Room

An option to password-protect meetings is handy, but in practice doesn't feel that secure. Ever since Zoom enhanced its security features, the unique meeting ID and passcode are selected by default, but the unique link that's added to the invitation makes it unnecessary for anyone you've invited directly to enter the password. 

You can set a passcode for your PMI, too, and it will remain the same until you change it.

With a Pro account, you can require that attendees "register," meaning they must fill out a short form before they join. That survey lets you collect information about them. It's useful when you use Zoom for webinars and you aren't sure who might attend. You also need to enable this option if you want to run reports of who has joined meetings.

Another feature is a waiting room, which has two purposes. First, participants can log onto a meeting and see a hold screen until the host officially starts the meeting, which effectively prevents participants from interacting with one another before the host is ready. Second, the waiting room allows the host to control who can join and when.

Host Controls

Hosts, especially with paid Zoom accounts, get a lot of options. Aside from creating a waiting room, hosts can also control whether participants are muted upon entry to a meeting, whether their cameras are active or off, and whether people can chat with one another privately, or at all, or only as a group.

As a participant, you can enable or disable your own video and microphone at any time, again, as long as the host allows you to turn them on at all. One reason to intentionally disable them is for certain types of meetings, such as large presentations. Participants can use on-screen buttons or keyboard shortcuts for muting and unmuting as well as enabling or disabling the camera. Hosts can also disable any participant's microphone or camera at any time.

Hosts see a Security button, which was added in 2020 and will show up on their toolbar during active calls. This button gives quick access to important security features, such as locking the meeting, enabling a waiting room for additional guests who try to join after the meeting starts, and giving participants permission to share their screens, chat, and so forth. Hosts and people with permission can add new people to the call on an ad hoc basis. For example, if you're already on a call and realize that you need to invite more people, there are tools for quickly copying your meeting ID and other information to send. There's also an option to start drafting an email with the invitation information, too.

As a participant, you can configure your screen to see relevant information panels, a chat box, and different view modes, such as Gallery View and Speaker View. Even if the host keeps participants muted, there are buttons for raising your hand, requesting the speaker to speed up or slow down, and other ways to interact.

Fun and Functional Features

Zoom has several features that aren't strictly necessary but make video calls more enjoyable. They include Video Filters, Virtual Backgrounds, Touch Up My Appearance, integration with game apps, and a new Avatar option that lets you replace your own head with that of a cartoon animal (in beta as of this writing).

Some of these features really are just for fun, though I'd argue that Virtual Backgrounds, which includes the ability to blur your background, is in fact an important privacy option. When taking video calls from a location where you don't want the other participants to have deep insight into your surroundings, it's important to be able to still have the option to show your face without showing everything else around you.

Touch Up My Appearance is only available on Apple mobile devices, Windows, and macOS (not Android or the web-based client). This feature softens skin and hair to smooth over wrinkles, dimples, pimples, and the like. In the desktop app, a slider lets you decide how soft a focus you want. The image above shows the touch-up completely off (left) and at about the halfway point (right). In my case, cranking up the filter to full capacity wipes aways all my freckles. Whether that's the result you want is up to you.

A few other special features in Zoom focus more on utility. The ability to assign a co-host to a meeting, for example, makes it easy to share responsibilities for managing the meeting and participants.

Deeper Collaboration

Desktop sharing, also known as screen sharing, works well and supports multiple monitors. In the same vein as having a co-host to share responsibilities, you can start a screen sharing session and hand over controls of your keyboard and mouse to someone else on the call. It's a nice way to have students engage with material or let someone else move your slides while you give a presentation. I used this feature to let my young niece design a pair of sneakers that I bought her as a gift. She was able to fully control my computer to design the shoes, and then I reclaimed control to make the purchase.

You can also set up a side-by-side screen share of your desktop and someone else's, a handy way to literally compare notes. During any screen sharing session, participants and the host can annotate and mark up whatever's on the screen. Zoom Meetings also has a collaborative whiteboard you can use to brainstorm or map out ideas.

Breakout rooms are another wonderful feature, especially for student groups and remote teams. During a meeting, you can assign participants to groups (or let them select the group they want) and send them into their own private video chat. When finished, everyone can easily reconvene in the main video call.

New Chat Space in Zoom

Relatively new to Zoom is a permanent chat space, a feature that makes Zoom much more like Slack and other team messaging apps than before. You can have private one-on-one chats, create channels (for group chats), and so forth. 

When I tested this feature, I found my personal Zoom account let me invite anyone via email to join a chat. In my business account, my administrator has disabled the feature—if you use Zoom for work and don't see a new chat space, you might be in the same boat.

My analysis of this new chat space, where your typed conversations and uploaded documents persist regardless of whether you have a meeting, is that it's coming way too late to be truly competitive with Slack, Microsoft Teams, or other established team messaging apps. I would bet that most users won't even notice its existence and that most business users already have a preferred method for having asynchronous conversations. Zoom may still be your video calling app of choice (it's better than Slack's built-in video calling by a long shot), but it's not going to replace your team's chat app anytime soon.

Meeting Recordings and App Integrations for Zoom

Zoom also lets you make a video recording of meetings. Paid accounts include some cloud storage space for those recordings, making it easier to not only save the resulting videos but also share them. As mentioned above, you also always have the option to record and save the video locally.

Still, while Zoom has lots of excellent features, we've heard of some nice-to-have options in other apps that aren't in Zoom Meetings. For example, ClickMeeting lets you send automatic "thank you" emails to participants. You could do this same thing with Zoom Meetings, but it would require a third-party automation app, such as IFTTT or Zapier, to carry out. Zoom Meetings integrates with both those services.

Speaking of integration options, support for apps has grown considerably, which is a huge positive for Zoom customers. You can now connect to general business apps for scheduling (Accuity, Calendly, ScheduleOnce), CRM or customer relationship management (Pipedrive, HubSpot, Salesforce), collaboration and productivity (Slack, Prezi, Monday.com) as well as  industry-specific apps for sectors such as healthcare, education, and fitness.

Audio Options for Joining Calls

Sometimes participants can't join a video call easily, in which case it's nice to offer the option for them to dial into the call by phone. Participants can join using a standard rate call or toll-free number where supported. There are no toll-free numbers for the US or the UK, however, though there are for dozens of other countries.

Depending on your settings, participants may be able to join the audio portion of the call via Microsoft Skype for Business. It's also possible to set up a third-party audio system of your choosing and include instructions for dialing into the meeting in the invitation.

Zoom for Business

Paying customers get a few more business-focused features, such as reports. From the web app, you can generate a report of all attendees in a meeting, though you have to enable registration in advance to get any data in the report. Otherwise, it will be empty. The participant reports are somewhat inconvenient because you must download them as CSV files and then import them into some kind of spreadsheet app to view them.

Other reports appear right in the web app, including bar graphs showing the number of meetings, participants, and minutes your organization spent using Zoom during a particular time period.

The list of other features for businesses is long, but a list of those worth mentioning start with templates, which let you save settings and options for specific types of meetings. There is also localized language support for 10 languages beyond English; and good accessibility options, including the ability to add closed captioning to live videos either with your own typist or another service.

If your organization is large, you might consider some of Zoom's offerings beyond Zoom Meetings (which has so far been the focal point of this review). Zoom Room, for example, is another deployment of the Zoom software that lets organizations use it with cameras, microphones, projectors, and other hardware they may already have in place in conference rooms or other locations. On the back end, administrators for Zoom Room get reports of not only who joined various calls, but the status of all the hardware being used across all the locations. Essentially, this is Zoom's answer to the slowly growing trend for smarter conference rooms.

I mentioned early that Zoom has faced scrutiny over its loose definition of end-to-end encryption, but that it has better clarified exactly how encryption works since then. I'd encourage any organization that's considering using Zoom to read its PDF Security Guide thoroughly.

Help and support varies based on what type of plan you have. Free users can fill out an online form and await a reply. Pro plan subscribers can either submit an online form or text-chat live with a support team member. Zoom members with a Business, Education, or API plan have those same two options plus toll-free numbers for phone support in eight countries: Australia, France, India, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, the UK, and the US.

Alternatives to Zoom

If you're not interested in Zoom, we can point you to a long list of other options. 

For personal use, there are plenty of free video calling apps. These options typically don't have the features you would expect to find in a business-grade video conferencing tool. However, for chatting with friends, they get the job done. A few examples are WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook Messenger, HouseParty, FaceTime, and Google Meet.

Google Meet and Skype can both be used in business settings, too, as they have ample features to support those kinds of calls. Other frequent options for business settings are Microsoft Teams and Slack. They're not really video conferencing services, but they're fine for meetings that don't require extensive tools to manage them. We recommend reading about the key differences between Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet to get a sense of how they differ.

Another option worth exploring is Jitsi Meet. It's free, open-source, and according to the website "fully encrypted." We think it's a good pick for casual get-togethers if you're opposed to other options. That said, it comes up short on features. If you want a custom waiting room for participants before the call starts, for example, or virtual backgrounds, or password-protected meetings, you're better off with Zoom. Jitsi does come with screen sharing, call recording, live streaming, and a few other features, however.

Best of Breed and Recommended

It's undeniably easy to start using Zoom for video calls and it's just as easy to get hooked on it. In light of recent conditions, we recommend new users take a few minutes to explore the app and its settings before creating their first meeting. Putting in even 10 minutes to look over the app before using it is beneficial. The service has much to explore regardless of whether you use it every so often to meet with clients or regularly to host all-hands meetings with a large team.

Zoom Meetings fully deserves consideration as a video conferencing app, and is a PCMag Editors' Choice in this space alongside Intermedia AnyMeeting and Webex Meetings.