Features we like about Microsoft Teams:
- Sharing audio while sharing screen: You can share both screen and sound showing a recorded video
- Blur function: You can blur out the background so that the participants cannot see e.g. your spouse walking around in the background
- Live captions: Teams can automatically do captions while you speak (currently only available in English)
- Team channel to continue working together: You can write, send files and call each other again on the same channel
Overall, Microsoft Teams is ideal if your business already uses Microsoft 365, or if you are looking to reinvent your organisation’s digital communication and collaboration workspaces.
Google Meet
Google Meet is part of the Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) office productivity platform. It recently got an overhaul and is now a more reliable and intuitive video conferencing tool than before.
We use Google Meet because the robust performance and frictionless video calling features make it an ideal choice for time-strapped business owners in need of a swift, cost-effective video calling solution. Developed specifically for business needs, it caters to a large number of users simultaneously.
Google Meet is an improved version of the standard Google Hangouts and aims to make it easier to work with external clients. Firstly, it does this by providing a web app experience, which means that there is no software you need to download – a Google Meet meeting takes place in an ordinary tab in your Google Chrome browser. Secondly, it provides a dedicated dial-in number, which not only means that employees on the go can join the meeting without using mobile data but also ensures that line quality is maintained and that there are no drop-outs.
Another plus is that Google Meet does not come with any big monthly costs that other providers might charge for their video conferencing tools.
Ultimately, Google Meet is a serious business-grade conferencing platform that does not require big upfront costs for hardware, which makes it accessible to businesses of any size.
The only negative thing is that Google Meet only works with the browsers Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge. So if you are still using the original preinstalled browser on Windows 10 or another non-chromium browser, you will get an error message prompting you to download and install a different browser in order to use Google Meet.