One platform to connect with built-in AI.
Grade: A — Score: 98/100
Basic (Free): Free
Pro: $13.33/user/month (billed annually), $16.99 monthly
Business: $18.33/user/month (billed annually), $21.99 monthly
Enterprise: Custom pricing (250+ seats)
Consider switching to Microsoft Teams: Offers similar collaboration features with integrated Office 365 tools.
Zoom holds 55.9% of the video conferencing market versus Teams at 32.3%. Zoom's main advantage is external meeting simplicity: guests click a link and join without an account or extra steps. Teams performs best inside Microsoft 365 organizations where it integrates natively with Outlook, SharePoint, and OneDrive. On pricing, Teams Essentials starts at $4/user/month versus Zoom Pro at $13.33/user/month (billed annually). Zoom includes AI Companion for meeting summaries on all paid plans at no extra cost. Microsoft charges $30/user/month for Copilot. Teams uses less bandwidth (1.2 Mbps for 1080p group calls versus Zoom's 3.8 Mbps) but Zoom delivers more consistent video quality on unstable networks.
Google Meet is bundled with Google Workspace starting at $7/user/month (Business Starter), which includes Gmail, Drive, Docs, and Calendar alongside video meetings. Its free tier allows 60-minute group calls versus Zoom's 40-minute cap. Meet works entirely in the browser with no downloads required. Zoom's advantage is depth: breakout rooms, polls, Q&A, whiteboard, and a standalone webinar product that scales to 50,000 attendees. Zoom also includes AI Companion for meeting summaries on paid plans, while Google's Gemini AI features are limited to higher-tier Workspace plans. For teams already in Google Workspace, Meet is the cheaper path. For teams needing advanced meeting controls or client-facing events, Zoom offers more.
Zoom states it does not use customer audio, video, chat, screen sharing, or other communications content to train its own or third-party AI models. This applies to AI Companion features including meeting summaries, transcription, and action items. Account administrators control whether to enable AI features and can separately decide whether to share content with Zoom for product improvement. AI Companion is disabled by default. Meeting participants see a notification when AI features are active and can choose to leave. Zoom offers a Zero Data Retention option for meeting summaries, and customers can select Zoom-hosted-only model deployment (ZMO) to avoid sending data to third-party model providers.
AI Companion 3.0, launched December 2025, is included at no extra cost with paid Zoom Workplace plans. It generates meeting summaries with speaker attribution, extracts action items, provides real-time transcription, and drafts follow-up emails. The 3.0 update added agentic retrieval that searches across Zoom Docs, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Gmail, and Outlook. Personal workflows (in beta) automate recurring tasks like daily reflection reports and Team Chat thread summaries. A standalone AI Companion subscription is available for $10/month without requiring a paid Workplace license. Free Basic users get limited access: 3 meetings per month with AI features and 20 AI queries.
Zoom's Business plan requires a minimum purchase of 10 licenses at $18.33/user/month (billed annually), creating a $2,200/year floor. Teams with fewer than 10 people cannot buy the Business plan at all, even if they need Business-tier features like SSO, managed domains, or company branding. The Pro plan, which has no seat minimum, maxes out at 9 licenses and does not include SSO. This creates a gap for teams of 5-9 people who need enterprise authentication. The workaround is to either purchase 10 licenses and leave some unused or to stay on Pro and use a third-party SSO provider that supports SAML at the identity provider level.
Zoom Phone is available standalone or bundled with Workplace. Standalone plans start at $10/user/month for US & Canada Metered (outbound calls billed per minute) and $15/user/month for Unlimited domestic calling. Bundle options combine Workplace and Phone: Pro Plus at $18.33/user/month includes Workplace Pro plus unlimited US/Canada calling. Business Plus at $22.49/user/month includes Workplace Business plus unlimited calling. All plans include HD voice, voicemail with transcription, call recording, auto-attendant, and native mobile apps. Zoom Phone has surpassed 10 million paid seats as of 2026. International calling requires additional add-ons.
Zoom supports HIPAA compliance through a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) available on eligible paid plans. Healthcare organizations must configure specific settings including encryption and recording policies. Zoom for Government is FedRAMP JAB Moderate authorized, including Zoom AI Companion. Additional certifications include SOC 2 Type II (covering October 2024 to October 2025), ISO/IEC 27001, HITRUST CSF, and PCI DSS attestation for Contact Center and Phone. Zoom Workplace for Clinicians integrates natively with Epic Haiku and Epic Hyperspace for ambient clinical documentation. EU data center routing is available for paid accounts to support GDPR compliance.
The free Basic plan caps all group meetings at 40 minutes, including one-on-one calls. This limit was extended to 1:1 meetings in July 2022. Once the timer expires, the meeting ends for all participants. Other limitations: no cloud recording (local recording only), 3 whiteboards, no SSO, no company branding, and no admin controls beyond basic settings. AI Companion Basic offers limited access (3 AI-enabled meetings per month, 20 AI queries). To continue a meeting past 40 minutes, the host must end and restart the session using the same meeting link. Google Meet's free tier allows 60-minute group calls, and Jitsi Meet has no time limits.