Zoom Review

Why Zoom is best for video conferencing

Zoom became synonymous with video conferencing during the lockdown era, evolving into a generic word for a product category much like Kleenex and Xerox before it. While its popularity may have waned over the last few years, the features and tools that made it the go-to meeting platform for remote work have not. All of Zoom’s phone plans include the option to elevate a call to a video conference with Zoom Meetings or transfer a call to a Zoom Meeting or Room.

Zoom’s basic Meeting tool is included with its phone plans. It supports up to 100 participants with 40 minutes per meeting, local recording, whiteboards, waiting rooms, filters, virtual backgrounds, screen sharing, breakout rooms and automatic translated captions that make it easy to find important details in past conversations. While Zoom plans include desktop and mobile apps, the technology works on any internet-connected device with virtual meeting capabilities; this makes it easy to schedule, initiate, join and collaborate regardless of your participants’ type of computer, phone or tablet.

During our review process, our team spent time participating in video demos with each company; it found Zoom’s live presentation to have the highest-quality video with crisp sound and no lag. While Zoom might not be our top pick as a stand-alone cloud-based phone service, any business that spends more time communicating over video than phone should put Zoom on its shortlist of all-in-one communications service providers.

Zoom offers three distinct phone plans. Source: Zoom

Usability

Zoom combines phone, video meetings and team chat into one communications platform, which is accessible through desktop and mobile apps with all phone plans. The phone system integrates with Google, Microsoft and Salesforce to provide immediate access to your contacts and schedule to book meetings. While the platform is far from difficult to use, changing some advanced settings like call flows and call queues with drop-down menus gives Zoom’s portal more of an enterprise software look and feel than some of the more intuitive platforms, like Ooma; the latter feels like it was designed for non-technical end users.

One area where Zoom shines is its ability to jump from a voice-only phone call to a video meeting instantly. Once you’ve initiated a video call, you can also bring your guest into a virtual conference room with a larger group to help close an important sales deal or brainstorm with your remote team using the collaborative whiteboard features. Zoom meetings are also very easy to host and attend from any device with an internet connection, making them ideal for small businesses that have gone (or stayed) remote as commercial rent prices continue to rise.

We also love that Zoom also keeps design top of mind for users, with its immersive workspace designer. The company provides the right hardware (like table mics and ceiling mics) and software for specific environments — from large meeting rooms to small personal or home offices. Not only that, but you can also change your background if you don’t want colleagues to see your bedroom while working remotely, use emoji reactions to respond while muted, take advantage of a gallery view and more. This, among countless other reasons, is why Zoom is our top pick for video conferencing tools.

Zoom features

Zoom includes the same basic phone features, device support, integrations and video conferencing capabilities with all of its phone plans. With a Zoom Phone, you get everything from unlimited auto attendants and interactive voice response (IVRs) menus to team messaging and call recording. While Zoom’s voice features are widely considered basic, the platform includes a few features we really like.

Zoom meetings

Zoom Phone subscribers get access to many of the video meeting features that make this platform so popular in remote business settings. That includes meetings for up to 100 participants, screen sharing, virtual backgrounds, team chat, annotations, filters, whiteboarding, waiting rooms, breakout rooms and recording.

Advanced conferencing features are available with separate Meeting and Workplace plans that allow custom branding, extend video conferences to 30 hours for 300 participants and add essential apps like the AI task manager. We enjoyed using these features when we tested Zoom for this review, but we nevertheless feel that most new or small businesses will fare just fine without Zoom’s branding tools and longer, larger video conferences.

Zoom’s whiteboards come with a wealth of helpful templates to save time and stay more organized. Source: Zoom

All Zoom Phone plans let you switch from a voice-only phone call to a face-to-face video conference instantly. You can also take your one-on-one call into a conference room and begin a whiteboard session with templates to streamline processes like building a new flow chart. Once your meeting has concluded, you or anyone on your team can access the whiteboard and any related recordings through a web browser or the app.

AI Companion

A new feature woven into all paid Zoom accounts, the AI Companion is a great addition to Zoom Phone. It provides post-call summaries that can be used with voicemails and calls, allowing you to focus on adding value to the conversation without worrying about forgetting what someone said. It can also extract action items from voicemails, helping you get up to speed quickly without listening to every message in your inbox. Just like with your voicemail, AI Companion can also summarize a lengthy team SMS thread so you can jump back into the conversation as if you never stepped away.

AI Companion can pull important tasks from your voicemail to save you time. Source: Zoom

Barge/Monitor/Whisper/Takeover

Barge, Monitor, Whisper and Takeover are separate phone features included with all of Zoom’s phone plans. This set of features is designed to let assistants, trainees and managers listen in on phone calls to take notes, speak privately to the person they’re monitoring, initiate a three-way call or take over a conversation entirely.

 In combination, these features are an essential tool for training new customer service agents on business phone etiquette and company standards. They’re also helpful in providing insights and direction to new sales agents nearing the close of a deal. For smaller businesses without in-house customer service or sales teams, using these features to listen in on calls can help you train your employees on how to effectively communicate with existing clients or customers, as well as with each other.

Zoom Phone Power Pack

This $25 monthly add-on feature is designed for call center supervisors and managers as well as receptionists, so depending on your business type and size, you might not need it yet. If you do, though, we found that this feature provides excellent call queue analytics and historical insights that managers can use to monitor their team’s level of service, with custom options to issue warnings and critical alerts at specific thresholds. Admins can look at active calls, waiting calls and calls held. You can also drill down into completed calls, abandoned calls, missed calls and calls forwarded to voicemail.

This real-time data dashboard updates automatically to include live caller data. Source: Zoom

The wallboard, or web-based dashboard, can be displayed on a large TV or shared with the leadership team to track the most important calling information. You can filter your boards by office location, department and call queue. With historical data, you can review call service levels with custom configurations across days and hours to identify trends and help optimize your workflow.

Zoom Cloud Phone costs

Unlike most all-in-one communications providers, Zoom offers metered and unmetered phone plans in addition to unified communications products. Metered rates can vary from a few cents to more than $5 per minute, so it’s important to know where your business is calling the most to determine which plan will be right for you.

Other potential costs include seven paid add-on phone features. These add-ons include toll-free numbers, international calling, video conferencing hardware and additional phone numbers. Zoom also offers phone hardware as a service with IP phones, handsets and conference phones from popular manufacturers such as Poly, Yealink and AudioCodes.  Chances are your small business (or solo operations if you’re a solopreneur) will be just as effective without phone hardware besides your smartphone. Zoom software should give you everything you need.

Zoom Phone setup

Like the majority of cloud-based phone systems, Zoom’s setup process is fairly easy and straightforward with an online guide that’s accessible to owners and administrators. Once you choose your main company number, or a temporary number if you’re porting an existing number, you can specify your extensions and your location for emergency services. From here, you can begin making and receiving calls or begin setting up your phone system management features, like the auto attendant and call queues.

Zoom’s setup section provides easy-to-follow guidelines to direct calls during or outside normal business hours. Source: Zoom

End users will log in to their Zoom account and select the phone tab to begin personalizing it with their country, local area code and a secure PIN to access their voicemails. If you allow it, your employees can set their own business hours and call rules.

Zoom Phone customer service

When comparing Zoom to other video conferencing tools, we found it to be stellar with its customer service. After testing Zoom’s customer service and support, we found that common issues and inquiries were swiftly addressed and resolved. All paid Zoom Phone plans include 24/7 live chat and phone support. However, support plans can vary when Zoom Phone is paired with other Zoom products.

Zoom’s learning center includes a number of free self-paced education modules that can teach you everything from product and administrator basics to engaging your audience effectively during video meetings. While you’ll need to log in to a Zoom account to access these tools, they’re available with a free basic account.

Zoom Phone drawbacks

While Zoom’s phone system integrates with Salesforce CRM, you won’t find many native phone integrations with other popular business applications. The full list of Zoom Phone integrations includes Salesforce, Slack, Outlook, Gmail, Google Calendar and a handful of others for contact centers. 

Direct competitors like RingEX offer more than 300 pre-built integrations with most plans. Additionally, many other business phone systems we’ve reviewed include dozens, if not hundreds, of integration options at most subscription levels. However, solopreneurs, low-budget businesses and very small teams might be working with just a few software platforms. If your business fits any of these descriptions, Zoom’s limited integrations shouldn’t be a major issue.

[Read related: RingEX Business Phone System Review]

Unless you plan on purchasing more than 99 user accounts (and that seems unlikely at this stage in your business’s life cycle), you won’t be able to find any bulk pricing discounts with Zoom. This lack of discounts is nevertheless worth noting — many competitors, including Nextiva, Ooma and Vonage, offer bulk discounts to businesses purchasing far fewer user accounts.

Methodology

In searching for the top business phone systems, we investigated more than a dozen platforms. We researched and analyzed each offering, participated in demos whenever possible, and tried free and paid plans. We evaluated each solution based on its tools and features, pricing, limitations, ease of use, setup process and customer service options. We selected Zoom Phone as the best business phone system for video conferencing thanks to its enterprise-grade video output, support for up to 100 participants and ease of use across any device with an internet connection.

Overall value

We recommend Zoom Phone for …

• Small businesses without a significant volume of incoming phone calls.
• B2B-focused businesses that primarily rely on email and video conferencing.
• Any business setting where phone calls are the least common method of communication.

We don’t recommend Zoom Phone for …

• Direct-to-consumer businesses.
• Any business with a significant volume of incoming phone calls.
• Any business that participates in cold calling for sales.