Are you team Zoom or MS Teams? Comparing/contrasting 14 features – who will win?

Drum roll please …. I present to you a comparison and contrast of 14 features between team Zoom and MS Teams. Let me know which team you prefer. Are you Team Zoom or MS Teams? Keep reading to check out the features.

I run a monthly Learning and Development Roundtable.  When I started delivering it online a couple of years ago, in the Roundtable description, I said that I used a tool called Zoom, like Skype but better.   

Fast forward and you’d be hard-pressed to find a human who hasn’t at least heard the term Zoom.  Which brings me to Team Zoom and Team Microsoft Teams.  Having used both of the platforms, I present to you a comparison and contrast of their features.

Who will be the winner?  Who’s the winner in your mind?

Onwards with the contest.

Each feature has been scored using the following:

Marvellous → the feature is great and easy to use (3 points)

Meh → the feature is so-so, not horrible but not marvey (2 points)

Miserable → the feature is really lacking (1 point)

Here are the fourteen features I’ve compared:

1. Participant metrics
2. Polling
3. Annotation
4. Whiteboard
5. View options
6. Share screen
7. Taking pictures of your participants
8. Sharing documents, your PowerPoint deck etc. during your call
9. Breakout rooms with randomly divided groups
10. Breakout rooms with prescribed groups
11. Making broadcast to breakout rooms
12. Closing the breakout rooms and bringing participants back to the main group
13. Chat
14. Bandwidth

I’ll share half of the ratings this post and the rest next week.

Zoom Score	Feature	MS Teams Score
Marvellous!  Zoom is a marvel; as long as people register through a Zoom link you can track the total number of minutes per call and also how many minutes each person has been on the call.	Participant metrics Reporting on how many people took part in a call, for how long (total minutes and breakdown by person)	Meh MS Teams is pretty great at participant metrics if you use the forms feature however it doesn’t add up the total number of minutes for each person and for the whole call which is disappointing.  It does track when someone enters the room and when they leave but again, there’s no minute total.  I will say that MS Teams has some nice graphing features.  So if for example, you asked about gender in your form, it will display the results in a graph.
Marvellous! Polling on Zoom is a breeze.	Polling Live polling with multiple choice questions.	Marvellous! Ditto MS Teams.
Marvellous! Annotation on Zoom is easy peasy.	Annotation You and/or the participants can write and/or draw on a slide.	Miserable This feature is lacking in MS Teams (hiss boo).
Marvellous! Easy peasy.	Whiteboard Writing and/or drawing on a whiteboard.	Marvellous! Ditto.
Marvellous! Zoom gives lots of options to view the chat, participants, your powerpoint deck etc. as you wish.	VIew options Options that you as the presenter have for what you see on your screen.	Meh MS Teams makes this tough.  To have the most flexibility in what you see you must use the app (not the desktop version) and you are forced to choose between seeing the chat or the participants (you can’t see both at the same time).
Marvellous! Zoom has lots of convenient ways to share your screen including a portion of your screen.	Share screen How and what you share with your participants.	Miserable MS Teams makes you work.  Using the app you can share your screen easily enough BUT if you then switch to a different view you have to upload your PowerPOint each and every time, which is just plain annoying and time consuming.
Miserable Zoom doesn’t allow this and it’s a total pain.  You can share part of your screen so while in presenter view, you can see all your slides but the particiaptns only see the current slide but it’s a finicky work around.	Presenter view You as the presenter can see your current slide AND without your participants seeing, you can also see all your past and upcoming slides.	Marvellous! As long as you’re using the app (not the desktop version) and as long as when you start to share you select ‘browse’ you are able to use presenter view for your slides.  Bliss!
Meh Zoom doesn’t have a feature for this.  If you want a picture you have to take a screen grab.	Taking pictures of your participants	Marvellous! MS Teams have several options for taking your group’s picture which make it look like you’re all sitting in theatre type seating.  Fun!

There you have it.  The first half of fourteen features compared and contrasted on Zoom and Microsoft Teams.  

And the winner is ……. drum roll please, …… stay tuned next week to find out.

In the meantime, dig into the features you haven’t yet tried and zero in on the ones that intrigue you.  Most of all, let the tool, regardless of whether you use Zoom and/or MS Teams, serve you versus the other way around.

Now go on and learn, laugh and lead

Learn

• I’d love to hear your experience.  Do you agree or disagree?  Are there any features you’d add?  Let me know in the comments below.

Laugh

• If you need a chuckle or three, simply google Zoom or MS Team fails.  Here’s an example (with tongue firmly planted in cheek as this is funny but it could have ended very differently – don’t Zoom and drive) where a politician pretends he is in his office but he’s actually driving during the meeting!

Lead

• On your next Zoom or MS Teams meeting try one of the features above to add some more engagement to your meetings and/or workshops.

P.S. Want to receive invitations to my monthly Learning and Development Roundtables that I mentioned in the intro? Easy peasy. Sign up here.