Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Office 365 vs Zoom comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Office 365
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Content Collaboration Platforms (9th)
Zoom
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
207
Ranking in other categories
Virtual Meetings (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Messaging and Collaboration solutions, they serve different purposes. Office 365 is designed for Content Collaboration Platforms and holds a mindshare of 4.9%, down 6.9% compared to last year.
Zoom, on the other hand, focuses on Virtual Meetings, holds 11.5% mindshare, down 14.9% since last year.
Content Collaboration Platforms
Virtual Meetings
 

Featured Reviews

Minos Pitsillides - PeerSpot reviewer
Excellent technical support, easy to install, but the price, while affordable, could be improved
Office 365 is scalable, but it is dependent on the situation. We don't have a problem with it from an organizational standpoint. They started with 100 employees and then added another 500 after six months, for a total of 600 employees. The setup of new users, new emails, and new applications to be assigned to the new users is straightforward. They also provide the PowerShell command, which they provided more, development type, like, for example, you can create users, not manually, but through a script that can create users, for example, 100 users in two, three minutes, and you don't do it manually. They're fantastic. My portfolio contains approximately 50 companies. Office 365 is our primary platform for the 50 companies. I only have one on G Suite, and the majority of them will be migrating from G Suite to 365 in the coming month.
Kallol Chaudhuri - PeerSpot reviewer
Helped us tremendously in collaborating with each other and getting our work done and offers the breakout rooms feature.
We are a team located across various locations. Not in the same geographic location. We are distributed. And it's not possible to physically travel and meet people. Sometimes it's simply not possible. But Zoom has helped us tremendously in collaborating with each other and getting our work done. Without Zoom, it would have been very, very difficult. The breakout rooms feature is also helpful. For example, I have a meeting attended by hundreds of people and want to create subgroups. I typically use it for different role-play scenarios during training if we are trying to conduct some training on presentation skills. So there's a large group, which is initially trained by an instructor. Then you get instructions that the room will be split into smaller breakout rooms. I'll give you a topic, and you'll practice in these smaller groups. That's one way I use it. So it's like a simulation of a real brainstorming session I'd have in a physical space.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Cloud-based management is valuable and software deployment is positive."
"Quarantine email alerts to users to allow the email to their inbox (tricky but handy) - tricky if one doesn't have third-party email security, handy if one has got good third party email security)."
"We use it for documentation management, to collaborate with Microsoft Teams, web calls, web conference calls, chats, and as a documentation repository mainly. We have an Office pack suite to be able to write documentation, make spreadsheets, and create PowerPoints."
"It's nice that it's an all-in-one solution and everything is all in one place."
"My primary use case is for preparing presentations to teach, often on PowerPoint."
"It's very stable."
"The phone VoIP product provides genuine a unified communication solution."
"The solution is quite intuitive and easy to use."
"I have found Zoom to have all the functions that I need. The solution is easy to use."
"The solution is much better and more reliable than Microsoft Teams or Webex."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to connect to and conduct meetings."
"The feature I find the most about Zoom is that you can have a private chat in a group call."
"There is a free version of the solution."
"I have found the product to be scalable."
"Zoom did everything that we needed it to do."
"Easy to use whenever and wherever necessary."
 

Cons

"I'd like to see them add more features in the future in order to continue to advance the product."
"It seems like every other week when we log into the administrative portals, it doesn't matter which one, it could be the active directory portal, it could be the exchange admin center or SharePoint admin center, it seems like Microsoft is consistently updating with new versions of the admin centers, which can be frustrating."
"Office 365 could be easier to use at first. Tutorials are needed to know how to use the solution."
"As a private user, I do not appreciate the cloud features, but I doubt that this is something Microsoft would consider a feature request."
"In the next release, I would like to have a more intuitive tutorial."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 could use some customization, but this area for improvement is trivial."
"It would be a fantastic opportunity if their solution could be used in combination with VoIP software, allowing you to combine VoIP software and Office 365 on a single platform."
"The online applications have limited functionality compared to the local applications."
"One thing that Zoom can improve is the chat. You can send messages to a specific person without messaging everyone. But everyone sees the whole chat if the administrator lets them see the chat. Maybe they could add an option to let you open a private conversation on the side with a person."
"Zoom will be cheaper if you want to have a general meeting, but if you want a real enterprise version, Cisco will be cheaper."
"They could address the product's limitation of the free version, particularly the 40-minute time constraint on meetings."
"I would like to be able to have multiple users open and collaborate on a document at the same time."
"The interface could be more user-friendly."
"I would appreciate it if the updates weren't so frequent."
"The security needs to be improved."
"It is difficult to see and control whether you're muted or not, so the interface should be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Office 365 is very expensive."
"The pricing is not really high, but one can get the software with the license key for free."
"The pricing is high and has actually caused us to limit the number of licenses we purchase due to budgeting."
"For the moment, we are paying on a monthly basis because we are still adapting the support and how we want to proceed. I think we will move to paying for the annual license."
"Good reporting and good value subscriptions for international calls."
"I would rate the solution 3 out of 5 for the price. I think Microsoft presents a good solution concerning the price."
"The pricing is good for all the features that we receive, e.g., Skype for Business."
"Licensing, billing, and accounting are available from the management interface."
"We pay a yearly licensing fee for Zoom, which is expensive in our part of the world."
"I use Zoom's free version."
"My organization has a yearly license for Zoom."
"We are on an annual license for the solution. The price of the solution could be less expensive."
"I use the free version of Zoom."
"The cost of Zoom has led me to use WeChat, instead."
"For personal use, I use the free version of Zoom, so I haven't paid anything."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Content Collaboration Platforms solutions are best for your needs.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
84%
Computer Software Company
2%
Financial Services Firm
2%
Government
2%
Educational Organization
92%
University
1%
Financial Services Firm
1%
Computer Software Company
1%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What are the differences between SnapComms and Office 365?
Here are the key differences between SnapComms and Office 365: SnapComms is specifically designed for employee communications, while Office 365 is a suite of productivity tools for bus...
LucidChart vs LucidSpark for brainstorming sessions over Zoom
Hi @Krista Thompson ​ - Yes, LucidSpark is a much more nimble and, in some ways, user-friendly tool than LucidChart. LucidSpark is designed to do a better job managing multiple users participating ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zoom?
I use the free version of Zoom and have not encountered significant issues in its use. I also use the free version of Google Meet.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Microsoft Office 365, Office 365 Enterprise, Office 365 Enterprise E1, Office 365 Enterprise E3, Office 365 Enterprise E5, Office 365 ProPlus, Office 365 Business, Office 365 Business Essentials, Office 365 Business Premium, Office 365 F1
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Me & the Bees Lemonade
Fortinet, Veeva, Proofpoint, Box, Ticketmaster, Trend Micro, Caesars Entertainment, Santa Clara University, Pandora, Stanford Continuing Studies
Find out what your peers are saying about Office 365 vs. Zoom and other solutions. Updated: April 2023.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.