Zoom: An Honest Review by a Competitor (2026)

If you're looking for a way to connect with your team and external collaborators, you need an app to help you achieve this as easily as possible.

So, is Zoom the right choice for you?

To help you come to a conclusive answer, I’ve tested Zoom to see how its interface, functionality, and specific features hold up in 2026 — especially compared to its price.

Since Zoom is such a feature-rich app, the main focus of this review will be narrowed down to team communication and collaboration with external partners (via Zoom Workplace). I’ll also briefly touch on Zoom’s webinar hosting options (Zoom Webinars and Events).

Let’s take a closer look at Zoom to help you decide whether it’s a good fit for your specific needs and budget.

Why trust us?

The apps we talk about are selected, tested, and written about by human reviewers who follow strict review and editorial guidelines. We pick solutions that are practical, purposeful, and can offer real value for the specific use case or business context we’re covering — while also being justified in their pricing. Our methodology is transparent, clear, and available to everyone:

Learn more about our review methodology here

Who is Zoom for?

Zoom is an overall reliable tool best fit for:

• Combining phone calls and web conferencing,
• Large-scale online meetings,
• Webinars and online events, and
• Scheduled, temporary, or recurring online events with many participants.

If you’re looking for a tool dedicated only to video calls, client sessions, or webinars with 500+ participants, Zoom will be a very useful, albeit pricey, tool.

Zoom can also be a solid addition to your existing set of workplace tools, if your needs end at scheduling and holding video conferences.

What’s more, you’ll also find Zoom to be a great fit if you’re looking to pair this capability with local, regional, and international phone calls, since it offers both phone and web communication in its plans.

However, for teams in need of a centralized communication hub, daily internal discussions, and sharing important files and information online, Zoom might not be the best tool for the job — since there are many superior Zoom alternatives, both in terms of price and functionality.

However, let’s take a closer look at all the main features, so you can judge that for yourself.

Zoom’s main features

Zoom’s main features include:

• Video conferencing,
• Screen sharing,
• Domestic and international phone calls,
• Large-scale meetings and webinars,
• Team chat,
• Chat management (channels, threads, folders, shared spaces),
• Native add-ons and enhancements (each billed separately), and
• App integrations.

The payment options and scope of features are extensively tiered, so you will probably have a fair bit of researching to do to come up with an estimate of what your price will end up being per user.

This will, of course, depend on the number of seats you need and the scale of your required features.

I’ve focused my research mostly on Zoom’s team communication and collaboration capabilities, officially named Zoom Workplace. Here’s what I’ve found.

Zoom’s user experience

Upon opening Zoom, I was greeted with an easy to understand setup tutorial.

As expected, the initial Home screen immediately made one thing clear — Zoom is clearly built for communicating with other users who have their own Zoom account, rather than with an internal team that you can manage.

Each of the options in the top menu gives you a different side menu option to choose from, for further navigation.

However, from the start, the sheer amount of the features felt overwhelming to me, and navigation took some time to get used to. Another thing that caught me off guard was the giant AI companion side menu that couldn’t be turned off, like an unremovable ad right in the app’s main window.

I guess aggressively pushing an AI assistant to the front row is one way of addressing the issue of a disorienting digital workspace.

Zoom’s Home window

Now, let’s take a deeper look into the top tab (aka toolbar) first, to get a sense of the available features in Zoom.

Zoom’s toolbar

I found Zoom's toolbar a bit complex and busy for my taste. It was a bit challenging to navigate at first, and it can easily feel clunky for anyone seeing this UI for the first time.

The Home tab offers the straightforward options to start a new meeting, join an existing meeting, schedule a meeting, or share your screen — and it’s the easiest menu to navigate.

The Meetings tab offers a calendar view of your upcoming meetings, while the Docs tab gives you an overview of all Zoom docs shared in your workplace, and allows you to create text and data table documents native to Zoom.

The Scheduler tab is where you can access Zoom’s paid Scheduler feature, and the Apps tab allows you to add various app integrations to your Zoom account.

The toolbar also includes Whiteboard, Clips, Tasks, Notes, Mail, Hub, Apps and Contacts. Keep in mind that each of these includes a vast number of features.

Honestly, simply listing all of them makes my head spin even now. Shuffling through them made me wonder if having such a huge selection of features could make work more complicated in some cases.

I can’t help but shake the feeling that Zoom would have benefited from taking a less-is-more approach.

Zoom’s Team Chat

Finally, we get to the main hub for Zoom’s workplace team communication — the Team Chat.

This tab is where you will find your DMs, mentions, channels, meeting chats, and shared spaces, for day-to-day conversations.

In addition to these, the Team Chat tab also includes various other features, such as drafts, starred messages, files, missed calls, external members, and more.

The messages are simple to organize, as you can move DMs and channels to custom folders. The overall experience of messaging is good and reliable for teams.

I like that topics can easily be followed through the “Replies” feature, which neatly stacks all responses to a message underneath it, in a single collapsable menu.

Replies in Zoom

However, as far as the user-friendliness goes, Zoom’s top tab navigation feels like using 9 different apps at the same time — as the entire window changes completely upon selecting any of the top menu items we mentioned.

To me personally, the vastness of the features feels more like a downside than an upside. Receiving a message when organizing a meeting in the home tab requires you to click through multiple tabs to get to the message, complicating instead of simplifying the work and flow.

Finally, because it’s so difficult to navigate Zoom’s countless tabs on the top and left side, reading messages can easily become tiring — especially in a busy workplace with a lot of messages from various team members and channels.

In this case, I’d honestly prefer multiple apps that are well integrated over clicking all over the place within a single app.

Organizing your workplace in Zoom

Still, not everything about Zoom feels complicated. For example, customizing your workplace menus is fairly simple — just drag and drop items from the side menu around. This is a very welcome feature for making the space your own.

Upon clicking an option in the three-dot menu, it automatically appears in the side menu, for a total of 9 options available for quick access.

In case of jumbling things too much for your taste, you can always revert the order to the original with an easy to access “reset sidebar to default” option for the side menu. The same goes for the top menu (or “toolbar”).

I appreciate this addition, because it makes things feel slightly less overwhelming after being greeted with the magnitude of options when I first started exploring Zoom.

Organizing your workplace in Zoom

Creating your team

Inviting a member to Zoom Workplace is a matter of simply sending an invite by clicking on the “plus” icon. The team member will get your request either through email or in their app, and join your workplace with their own Zoom account.

On paid plans, you can assign different default clearance levels for new users for your Zoom workplace, but it will require quite a bit of effort in the initial phase.

From my experience, other team collaboration apps on the market offer a much more streamlined user permission management.

For example, by default, a new licensed "member" in Zoom will immediately be allowed to host a 100-person meeting for 30 hours and invite external users into a new chat channel they create themselves.

To prevent this, you’ll need to manually configure a complex set of global permissions for what your users can do on their “member” role.

Many of Zoom's competitors offer more intuitive role-based systems, which allow workspace owners to avoid any security misconfigurations because the options feel far less complicated.

Inviting external collaborators

By default, external users invited to a Zoom channel have a wide range of options available to them and the same clearance as internal members.

Both workplace members and external members can:

• Share files,
• Start meetings, and
• Send messages to other channel members who are also their contacts.

To limit what external members can do, you will also need to manually adjust the settings in your Zoom web portal, as you would for the “member” role. Because of that, this process can drag on, just like it does when inviting internal members.

Zoom’s main pros

Let's take a look at Zoom's unique features, which make it stand out for all the right reasons. Since Zoom is one of the most popular video conferencing apps on the market, I’ll start with its most prominent feature — video conferencing.

Video conferencing

The video conferencing in Zoom is clean, smooth, and reliable. The vast options during the call allow you to control the meeting in just about every way you may need.

The Free plan allows you to host 40-minute meetings for up to 100 participants, the Pro plan allows you to host 30-hour meetings for up to 100 participants, while the Business plan allows you to host 30-hour meetings for up to 300 participants.

Video conferencing in Zoom

Apart from the usual video meeting features such as screen sharing, a host in Zoom can do the following on the free plan:

• Quickly lock the meeting (prevent any new participants from joining),
• Enable a waiting room,
• Control participant permissions (ability to chat, unmute themselves, or share screens),
• Create breakout rooms, and
• Spotlight a participant's video (make someone full-screen for all other participants).

Integrations of Zoom docs, whiteboards, and integrated apps are also supported in Zoom meetings.

This is not the whole list of options, but I believe it best showcases Zoom’s primary focus — its versatile video calls.

Although the large amount of user-management options might be justified for a business that relies heavily on video conferencing, it does make the interface a bit cluttered and overwhelming.

But the option to reset the toolbar to default in the 3-dot menu makes it easy to go back to the start if the bottom row gets too feature-heavy for you during a meeting.

Joining a meeting in Zoom is as simple as it gets — and it allows you to test your settings before joining the meeting so you can test your audio and video.

As far as video quality goes, it’s exceptional, as expected — both me and my meeting participant had no trouble seeing and understanding each other loud and clear.

We both tried moving away from our respective routers, to simulate a poor network environment. Although certain expected hiccups did occur (video quality decreased, stutter), the app handled the poor internet connection very well.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to test the app with a large number of participants, but user reports claim overall solid reliability for large-scale meetings.

One thing to also point out is Zoom’s great audio quality as well as advanced audio settings (like stereo audio or the “Original Sound for Musicians”). Zoom performs great under various network conditions, and audio quality remains reliable despite video dropouts on poor connectivity.

In practice, hearing and understanding other participants will always be more important than seeing them, especially on poor network conditions.

As expected, video conferencing and all of its parts remain one of Zoom’s strongest sides.

Whiteboards

Whiteboards are one of the more unique features of Zoom. Although they feel like casual spaces for drafting ideas and creative expression, they can most definitely be used for productive collaboration.

You can invite co-owners, viewers, and commenters, which can be very handy for real-time collaboration.

Whiteboards in Zoom

Personally, I haven't found a particularly compelling reason to use Whiteboards in Zoom, and similar features do exist in competitor apps, so its uniqueness isn’t absolute.

However, Whiteboards are still a fun and inspiring feature design-wise. To me, they feel like a completely new space where you can let your creativity flow and come up with some unexpected results, especially if you include other workplace members.

On the free plan, users are limited to up to 3 editable Whiteboards at a time, while unlimited monthly Whiteboards are billed $2.08 per month.

Webinars

Webinars are one of the biggest selling points of Zoom, and the reason why many users opt for this app.

Zoom allows users to host webinars where they have tight control of the user’s behavior and how much they can participate in the event, which makes it the clear winner compared to all other tools out there.

The main difference between webinars and meetings in Zoom are the user’s roles.

A webinar is a controlled presentation or broadcast with one or a few speakers, unlike meetings that usually take the form of an open conversation.

Attendees primarily see the active speaker or panelists, and, by default, only the host and panelists can speak and share screens. Audiences can participate, but their interaction in webinars is managed through specific tools like a Q&A or polls.

The best use cases for webinars are company all-hands, public lectures, product launches, etc.

Whenever I attended a Zoom webinar as a guest, I didn’t need to download the app — the code from the email took me to a new tab where the meeting was hosted, in my browser.

From my experience, the one-click access through email with the permissions for attendees limited by default truly make Zoom the industry leader for webinars.

Users who regularly host webinars with Zoom generally seem to be satisfied with it, highlighting high video and audio quality and customizability features that made their events a success. However, according to user reports, the mobile application can be a bit confusing compared to the desktop version, and the steep price is cited as a big turn-off.

Phone calls

Although not the focus of this review, Zoom’s phone call options are also one of its strong features.

Zoom Phone is a business phone system that allows you to:

• Make local, regional, and global calls,
• Create auto-attendants and call queues,
• Record calls,
• Transcribe voicemails to text, and
• Send and receive text messages.

I haven't personally used Zoom phone calls very much, so my experience with this feature is limited. However, from the few Zoom phone calls I attended in a group setting, I can say that they all went down without any issues.

One thing to keep in mind is that the phone call audio quality will directly depend on internet speed, so a stable connection with at least moderate speed at your workplace is necessary for a smooth experience.

Zoom’s main cons

With the main pros of Zoom covered, let's take a look at the downsides of using it app for internal team communication.

Concerning default member permissions

By default, all users that you add to your Zoom workplace (and pay for their seat) have the permission to host an unlimited number of meetings with up to 100 participants (or more, depending on your plan) with no 40-minute time limit.

But, on default settings, your users can also:

• Create and manage polls and breakout rooms,
• Create an unlimited number of new public and private channels,
• Invite anyone internally to the channels they create,
• Add external users to channels and start chats with external Zoom contacts,
• Share all types of files, images, and code snippets without restriction,
• Create their own public booking links, allowing anyone to schedule a meeting directly on their calendar (if your workplace includes Zoom Scheduler), and
• Browse the Zoom App Marketplace and install third-party apps into their own Zoom account, connecting other services to their account.

If any of these permissions could present an issue for your company, you will need to identify and manually disable them before you add your team members.

Bear in mind, these settings are on by default even for the lowest-level role with no administrative power, named “members” in Zoom.

Overwhelming pricing options

Zoom’s pricing gets pretty expensive, fast. After the fairly limited Free plan, Zoom’s Pro plan will cost you $13.33 per user per month (billed annually), while the Business plan will cost you $18.33 per user per month (billed annually).

As an extension to the expensive base-level features, Zoom’s payment structure is unreasonably difficult to navigate, creating another pain point.

For example, exploring the pricing for webinars easily turns into a head scratching experience.

For reference, the cheapest Zoom Webinars plan for 300 participants requires a Zoom Workplace Pro account ($13.33 per user per month when billed annually), and costs an additional $66.67 per month (billed annually).

While the Zoom Webinars plan will allow you to pay per month, the two more expensive plans, Zoom Webinars Plus and Zoom Events, will only allow you to pay per attendee or pay annually for anything more than 100 attendees.

This makes for a pretty low flexibility, and can become frustratingly limiting depending on your specific needs.

And, as you can see, it’s quite confusing to figure out how much everything will cost.

Add-ons get very expensive

Zoom offers a vast amount of add-ons for various purposes that allow you to "enhance your Zoom experience”.

Zoom workplace add-ons range from hosting larger meetings to additional cloud storage.

However, all of these are billed separately on a monthly basis (with a 27% discount for upfront annual payments), and most of them require a purchase of Zoom Workplace’s Pro or Business plans.

Some of Zoom’s add-ons

If you're looking to onboard your entire team, the app can get expensive really fast, especially compared to other communication apps on the market.

Reported poor customer support

Many users have recently reported poor customer support on multiple Zoom’s products, which I found important to include in my review.

I feel this is especially relevant for teams that require help to initially set up the software, as implementing a new system in a company is stressful enough on its own.

Paired with poor assistance, it can turn into a complete nightmare.

In my case, on the free plan that I have tested, I couldn't report a technical issue regarding occasional notification delays.

Upon selecting the Technical Support option on the Submit a Support Case page, I was automatically redirected to the Zoom knowledge base articles, the Zoom Community, and their chatbot. So, instead of support, I got a help page, which I’ve already explored.

For me, it's really important to be able to contact real people for support, and I find this to be especially important for less tech-savvy users.

Most Zoom’s competitors offer support on all plans, including the free ones. After all, shouldn’t direct and transparent communication be the standard for all communication apps?

After covering the main advantages and disadvantages of Zoom, let’s take a look at how much using this software could cost your team.

Zoom’s pricing and examples

The table below includes examples of annual Zoom Workplace subscriptions for teams of different sizes.

If you’re looking to host webinars, the price you’ll have to pay will vary depending on the number of people you’d like to attend, as well as the specific features available on different webinar plans, number of attendees, and payment frequency (monthly or annually).

For example, the Zoom Webinars and Zoom Webinars Plus plans will allow you to create many separate Webinars, while the Zoom Events plan will allow you to create a complete event with many different sessions.

All of the webinar plans require a Zoom Workplace Pro licence, at $13.33 per user per month (billed annually). However, this only includes you and your inner team (optionally) — not the webinar attendees who join externally.

Here’s what hosting large scale events will cost you per year on top of your annual subscription for the Pro or Business plans, for groups of different sizes:

Zoom will also allow you to pay on a per-attendee basis (only for Zoom Webinars Plus and Zoom Events), or give you options for monthly billed subscriptions (for all plans) with varying maximum number of users.

Depending on your specific needs, Zoom can be either the best or the most overwhelming choice for a business with many collaborators.

As far as team communication and collaboration goes, a more understandable pricing model, simpler features, and a UI suitable for all levels of experience would make the app perfect for this use case.

Luckily, there is an app that offers just that.

Your team needs more than just meetings? Centralize your team communication with Pumble

If you’re looking for a way to unite your team in a single online workspace, Pumble is the best choice for your team.

While Zoom leaves out certain features in favor of video conferencing, Pumble is a much more rounded digital solution for internal team communication with superior messaging, strong video call capabilities, and Google calendar integration.

Pumble starts at $2.49 per user per month (billed annually) for the Pro plan, while its most expensive plan is $6.99 per user per month (billed annually) for the Enterprise plan — making Pumble a much more affordable option than Zoom on all plans.

It’s the go-to option for small to medium-sized teams looking to create a centralized collaboration workspace for messaging and team video conferencing.

Being much more streamlined and specialized than Team Chat in Zoom, Pumble allows you to:

• Make onboarding for your users much simpler,
• Effortlessly navigate channels and messages,
• Add guests and manage their roles in a more intuitive and risk-free way,
• Manage user permissions much more easily,
• Have an unlimited message history on all plans, and
• Receive 24/7, 100% human world-class support with 95% satisfaction rate.

Pumble is designed to simplify your workflow and allows for both synchronous and asynchronous communication.

However, if you're looking for a way to utilize Zoom's best features (most notably its quality on poor internet connectivity and support for many meeting attendees) you can do so with Pumble’s Zoom integration, eliminating the need for anyone other than the meeting’s host to create or pay for a Zoom account.

Choose Pumble for organizing your company into teams and sub-teams, and simplifying day-to-day operations, through a central, organized, and easy-to-use hub.