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Discord vs Google Meet: What are the differences?

Differences between Discord and Google Meet

Introduction

Discord and Google Meet are both popular communication platforms, but they have some key differences. Here are the main points of distinction:

  1. Purpose: Discord is primarily designed for gaming communities and casual social communication. It offers a wide range of features, such as text and voice chat, screen sharing, and community management tools. On the other hand, Google Meet is focused on professional video conferencing and collaboration, providing features like live closed captioning, real-time document sharing, and integration with other Google Workspace applications.

  2. User Interface: Discord has a visually appealing and customizable interface with various themes and colors to choose from. It is known for its easy navigation and intuitive design, which enhances the gaming experience. In contrast, Google Meet follows a more minimalist and streamlined interface, emphasizing simplicity and productivity. It provides a clean and straightforward layout to facilitate professional meetings and discussions.

  3. Accessibility: Discord is available as a standalone application for desktop and mobile devices. It also offers a web version that can be accessed through a browser. This versatility allows users to connect from different devices and operating systems. In contrast, Google Meet is primarily web-based but also offers dedicated mobile apps for Android and iOS. It integrates well with other Google products, making it convenient for users already utilizing Google Workspace applications.

  4. Privacy and Security: Discord provides a high level of privacy control, allowing users to fine-tune privacy settings for individual servers and direct messages. However, being primarily a gaming-focused platform, Discord may not have the same level of stringent security measures as Google Meet, which is built with enterprise-level security features. Google Meet offers end-to-end encryption for video calls and robust security features to protect user data and meeting information.

  5. Meeting Capacity: Discord allows large groups of users to join a server and engage in voice chats. It can handle hundreds of simultaneous users within a server, making it suitable for communities and social gatherings. Google Meet, on the other hand, is designed for smaller, more focused meetings. The basic version of Google Meet can accommodate up to 100 participants, while increased capacities are available in Google Workspace plans.

  6. Integration and Collaboration: Google Meet seamlessly integrates with other Google Workspace applications like Google Calendar, Gmail, and Google Drive, streamlining the workflow for professional meetings and collaborations. Users can easily schedule meetings, send invitations, and share documents. Discord, although primarily focused on communication, offers gaming-centric features like screen sharing and voice activity detection, which are not as central to the collaboration aspect.

In summary, Discord is a versatile platform catering to gaming communities and casual social communication, with a customizable interface and broad group capacity. Google Meet, on the other hand, is geared towards professional video conferencing, emphasizing simplicity, security, and integration with other Google applications.

Advice on Discord and Google Meet
Needs advice
on
DiscordDiscord
and
ZoomZoom

I want to host an online Jeopardy game with less than 30 participants. During each round of the game, I'll stream some videos. The point is to gather friends together to play the Jeopardy game and watch random stuff. Please let me know if there's a more suitable platform other than Discord and Zoom. Thanks, everyone!

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Replies (1)
RuralAnemone
Head Devoloper/coder at Super Smash Eternal · | 2 upvotes · 181.8K views

Personally, I think that Discord works much better than anything else, even if you don't have Nitro (which is what they call their premium plan). You could seriously do this Jeopardy thing with just Discord (and maybe a bot to make it easier)

Zoom would only let you have a crappy meeting that hackers could easily join. Discord actually has DDoS protection, Zoom just has things that can easily be bypassed.

And if you do want Nitro, it's only $9/mo or $99/yr

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Needs advice
on
Google MeetGoogle Meet
and
ZoomZoom

I have a google account and use google classroom. I want to give classes online, including screen-sharing, and going in and out of multiple documents on screen.

Even though I am paying for my google account, I still want to explore which of these two tools is best for what I want to do. My classes vary from 5 to 20 persons per class, three times per week, and have a duration of 2 times 45 min.

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Replies (1)
Recommends
on
ZoomZoom

I’m in the same boat as a teacher. I researched both, used both, I like Zoom much better. I like to compare it to Google having the lite version of an app while Zoom is the paid version. Zoom allows the “Host” to control every aspect from password protecting your room to the host admitting people in individually. I know Zoom is normally paid but has a limited free version. Hope this helps but Zoom seems much further ahead.

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Needs advice
on
Google MeetGoogle Meet
and
ZoomZoom

I own an Escape Room. Since right now everyone is practicing social distancing, I would like to run my Escape Room games virtually. I would like to allow approx 4 users to log in to play. They can chitchat a few minutes before their game to get to know each other. Then once the game begins, I will introduce myself and give them the plot to their escape game. I will have a wide-angle camera mounted to the wall to show the room, and as the game master, carry a tablet or webcam around as players talk to me and direct me to show them certain items in the room, move in for closeups in certain areas, try lock combinations, etc. I will be their hands while they solve the puzzles. I am not sure if Google Hangouts Google Meet or Zoom is better for this. I did try it yesterday using google hangout meet and it was good, but I think there may have been a wifi issue where it was choppy. Just trying to figure out the best option. Thank you! Catherine

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Replies (4)
Recommends
on
ZoomZoom

Google meet, as well as zoom are amazing platforms for online meetings. But I will try to explain the pros and cons of both according to your needs.

  1. Network requirements: Google meet requires considerably more bandwidth than zoom, and it isn't a great choice if you have poor internet, or if there are more than 25 or 30 participants. While zoom is pretty lightweight and can support large groups (say about 80) with little to no internet instability.

  2. UI: Zoom and google meet have decent UI, but assuming that participants will be using mobiles, they might have a hard time with chatting in zoom as it takes up a lot of space to view all contents.

  3. Security: Even though both zoom and google meet provide 100% encrypted connections, I personally think google meet is somewhat better due to the flaws in the recent zoom security patches.

  4. Battery consumption: Google meet hogs up your battery when uploading your video and also your video quality, unlike zoom will not be adjusted based on your network, meaning, even if you have poor internet, google meet will upload your video in high quality, sometimes leading to lag and hangs.

NOTE: If you are using the free version of zoom, your meeting will automatically end after 40 minutes. So either keep your games small, or buy the premium version.

In the end I think zoom will be a better choice according to your needs, but if you plan on buying zoom, I recommend you read other reviews about zoom. Enjoy and stay safe!

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Verhaeghe Jonas
Sr. Marketing Technologist at Invisible Puppy · | 3 upvotes · 132K views
Recommends
on
ZoomZoom

I would suggest Zoom: - quality sound and audio is great - simple to set up and invite people + it doesn't matter if they have a microsoft, google, etc. email account or operating system - recently it added a couple of security options which could be handy in your situation = for example 'lock meeting' - once all your participants have logged in you can 'lock the meeting' to prevent others from entering. Another on is the enable waiting room, where participants can 'wait' before you allow them in the meeting.

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Recommends
on
ZoomZoom

Zoom has lot more features and higher quality. Agree with the other people's advice. Make sure to realize it is 40 min limit for free account - but you can do monthly Zoom subscription and try it out or only use during pandemic and cancel subscription once this is over if you need to.

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Decisions about Discord and Google Meet
Chose
DiscordDiscord
over
ZoomZoom

as many people say that you can only hold 30 to 10 people in one discord call if you were to make a server and add a chat or a VC you can hold up to 99 which is more than zoom and you can also use the text chat, general chat or anything else that you add and the best part you can hold pretty much infinite people I have personally seen servers with up to 100k people in it. One of the better parts is that you don't necessarily have to download it you can search it up on google and make an account it's as easy as that. Another thing is due to the original purpose of the website/app is that it's very customizable meaning that your students can customize heir profile pictures and names, but not to worry in a discord server you can have it where only you can change their nicknames so let's say things get too confusing or you want to be able to see who they really are you can just change it to their name. One last thing I will say is that you can have customizable ranks and so on so if you desire to split people into teams you can do so and with that, you can customize what they can do like give people ranks or de-rank them. Like I mentioned earlier about VC's you can also screen share and do videos so you can see their screen or their face.

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Pros of Discord
Pros of Google Meet
  • 65
    Unlimited Users
  • 59
    Unlimited Channels
  • 55
    Easy to use
  • 51
    Voice Chat
  • 49
    Fast and easy set-ups and connections
  • 46
    Clean UI
  • 43
    Mobile Friendly
  • 43
    Free
  • 33
    Android App
  • 29
    Mention system
  • 27
    Customizable notifications on per channel basis
  • 26
    Customizable ranks/permissions
  • 22
    IOS app
  • 21
    Good code embedding
  • 19
    Vast Webhook Support
  • 16
    Dark mode
  • 14
    Easy context switching between work and home
  • 14
    Roles
  • 13
    Great Communities
  • 12
    Very Resource Friendly
  • 12
    Robust
  • 12
    Easy to develop for
  • 12
    Great Customer Support
  • 12
    Bot control
  • 11
    Video Call Conference
  • 11
    Video call meeting
  • 10
    Able to hold 99 people in one call
  • 10
    Sharing screen layer
  • 9
    Great browser experience
  • 9
    Shares screen with other member
  • 9
    Easy Server Setup and joining system
  • 8
    Easy
  • 7
    Lower bandwidth requirements than competitors
  • 7
    Easy to code bots for
  • 6
    Noice
  • 3
    Easily set up custom emoji
  • 35
    Free
  • 15
    Integrated with G Suite
  • 14
    Group video call
  • 10
    Gmail server integration
  • 10
    Good to make phone calls
  • 9
    Instant Messaging
  • 9
    Easy to add and remove contacts
  • 7
    Unlimited Storage (Premium version)
  • 6
    Easy setup
  • 6
    User friendly mobile app
  • 6
    Record (Premium Feature)
  • 5
    Accessible from the Browser
  • 5
    Saves the chats for future reference
  • 5
    Browser extension
  • 3
    No pornography
  • 2
    Google Meet is never buggy
  • 2
    Cool emoji extensions
  • 2
    Amazing captions
  • 2
    16 people show at the same time
  • 2
    Meet has the best quality in terms of participant view

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Cons of Discord
Cons of Google Meet
  • 9
    For gamers
  • 9
    Not as many integrations as Slack
  • 4
    Limited file size
  • 4
    For everyone
  • 3
    Sends data to US Gov
  • 1
    Unsupportive Support
  • 1
    Suspected Pedophiles in few servers
  • 1
    Undescriptive in global ban reasons
  • 9
    Quality isn't great
  • 5
    Really high CPU utilization during video/screenshare
  • 2
    No client annotation on shared screen
  • 2
    Not great sound quality
  • 2
    Difficult to share video with audio
  • 2
    Needs to take measures to improve the ecosystem
  • 1
    Auto-added to G Cal invites
  • 1
    Needs better support and rollout process
  • 1
    No interactions activities
  • 1
    Overheat cpu on Android
  • 1
    No desktop client
  • 1
    No desktop client

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What is Discord?

Discord is a modern free voice & text chat app for groups of gamers. Our resilient Erlang backend running on the cloud has built in DDoS protection with automatic server failover.

What is Google Meet?

It is the business-oriented version of Google's Hangouts platform and is suitable for businesses of all sizes. It allows users to dial in phone numbers to access meetings, thus enabling users with slow internet connection to call in.

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What are some alternatives to Discord and Google Meet?
Slack
Imagine all your team communication in one place, instantly searchable, available wherever you go. That’s Slack. All your messages. All your files. And everything from Twitter, Dropbox, Google Docs, Asana, Trello, GitHub and dozens of other services. All together.
Skype
Skype’s text, voice and video make it simple to share experiences with the people that matter to you, wherever they are.
Zoom
Zoom unifies cloud video conferencing, simple online meetings, and cross platform group chat into one easy-to-use platform. Our solution offers the best video, audio, and screen-sharing experience across Zoom Rooms, Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and H.323/SIP room systems.
Gitter
Free chat rooms for your public repositories. A bit like IRC only smarter. Chats for private repositories as well as organisations.
Google Hangouts
Message contacts, start free video or voice calls, and hop on a conversation with one person or a group.
See all alternatives