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Hangouts vs Skype: What are the differences?
Developers describe Hangouts as "A communication platform *". It is a communication platform which includes messaging, video chat, and VOIP features. On the other hand, *Skype** is detailed as "Voice calls, instant messaging, file transfer, and video conferencing". Skype’s text, voice and video make it simple to share experiences with the people that matter to you, wherever they are.
Hangouts and Skype can be categorized as "Web and Video Conferencing" tools.
Hi, I am helping teachers in my kid's schools to set up distance learning and wanted to see what is better between Webex, Zoom, and Skype (although only putting this one in as most parents probably have it). The children are 8-9, so they won't be using it on their own and the parents have no experience using Webex or Zoom.
The main use will be for the teacher to explain what they will be covering in the week and enable some social interaction between the kids.
I need to be easy to use for about 20-25 people.
Thanks for your advice, Lisa
I consider Skype dead. Even Microsoft strongly neglected it. Webex is more corporate-oriented. So for your use case, I recommend Zoom. It is easy to set up, and the quality is very good. Zoom became such a household name that the average person heard about it. Moreover, any person probably has friends who may have used it. So it will be easier for people to get some community help.
Hi, Lisa,
I haven't used Skype in a long time. I have I lot of experience with Zoom and Webex. Both for me are very good tools, especially if you have money to pay for (to unlock more features, like more people in a video conference - Zoom).
Nowadays, I've used more Webex with my undergraduate students, I'm using the free account. Cloud recording is a features very useful, especially while using the free account (thanks Cisco!). Webex has control features very useful (e.g., mute, raise hand etc).
Kind regards,
We've been using Zoom for about a half a year and it's stability is unbeatable. We have all-hands on Fridays with 100+ participants. The free tier can easily handle the requirements, the only limitation is that max meeting length is 40 minutes. After that you can immediately restart the meeting, but the pro option is also very affordable. It also features screen sharing and whiteboard sharing out of the box. I also appreciate that it's not mandatory to register an account to attend a meeting.
From my experiences I feel like Zoom is a pretty intuitive program to teach kids, however Skype might be more common amongst them already.
I am a big fan of Microsoft Teams.
They all do the same pretty much but Teams I find the bells and whistles are easier to find, like custom backgrounds... creating groups for topic discussions that remain there until you want to change/edit or delete. Easy to share files.
Pros of Hangouts
- Free4
Pros of Skype
- Free, widespread258
- Desktop and mobile apps147
- Because i have to :(110
- Low cost international calling57
- Good for international calls56
- Best call quality anywhere, generally10
- Beautiful emojis5
- Chat bots4
- Translator2
- Skype for business integration with Outlook2
- United kingdom1
- Not the Best, but get the job done1
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Cons of Hangouts
Cons of Skype
- Really high CPU utilization during video/screenshare5
- Not always reliable3
- Outdated UI3
- Birthday notifications are annoying3
- The worst indicator noises of any app ever3
- Finding/adding people isn't easy2