Google Hangouts (Classic) vs. Join.me (discontinued) vs. Microsoft Teams

Had I completed this review a couple years ago, I would have given a rating of 9 or 10 as Hangouts (Classic) is an excellent product. However, now that Google Chat has succeeded Hangouts, I would not recommend that any new users begin using it where other more modern options are available. Android users who want an internet based instant messaging that also supports calling and video calling could benefit from using Hangouts (Classic) as Google Chat requires the user to also have Google Meet installed to make video calls and there is no voice only calling option.

Incentivized

I would neither recommend nor dissuade anyone from using Join.Me. When it first came on the scene, it was a game-changer as far as providing remote access to other authorized individuals and helped save a great deal of time trying to walk someone less proficient through all the detailed steps of computer repair. However, with the proliferation of Zoom and other conferencing products that also provide built-in remote access through its service, the need for a separate application is now limited and not as essential as its own product.

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It's amazing as a daily driver for team communication, and document search/store. Also, if you're doing a lot of LONG meetings and have trouble remembering details, the AI summarization is amazing and convenient. It just works. I'm not saying I always do this, of course, but if I need to 'skim' instead of really digging into every detail from a meeting, the AI-generated summary is generally good enough that I can get away with it.

• Google Hangouts (Classic) is embedded within Gmail's scheduler, so setting up the link is as quick as a click of the button. It's a one-step process.
• Google Hangouts (Classic) is user-friendly and [has] features to share screens easily.
• Google Hangouts (Classic) is much easier to use than its competitors.
• Google Hangouts (Classic) have [a] good connection time and there are few glitches.

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• No need to download anything to get started. Once you sign up you can get started from within your browser. This is probably the single best feature, its a get up and go solution for video conferencing and you do not need any software for it to work.
• The one click join a meeting URL is genius. Users who struggle with remembering passwords or invites can just click a link and immediately participate in a meeting which means one email and a couple of clicks and a meeting can start.
• Good control features - As the main user, you have many control features including deciding who can speak, annotations, screen sharing easily.
• Screen Recordings to the Cloud - This can save on time when you have had a long conference, you can save a recording to the cloud and download it later.

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• All in one communication for Teams.
• High quality and reliable both audio and video meetings.
• Well organized and clear instant chat.
• Excellent security features.
• Beautiful integration with 3rd party tools and systems.
• Perfect compatibility with windows ,android and iOS.
• Allow meetings recordings for later us or sharing with teams that missed the live.

Incentivized

• I would like to see improved video support, so that saved videos can be sent back and forth via Hangouts more easily, without having to start a separate meet chat
• More pronounced notifications of messages would be helpful; pop up notifications are good, but once there is one, additional messages do not pop up
• Custom muting times would be great, so that if I am in a 90 minute Zoom meeting, I can set it for that time; right now, it is 1 hour or 2 hours. Easy to forget.

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• There should be a complete guide to understand its features before installation because if one feature will be missed then, we can’t get them working properly.
• Furthermore, there should be high-quality internet for getting its function and it won’t work without good network coverage.
• I think its interface is a little hard for beginners and is not that user friendly.

Incentivized

• The webinars feature has some missing functionally such as the ability for all users to use the Q&A feature (only those with a Microsoft Teams account can use it now), the ability to upload documents for attendees to easily access and download, and the ability for presenters and organizers to easily chat amongst themselves throughout the webinar.
• The "Channels" organization hierarchy could be more clear. If you have several channels set up, it can get clunky and hard to find the specific channel you are looking for.
• The MS Planner tool lacks functionality and organization. You cannot assign more than one person to a task and it's confusing when you try to share tasks with people - it would be nice if they were automatically added to someone's calendar.

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This platform enables a very high ROI for the solution that it provides to our team to support our end-users.

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Microsoft Teams is included with our Office 365 subscription and we have no intention of migrating off of Office 365 and Microsoft products. Since Microsoft Teams is included for free with our Office 365 subscription, and since we enjoy all the features, benefits, and functionality, there is no question that our team will continue to use the product

Incentivized

The tool is almost self-implemented. It is likely to be available in every pc or mobile device a user or potential user might have, and all you need to do is adding the company's account and you are done. Once you are setted up, you have almost all actual communication methods available in one tool

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Join.me is one of the easiest programs I've ever used. It's so easy to get it set up and installed and even easier for someone to join a meeting. The controls are very intuitive and labeled appropriately. The UIX makes sense. It's been a reliable product in my app stack-I love it!

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If you have the full Microsoft Office suite, it works really well because it's integrated well within its ecosystem, but if not, it can be annoying because it tries to open a shared file in the web versions of the file equivalents. The web version is also a bit slow, and the login is very difficult to handle if you have multiple Microsoft or Outlook accounts.

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Rare, but outages do happen

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Sometimes about once a week I get a message that says "Sorry, there seems to be something wrong". But it goes away in a few minutes.

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Google Hangouts works great and does not require a lot of work to troubleshoot. Everything is simple and easy to use. Google provides all of the tools that one requires to utilize Google Hangouts and any information can be found in the built-in help tools. There is also a forum for users to report issues and typically, Google responds well and will try to work out any issues.

Incentivized

I honestly haven't reached out to their Support team. I get notifications of what they are working on which is good to see, but I haven't directly spoken with any of them. I think my main reason for this is that join.me gives me just what I need (not much more and not much less).

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The overall support provided by Microsoft for Microsoft Teams has been quite good but there is still some room for improvements. Microsoft needs to proactively work on fixing the open bugs in order to provide a seamless experience to the users. But over the service and experience provided by the Microsoft team have been quite satisfactory.

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This is a fairly simple product which doesn't require much "implementation" work for our use cases.

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I find everything I need for my day-to-day work.

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Google is the white cotton socks of the conferencing world. It’s a great ad-hoc tool, but not too much more. If you are not looking to spend money or operate completely on WiFi (without data charges), it’s a great free option as well. The benefit of being free and open is also the liability. It doesn’t have a great integration story with other corporate tools, but [it doesn’t have to] if you aren’t looking for that. All in all, it’s as helpful and ubiquitous as a public payphone…without the pay…and with a video capability.

Incentivized

If you're looking for something basic that handles a little bit of everything when it comes to meetings, screen shares and remote desktop control join.me is a great options. If you're a super user and really wanting a lot of detailed features and rich user interfaces and money is not an issue you may want to consider use specific options.

Incentivized

Microsoft Teams offers a much more integrated experience between their chat and video call function compared to Google Chat and Slack. Both other tools are much better for internal communications are they have simpler UI without other features. Whereas Microsoft Teams can be used for more critical conversations, particularly between external companies, and has been very useful in sales conversations which is what we chose it for when speaking to companies that work exclusively through Microsoft.

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Honestly, this tool is worth every penny. Yes, it's not free and you pay for the quality of services and the license. But the ROI and the benefits are all there. Also, the renewal, negotiation, and contract terms are all very well explained by our Microsoft account manager, and she's a charm.

It does not appear to have a limit to how many teams and employees we can have using it

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I used Skype for Business to take calls, hold conferences, and provide remote assistance to users. Microsoft Teams, on the other hand, is superior to Skype for Business in my opinion. My job entails a lot of screen sharing.

• I believe it was part of the google suite that was purchased. It was worth the cost as it was cheaper. I believe it is now free, but also becoming deprecated. It is much better to use Teams, Discord, Telegram, etc. Google does not provide enough support or features to make using hangouts worth it these days.

Incentivized

• Customer support solution - join.me has made it so much easier to quickly get with a customer and see their trouble and show them a solution. This saves lots of back and forth time and gives the customer more power over owning their solution.
• More efficient communication - without join.me we would waste time going back and forth on emails or slack trying to get our message across. Join.me lets us quickly show AND tell others what's going on. I honestly don't know how we ever functioned without it.

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• Personally, I would say that by using Microsoft Teams, it upped my collaboration with my colleagues by around 50% or around more than half of what I usually did prior to using it.
• I had 100% show rate and attendance on all of my meetings in the past 6 months.
• If I may add, I also have been chattier & collaborative towards my colleagues in past 3 months particularly the month of December when we had huge traffic at work. I would estimate this behavior to have been increased by around 60% than what I usually incur during normal operating days.

Incentivized