The price is right, and the deployment is trivial, but it may not be enough for your power users!
March 31, 2017
The price is right, and the deployment is trivial, but it may not be enough for your power users!
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Google Hangouts
We use Hangouts to facilitate quick and easy chats via text, audio, and video, with no additional configuration to speak of over and above a little bit of training for novice users. It uses their existing Google accounts and doesn't require much else, and even works on ChromeOS devices. Outstanding, perhaps even superior, mobile apps complete the package. There are products that perform better, but Hangouts has ease of use and supports at minimum 10 users at a time with little scheduling or planning overhead. It even integrates with Google Calendar!
- Text chat
- Phone calls to external land lines - replaces some of our desk phones
- Multi-user video calls. Everyone knows FaceTime and likes the quality, but the circa-2001 limit of just two users is a deal killer for most work purposes.
- Performance is not as good as any of the competitors: FaceTime, Skype, GoToMeeting, Zoom, etc.
- Pro features such as branding, admin dashboards, etc.
- Replaced phones for savvier users
- Included in the monthly fee we're already paying for G Suite, so a great value
- Has reduced email traffic somewhat, at least for advanced users
Google Hangouts undercuts almost everyone on pricing, and has a solid feature set. In particular, it is enhanced when using with a Google Voice number. In this instance it makes outgoing calls to "real" phones trivially easy. It's great for on-the-fly use, too.
However, when compared to other options, the quality and admin/oversight aren't as robust and there are performance issues even on modern "PC"s
However, when compared to other options, the quality and admin/oversight aren't as robust and there are performance issues even on modern "PC"s