Skype has grown a lot, but is still a little outclassed by Teams and Zoom
September 10, 2019

Skype has grown a lot, but is still a little outclassed by Teams and Zoom

Ho'omana Nathan Horton | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Skype

Skype is included with the university's Office 365 subscription, and all Active Directory users can access and be contacted via Skype. We sometimes use it for within- and between-department communication, especially for quick instant messaging. Skype is, of course, one of the original household names in videoconferencing, etc., but we don't use it much for that on a daily basis.
  • Skype for Business has grown quite a lot since its days as Microsoft Lync and is now quite nicely integrated with almost facets of Windows and Office (and other Microsoft stuff).
  • It's nice for inter-office communication when everyone's using Active Directory and has Skype for Business running.
  • Skype for Business works well even on non-Windows and/or non-university machines (e.g. personal computers).
  • Skype in general, including the Business version, can be pretty clunky, and surprisingly resource-hungry, especially when it's always running, and on machines with lower specs.
  • This resource hungriness can be worth it for quick IMs to other members of the same organization, but I really have a hard time recommending Skype over something like Zoom for videoconferencing.
  • Video communication with others in the same organization just doesn't always seem to work very well, even on the same network.
  • Skype has allowed us to communicate quickly and easily across departments.
  • Unfortunately, has proven to be confusing and unused by some users.
  • Users' non-use of Skype can be pretty detrimental to the performance of some lower-powered machines especially.
Microsoft Teams seems to do everything that Skype does, but allows for much more collaboration with Office products, is much less clunky, and is much more easy to understand, seemingly. For videoconferencing, especially with offsite or non-organization users, Zoom is unrivaled in my opinion. It's lightweight, easy for everyone to use, and has great options for collaboration and sharing.
Skype has been around long enough that there's quite a lot of resources available online, including from Microsoft. However, this can also be problematic since it's been through so many versions, and sometimes support for one version or iteration of Skype is totally irrelevant for the most recent version. This has improved recently as Microsoft has worked to unify their apps, but there's still plenty of room for improvement.

Do you think Skype delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Skype's feature set?

Yes

Did Skype live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Skype go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Skype again?

No

Skype is pretty good as an integrated tool for quick communication between departments. However, Zoom is lightyears ahead of Skype (and everything else we've tried) as a videoconferencing solution. Teams (another, newer Microsoft product) works for all the things I like about Skype namely within-organization collaboration and communication and is more streamlined and tightly connected to the Office suite in ways that Skype is not.

Skype Feature Ratings

High quality audio
9
High quality video
7
Low bandwidth requirements
7
Mobile support
8
Desktop sharing
8
Whiteboards
6
Calendar integration
8
Meeting initiation
7
Integrates with social media
7
Record meetings / events
7
Slideshows
7
Live chat
9
Audience polling
8
Q&A
8
User authentication
9
Participant roles & permissions
9
Confidential attendee list
9