5 ms·

Besides this vs Jitsi, I wonder if there is a tldr about how Zoom managed to capture so much of this space.

crubier 5y ago
I think it's region and connection speed dependent, but for several years I noticed that meetings with zoom had wayyyy less problems with freezes, bad quality, audio drops and stuff when compared to all other tools.
- salmo 5y ago
  This has been my experience, even now. I still prefer it to Teams and WebEx because of the reliability. I do like that Teams allows for a richer chat experience, but often just keep a Teams chat and Zoom call going when needed.
  - lucb1e 5y ago
    Then again, Teams is an outlier in terms of performance and reliability. Most things will compare positively with that.
james_in_the_uk 5y ago
I've assumed that control over the end point client native software allows them to focus on removing pain points. Codecs. NAT traversal etc. Once a critical mass of users, big corporates etc. found their solution easier, then they got the network effect.
detaro 5y ago
It was free and easy to get started with, and worked.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  So like jitsi except not free as in freedom
  - detaro 5y ago
    For quite a different definition of "worked", especially 2+ years ago.
    - lucb1e 5y ago
      Dunno, I used it 2+ years ago with friends who had setup their own instance (I presume meet.jit.si was also a thing back then but I don't know that for sure) and that worked as well as any other web-based call solution at the time.
      - detaro 5y ago
        And all web-based solutions (maybe with the exception of BBB, didn't use that back then) were quite a bit worse than Zoom with its native apps.
        lucb1e 5y ago
        ...we were talking about web clients I thought? I've not used a desktop client to do calls since maybe Skype in 2015 or so, I didn't realize anyone still used that because of the extra hassle. Even MSN did video calls and that shut down basically the year Zoom was founded, let alone was used by anyone. This wasn't new among desktop clients, either.
        detaro 5y ago
        Zoom is widely used with the native clients and mobile apps, so I was talking about those. Not sure how good/not good Zoom on the web is/was.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Webex got better under pressure from others but it's what we used at first and the CEO of my mid size employer got talked into zoom near the beginning of covid and it was just very easy to use and much less problematic than webex which we used before but didn't need nearly as much so we put up with its faults. Then covid hit and zoom just worked better despite the encryption debacle.
nerdbaggy 5y ago
The first year of covid webex wasn’t really innovating while Zoom was flinging out new features. WebEx is now going faster and adding more and more features.
kortex 5y ago
Our company read.ai builds add-ons for videocon clients so I'm pretty familiar with most clients. - Zoom is just simply the best in terms of stability, performance, user experience, and in particular ease-of-first-use. Call quality is the best. - Webex is a hot mess. They've been scrambling to catch up and have made stride but have a ways to go. Install is a nightmare - google meet feels like it's barely changed in 5 years. Makes my fans take off. Decently stable at least - Teams is decent all-around, featureful, and actually had a good SDK before Zoom, but install/userex and stability struggle at times - is skype even a thing still? Hands down the two biggest factors are time-until-first-use, friction, and stability of the audiovideo stream. Zoom simply dunked on the other legacy players in this regard.

I think it's region and connection speed dependent, but for several years I noticed that meetings with zoom had wayyyy less problems with freezes, bad quality, audio drops and stuff when compared to all other tools.

salmo 5y ago
This has been my experience, even now. I still prefer it to Teams and WebEx because of the reliability. I do like that Teams allows for a richer chat experience, but often just keep a Teams chat and Zoom call going when needed.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  Then again, Teams is an outlier in terms of performance and reliability. Most things will compare positively with that.

james_in_the_uk 5y ago

I've assumed that control over the end point client native software allows them to focus on removing pain points. Codecs. NAT traversal etc. Once a critical mass of users, big corporates etc. found their solution easier, then they got the network effect.

detaro 5y ago

It was free and easy to get started with, and worked.

lucb1e 5y ago
So like jitsi except not free as in freedom
- detaro 5y ago
  For quite a different definition of "worked", especially 2+ years ago.
  - lucb1e 5y ago
    Dunno, I used it 2+ years ago with friends who had setup their own instance (I presume meet.jit.si was also a thing back then but I don't know that for sure) and that worked as well as any other web-based call solution at the time.
    - detaro 5y ago
      And all web-based solutions (maybe with the exception of BBB, didn't use that back then) were quite a bit worse than Zoom with its native apps.
      - lucb1e 5y ago
        ...we were talking about web clients I thought? I've not used a desktop client to do calls since maybe Skype in 2015 or so, I didn't realize anyone still used that because of the extra hassle. Even MSN did video calls and that shut down basically the year Zoom was founded, let alone was used by anyone. This wasn't new among desktop clients, either.
        detaro 5y ago
        Zoom is widely used with the native clients and mobile apps, so I was talking about those. Not sure how good/not good Zoom on the web is/was.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

Webex got better under pressure from others but it's what we used at first and the CEO of my mid size employer got talked into zoom near the beginning of covid and it was just very easy to use and much less problematic than webex which we used before but didn't need nearly as much so we put up with its faults. Then covid hit and zoom just worked better despite the encryption debacle.

nerdbaggy 5y ago

The first year of covid webex wasn’t really innovating while Zoom was flinging out new features. WebEx is now going faster and adding more and more features.

kortex 5y ago

Our company read.ai builds add-ons for videocon clients so I'm pretty familiar with most clients. - Zoom is just simply the best in terms of stability, performance, user experience, and in particular ease-of-first-use. Call quality is the best. - Webex is a hot mess. They've been scrambling to catch up and have made stride but have a ways to go. Install is a nightmare - google meet feels like it's barely changed in 5 years. Makes my fans take off. Decently stable at least - Teams is decent all-around, featureful, and actually had a good SDK before Zoom, but install/userex and stability struggle at times - is skype even a thing still? Hands down the two biggest factors are time-until-first-use, friction, and stability of the audiovideo stream. Zoom simply dunked on the other legacy players in this regard.