Zoho Meeting – Review 2021

Zoho Meeting is a low-cost solution for basic video conferencing, especially for companies that are already invested in other portions of Zoho’s extensive business software portfolio. However, most organizations will need to upgrade from the introductory tier, since it’s limited to just 10 attendees. Overall, while Zoho has certainly done work to update Meeting since the start of the pandemic, it’s still an application focused on no-frills business web meetings. You won’t find the niceties contained in leading competitors, like a smart assistant and especially cloud video recording. For that, you should check out our small business-oriented Editors’ Choice winners, Intermedia AnyMeeting and Zoom Meetings.

Zoho Meeting: Pricing and Getting Started

Zoho Meeting starts at $2.50 per host per month in its introductory tier, which is very friendly price for cash-strapped small businesses. It’s appropriately called Meeting-10, since this tier is limited to 10 session attendees. Above that are three other tiers, predictably called Meeting-25, Meeting-50, and Meeting-100, each number referring to that tier’s maximum number of meeting participants. Pricing for 25 participants is $5 per host per month while 50 participants costs $7.50 per host per month. Last, 100 will run you $10 per host per month. The naming might not be eye catching, but compared to the rest of our video conferencing contenders, the prices should be. They’re especially attractive when compared directly against the more expensive competitors, notably LogMeIn GoToMeeting and our big business Editors’ Choice winner, Cisco Webex Business.

If you need attendee counts beyond 100, Zoho classifies these as webinars. While these use the same conferencing technology, Zoho has a separate product for them, called Zoho Webinar. It also uses the same naming scheme for its pricing tiers as Zoho Meeting, consisting of Webinar-25, Webinar-50, Webinar-100, and Webinar-250, each respectively priced at $15, $23, $31, and $63. Those numbers refer to being charged per host, per month, and all must be billed annually. Again, these are attractive price points, though the absolute limit of 250 on webinar attendees might restrict Zoho Webinar’s utility when it comes to larger marketing webinars, virtual events, or simply town hall-style meetings for even midsized organizations.

Users looking for installed clients, will find versions for Apple macOS, Linux, and Microsoft Windows. Mobile users can download dedicated apps for both Apple iOS and Google Android. If nothing else can get the job done, there is a web client that works best from Google Chrome, though this was one of the few web video conferencing apps we reviewed that was flatly incompatible with Internet Explorer.

A free tier is available on the Zoho website, but it’s for just two attendees at a time. This is enough to get a basic meeting started or have two IT pros evaluate the app. But a couple of participants isn’t even enough to have a pandemic family get together, so nearly everyone will want to upgrade.

Getting signed up is simple. All you need is an email address and some basic information to get a free account, and from there, access to the higher tiers is simply a matter of paying. Once you get signed in, the layout is clean and unobtrusive.  There’s a handy Meet Now button that expands to offer a quick audio or video conference, which is the fastest way to start chatting with your coworkers. There are also some network administrator-oriented tools that you won’t find in some of the more consumer-oriented competition, like Zoom. These tools let IT professionals keep tabs on overall network performance and how it’s impacting a video conference so they know what to tweak in case your video gets choppy or chokes.

Integration With the Zoho Software Portfolio

Considering that Zoho offers more than 30 other business applications in its portfolio, it makes sense that the company provided close integration between Zoho Meeting and as many of those apps as possible. For example, for scheduling power, Zoho Meetings integrates closely and bi-directionally with Zoho Calendar, which is great for businesses that use that app.

Unfortunately, that same effort hasn’t gone into integrating Zoho Meeting with more popular scheduling apps, like providing a Microsoft Outlook plugin as many of its competitors do. There is a one-way method to add meetings to Outlook, but beyond that, the two exist as separate entities. For smaller businesses that can fully standardize on Zoho, this might not be a problem. But for many enterprises or even just midsized companies, a lack of depth-Microsoft Office integration, especially around Outlook and Teams, can make life difficult.

New Features and UI

Since we last tested Zoho Meeting, the company has done some obvious work on both its features list and its UI. Previously, Zoho Meeting was greatly limited in that you could not have multiple video streams. This has been fixed now along with bandwidth conservation features to help optimize the experience.

Along the top, you have a series of icons that let you bring up different sidebars. Attendees is the one that’s up by default. It lets you mute existing attendees as well as invite new ones. Next is the Chat icon. Similar to GoToMeeting, this is just a basic chat implementation without rich text formatting or even an emoji window.

Next over is screen sharing. You can share an entire screen or a specific application. We found this very easy to use and had no issues at all sharing our screen with other attendees in our test sessions. We would like to see some of the other sharing features evident in competing apps, like Intermedia and Cisco Webex. Things like the ability to directly share web elements or simply local video files. However, while it sticks to the basics here, Zoho’s implementation worked reliably and was easy to pick up.

You also have the ability to lock the meeting, now a necessary feature in these days of Zoom bombings. Combined with meeting passwords, it serves as an effective deterrent to unwanted attendees. There is a recording button, but sadly, this doesn’t include video recording like most of the other competitors. However, Zoho does allow for unlimited audio recordings, which is a nice feature. All recordings are available under the My Recordings tab after exiting the meeting. You can play, share, or download them for later. Lastly, you can toggle the video feed and microphone. All in all, the interface is basic, but easy to use.

Aside from its attendee count, Zoho does shine more brightly in its Webinar incarnation. While the basic conferencing feature set is the same, this version allows for attendee polls, reminder emails, follow-ups, and even an automatic post-webinar redirect after the meeting ends. Also, you have a question-and-answer window as well as the ability to raise your hand. If you need a co-organizer that feature is built right in, and you can add one or more as needed.

Overlooked Web Meeting Features

What is missing from Zoho are some of the more advanced features found in the leading products we tested. For instance, there is no artificial intelligence (AI)-powered smart assistant that can take notes for you and provide action items automatically. This puts a person back in the saddle for these tasks. While this hasn’t been much of an issue in the past, the pandemic has created a significant amount of meeting fatigue, and every little feature helps. Also, since such an assistant is available from Cisco (though only in the near future), GoToMeeting, and Intermedia, it’s something of a competitive oversight. Once you’ve gotten a taste of automatic note taking, it’s hard to go back.

An even more glaring omission is the lack of a built-in virtual whiteboard. This has been a common feature in most business-oriented conferencing apps for some time. Additionally, these days it’s becoming much more critical to communicate visual ideas outside of face-to-face talking, so continuing to overlook this capability could be a problem for many different kinds of teams and businesses. While Zoho Meeting doesn’t stop you from using a third-party whiteboard, it’s still a definite hurdle for quick and easy collaboration and brainstorming.

Lastly, there is no mechanism in the video window to show a reaction. Being able to give a quick thumbs up, thumbs down, or other emoji is not only fun, it often improves the efficiency of a video conference since users can respond without having to take over the microphone. This is another feature oversight that definitely dates the product, and could steer away many experienced users that have come to expect it. Simply adding a hand raising feature would go a long way toward improving the product, especially since you can find that in the Webinar version.

No-Frills Conferencing, But Good for Zoho Customers

At the end of the day, Zoho Meeting gets the job done as long as you’re not looking for anything overly advanced. And if you are already using some of Zoho’s other products, it fits nicely into that scheme. While it’s not the best product out there from a feature perspective, the price is extremely competitive. But if you need more powerful capabilities, it’s worth taking a look at our small business Editors’ Choices, Intermedia AnyMeeting and Zoom Meetings.