Finding the right Zoom alternatives: A complete guide for 2025

Zoom became the default for video calls so fast it’s basically the Kleenex of video conferencing. But now that we’re all more settled into remote and hybrid work, the conversation is changing. Searching for "Zoom alternatives" isn’t just about swapping one video app for another anymore. It’s about building a smarter, more connected way for your team to collaborate.

This guide will walk you through what to look for in a modern communication platform, point out some common blind spots (like what happens to all that great info after a call ends), and show you how to connect your tools to make your whole workflow, especially for support teams, run a lot smoother.

Understanding Zoom and popular alternatives

Before we jump into the alternatives, let’s get a clear picture of what we’re comparing them to. Zoom has evolved way beyond just a tool for meetings.

What is Zoom?

Zoom now calls itself the "Zoom Workplace," which is a fancy way of saying it bundles a bunch of tools together. The core is still Meetings, of course, but it now includes Team Chat for ongoing conversations and an AI Companion that can summarize meetings and help you write things. It’s trying to be the one-stop shop for all your collaboration. The only catch is that most teams don’t actually work in just one place.

What are the main Zoom alternatives?

Most companies looking for an alternative are trying to find something that fits neatly into the software they already use. The main Zoom alternatives you’ll run into are:

• Google Meet: If your team basically lives in Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive, this is the no-brainer choice. It’s built right into the Google Workspace ecosystem.

• Microsoft Teams: As the heart of Microsoft 365, Teams is a powerhouse that mixes chat, video, and deep file integration with tools like OneDrive and SharePoint.

• Webex by Cisco: Webex has been around for a while and is often the go-to for big companies that are serious about security and reliability.

• Slack: While most people think of it as a chat app, Slack’s "Huddles" are perfect for quick, informal video and audio chats without having to schedule a formal meeting or leave the app.

Feature	Google Meet	Microsoft Teams	Webex by Cisco	Slack Huddles
Best For	Teams in Google Workspace	Businesses using Microsoft 365	Large enterprises, security-focused orgs	Quick, informal team chats
Integration	Deep with Google apps	Deep with Microsoft 365	Enterprise software	Broad, especially dev tools
Key Feature	Simplicity, accessibility	All-in-one hub (chat, video, files)	High security, reliability	Seamless transition from chat to video

Key features to compare

Every platform has its unique perks, but there are a few fundamental things any modern communication tool has to nail.

Video quality and reliability

Let’s be honest, if the video is choppy and the audio keeps cutting out, nothing else matters. A video conferencing tool has one main job: deliver a clear, stable call. Look for platforms known for consistent HD video that can handle a less-than-perfect internet connection without dropping you completely. Webex is famous for its reliability, but others are getting smarter about adapting, like automatically switching to audio-only when your connection gets weak. Things like noise cancellation and virtual backgrounds are pretty standard now, so you should expect them.

In-meeting collaboration tools

A good meeting is more than just a bunch of talking heads on a screen. The best tools have built-in features that let you work together on the spot.

• Screen Sharing: This is a must-have for presentations and walking someone through a process. You should be able to share your whole screen, a single app, or even just a specific part of your screen.

• Digital Whiteboards: Brainstorming sessions feel much more productive with a shared digital space to sketch out ideas. Microsoft Teams has its own Microsoft Whiteboard, and Google Meet connects with Jamboard, letting everyone draw and write together.

• In-Meeting Chat & Polling: For bigger meetings or webinars, these are great for keeping the audience involved without derailing the main speaker. It’s an easy way to run a Q&A or get a quick feel for how well everyone is following along.

Integrations and scheduling

A tool is only as good as how well it fits into your team’s daily routine. At the very least, it needs to connect smoothly with your calendar, whether that’s Google Calendar or Outlook. Setting up a meeting and dropping in a video link should take one click. It should be effortless for anyone, inside or outside your company, to join a call.

The hidden challenge: What happens to knowledge after the call ends?

Here’s the part most people overlook when they compare video tools. They focus entirely on what happens during the meeting. The real challenge, and the biggest missed opportunity, is what you do with all the valuable information that’s created on that call.

The problem of fragmented knowledge

Every meeting you have on Zoom, Teams, or Meet is a goldmine of unstructured data. You end up with transcripts, chat logs, and recordings full of customer feedback, key decisions, and action items. But where does it all go?

Most of the time, it just gets lost. A recording gets saved to some random folder in the cloud, a transcript gets buried in an email chain, and the chat log vanishes into thin air. This knowledge rarely gets put to use for the rest of the team, especially for people in roles like customer support. The built-in AI tools like Zoom’s AI Companion or Microsoft’s Copilot are a decent first step, but their main goal is to keep you inside their own world. If your team uses Zendesk for tickets, Slack for chats, and Google Docs for notes, a summary that’s trapped inside Zoom isn’t very helpful.

The disconnect from support workflows

Picture this: a customer success manager has a great call with a client on Webex and learns something critical about a new feature. A week later, a support agent gets a ticket about that exact same feature. How does that insight from the call get to the agent?

It usually doesn’t, at least not easily. The manager might type up some notes and save them somewhere, hoping the agent thinks to look there. But more often, the agent is left scrambling, digging through the help desk, pinging colleagues in Slack, and trying to figure out the answer from scratch. It’s slow, inefficient, and leads to customers getting different answers from different people.

How to bridge the gap with an intelligent knowledge layer

The solution isn’t to find one magical tool that does everything. It’s to add a smart layer on top that connects all the tools you’re already using.

This is where a dedicated AI platform like eesel AI comes in. Instead of locking you into one system, it plugs into all of them. You can connect it to the Google Docs where your meeting notes live, your Confluence wiki, and your help desk, whether that’s Zendesk or Freshdesk.

This approach gives you a few major benefits:

• Unify your knowledge: eesel AI learns from everything you connect, old support tickets, help articles, internal docs, and meeting summaries, to create one reliable source of truth for your whole team.

• Go live in minutes: You don’t need a six-month implementation project or a team of consultants. eesel AI connects to your current tools with a few clicks, and you can set it up yourself without having to sit through a sales demo.

• Empower your team where they work: This unified knowledge powers AI tools that help your team right in their workflow. An AI Copilot can draft accurate replies for support agents directly in your help desk, or an Internal Chat bot can answer questions in Slack by pulling information from a meeting summary stored in a connected Google Doc.

• Test with confidence: Nervous about letting an AI talk to your customers? Fair enough. eesel AI’s simulation mode lets you test it on thousands of your past support tickets. You can see exactly how it would have replied, get a forecast of your resolution rates, and tweak its behavior before it ever interacts with a live customer.

eesel AI's simulation mode allows you to test the AI on past support tickets before it goes live.

An overview of Zoom’s pricing plans

While a lot of Zoom alternatives offer free plans, businesses usually hit the limits on meeting time or the number of participants pretty quickly. To really compare apples to apples, you have to look at the paid plans. Here’s a quick look at Zoom’s pricing for its Workplace plans.

| Plan | Price (Billed Annually) | Key Features | Best For | | :------– | :---------------------- | :------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | :------------------------------------------------------------------ | | Basic | Free | Up to 100 participants, 40-minute meeting limit, Team Chat, 3 Whiteboards. | Individuals or small teams for short, infrequent meetings. | | Pro | $13.33 /user/month | Everything in Basic, plus 30-hour meeting limit, 10GB cloud storage, AI Companion. | Small businesses that need longer meetings and some AI help. | | Business | $18.33 /user/month | Everything in Pro, plus up to 300 participants, unlimited whiteboards, managed domains. | Growing teams that need to host more people and have more admin control. |

It’s also worth remembering that things like Webinars, Large Meetings, and extra cloud storage are usually paid add-ons.

Pricing is based on info from Zoom’s official pricing page as of June 2025.

This video provides a quick overview of some of the top Zoom alternatives available for your meetings.

Choose a stack, not just another video app

In the end, picking the best "Zoom alternative" is about more than just finding a new video app. It’s about designing a connected collaboration stack where information can move freely between all the tools your team relies on. The real magic doesn’t happen in the meeting itself; it’s unlocked when the knowledge from that meeting is captured, shared, and used to make your entire business smarter.

So whether you land on Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, or even decide to stick with Zoom, the most important move you can make is to pair it with a system that can make sense of all those conversations.

Don’t let your meeting insights vanish when the call ends. You can power up your entire support workflow by connecting all your knowledge sources to eesel AI. See how our AI agents and copilots can use your team’s collective brainpower to deliver faster, more consistent support. You can start a free trial today.