Where your workforce is located no longer matters, because with today’s powerful, efficient and reliable video conferencing tools, your organization can meet instantly, anywhere. Advanced video conference technology makes it easier than ever to hold high-quality virtual meetings and presentations at the touch of a button.
Zoom and Flock are two popular video conferencing tools you can leverage to boost your global business connections, but which one is the best platform for hosting your next online meeting? Let us take you through a detailed comparison between Zoom and Flock. We hope to take the stress out of choosing a video conferencing solution for your business.
What Is Video Conferencing?
Video conferencing is a technology-based innovation that receives and transmits both high-quality audio and full-motion video image signals in real time. It makes communication between people in different geographical locations simple, easy and efficient.
What Is Zoom?
Zoom is a popular video conferencing tool that offers some of the best features you can find on the market. It provides consistent and powerful services such as video webinar, Zoom Rooms, online meetings and group messaging. It’s an ideal tool for any business as it provides a great communication experience at an incredibly affordable cost — there’s even a free version! This platform is uniquely designed and optimized to offer seamless services and maximum reliability, and it comes with a user-friendly interface.
What Is Flock?
Flock is a desktop and mobile messaging and collaboration tool first. Video conferencing is one of many uses and integrations this productivity product provides. Additionally, Flock offers direct and channel messaging, video conferencing, screen and file sharing and unlimited chat history. Flock makes its platform available to developers interested in building apps, bots and custom integrations to personalize the experience, even conducting regular hackathons to help young developers build innovative apps using FlockOS’s capabilities.
Zoom vs. Flock Comparison
Let’s take a look at the features offered by these two web conferencing tools.
| Zoom | Flock | |
| Cost | Free – $19.99/mo. + | Free –$8.00/mo. + |
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Basic Features |
||
| Participants | Up to 100 participants | Up to 20 participants |
| Support | Online support for free, phone for paid, account manager for Enterprise | Online for free, 24/7 dedicated and priority support for paid Pro and Enterprise accounts |
| Conferencing Features | HD video, HD voice, screen sharing, whiteboarding | Unlimited conferences, (limited to 1:1 for free plans), private and public chat channels, screen sharing for Pro accounts |
| Web Features | Private and Group Chats, MP4 or M4A local Recording, host controls, Chrome and Outlook plug-Ins | An app store allowing users to customize Flock according to the productivity apps they use every day. Also, direct and group channels |
| Supported Integrations | Google Drive, Pardot, Dropbox, Eloqua, HubSpot, Infusionsoft and More | Google Drive, Google Analytics, Trello, GitHub, Twitter and Mailchimp |
1. Pricing
Pricing is a critical aspect when choosing a dependable video conferencing platform for your business. The way your company does business affects the features you’ll want in a video conferencing product. When the features are relatively similar, cost can be the deciding factor.
When compared to Flock, Zoom’s pricing might seem high. While Flock’s Pro plan comes in at $8.95 per month per user, Flock is fundamentally a collaboration and productivity tool first. Zoom’s affordable $19.99 per month per user price point includes robust and a video-conferencing-first sensibility. Zoom also offers a free trial period for new users through partners like DGI.
2. Video Quality
Independent tests show that Zoom has superior HD video quality. Flock is essentially designed for channel-based messaging, and cannot compare to Zoom in terms of dedication to quality business video conferencing. Flock does offer a Zoom integration, allowing Flock users to participate in Zoom-based conferences and webinars without leaving it’s user interface.
3. Capacity
When it comes to video conferencing solutions, nothing takes center stage quite like the user capacity. Zoom can accommodate up to 1,000 users per single web or video conferencing session with an Enterprise plan. Flock tops out at 20, making it the clear leader for capacity.
4. Conference Features
Flock is built to support messaging and collaborating via channel, much like Slack. Video conferencing is an available feature. When shopping around for a software that can take your video conferencing experience to the next level, you want a video conference solution packed with robust collaboration features that suit your individual business needs, like whiteboarding, advanced security features, large capacity meetings and industry leading HD audio and video.
5. Security Features
Security is important — especially for business meetings and video conferencing sessions. Both Flock and Zoom offer solutions that are highly secure and reliable. Flock is recently SOC 2-certified and employs strict data access and user rights controls. Both platforms provide encryption and secure cloud storage and hosting.
In addition to Zoom’s established security protocols and advanced responses to increased security needs in the wake of 2020’s unprecedented work- and learn-from-home load, Zoom’s Telehealth solution is HIPPA-compliant security for patient-to-doctor communications.
6. Meeting Follow-Up
For any business, meeting follow-ups are extremely important. This allows participants to view the previous meeting’s recording and listen to them again whenever they need. Zoom is outfitted with a unique participant reporting feature that checks all the members who reported at the meeting. Flock keeps unlimited, searchable messaging histories in its channels.
7. User-Friendly Design
When it comes to business software, ease-of-use and a simple interface are two important factors to seriously consider. Complex software is a time and resource waste. Both Flock and Zoom allow users to instantly join an online video conference or meeting, but Zoom’s video conferencing first design means users aren’t tethered to a separate productivity tool start a new meeting. Flock’s capacity limits make it slightly less user-friendly overall.
The Bottom Line
Considering all the powerful features and positive reviews given by experts and users alike, Zoom is the superior video conferencing software. If your company is looking for a combination of direct and public channel messaging and collaboration with video conferencing and calling as an option, it might be the better fit.
With Zoom, you get all the benefits and features your business needs to host a professional video conference or web presentation, plus robust security, and mobile and desktop platform support, at a relatively low cost. With a single touch, Zoom enables you to hold meetings and connect with people in different locations around the world, saving your business energy, time and money.
Still not sure which video conferencing platform is the best fit? Talk to us at DGI.
