Rated: You tell us your best video call platform from Zoom to Hangout and Teams

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Since the start of the pandemic, we’ve had no choice but to come into daily contact with video conferencing platforms and the highs and lows have quickly become apparent.

With the last stage of lockdown easing in force from Monday July 19, the need for video conferencing may well reduce but it definitely won’t become a thing of the past as for most of us, working remotely will remain part of our daily routines.

Last week, our BusinessLive team in the North West asked its Linkedin followers to rate their favourite video calling platform in a snap poll.

And this the result…

In third place

Hangouts (22%)

Google Hangouts is pretty simple to use, foolproof and free for anyone with a Google account. It has a messaging function too and it just as simple from desktop or phone. It is a stripped down basic set up – which may be why it came in with a bronze medal in our poll.

In second place

Zoom (36%)

Virtually no-one had ever heard of Zoom when the first lockdown hit in March 2020 but it soon became the byword for group video calls. In fact, the brand name has become a verb – to ‘Zoom’ and has become synonymous with video calls, just like Hoover did with the vacuum cleaner.

In the early days of the pandemic, Zoom’s daily meeting participants grew from 10 million participants to more than 300 million.

Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom said he had more sleepless nights than at any other time in my career, when describing those first days of lockdown.

Zoom has spawned some unlikely stars, including parish council clerk Jackie Weaver who went viral for her no-nonsense approach at Handforth Parish Council.

In first place

Teams (41%)

What can we say about teams? You have to admire the confidence of a platform that opens automatically on your screen everyday whether you want it to or not.

Microsoft Teams has been crowned winner of our snap poll – OK ,with around 150 participants it is far from conclusive, but gives us an idea of your preferences.

Teams is Microsoft’s fastest growing app with more than 330,000 companies worldwide using it. If you use Windows, the chances are you’ll have Teams set up and it will be the video conferencing of choice for the Windows 11. It allows users to create their own ‘teams’, hold on-the-spot meetings, have conversations, and share files.