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hrrisn t1_iv0hesv wrote

Reply to comment by TestAndLearn in [OC] Visualising Zoom's revenue and profit sources by giteam

I actually just learned it wasn’t free for HD video calls with more than 1 other person. The reason I was looking this up is because I wanted to see a comparison with Discord, which I’ve been using since ~2015. At a glance, Zoom seems like the inferior service. And their cheapest plan is 15$/mo to access features that you get for free on Discord.

I’ve been perplexed about Zoom’s rise to popularity over Discord during the pandemic. But I guess they marketed to businesses harder and faster, became the defacto meeting platform and now workers couldn’t be bothered to learn a new software, even if it would be cheaper and more efficient for companies.

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DasDunXel t1_iv0kb1v wrote

Discord did absolutely zero marketing for business purposes. Most people in the industry looking never even heard of them.

Zoom had voip that made WFH easier and far cheaper when it came to businesses needing to find a better solution to Cisco. Zoom video for 1k+ people for big business announcements or major conferences.

Zoom only competition was Cisco and Microsoft Teams. And if your company is using Slack over Teams they ain't going to want to switch.

Krisp the audio thing discord has by default that many people don't even know about. They actually sell themselves as a separate app for businesses to deploy that pairs directly with Zoom.

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tinySparkOf_Chaos t1_iv1734h wrote

Zoom did ONE thing amazingly well. It's was super easy to get people into a call. Click link in email --> be in zoom call. No fuss, no frills, No extra buttons or menus for Grandpa to accidently click and get lost in. More importantly no account needed.

Even starting a new call was easy. You could email the link to someone from in the call you were in. scheduling calls had a similar super easy UI

As for replacing other options, it wasn't just Discord, lots of other video conferencing software exists, and was in fact already being used for b2b (Cisco).

Have you ever tried to schedule video call event in discord with people who haven't used it before? I tried to host virtual Halloween parties etc in 2020. It worked but it was very clunky.

In order to have a specific guest list I had to create a new server. Then email out a server join code. People trying to join were forced to make a discord account if they didn't have one. And once in the server since people didn't know how to actually join the video call portion and how to turn on their video in the voice chat.

On the flip side I saw people trying to use zoom for a virtual conferences... Which was always a disaster because zoom doesn't have the tools for that. Meanwhile discord or something similar would have been perfect.

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Shaallelujah t1_iv0kc1r wrote

Aren't the functionalities and usage purpose between Zoom and Discord different?

I mean correct me if I'm wrong but i don't see how you can compare Zoom and Discord. Zoom Vs. G-Meet or Msft Teams is much more understandable

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