Video calling has become an essential digital toolkit both personally and professionally. As an experienced technology analyst, clients often ask me – should I use Zoom or Skype? Which one is better? Here I‘ll provide an insider‘s overview of the key strengths of each platform and the market forces at play.
Understanding the Rise of Zoom and Skype
First, let‘s ground the analysis in some history. Skype, founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis (also of KaZaa fame), pioneered voice over IP calls and was acquired by Microsoft in 2011 for $8.5 billion. Zoom Video Communications entered the scene more recently in 2011, conceived by Eric Yuan after 14 years at WebEx (which sold to Cisco for $3.2 billion in 2007).
Both tools filled the consumer and business need for face-to-face connectivity independent of physical location using commonly available computing devices. However, Zoom‘s laser focus on enterprise video conferencing fueled meteoric growth during the COVID-19 work-from-home transition in 2020.
Zoom facilitated over 300 million daily participants at the pandemic peak in April 2020, up from just 10 million in December 2019. Skype in contrast connects around 40-50 million users daily in 2021 according to Microsoft‘s latest metrics.
Let‘s dig deeper into why Zoom pulled so far ahead as seemingly the gold conference calling standard.
Zoom‘s Breadth of Features Attracts Larger Enterprise Clients
While Skype offers a quality 1:1 video chat experience, Zoom built an extensive suite of audio, video and collaborative capabilities with the modern workforce in mind:
- Screen sharing – Demonstrate ideas by broadcasting your desktop or mobile screen to meeting participants
- Co-annotation – Collaboratively mark up shared screens and documents using digital ink
- Virtual whiteboard – Brainstorm on an infinite shared canvas with support for images and sticky notes
- Polling – Quickly survey meeting attendees or students with single/multi-choice votes
- Breakout rooms – Split meeting into separate discussion groups that can rejoin fluidly
- Webinars – Broadcast video, audio and screens live to large audiences up to 10,000 view-only attendees
- Cloud recording – Record meetings locally or to the cloud with searchable transcripts generated via AI
- Conference room connector – Extend Zoom software experience into physical conference rooms
- Customer support – 24/7 support via live chat, phone, and email
As you can see, Zoom operates well beyond basic video chat into advanced remote team collaboration. These tools enabled organizations to continue operations despite in-person restrictions.
Compare the array above to Skype‘s offerings which cover simple messaging, voice and video calls without the extensive mix of enterprise features and integrations.
Additionally, Skype has faced mounting complaints over poor video quality, laggy performance, and regular glitches that undermine professional use.
Zoom‘s Freemium Tier Drives Wider Early Adoption
What vaulted Zoom ahead? Beyond robust features, their wildly popular (and marketing savvy) freemium tier removed the barrier to entry that Skype‘s universal paid subscription model poses.
Zoom makes joining frictionless for the average consumer. Just enter a meeting ID and you instantly connect via browser without an account. If you wish to host meetings, registering for a free Zoom account takes seconds and entitles you to:
- Unlimited 1:1 meetings
- Group video calls with up to 100 participants
- Meetings length limited to 40 minutes before hitting the cutoff
Compare Skype which only allowed a 1 month trial before requiring a paid monthly subscription that formerly started at $2.99 per month for 60 Skype-to-Skype call minutes.
Of course both platforms offer various business and enterprise packages (Zoom starts at $14.99 per month per host) with more features, capacity and management controls. But Zoom‘s free offering gave them an enormous footprint from which to upsell.
Privacy and Security – The Achilles Heel for Both Platforms
With meteoric growth comes intensified scrutiny. Cybersecurity researchers and privacy advocates have flagged concerns about protections for Zoom and Skype users:
- Zoom initially claimed calls were end-to-end encrypted when in fact they were not, inviting legal action
- Personal data including names, photos and more were shared with third parties without consent
- Screensharing left users vulnerable to exposing passwords, financial data and medical info
- "Zoombombing" incidents highlighted the ease of crashing open or leaked meeting links
- Calls routed through Chinese servers raised data privacy questions
In response, Zoom embarked on a 90-day security plan, hired former Facebook CISO Alex Stamos as an advisor, and rapidly patched many vulnerabilities.
However, Skype has not been immune either to criticisms regarding their security posture and lack of transparency. Tip: I always advise clients to enable available encryption settings for added protection.
Zoom‘s Market Trajectory Has Eclipsed Skype
Given the factors above of features, pricing and security, Zoom has rapidly outpaced Skype in market share across core metrics:
| Metric | Zoom | Skype |
|---|---|---|
| Daily Users (April 2020 peak) | 300 million | 40 million |
| Market Share of Video Conferencing | 43.2% | 4% |
| Expected Annual Growth 2021-2026 | 17.1% CAGR | 3.7% CAGR |
The above underscores Zoom‘s popularity across consumer and enterprise markets while Skype plateaus as a legacy household name that failed to expand with demand.
However, competitors like Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and relative upstarts like Webex pose threats if Zoom rests on their laurels without continued user-focused innovation.
Which Tool Should You Use?
For individuals and small teams, Zoom still reigns supreme due to generous (if not slightly chaotic) free access and modern meeting enhancements like fun virtual backgrounds to showcase some personality.
For large enterprises mandating added security controls, data access limitations, compliance auditing and administrative management, tools like Microsoft Teams built on existing Azure ActiveDirectory identity integrations offer compelling options depending on current technology infrastructure.
Overall Zoom should remain most users‘ first choice for an accessible, ubiquitous and reliable business collaboration experience – although I advise toggling on their upgraded security protections including password protection and waiting rooms.
With smart leadership and sustained engineering efforts to harden their systems, Zoom stands ready to continue dominating the virtual conferencing sphere. But they must balance convenience and top-notch security to earn users‘ long term trust.
I hope this thorough examination of Zoom and Skype‘s core use cases, features, security track records and market outlook helps guide your next choice of video chat, conference call or webinar software for personal or professional needs. Let me know if you have any other questions!
