When the pandemic first started, millions of people all over the world had to work from home. Companies were left scrambling to figure out how they will still have business meetings and keep their businesses open during the lockdown.
But even after the corona virus, we will continue to rely on video conferences at work and in private life. Video tools are simply very useful and offer many advantages for us.
This is when people started using video conferencing services, such as Livestorm and Zoom. It’s difficult to select a video conferencing service when you’re not familiar with the companies. This comparison guide will help you understand the differences between Livestorm and Zoom, and it will also give you the best and worst parts of both video conferencing services.
Livestorm | Zoom | |
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Pricing | They have a few different pricing plans, such as starter, premium, and enterprise. You can choose to pay monthly or yearly. The starter plan is free. The premium plan will charge you around 109 dollars a month. If you pay yearly, the premium plan will come out to around 76 dollars a month, but you will be charged around 912 dollars a year. The enterprise plan means that you will be charged by the number of times you use it. | You can choose basic, pro, business, or enterprise. The basic is free. Pro: You can pay $14.99 per month or 149.90 dollars a year. Business: You can pay $19.99 per month or $199.90 a year. Enterprise: You can pay $19.99 per month or $240 a year. |
What Does the Price Include? | Starter: You get to meet up with four people. up to 20 minutes of the event you’re holding. Premium: You can have up to 16 people that speak throughout your meeting. Enterprise: You will receive all the benefits listed at the premium price plus additional services. For example, one of those additional services will allow you to have up to 3,000 people join the meeting. Something else you will receive in the enterprise package is a review of your business. | Basic: You can have as many group meetings as you want but for only 40 minutes at a time. You will also receive meetings with just yourself and a client or an employee for up to 30 hours at a time. Pro: You can have up to 100 people join your meeting. You can stream your meetings on social media for other people to watch that weren’t able to make it to your first one. You can have a small group meeting for up to 30 hours at a time. Another thing that comes with the pro plan is a recording for one GB. Business: You can have meetings with up to 300 people. You will also receive written copies of your meetings and pass them around to the people that weren’t able to attend. Enterprise: This is for larger companies. You can have 500 people join your meeting if you wish. If you want to save your meetings, you will receive an unlimited amount of storage. Plus, you will also receive written copies of your meetings. In addition to all of this, you will receive everything else that comes with the other plans. |
Features | The event is easy to create with its organizational tool. All you have to do is answer the questions it provides. There may be some additional questions but based on the plan you choose, those questions will be limited. You don’t have to send out a bunch of emails. Livestorm will do it for you. All you have to do is type the names of the people you want to attend your meeting. When you sign up, you will receive an option for Livestorm to send out reminder emails to everyone in attendance. Another cool feature is that Livestorm will allow you to speak to the people that have attended your meeting. You can choose to open a chat room, start a poll, or include a question and answer session within your meeting. You are also able to see how many people went to your meeting and the number of people that participated. | All your videos will be of the highest quality. No one should have a problem with the video and audio. Your guests can chat throughout your video. On the home page, your guests will see when your meeting will start, so they can be on time. You can change your background picture if you wish. If you sent a message to someone or if someone sent a message to you, you can find it easily with the search icon at the top of your screen. If you want your guests to have something prepared for your meeting, you can let them know with a status update. You can also change your meeting from landscape to portrait or vice versa. |
Advantages | The enterprise plan is great if you aren’t planning on using this service as much. Your clients and your staff can message you and ask you questions in real-time throughout the meeting. Once the webinar is complete, it is automatically sent to everyone on your invite list. These meetings can be live or they can be previously recorded. | They have more plans to choose from. You can decide on which plans you want based on if you have a small or large business. More things come with each plan. You can use this on an iPad, a desktop computer, a laptop computer, or a mobile phone. The higher your plan is, the more people you can invite to your webinar. |
Disadvantages | As the host, you can put in a message stating why you want the buyer to buy your product. Unfortunately, you cannot put in a timer to let the buyer know the amount of time they have left to buy the product. Another downfall is when a client puts in an offer, they cannot pull up the offer again after it has already been closed out. | Downloading an app can cause major headaches because it can take up too much space on your device. It can be expensive if you use a lot of the add-on features. As the host of your webinar, you cannot control the comments on your guest’s posts. Depending on how long your meeting lasts, the file size will be too large for them to download once you share it. |
Now that you have taken a look at the pricing, features, advantages, and disadvantages, it will be easier for you to decide on which one to go with whenever you have to work from home.