Google Calendar vs. Zimbra by Synacor

For small businesses or personal use, it works out well. The whole idea of a free platform on a free service is very alluring, especially if you don't have high end or high tech services for such a program already. Calendar would work in most business, school, and personal situations to keep track of where you're headed.

Incentivized

I consider Zimbra Email & Collaboration a viable alternative to the major American cloud email platforms. In a scenario where data protection and privacy are critical, especially in an on-premise environment, Zimbra is a very suitable solution. It is also capable of offering a comprehensive set of tools and additional features (tasks, calendars, contacts, briefcase) in an integrated manner.

Incentivized

• Makes it easy to schedule meetings and block off time
• I can see everyone in my org's calendar's as well which makes it convenient when scheduling calls with multiple people so I can see when they have overlapping availabilities.
• Integration with Zoom and Microsoft Teams for video calls that can be added from the calendar invite itself

Incentivized

• The management of incremental mail backup. It is very simple, and the administrators of my company recover information quickly.
• The management of the distribution lists is structured. This allows easy distribution of mass information.
• The web application is very complete and intuitive.

Incentivized

• Being able to group a team much easier so I don't have to add the same people over and over again without having to have access right to create a Google group
• Room or space management, because of repeating events the rooms of the office tend to be always "occupied" but not everyone is there due to how the new hybrid way of working is
• Better way of working together in the calendar events where it's easier for the team to prepare if I give a clearer better UI of all the documents/presentations they might need to look over

Incentivized

• User web interface could be more friendly, but it is enough for daily use. It could be renewed and has to consider some usability concerns. Improving usability would significantly improve users' satisfaction.
• Message backup recovery is not a simple activity.
• As an administrator, some of the features work better using the command-line interface.
• The webclient uses ajax requests in almost every event. Because of that you may need a fast internet connection to have a good experience. You can switch to HTML version but it will limit what you can do.

Incentivized

It's a bit outdated on how things should be working, the UI per say hasn't changed much and I believe there is still a lot more room for improvement in how the calendar shows, the creating process, the parameters on setting up an event and it could be better integrated with the g-suite and other tools

Incentivized

The web usability of the solution is adequate, with all functions integrated into a single interface. However, it is important to note that in the desktop environment, it lacks its own application and relies on ActiveSync synchronization with reference solutions like Outlook or Thunderbird. Some features, such as the briefcase, will be excluded. The same happens on smartphones.It is also common for competing solutions to include integrated chat or video call tools, which Zimbra lacks. These shortcomings are among the most frequently requested by users.

Incentivized

Overall, we were satisfied with the implementation. We perhaps should have spent more time consulting with Zimbra or others regarding best practices but as we got to know the system better we were able to make changes relatively easily after the fact.

Incentivized

Google Calendar is a close competitor and I think wins in certain categories like general appearance and enabling focus hours & working hours. However, Microsft 365's calendar just seems like it has been built out more with a focus on business use case (despite still having many grievances with Microsoft 365).

• We were originally a Groupwise shop before changing to Zimbra in 2008. Zimbra, from an end-user standpoint, pricing, system administration, and management is a far better system.
• We use Google Apps for our students. We did not find it to be suitable for faculty and staff due to its lack of shared accounts.
• We are moving from Zimbra to Office 365. Office 365 offers just about all that Zimbra had, though its web interface is inferior to that of Zimbra. It does offer us greatly reduced costs though, and high availability. If Zimbra were to have a fully HA environment, we may have stayed with them.

Incentivized

• Very significant improvement in employee productivity (more than 10%), because people spend much less time arranging meetings.
• Essential tool to develop remote work within the company during Covid.
• No need to build an email infrastructure (significant cost reduction in IT infrastructure).

Incentivized

• Improved internal communication and dissemination and distribution of messages and corporate objectives.
• The creation of an internal network of employees is something that gives us security and confidence.
• Having a private and exclusive messaging system differentiates us from the competition and from other companies.