RingCentral Meetings vs. Skype (discontinued)

I would recommend RingCentral for any business that looking to make the jump to Voice over IP and also want business essentials like video meetings all in one app. RingCentral Meetings integrates very well with its other communication tools which makes it very easy for a business to manage their communications in a single platform. The only scenario I see where RingCentral Meetings not being a good fit is if a business will be using video meetings as a marketing tool where they need extra marketing features like lead form captures and notification emails to be sent out.

Incentivized

Skype is an excellent choice for phone calls, both local and international, and is also one of the most affordable solutions for business office line. It is simple to use and get started with and provides a call experience on mobile that is similar to a regular phone call. It is not the ideal tool for team chat. For text-based team communication, a separate dedicated tool is still ideal

Incentivized

• Screen sharing is wonderful in [RingCentral] Meetings. It makes presenting easy.
• Being able to mute and turn off cameras when necessary is a nice feature too.
• Switching from the computer to the cell phone when on the go is a nice benefit.

Incentivized

• Perfect for chatting via text. Has emojis, file sharing, audio sharing, and even video sharing capabilities.
• Good for video chats. You can do 1 on 1 sessions with a good quality video.
• Privacy is also another important function they have. They allow for private conversations between users.
• Ability to delete conversations with sensitive information you may not want seen by users not authorized. Can share confidential information via Skype.
• Customizable profiles to fit your company culture.

Incentivized

• It's easy to end up accidentally trying to run multiple meetings under the same account, which can cause churn and confusion for participants
• Interacting with people outside the organization is sometimes hard because RingCentral Meetings requires them to download and install software - there's no plugin-free way to get in to the conference (other than just dialing in via audio)
• A lot of our end users are repeatedly confused with how to select phone vs computer audio, so we end up losing time at the start of a meeting dealing with echoes on the line
• There's only two roles in a meeting - Host and Guest. When we have large meetings with remote team members, it'd be useful to be able to manage subgroups of participants - i.e. Team Members vs Executives, to be able to control who gets muted or who gets dropped at different times in the call.
• From time to time we encounter notifications of instability of the underlying internet connection, but then RingCentral isn't able to tell us if the issue was on our local network, intermediary sources, or their main service.
• Because RingCentral Meetings is just a white label of Zoom, RingCentral's support for the platform is more limited than for their other services.

Incentivized

• Skype is a RESOURCE hog. People who have limited bandwidth will have poor call quality.
• It is hard to figure out how to use emojis and upload images in the chat.
• The background images do not fool anybody....it is clearly not your real background.

Incentivized

We are grandfathered into an unlimited toll-free minutes plan with RingCentral, so as long as we have them as a VoIP provider, we get Meetings free. If they ever start to charge us for using meetings as well, we'll drop that part in a second and switch to Skype for Business, which we currently have as well part of our Office 365 package.

Incentivized

I have given this rating as this need to give more than that as it's very helpful for us and makes our work more efficient and fast.

Extremely intuitive and easy to use. Very minimal onboarding needed (ie training ) as most clients implement and use RingCentral Meetings in their environment within weeks of implementing it. This is the power of cloud computing where as applications are feature rich, flexible. Also, RingCentral can be branded with other technologies with their skins.

Incentivized

Skype is not as good as Facetime in terms of ease to glance at it and figure out how it works. I think that's a result of Skype trying to be too many things at once. A lot of the menu and UI could be streamlined, and I would jettison some of the additional functions that have been tacked on over the years to simplify. That being said, while some options are slightly hard to find, they all work flawlessly once found.

Incentivized

RingCentral is a great tool for everyone interested in making animations. The thing that appealed to us most about it is that it is very simple to use and works with much perfection. Like lip-synchronization goes so well with the character as soon as we add voice-over in it. Also, we can add characters and scenes without any hardship. We highly recommend this software.

I am not aware of the current support level for Skype for business, as I have never used even though I have the product. However, the support for Skype's personal paid users is not where it could be. Users who pay for Skype features do not have a clear path to reach out to support. So, rating 6, can be better as soon as I need to use Skype for business support and get a good experience. I will say that I will renew Skype for Business subscription, which is a significant inconsistency on my end. The explanation is that Skype for Business comes bundled with Office for Business, with no additional cost, so why not.

Incentivized

It can be used on the phone via mobile application as well as on the desktop by logging in to the website. Easily installed and ready to use.

Incentivized

We use RingCentral Meetings only because our consultants have standardized on it and it allows us to not have to manage temporary accounts for those consultants in our local meeting platform. It's not a bad platform, just not what our organization has standardized on. Our primary platform for meetings is Microsoft Teams, which integrates very well with our other business software.

Selected Skype because it was the only platform that was available for such purposes for video conferencing or audio conferencing. Since Microsoft, the tech giant, backed it, it was assured that it would work great in terms of productivity, with utmost security measures for all data, conversations, work materials, and personal information.

Incentivized

• Reduced time spent managing technical support issues (instead of customers describing problems, they can screen-share to help with the diagnosing process)
• Whiteboarding has been exceptionally helpful to sketch new concepts and save them for future reference
• Lack of capability to remote-control smart phones has limited it's screen sharing functionality for us, requiring the need for another software subscription to utilize that function.

Incentivized

• Skype has contributed to increased efficiency for remote collaboration, especially now due to the ways things are and having so many remote employees. Without this tool, or any collaboration tool, business could not move forward.
• I think Skype is the cost effective solution also between it and the other competitors out there. I'm not privy to the exact costs, but it strikes me as the cheaper option.
• The only negative impact I would say is its lack of functionality and customization for larger organizations or groups that have employees spread out or require inter-departmental collaboration.

Incentivized