Google Meet Review 2024: Features, Pros & Cons

Google Meet is a video and audio conferencing tool; it is the surviving remnants of the now-defunct Google Hangouts and Google+. The program launched in 2017 and today is one of the better-known and routinely used video conferencing options available.

With Meet, users can:

• Instantly launch or join a meeting
• Send out invites by email or text messaging
• Use the chat feature during meetings
• Blur the background or select special background images
• Present by using the “Share screen” feature
• Engage the “raise hand” feature to avoid speaking over other participants
• Use emojis for self-expression and positive interactions

Though Google Meet is free, premium features expand on what is possible. For instance, by signing up for a Google Workspace plan, your business can hold meetings for up to 1,000 participants. Premium Google Meet allows companies to record meetings, track attendance, use noise cancellation and use in-domain live streaming. With enterprise-level plans, it is also possible to livestream from Google Meet to YouTube.

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Google Meet works by using the internet to allow meeting participants to connect. Calls may use both video and audio, but it is also common for such meetings to be strictly audio, functioning similarly to a phone call. This option is useful when a poor or unreliable internet connection may cause the video to lag or freeze, especially when attempting to share screens.

Because the internet connection quality can directly impact the success of the meeting, Google recommends a wired connection for optional sound and video quality. For bandwidth, Google suggests an outbound signal of at least 3.2 Mbps and a minimum inbound signal of 2.6 Mbps with two participants, 3.2 Mbps with five participants, or 4.0 Mbps with 10 participants. Understand that the more participants a meeting has, the better your bandwidth quality must be.

As Google Meet is a top-rated video conferencing product, many professionals or organizations incorporate the software into their communication strategies. However, alternatives on the market could serve as a better fit depending on your business needs.

Google Meet Is Best For:

• Low-cost video and audio conferencing: Even when upgrading to premium business plans, Google Meet provides a cost-effective method for businesses of all sizes to network within and outside the organization efficiently.
• Meetings with hundreds of participants: Depending on your service plan, you can hold a meeting with a couple of hundred or up to a thousand participants. By recording meetings or streaming to YouTube, the number of people seeing the meeting could be especially large.
• Share screens: Easily present slide shows or other information during the meeting by selecting the “share screen” button.
• Ensuring privacy: You can blur or substitute background images to protect your privacy during meetings or avoid unnecessary distractions.
• Interactivity tools: Google Meet provides features that encourage engagement during meetings. For example, those in meetings can raise their hand to ask questions, react to news with available emojis or use the chat to ask questions and share links.

Google Meet Is Not Recommended For:

• Use as part of an all-in-one platform: Google Meet is not naturally intertwined with cloud communication tools that fall under the Google umbrella; it takes notable effort to use these products together. In contrast, competing products such as RingCentral or Dialpad provide omnichannel services on the same plan via downloadable software.
• Google-based whiteboards: Google is phasing out its native whiteboards, so you must find third-party whiteboards compatible with Meet.
• Avoiding Google purchases: Because Google Meet has no specific pricing plans, paying solely for premium video/audio conferencing software access is impossible. Getting premium business options outright requires committing to a Google Workspace plan, regardless of whether you want or need those other tools.

Google Meet probably has the best advantage of video conferencing tools in that so many people use Google and have existing accounts. Rather than downloading a product to their desktop for video meetings, meeting participants can join via any modern web browser. You can download a mobile app to hold video and audio conferences via smartphone.

In addition to easy access, Google Meet is free to use; you must upgrade for business features. As Meet is free, it is excellent for individual professionals and small business teams seeking a budget-friendly way to hold video meetings. The cost-friendly nature of Workspace pricing makes it among the most scalability-friendly conferencing tools available.

Google Meet provides service options for getting the most out of your video conferencing experience, as discussed below.

Ease of Use

Google Meet is a very easy-to-use video meeting tool, accessible by logging in to your Google account and going to the website to start a new conversation. While you do need to download software to use the product on your phone, once you do, it is just as quick and easy to start or join a new meeting.

Hardware

Google provides hardware for Meet under the Series One umbrella of supportive equipment. These items include:

Series One Desk 27: This product is an all-in-one device with a 27” LCD touchscreen, 5-megapixel camera and passive styles. Use a single USB-C cable to link it to a laptop, or you can use it as a desktop monitor. Google made it in partnership with Avocor.

Series One Board 65: This 65” UHD LCD screen device can be attached to a mobile stand or mounted to the wall. It comes with a Google Tensor Processing Unit, or TPU, and Google AI. Along with the Desk 27 model, Google and Avocor partnered to create it.

Series One Room Kits: Made through a partnership with Lenovo, these room kits feature a smart audio bar that uses noise-canceling technology, microphone pods, 4K cameras, and a Meet compute system with an Intel i7 processor and built-in Google Edge TPUs. Manage the setup using a touch-control display powered by a single Ethernet cable; you can also operate the meeting without touch, using voice commands instead.

The Series One Google Meet hardware options are each designed to provide an engaging team collaboration experience. Some items work best for individuals at a desk, while others support large teams with members engaging across wide spaces within huge rooms.

Software

Google Meet’s software is primarily web-based, though it is available for download to iOS or Android-compatible devices. You can use Meet software for:

• Video and audio conferencing
• Screen sharing during meetings
• Interactions using the chat box, emojis or raise hand tools
• Recording meetings

With a plan upgrade, you may also connect your stream to YouTube. Unlike competing software, Google Meet’s software functions as a stand-alone tool; it’s quite common with competing VoIP and UCaaS providers to treat video conferencing as one branch of an all-in-one communications platform.

Video and Audio Quality

We found Google Meet’s video and audio quality to be overall of the highest quality. Images of others in the meeting were clear, and the speakers were easy to hear and understand. When someone was temporarily frozen or experienced lagging, it was typically because of their internet connection quality.

If your internet broadband connections are of a certain quality, your video meetings should go well; to ensure the best experience, you should test your video and audio features before the meeting. If using Wi-Fi, consider switching to an Ethernet connection for the best experience.

Screen Sharing

During a meeting, you can share your screen by clicking the appropriate button. You can choose to share a single tab or the entire screen. This option is extremely useful for sharing PowerPoint presentations or team documents. Screen sharing with Google Meet is a great collaboration tool and a valuable means of employee instruction.

Meeting Recordings

It may be that a team member is absent or, due to other obligations, cannot be part of the meeting. By recording meetings in Google Meet, you can ensure everyone is on the same page and that nobody misses out on important information. Please note that the option to record meetings is a premium feature in Google Workspace; you must have at least the Business Standard plan to use it.

Security

Google Meet adheres to the standards set by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) security for Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) and Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP). If you sign up for Workspace, you can add another layer of security through Client-side Encryption (CSE).

All data transferred or shared during a Google Meet session automatically gets encrypted, provided you are accessing the meeting through a web browser, the Meet app on an Android or iOS device, or Google Meet hardware. Those who join the meeting by phone or using their phone’s audio feature do so through their telephone carrier’s network. Because of this, those calls might not be encrypted.

Third-Party Integrations

Google Meet can integrate with more than 200 applications. Some more popular options include Miro, HubSpot, Trello, Zapier, Jiminny and many others. While it is possible to integrate with Google through various apps, this is not the impression you would get through the Google Workspace Marketplace, where the filter only features several applications.

Google Meet benefits greatly from being capable of linking up with a variety of productivity, training, applicant-tracking and other types of software. Additionally, Google Meet can link up with a suite of in-house applications such as Calendar, Voice and Chat.

	Business Starter	Business Standard	Business Plus	Enterprise
Starting Price	$6 per month, billed annually	$12 per month, billed annually	$18 per month, billed annually	Contact the sales team for a quote
Meeting Participants (Maximum)	100	150	500	1,000
Screen, App and Document Sharing	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Whiteboards	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Record Meetings	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Virtual Backgrounds	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Meeting Transcription	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Integrations	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Breakout Chat Rooms	No room, chat box available	Yes, breakaway chat room	Yes, breakaway chat room	Yes, breakaway chat room
Polls	No	No	Yes	Yes
Pin/Spotlight Certain Participants	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Raise Hand	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Customer Support	Standard (multichannel support, including knowledge base; lower priority than enhanced support customers)	Standard (multichannel support, including knowledge base; lower priority than enhanced support customers); enhanced support through add-on	Standard (multichannel support, including knowledge base; lower priority than enhanced support customers); enhanced support through add-on	Enhanced support

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Free

As Google Meet is freeware for anyone with a Google account, you can start a video or audio meeting at no cost. Host up to 100 participants in a meeting that may last up to 60 minutes; you may also raise your hand to get the moderator’s attention. This level of conferencing may be fine for individuals conducting one-on-one meetings or small business teams. Otherwise, you must purchase a Workspace plan to access more advanced Meet tools.

Business Starter

Business Starter improves on the freeware tier by letting you host 24-hour meetings.

Participants can join domestically or internationally by phone through Google Voice. In addition, Starter permits Google Meet hardware owners to use the “raise hand” function for an entire room during a conference.

Business Starter improves the freeware regarding meeting length and lets team members or outside collaborators join by phone. At $6 per user per month, it could be a cost-effective option for individuals or small teams.

Business Standard

Business Standard offers everything in Free and Starter while incorporating breakout chat rooms, noise cancellation, adding co-hosts, polls, Q&As, control Slides presentations and the ability to record or transcribe meetings and save them to Google Drive. You may also set the recording quality when sharing screens. Business Standard lets up to 150 participants join meetings, making it an ideal subscription plan for small businesses.

Business Plus

Plus provides everything in the lower tiers while allowing you to host meetings for a maximum of 500 people; you can also track attendance, though this option requires that at least five people attend the meeting. This tier is ideal for a medium-sized business that expects hundreds of people to attend conferencing sessions routinely.

Enterprise

The Enterprise plan lets you host up to 1,000 people in video meetings. You also get access to in-domain streaming. As there is no listed price, you will need to contact the sales team to get an exact quote for the service.

You must have access to an admin account to contact support concerning Google Workspace. You can contact customer support using the “Help Assistant” window if you have an admin account. Without an admin account, customers are limited to getting help for issues through the Google Workspace Community forum or the Google Workspace Learning Center.

Google prioritizes support offerings by service plan, offering three tier levels: Standard, Enhanced and Premium. While Google mentions that each tier has specific channels available, it does not clarify the channels available and how best customers may take advantage of them. The only thing clearly stated is that depending on your service plan, Google expects to respond to your issue within a certain time frame.

In attempting to get support, we were extremely limited due to our account not being an admin account and not having access to enhanced support options, which are limited to enterprise-level customers. If you prefer direct access to customer support without a series of upgrades or confusing limitations, then Google is probably not the best option.

	Google Meet	GoTo Meeting	Zoom	TeamViewer Meeting
Rating
Starting Price	$0 per month	$12 per organizer per month (billed annually)	Free; $149.90 per year per user for Pro	$24.90 per license per month (billed annually)
Meeting Participants (Maximum)	1,000	250	1,000	300
Screen, App and Document Sharing	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Whiteboards	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Record Meetings	Yes, with upgrade	Yes, with upgrade	Yes	Yes
Virtual Backgrounds	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Meeting Transcription	Yes	Yes, with upgrade	Yes	No
Integrations	200-plus	28	1,000-plus	30
Breakout Chat Rooms	Yes, with upgrade	Yes	Yes	No
Polls	Yes, with upgrade	No	Yes, with upgrade	No
Pin/Spotlight Certain Participants	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Raise Hand	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Customer Support	Standard (multichannel support, including knowledge base; lower priority than enhanced support customers)	Knowledge base, community forum, chatbot, support tickets, phone number	Knowledge base, community forum, chatbot, support tickets; support ticket and live chat for licensed users only and live support available for subscription plans greater than $50 per month	Knowledge base, community forum, website chat, support tickets, phone number
Read Reviews	–	–	Read Zoom Review	–

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Google Meet vs. GoTo Meeting

While GoTo Meeting is a serviceable video conferencing service with a two-week trial available, Google Meet outright provides video conferencing software for free with a lower starting cost for premium access to related tools. Each service sells video conferencing-related hardware, with GoTo Meeting allowing a monthly “flex” option to cut costs; GoTo sells its products directly while Meet offers equipment through global resellers.

A few items, such as polls, are unavailable with GoTo Meeting or cost more upon service plan upgrade, as is the case with transcription. Google Meet also has far more integrations available than GoTo Meeting. Meet is also more scalability-friendly and cost-effective overall, making it the better choice for small and large companies.

Google Meet vs. Zoom

Google Meet and Zoom each provide video conferencing software at no cost, with the option to upgrade and expand service features. A key difference is that Google Meet doesn’t have its own pricing tiers; instead, Meet is available with Google Workspace plans. Zoom, however, can be purchased separately; likewise, you can bundle it with other services such as Zoom Phone or Zoom Contact Center.

Each service allows up to 1,000 video meeting participants, though Zoom has far more third-party integration options. Although both make customers pay upgrades to improve customer support options, Zoom’s offerings are at least a bit more transparent, making it clear exactly what support options are available depending on your service plan.

Google Meet and Zoom nearly match up with service features and overall qualities. Still, Meet’s lower starting cost may make it a better option for individuals and tiny companies. Please read our article comparing Meet and Zoom for additional insight into which software may be best for your business.

Google Meet vs. TeamViewer Meeting

TeamViewer Meeting may not be as well known as Google Meet, but it provides several service plans that could make it work for businesses of all sizes. With a starting cost of around $25 per month per person, TeamViewer’s service is a bit more expensive than Google’s, but you can purchase licenses in batches instead of one at a time; this also covers hundreds of devices.

While TeamViewer Meeting boasts the trust of major brands including Coca-Cola, Airbus and Philips, its video meeting participation maxes out at a far lower rate than Google Meet, which can host up to 1,000 people outright; viewership could also increase when linked to YouTube. In terms of cost, growth and features, Google Meet is the better choice between the two.

Our experts have used Google Meet for interviews and work meetings for several years and are familiar with the software. As for video and audio quality, we find it is consistently high-definition as long as the internet connection meets the necessary standard. We appreciated the availability of chat options, which we used to ask questions without risking the flow of conversation or the presenter as they shared important information with the group.

We noticed no lagging or freezing in meetings with hundreds of people present. Admittedly, internet connection quality may have played a role in this, as we witnessed others with such issues, but they likely had less adequate bandwidth availability at the time.

Google Meet has all the necessary features for a productive video conferencing session. The one area where it lags behind alternative options is its customer support, which is not as transparent or readily available to assist users as possible. Still, because of the cost-effectiveness of Google Meet, we believe it is an excellent option for professionals and companies ranging from tiny teams to enterprise-level organizations.