Virtual meetings are a must-have tool for modern businesses. These digital spaces allow distributed teams to collaborate, share ideas, and stay productive, wherever they are. Virtual meeting spaces enable smooth communication and add features to traditional business discussions that enhance creativity, improve productivity, and accelerate results.
Many platforms offer features such as screen sharing, whiteboarding, AI-driven notes, and recordings. Some offer enhanced hybrid meeting experiences, integration with productivity tools, and other features that reduce friction and improve productivity. Selecting the proper meeting platform is essential. Your choice affects the quality of your online meetings and impacts the effectiveness and engagement of your employees.
Criteria for evaluating virtual meeting rooms
At first, it might seem like virtual meeting rooms are very similar. While they do have some features in common, a few products stand out from the rest. Here are some criteria to consider when evaluating a virtual meeting platform.
Video and audio quality
High-quality video and audio are a must. Participants want to communicate clearly, without glitches and gaps that can be distracting and frustrating for meeting participants. The best platforms prioritize adaptive technology that maintains HD video and crisp audio, even if a user’s network connection is weak.
Collaboration tools
Collaboration is the heart of any successful meeting. The best virtual meeting rooms offer tools such as screen sharing, whiteboarding, file sharing, and meeting recording to make teamwork seamless and efficient. Collaborative meeting notes give participants an opportunity to record their shared vision of a conversation, facilitating better alignment and driving positive outcomes.
Ease of use
Users should not have to undergo lengthy training to use a virtual meeting platform. The best tools are intuitive, flexible, and easy to use. Look for a clean user interface and a straightforward setup process, which can often make the difference between a productive meeting and a frustrating one. Participants should be able to join meetings quickly, without the need for complex software or technical knowledge.
Security and privacy
Cybersecurity is a top priority for businesses, who must protect important trade secrets and safeguard customer information and other sensitive data subject to privacy and security regulations. The best platforms use end-to-end encryption, allow for multi-factor authentication, and comply with stringent regulations like GDPR and HIPAA. Responsible and secure use of AI is also important, especially for companies that operate in highly regulated industries like healthcare and financial services.
Integration with business tools
Although some vendors offer little or no integration with external software, this capability offers enormous advantages for those who wish to take advantage of the opportunity. By integrating with CRM systems, calendars, and productivity apps, the best virtual meeting rooms allow users to schedule meetings, manage tasks, and collaborate across different platforms easily, without leaving the virtual meeting room. That means higher employee productivity, and it virtually guarantees that fewer follow-up tasks will slip through the cracks.
Scalability and reliability
A virtual meeting platform must be scalable, offering consistent performance regardless of the number of participants. Work with a vendor that delivers “five 9’s” of uptime (i.e. 99.999% availability). That means higher platform reliability, with fewer disruptions.
Best virtual meeting rooms today
With these criteria in mind, here’s a breakdown of the top virtual meeting rooms for 2025:
RingCentral virtual meeting rooms
RingCentral delivers a powerful virtual meeting solution with unmatched scalability and reliability. It provides high-definition video and audio, ensuring every participant has a clear and smooth experience, even in low-bandwidth environments. Your participants can easily join from the most popular desktop or mobile browsers, with zero downloads required. RingCentral offers seamless integration with popular business tools, including popular CRM systems and productivity apps. It also offers robust APIs to enable custom-built integrations. Additionally, your team can easily join quick, informal meetings via team huddles when needed.
RingCentral adheres to a strict “privacy by design” policy for high security and trusted AI, making it suitable for highly regulated industries that must comply with HIPAA, GLBA, and similar laws. RingCentral offers some of the best AI-enabled features among all the products featured here. Perhaps most importantly, it’s part of the company’s larger cloud-based communications platform, weaving together phone, video meetings, and messaging for a unified experience.
Zoom
Zoom has become a household name, known for its ease of use and strong video quality. Its wide range of collaboration tools, including breakout rooms and virtual backgrounds, make it a popular choice for businesses and educators. Its simplicity and familiarity are virtues, but companies that truly want to leverage the power of online meetings and integration may find that it falls short of meeting their needs. The company has also experienced some negative publicity because of security limitations, but has since caught up to most of its competitors.
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams integrates deeply with Office 365, making it a good choice for businesses that rely heavily on Microsoft’s suite of applications. It excels at team collaboration with features like file sharing and persistent chat, and offers robust support for hybrid meetings. However, the product’s user interface can be confusing for new users, and it lags behind most other top competitors in terms of usability.
Cisco Webex
Cisco Webex is known for its enterprise-grade security and high-quality video and audio. It’s suitable for businesses prioritizing privacy and data protection, offering collaboration tools and meeting features. Webex is good for enterprise-level meetings and integrates with the company’s event-management products for online and hybrid events such as conferences and expos. Some users feel that the Webex interface is outdated and lacks the ease of use that casual users need to participate effectively in online meetings.
Google Meet
Google Meet stands out for its simplicity and seamless integration with Google Workspace, making scheduling and hosting meetings effortless. It’s good for businesses already using Google products. It is easy to schedule meetings using Google Calendar, and the product lives up to Google’s reputation for simple, user-friendly interface design. Having said that, Google Meet offers surprisingly few collaboration features compared to other platforms on this list.
GoTo Meeting
GoTo Meeting is known for its user-friendly interface and practical collaboration tools. It’s a solid choice for small to mid-sized businesses looking for reliable virtual meeting solutions. GoTo Meeting covers all the basics adequately, but it lacks some of the advanced features needed by larger enterprises.
Slack Huddles
For teams already using Slack, Huddles offers a quick, in-platform way to launch audio and video meetings, making it convenient for impromptu team collaborations. The clear benefit in this case is the tight integration with Slack, making it very simple to launch quick, informal meetings. However, Slack Huddles offers fairly limited functionality, making it less suitable for larger, more formal meetings.
Adobe Connect
Adobe Connect is designed for customized virtual meeting rooms, perfect for webinars and training sessions. Its extensive feature set allows for high levels of engagement and control. Organizations that do a lot of online training sessions and webinars may prefer Connect because it offers high levels of moderator control and customization. For new users, however, Adobe Connect comes with a relatively steep learning curve.
RingCentral: The right virtual meeting room solution for your business
The right virtual meeting room can dramatically improve team collaboration and productivity. Although there are many platforms to consider, RingCentral stands out as a top choice due to its AI-driven collaboration and workflow tools, superior security, and seamless integration with the company’s industry-leading unified communications platform.
Ready to transform your meetings? Schedule a demo today to experience the power of RingCentral’s virtual meeting rooms firsthand.
Originally published Oct 01, 2024
