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OVID or no-COVID, online meetings, and events are here to stay. Global reach, high ROI, and convenience are just a few of the factors that will keep us hooked on these platforms.
At a time when people are looking for safer and better technology, a comparison between Airmeet and Zoom is obvious. While Zoom has been in the market for a longer time and is definitely a great product, it has had some glaring concerns with regards to security and privacy.
Airmeet was only launched in 2019 but we’ve managed to gain a ton of traction globally for humanizing the whole concept of virtual events & meetups. Also because we have a few great feature offerings along with robust security & a privacy-focused design.
Long story short: Zoom is amazing for internal video chats or conferencing needs within your organization/known-group. But if you’re looking for a platform to support your virtual event & networking needs, trust me nothing beats Airmeet!
And no, I’m not saying this just because I’m from Airmeet, but because I have tried virtually every decent-enough platform and as an online summit organizer myself, I don’t think anyone comes even remotely close to delivering the user experience that Airmeet does. We actually measure the “interaction value” of participants and not just “how many people did we get”.
Let’s take a deeper dive into the differences between these two platforms so I can convince you better 🙂
Airmeet
Airmeet is an all-in-one virtual events hosting platform that takes the “remote” out of “remote connections” and adds “real” into the equation.
Airmeet’s events have immersive interactions and a more luxurious or visual networking experience that actually creates that “Wow” moment for most participants. I have never heard anyone say “wow” on Zoom unless I put up a weird virtual background!.
As a community manager, you could host an Airmeet with tens of thousands of concurrent users and have up to 16 speakers live on the stage. Amazing right! And all this without compromising on security and privacy.
Exciting Features of Airmeet
- Built for events of all sizes from team meetings and webinars to large scale conferences and multi-sessions seminars.
- No Download: No software downloadable required, no drop-offs, and no latency. Only a high-quality HD live broadcast & networking experience.
- Ease-of-use: Easy to start and join an Airmeet through any device. Works on all modern browsers.
- Robust Security and Privacy Features: End-to-end encryption, GDPR compliance with cloud storage so you can count on your communications being secure. Guest authentication and chat moderation ensure spam-free discussions.
Another interesting way to make it more secure is that with no app installer, Airmeet ensures no one is snooping on your data or requesting permission to gain control (yeah, it’s a little technical for me too). - Social Lounge: The place where participants actually meet. You could join a table to meet a group of random people & have a video chat with them. Or hop from table to table till you find “your people”. Pre & post session networking helps your attendees build real connections.
- Raise Hand: There’s a live broadcast going on & someone has a question. You could either let them post the question on chat, or they could “Raise Hand” and come onto the stage where they can directly talk to everyone on video. What better way to reward the kind people who ask genuine questions!
- Quality and Scale – Airmeet events can auto-scale as your attendee count increases, without a drop in quality. Agora.io powers video communications on Airmeet and is capable of supporting upto 1M connections.
- Multi-speaker sessions for large scale events that could run for hours or days at a stretch. Participants don’t need to register for each session separately.
Pros
- Easy and quick event set-up and registration with no download required to join an event or meetup.
- HD-quality video and audio
- Automatic meeting recording of the entire event session at no cost & saved on the cloud.
- Hassle-free screen sharing.
- With a single click, add an event to your calendar.
- “Social Lounge” enables attendees to network for a more luxurious experience.
- Offers moderated group chats to disable malicious posts.
- “Raise Hand” to ask a question to the Host/speaker and share the stage.
- Provides end-to-end support and training from event creation to going live.
- Allows up to 16 feeds simultaneously on-screen, reduces distractions and maintains the focus on speakers.
- No more Zoombombimg: The word “Zoom bombing” has been specially coined because of the frequency of such privacy breaches happening on Zoom.
Zoomboming is photo-bombing gone wild, with trolls posting explicit and racist material to an unsuspecting audience and taking screen controls, by utilizing open or unprotected meetings and weak settings.
Airmeet reduces the odds of this happening in several ways – guest authentication for every meeting, invite-only private meetings, chat moderation, and screen sharing limited to speakers or attendee with hand-raised.
“Virtual events & conferences require their own vertically oriented platforms designed specifically to build real connections & deliver an interactive event experience. Video conferencing tools like Zoom aren’t built for this use case.”
Virtual events & conferences require their own vertically oriented platforms designed specifically to build real connections & deliver an interactive event experience. Video conferencing tools like Zoom aren’t built for this use case.
Cons
- The product is simple right now, simple yet efficient
But we’re moving fast & building an entire ecosystem to support communities & community managers to help them build, grow & engage their communities on Airmeet.
Who Should Use Airmeet?
Community Managers who are looking to:
- Build more significant and engaged communities.
- Maximize ROI with quality lead generation.
- Enjoy a seamless experience from publishing an event to hosting it.
- Provide richer peer-to-peer networking experience with virtual tables in the social lounge where an attendee can choose to interact with co-attendees of interest.
- Prioritize the safety and privacy of participants.
- Host frequent events or networking meetups.
Zoom
Zoom is among the most popular products for video conferencing, even when it has been under fire more often than it would like.
Here we share what you need to know about Zoom to make a conscious decision-
- Security Concerns: No comments here, just some major recent security events (breaches) that I hope never happen with me: –
- ZoomBombing and ZoomRaids (mass zoombombings).
- Zoom malware allows unauthorized session recordings.
- Phishing scam preys work-from-home employees.
- Data collection, leaks, and compromised accounts traded online.
- Dubious “end-to-end” encryption.
- Installer bundled with malware gains admin rights to access the user’s computer root.
- Vulnerability to foreign surveillance.
- A webcam vulnerability allows malicious hackers to gain access to the user’s webcam.
- The automated tool quickly finds active Zoom meeting IDs.
- ZoomBombing and ZoomRaids (mass zoombombings).
- Performance issues: The quality of sessions is not always at par and can take a long time to connect in some cases.
- Complicated and expensive pricing plans.
- Best Suited for 1:1 interactions and smaller groups.
Quick Comparison Table
No automatic recording.
We hope this comparison gives you a good look at what to expect when you are looking for the right platform for your community & organization. And if you still have any doubts, do reach out to us. We’ve got an amazing onboarding & support team!
Note: All data is updated as of June 2021, and the above content is based on the data collected from review sites. Further, prices, features and product specifications of the various service providers may be varied at any time without notice. Therefore, Airmeet does not guarantee that the information provided is complete and up-to-date. Further, the data shown here is for guidance only, and does not constitute any contractual representation or warranty. All copyrights and trademarks of the named service providers are duly acknowledged. Any liability for errors or omissions is expressly disclaimed.
Sorry, for the follow up comment. I am keen to know how my profile picture is shown for my last comment? I shared only my name and email address while posting a comment. Is it automatically taken from my Google account? If yes, you should ideally caution me there that my Google account profile picture will be shared with my comment.
We talk about privacy, and commenting policies are the backbone of the blog.
Thank you!
Hello Vinish, the profile picture here must be your WordPress author photo. This is standard procedure, we didn’t extract your gmail account photo. Hope that helps. 🙂
Very great medium to connect with. Rocking !!!!
How can I delete airmeets that are nol longer relevant?
Please drop us a mail at [email protected] for details.
Am I able to set up a demo of Airmeet for myself and some colleagues to view?
Please write to us at [email protected] and we will connect you with the best person for a demo.
Is it possible to use a diferent camera, i.e., not a webcam as a host?
Hello Joaquim,
Yes it is. Please follow this mini-guide to know how: https://help.airmeet.com/support/solutions/articles/82000443321-how-do-i-give-the-required-device-permissions-
If you still face any confusion, please feel free to write to us at [email protected]
Can I make concurrent sessions, I would like to make 3 discussions groups where I only go in the first 10 min to explain the theme, go out and return 10 min before it ends to get conclusions? And I neeed to record all of the discussions groups. Can Airmeet help me?
Hi Doris, As of right now you can’t be the host to 3 concurrent sessions. All sessions can be recorded except for table chats/discussions which cannot be recorded. Let us know if you’d like to get on a call to answer any other questions that you might have?
Amazing write-up! to the comparison of virtual platform