I'm going to compare three online meeting tools:
Adobe Connect, Google Meet,
and Zoom.
Adobe Connect is the most costly at about $1750 per year.
Google Meet is free,
and zoom is also free. However, if you want to
have meetings larger than three to four people, and you want to meet for more than 40 minutes,
you're gonna have to spend somewhere between 120 to 200 dollars a year.
In terms of connectivity, if you have a weak connection,
if you're in a rural area, or you just don't have a
very fast internet connection, Adobe Connect will give you problems
in terms of video and audio and delay in the audio.
Google Meet, it's pretty good, and so is Zoom in terms of connectivity.
So if you have a weak connection,
those would be the tools that you'd want to use in terms of ease of use.
Adobe Connect has a fairly steep learning curve, relative to Google Meet and Zoom.
Visual clarity I think is the best in Zoom, second-best in Google Meet.
And is pretty poor in Adobe Connect.
Unless you have a really strong connection, and even if you do,
the pictures seem quite small compared to the other two.
Tools, in terms of audio clarity,
I think Google Meet and Zoom are much clearer,
or clearer than Adobe Connect when you have connectivity problems.
Otherwise, they're comparable.
Screen sharing is pretty easy in Zoom,
and you can actually annotate the screen while you share it.
It's pretty good in Google Meet as well,
but it's not good at all in Adobe Connect. And I actually wouldn't recommend using it,
because it tends to freeze up the entire meeting.
In terms of chat features, Adobe Connect and Zoom are pretty much the same.
They allow you to chat with the whole group and with individual members within the group.
And you can see the chat while you actually see members of the meeting.
Google Meet isn't as good.
As soon as the chat goes up,
it actually blocks pictures of people in the meeting.
And if you post a comment or a link, and someone comes into the
meeting after you've posted, they won't see the previous chat.
So that's not too good in terms of Google Meet if you come in late to a meeting.
Social presence is your feeling about being in a community,
or in a room.
And Adobe Connect isn't that good,
because everybody looks really, really small on the screen.
And because of the connectivity issues, and visual and audio clarity,
social presence is undermined if you have a weak internet connection.
Google Meet is not that great either, because it allows you to only to
see four people on the side, instead of the entire group.
However, you can download a grid add-on to see the entire group,
and I would strongly recommend that.
Zoom allows you to see the entire group in a grid view naturally,
so I rated it higher.
In terms of managing participants in a meeting,
that is allowing them to do certain things in a meeting
Adobe Connect is pretty good, although it's somewhat complicated.
And, if you give everyone host status, they can change the screen,
and manipulate the screen, and that will affect everyone else,
so sometimes it creates a bit of confusion for users.
Google Meet doesn't really allow you to control participants in terms of muting,
or giving them access to certain features. Everyone is on their own.
Zoom on the other hand, has a number of
features like renaming a participant or muting a participant that are pretty handy.
Adobe Connect does provide you with access to breakout rooms.
And what I mean by breakout rooms is, small rooms that a larger
group can be divided into, and have small group discussions.
And Adobe's pretty good at that, it just takes a while to get people into groups.
Google Meet doesn't have that feature.
Zoom has the feature,
and it allows you to divide hundreds of people into small groups almost instantly.
I really like that feature in Zoom. I think it works well.
in terms of recording meetings,
Adobe Connect is pretty good.
It allows you to record the meetings, however the playback is slow,
it's awkward, and it doesn't really flow well.
Google Meet also allows you to record meetings, but you have to pay extra for that.
Zoom allows you to record meetings, the bigger meeting,
and it is the only tool that allows you to record breakout room sessions.
In terms of privacy and security,
I've rated Adobe Connect the highest because it is password protected,
and I haven't noted any issues with that program.
Google Meet is also pretty secure, it's a Google product.
However, you do give up some of your privacy when you're using any Google product.
I rated Zoom the lowest,
because there have been a number of privacy and security issues reported recently.
However, I believe Zoom is actually responding
to those concerns and addressing the privacy and security issues.
And finally in terms of closed captioning and accessibility,
Adobe Connect does not provide closed captioning.
Google Meet automatically provides closed captioning,
and it's pretty good.
Zoom provides closed captioning,
but you have to get a secondary tool to turn that on.
In terms of overall average then,
I rated Zoom the highest,
Google Meet somewhere in the middle,
and Adobe Connect the lowest.
I welcome your comments, suggestions, and challenges in the comment area.