Google Hangouts and Google Meet Review

If you’re jumping onto the work-from-home bandwagon, you’ll need a new way to meet online. Maybe you’re just looking for an alternative to Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Or perhaps you want a better way to connect with family and friends. Whatever the reason, we’d like to help you negate the confusion between Google Hangouts and Google Meet.

In short, we think you’ll love Hangouts for easy one-on-one chats, but Meet is a better fit for groups or video meetings.

Here’s the biggest difference between Google Hangouts and Google Meet: Google Hangouts is typically more casual and easier to use for personal messaging, calls, and video conferencing.

Using Google Hangouts is free and simple. All you need is your Gmail account, and you’ll automatically have access. However, anyone participating in your calls or messages needs to have Hangouts too. You won’t be able to send external messages or video call anyone who doesn’t have Hangouts.

Google Hangouts is very easy to use if you want to send a quick message or call someone using Wi-Fi. Hangouts especially shines as a group-chat app. While it only allows 25 people on a video call, you can have six times that many people in a text-based group. A friend of mine uses Hangouts on her iPod Touch to connect with friends over Wi-Fi. It’s almost like having a mini phone-plan at your fingertips, for free.

Google Meet goes more in depth than Hangouts. You can upgrade to a paid plan and join meetings with more participants. The free plan allows for up to one hour of video conferencing at a time with up to 100 people. Not bad for the free option. (And in case you didn’t notice, it’s longer than a free Zoom meeting, which times out at 45 minutes.)

Google Meet also allows you to dial in on your phone if you don’t have access to Wi-Fi. This feature is really nice if you don’t have an internet connection but still want to catch that work call.

Similar to Zoom, you can send private messages or share pictures, files, links, and other data during your meeting. It’s also really easy to record your meetings and upload them to Google Drive so you have them later. If you prefer to send a message to the whole chat, you can do that too.

Unfortunately, you won’t be able to disable the chat feature in Google Meet even if you’re hosting the meeting. This feature is highly requested by users and might change in the future. Both Zoom and Microsoft Teams allow the meeting hosts to turn off the chat feature in meetings.

Another benefit is the ability to connect with someone even if they don’t use Google Meet. You can still video conference with anyone you want. All you’ll need to do is send them the link to dial into the meeting.

Because there’s a dial-in option, you don’t need to rely on your internet connection for that work-from-home meeting. You can use Google Meet right from your device using the Android or iIOS app. All you need is the dial-in number. It’ll work without Wi-Fi or data.

If you want to upgrade from the free version of Google Meet to Google Workspace (the two services are fully integrated), you can purchase one of the following premium plans, which cost $6 to $18 per month per user.

Each plan comes with different levels of attendees, storage, and security. The Enterprise plan seems to be geared more toward business use, but any other plan can work for the average Jo.

Business Starter can give you the basics for those busy working from home on a presentation. And Business Plus is great for someone like a remote professor or someone who just needs a bit more support, giving you up to 500 participants and even recording and attendance tracking. 

If you’re trying to choose between Google Hangouts and Google Meet, remember that it depends on what you’re looking for. If you need to host a meeting with up to 100 people, or if you think you’ll need to upgrade to a business plan, then Google Meet has you covered. You can also use Google Meet similar to a phone call—you don’t need an internet connection.

If you’re looking for a free platform that’s easy to use with just a few friends, then Google Hangouts is the better option. Anyone has full access to Hangouts with a Gmail account.

Let’s compare Google Hangouts and the basic Google Meet plan with popular video-conferencing giants like Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

After looking at the table, it’s easy to see that Google Meet allows you to set meetings for the same amount of time as Microsoft Teams. If you’re looking for a new alternative to Zoom, Google provides a good option.

We think that both Google Hangouts and Google Meet are worth competitors in the video conference sphere. Hangouts is a good fit for casual video hangs with a few friends or for large texting groups. Google Meet goes toe-to-toe with players like Zoom and Skype with large video meeting rooms and hour-long meetings.

Interested in more apps for online meetings? Check out these five great video conferencing apps.