Google Hangouts Pricing, Features, Reviews & Comparison of Alternatives

Pros
As station masters we do communication mainly through emails and video conferences. There are quite a lot of employees in each and every station and it is somewhat difficult to gather them all at one place to held meetings. So we decided to use video conferencing for meetings when employees are difficult to be gathered. Google hangouts help me to connect with other station masters. Google hangouts has everything that mandatory for communication. I don't need to install any application instead it's perfectly integrate with the email account. I can check the availability of co-workers and the important conversations with them can be archived easily. Normally we create calendar events and join from hangouts.While I'm using hangouts, I can access both my mails and chat from my mobile and my PC. The interface is really simple and easy to follow so that that even an average person can easily use this.

Cons
I love to have the feature of sharing multiple images and different file types with my colleagues. It would be great if google can improve on sharing different file types like pdf,xlsx etc and multiple images at once. Likewise google need to make certain improvements in hangouts to be competitive with other software giants in the industry. Other than that I have no complaints regarding hangouts and it satisfies me with my expectations about communication.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Google Hangout is one of the most intuitive and versatile tools available for video conferencing. Since its integrated with the Google ecosystem, I can access it from my corporate Gmail account or Google Calendar or directly through the meeting link. When I schedule a new meeting with my office colleagues, I can easily add Google Hangout to it when creating the invite which automatically generates a conference number. So, if the video conference doesn't work due to internet issues, I can simply dial into the conference using that random number. My favorite feature is Google Hangout letting me share my screen so other participants can see my presentation or whatever I am sharing in my laptop. All these features are available for use without additional cost, as long as, one has a Google account.

Cons
There are couple of issues which bother me when using Google Hangout. Firstly, I can't have multiple conferencing sessions open at the same time. Secondly, the steps to share my screen or presentation are not very intuitive and confusing to those who are first time users. I also believe active Google Hangout conferencing sessions consume high RAM resources and slows down Chrome browser or CPU. Finally, since Hangout is a Google product, it doesn't work smoothly using any non-Chrome browsers such as Internet Explorer. If I try opening it in Internet Explorer, Google Hangout may not start conference session. Google also needs to add new features and make Hangout more friendly experience when using mobile. Plus, I should be able to use Google Hangout with other meeting participants who don't have Hangout.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
This is literally the easiest chat and video conference platform, period. It truly puts other software to shame, to the point where it's hard to fathom that companies spend money on specific software to connect in this way when Hangouts is free with G-Suite and super reliable. I love that you can be on or off camera, you can readily mute yourself before even hopping into the hangout, and that it switches the view to the active speaker so that you never have to scroll or click through to see who is talking.

Cons
Sometimes, like with other Google products, it can seize up my Chrome browser. However, this is momentary and the lag will cease after a couple of seconds and allow me into the Hangout chat.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
The fact that google hangout is well integrated for the google mail users and chrome users, makes me to prefer it. I receive messages faster, easy to access and communicate with my colleagues at work, hangout makes working from home fun,chat on hangout are well organised and sorted in order, and also, it notify me when messages are sent,hangout offer the ability to create groups for friends or co workers,keeping track of people is made easy, we make video calls daily with clients and trainee , the screen sharing has been very helpful in training our real estate agent on digital marketing. i suggest for my organisation to use google product such as gmail, chrome and hangout, its a great community for easy communication, since they are all well integrated. One other thing is that I can search for my conversations, in case i forget, the fact that messages cannot be deleted after it has been sent has being beneficial, for record keeping, thanks to google.

Cons
I observed that hangout is not keeping up with latest instant messaging features, that allows to send multimedia document easily, accessing, selecting and sending images while on conversation is not easy to access on gallery at ones,the video call functionality needs upgrade to allow more people to share video calls at ones, my organisation is out growing the hangout messaging platforms, we need to be able to send pdf files on hangout, but hangout still remain our choice because it keeps us integrated in the google community, since what cannot be sent through hangout could be sent via gmail.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
Hangouts is incredibly simple to set up and use; it integrates directly into your existing gmail/gsuite account automatically and allows chatting with specific individuals or groups with a single click. You can create new groups very easily, and it's incredibly simple to keep track of who is talking. Chats are sorted by most-recent-first, allowing you to instantly spot new messages and respond.

Cons
There are very, very few features beyond what I've described in the Pros section. It's impossible to edit or delete a chat once it has been sent, there are no 'reactions' to individual chats, and most importantly there's no Level/Tier system meaning all chats are given equal focus and conversations can derail incredibly easily. Furthermore, you're restricted to using either the in-your-email interface, or the chrome addon interface, both of which have serious restrictions and failings in terms of notifications. The in-email interface makes it so you cannot see your chats unless you open your email tab, making multitasking very hard, and also masking notifications to the point it's basically imperceptible. The addon interface is bulky and unwieldy. It lacks any sort of stay-on-top-of-other-windows feature, and even if it had one it's so large you'd never want to use it. It doesn't pop itself forward when you receive any chats. The worst part is that it *used* to have an incredible addon interface, where it sat at the bottom of the screen only taking up a small handful of pixels, and popped up larger and flashed green whenever you had a new chat, and you could click on it to expand that chat to read/reply, and then minimize it back to the bottom of the screen, but then they "updated" it to the current version that's just objectively worse.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
What I like the most is that I don't need to share my phone number, only my Gmail email account and I already have access. It's totally free since it's another of the tools offered by Google. The interface is intuitive and easy to use, I can share images and videos, I can also make video calls. The app is light and loads very fast. I can chat from the computer or from the cell phone. The videoconferences are excellent, the communication flows very well, although as always, it depends on the internet signal, but in general terms it goes very well, you can share the screen

Cons
There're only two things that I don't like, one of them is that it doesn't have a desktop software but I have to use the web browser. It would be great if they offered software similar to the application they offer for smartphones. And the other thing that I do not like is that it doesn't offer the option to send and receive voice messages.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
I would never have known Hangouts without its integration with the Google mail system and since I am using it I can honestly say that it is the feature that I like the most: its perfect integration with email since it is not necessary to have an application installed on my computer to use it. It is a very simple application to use and it fulfills what it promises, fast, powerful messaging, video calls, ability to create groups of users and quite light if it is used from the web. Another feature that I use a lot and I really like is that the search bar that owns the mail system also finds the messages that you have sent or received through hangouts and it is very useful when you want to find very old messages that you need.

Cons
Something I do not like about Hangouts is that while the competition advances adding more and more features, such as stickers, voice notes, among others, I get the impression that Google Hangouts is not investing time in the platform because it remains the same I also do not like that video calls are not as fluid as their competition and creating a room sometimes gives so many errors that I end up using platform. But when I manage to connect with my colleagues, it works wonders. Finally, I feel that the mobile application must be improved, it is very heavy and slow, today I have a very fast cell phone and it does not affect me but when I had a mid-range cell phone it was a nightmare to use Google Hangouts.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
Google Hangouts allowed me to stay in touch and collaborate on projects with coworkers while working from remotely for a company from home. Being able to video chat and participate in meetings with others allowed me the freedom to work full time and 100% from a home office. With Google Hangouts you can check a co-workers availability, send direct individual and group messages and video chat easily. I interviewed for the position over Google Hangouts and having never used it before I thought I would be intimidated but it was extremely easy to use. After being hired I was 100% trained by a co-worker in another city over Google Hangouts. Not only did we video chat daily during training she utilized the screen sharing to teach / train me. Once trained I used Google Hangouts every day to communicate and collaborate with coworkers on projects. Google Hangouts was my virtual office and allowed me to be a part of a team while working independently from home.

Cons
Google Hangouts is ideal for work and personal use however our company began to outgrow the video chat limits (Google Hangouts has a limited number of participants that can participate in a video chat meeting) and as a company we needed to switch to a tool that allowed a higher number of users to participate in those type of company wide meetings.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Hangout has over the years afforded me a simple and enjoyable messaging experience with the added advantage of been able to send multimedia as well as make calls at reasonable rates to phone numbers and contacts on your Gmail account that also use hangout. I must say that the quality of hangout voice calls (paid option) is just exceptionally great. The video call is free and also nice too. You can archive important conversations as well as easily send an invite to your contact within hangout to adopt the software if they are not using it yet. The ability to have one-to-one or group conversations within Google Hangouts is an advantage that has endured it to me as it has helped my organization reduce spending on a previous collaboration software we hitherto used. The installation is easy and the software is lightweight and as such, hardly cause hanging. I recently was able to install the chrome extension of hangout to my chrome browser and can now reply to my message while on my computer without reaching for my phone. this has furthered made this software more appealing to me. I like the fact that the software is free on Gmail account and yet there are no ads in it

Cons
I miss the SMS functionality that was previously integrated into hangout and I still wonder why it was removed! For you to really enjoy Hangout, you require a very strong internet connection otherwise it becomes a real test of your patience. I also wish there was a way to reach your contact (maybe by assigning a hangout ID phone Number) so that you can call them when they are offline. You might want to avoid sharing very sensitive data with hangout as there is serious concern over the security of files shared with others within hangout. I also think the need to have a Gmail account in order to use hangout is not pleasant. It will be better if hangout can be designed to support a number of email service providers.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Simple, intuitive yet powerful. Simple chatting with co-workers has declined on Hangouts since we started using Slack, however, Hangouts remains our default tool for video calling and online conferencing. The best about it is that its easy to use, simply calling from the chat window, or, as we mostly use it, by creating a calendar event and joining from Hangouts. It usually works well, without delays, and we can screen share easily for remote co-working.

Cons
Its a bit connection intensive. If your connection is seeing a lot of use, then Hangouts might be a bit slow. We usually turn the camera off to save somw bandwidth, especially if we are screen sharing since we don't need to see each other anyway. Audio and shared screen is the usual way to work on Hangouts for us, and we do use it often. I'd say that over 80% of our company meetings have someone joining via Hangouts.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10