Skype (discontinued) vs. Whereby

Skype is an excellent choice for phone calls, both local and international, and is also one of the most affordable solutions for business office line. It is simple to use and get started with and provides a call experience on mobile that is similar to a regular phone call. It is not the ideal tool for team chat. For text-based team communication, a separate dedicated tool is still ideal

Incentivized

Whereby is well suited for making connections with clients and people who are not technologically savvy. It is very easy to use for the most part. It does not work very well when I am trying to screenshare and show demonstrations of excel spreadsheets, but not a lot of products do

Incentivized

• Perfect for chatting via text. Has emojis, file sharing, audio sharing, and even video sharing capabilities.
• Good for video chats. You can do 1 on 1 sessions with a good quality video.
• Privacy is also another important function they have. They allow for private conversations between users.
• Ability to delete conversations with sensitive information you may not want seen by users not authorized. Can share confidential information via Skype.
• Customizable profiles to fit your company culture.

Incentivized

• Easy to use: The app is very, very easy to use. Literally just create a chat room (input a name) and access it to chat.
• Call/video quality: I've experienced better call quality on appear.in than in almost all other chat and video conferencing services out there.

Incentivized

• Skype is a RESOURCE hog. People who have limited bandwidth will have poor call quality.
• It is hard to figure out how to use emojis and upload images in the chat.
• The background images do not fool anybody....it is clearly not your real background.

Incentivized

• The paid version may have dial-in. But I have always used the free version. Dial-in is typically required for an "official" multi-purpose teleconference platform.
• I did have some trouble with larger groups (5+) when it was Appear.in but almost always use it for small 1-on-1 or 3 person meetings.

Incentivized

I have given this rating as this need to give more than that as it's very helpful for us and makes our work more efficient and fast.

We are using a larger tool suite that already includes video conferencing instead of our older approach of using different apps from different vendors. appear.in has a simple but great set of features but its pricing scheme is not as scalable as we really need in a 500+ employee company.

Incentivized

Skype is not as good as Facetime in terms of ease to glance at it and figure out how it works. I think that's a result of Skype trying to be too many things at once. A lot of the menu and UI could be streamlined, and I would jettison some of the additional functions that have been tacked on over the years to simplify. That being said, while some options are slightly hard to find, they all work flawlessly once found.

Incentivized

Very easy to use, technical and non-technical colleagues have used it with no instructions needed. That says all about the app and services.

Incentivized

I am not aware of the current support level for Skype for business, as I have never used even though I have the product. However, the support for Skype's personal paid users is not where it could be. Users who pay for Skype features do not have a clear path to reach out to support. So, rating 6, can be better as soon as I need to use Skype for business support and get a good experience. I will say that I will renew Skype for Business subscription, which is a significant inconsistency on my end. The explanation is that Skype for Business comes bundled with Office for Business, with no additional cost, so why not.

Incentivized

Never had to contact support, so we cannot give a rating for their overall support. When we noticed the audio was not always great quality, we simply educated our users to mute the mic and use the in-room conference phone which is connected via a dedicated VOIP link and had much better voice quality. The video performance varied by locations network speed and found it got much worse when the room size increased to over 4 connections.

Incentivized

It can be used on the phone via mobile application as well as on the desktop by logging in to the website. Easily installed and ready to use.

Incentivized

After a recommendation from a partner, as the system is very easy to use, we simply start.

Incentivized

Selected Skype because it was the only platform that was available for such purposes for video conferencing or audio conferencing. Since Microsoft, the tech giant, backed it, it was assured that it would work great in terms of productivity, with utmost security measures for all data, conversations, work materials, and personal information.

Incentivized

I did not evaluate other applications against Whereby, because we had a very specific need, which was the partner that we would use the solution, only accepted to use Whereby, so, we accepted to use the solution. As it was for a specific period, there was no problem. And in the end, it proved to be a very stable, very fast solution, with no need for crazy plugins or anything. Basically, it was access[ed] and use.

Incentivized

• Skype has contributed to increased efficiency for remote collaboration, especially now due to the ways things are and having so many remote employees. Without this tool, or any collaboration tool, business could not move forward.
• I think Skype is the cost effective solution also between it and the other competitors out there. I'm not privy to the exact costs, but it strikes me as the cheaper option.
• The only negative impact I would say is its lack of functionality and customization for larger organizations or groups that have employees spread out or require inter-departmental collaboration.

Incentivized

• In general, any sort of online collaborations saves a lot on your budget. The meetings are rather more on time and can be efficient and short.
• Easy to drop-by and have a small talk with clients/teammates within COVID era.
• The URL makes you look fancy instead of a random hash.

Incentivized