Google Meet vs BlueJeans vs Switchboard: Which is Best?

Which sounds more engaging: sitting through an hour-long lecture or getting hands-on in a lab? 

In the lab, everyone has a part to play in moving the research project forward—and a stake in the results. During a one-way lecture, as an audience member, you’re just an onlooker, passively receiving information.  

Traditional video conferencing can be like a lecture: a spectator event where one person’s the star of the show. And choosing the best meeting platform is a challenge when many offer similar features—but few go beyond screen sharing. 

When choosing a virtual meeting platform, many people look to the obvious choices: Google Meet vs BlueJeans. However, they’re both great for talking, but not so much for doing. To take teamwork beyond one-way screen sharing and get more done during meetings, leaders of highly collaborative teams in small remote or hybrid companies should look for alternatives with features that support side-by-side working.

In this post, we’ll walk you through each of these tools, compare their features, pricing, and advantages, and highlight which kind of teams each is best for. We’ll also show you how Switchboard helps you create the kind of collaborative space where teams feel more connected to each other and their work. 

Want to run more engaging team meetings where everyone can be hands-on?
Switchboard’s online meeting platform lets you share and work together inside a virtual room.
Sign up for free.

Google Meet vs BlueJeans vs Switchboard: Side-by-side comparison 

When it comes to virtual meeting tools, many platforms offer the same features and functions, so it’s hard to decide which one’s best for you. We’ve done the legwork and analyzed each app and its ideal user profile to help you decide. We’ll help you find the right tool to boost collaboration, create a positive remote work culture, and keep everyone engaged—from head scientist to lab technician. 

Here’s a breakdown of Google Meet and alternatives: BlueJeans and Switchboard—and how each tool stacks up on key features.

Google Meet

Overview

If your company’s already using Google Workspace, Google Meet (previously Google Hangouts) is a good choice of online meeting platform. It’s straightforward, gives you high-quality video and audio conferencing and live chat, and lets you easily connect with your team.

You can use it to host 1:1s, quick check-ins, and top-down events or meetings. There’s also the option to dial in from a mobile device if your network connection is bad. Additionally, there’s a Google Meet app so your team members can join meetings on the go.

The software has different viewing options so you can see everyone in the meeting or pin a single speaker’s video to help you focus. Polls, hand raising, emoji reactions, and virtual whiteboards let everyone jump on stage, get involved, and develop ideas together.

Let's say your marketing team is working on a new advertising campaign and they're holding a virtual meeting to go over ideas in development. During the meeting, each person can share their screen to present what they’ve been working on so the team can discuss. Then, one team member proposes a new tagline and suggests using a specific color scheme. Another comes up with the idea to create a series of short videos to promote the campaign. And all of these ideas can be noted down on the whiteboard.

Finally, your Google Calendar always has the correct meeting link automatically saved, so you never have to ask if you’ve got the right one again.

Key features: 

• Up to 500 participants on paid plans
• Live captioning during calls (only available in English)
• In-meeting whiteboard and Miro integration
• Screen sharing
• Live-streaming
• Meeting recording on paid plans
• Breakout rooms

Pricing: 

• Google Meet is free to use with access to basic features
• Business Starter: $6/month per user
• Business Standard: $12/month per user
• Business Plus: $18/month per user
• Enterprise: custom priced 

What are the advantages of Google Meet?

• Integration with other Google Apps for a streamlined experience
• User-friendly and straightforward
• Can collaborate using the whiteboard 
• Meeting recordings automatically saved to Google Drive on paid plans
• Suitable for large-scale webinars or company-wide events 

Best for: 

Google Meet is a convenient choice for companies that are already set up on Google Workspace. It’s user-friendly, effective, and a good choice for remote companies that prioritize face-to-face discussions and real-time working.

However, it’s less suitable for highly collaborative remote teams because you can’t work together on the same documents and apps during video calls—or continue afterward. 

BlueJeans

Overview

BlueJeans is a video conferencing software that was acquired by Verizon in 2020. What makes it stand out is the use of Dolby Voice technology to boost your meeting audio quality. This function lets you suppress background noise and hear everyone just as well as you would in a physical office. It even allows you to hear your team members clearly if their voices overlap. So whether people are dialing in from a coworking space or cafe, you’ll never lose any information.

The Smart Meetings function lets you transcribe your discussions, highlight important moments, assign tasks, and create action tags that help teams track project status. Let’s say you need your coworker to follow up with the developers about the new product launch. When that action item comes up on the agenda, just add a Highlight to that point in the meeting transcript, tag your colleague, and add a comment for more context.

When the meeting is over, the BlueJeans app sends each attendee and action-item owner a tailored summary of the call with what’s expected of them. This saves everyone time because they don’t have to watch the entire recording to know what they need to do next. 

Key features: 

• Up to 200 participants on Enterprise Plans
• Live captioning during calls on Enterprise Plans
• In-meeting whiteboards 
• Screen sharing
• Meeting recording and transcription 
• Breakout rooms
• Polls, hand raising, and participant reaction functions
• In-app messaging 

Pricing: 

• BlueJeans Standard: $9.99/month per host
• BlueJeans Pro: $13.99/month per host
• BlueJeans Enterprise: $16.66/month per host

What are the advantages of BlueJeans?

• High-quality audio through the platform’s Dolby Voice technology
• Teams can continue working on the whiteboard after meetings
• Ability to highlight action items for more productive post-meeting work  

Best for: 

BlueJeans is good for distributed, mid-sized companies that are looking for high-quality audio, simple collaboration features like whiteboards, and high-level security. 

However, it’s not the best option for remote teams that need to share files and links and work together on the same documents and apps during or after calls.

Switchboard: The best alternative to GoogleMeet & BlueJeans for small remote and hybrid teams

Overview

Switchboard is a browser-based collaboration platform that lets you and your team work on documents and apps together inside a virtual room—without having to share your screen. It’s designed to foster connections, teamwork, and productivity through intuitive permanent meeting rooms. 

Switchboard lets you communicate in real time with video, audio, and chat. You can also work side-by-side allowing everyone to scroll, type, and browse the same document at the same time. So instead of sitting passively in the lecture hall, everyone can join in the experiment, discover, and learn together.  

You can create cloud-based virtual rooms for brainstorming, host spontaneous meetings with your team, and connect with clients in an interactive space.

Throughout the meeting, you can also explore any file in the room, moving around and viewing whatever you want without getting in the way of others. Best of all, Switchboard saves all your files after every meeting, so you never need to download anything or repopulate the room again. 

For example, let’s say you’re running a sprint planning session in Switchboard. You can create a dedicated room and open multiple browsers, your roadmap, bug-tracking tool, and meeting agenda. Once the meeting is over, all those documents will remain available in the room for team members to reference or work on whenever they want.

Key features: 

• Shared online workspace and rooms for recurring meetings
• Web-based canvas to add multiple apps, websites, PDFs, and images side by side
• Persistent rooms that save your work
• In-meeting video, audio, and chat
• Secure, fast multiplayer browsers for instant collaboration
• Screen sharing for native apps
• Presentation mode
• In-app support
• Google Calendar integration
• Unlimited rooms for 1:1s, meetings, and projects
• Meeting recording
• No integration required for web-based apps—they all work
• Room permissions for members and guests
• Sections to organize documents and apps

• Host not required for members to enter a room
• Up to 50 participants 

Pricing: 

• Free: Includes limited features, rooms, and members for small teams or individuals.
• Pro: $15 member/month for up to 200 rooms and 500 members plus Switchboard AI and additional storage.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing.

Best for:

Highly collaborative small remote or hybrid companies looking for a comprehensive and team-oriented solution to traditional video conferencing tools. 

How does Switchboard compare with Google Meet and BlueJeans?

Google meet has a familiar interface and is an easy-to-use option for remote team meetings. BlueJeans offers a few more interactive meeting features and aims to offer exceptional audio and video quality. 

Both platforms are great for talking but don’t allow teams to actually collaborate on projects. And when you end a call on Google Meet or BlueJeans, everything disappears, so you have to prepare the meeting space every time.

By contrast, Switchboard is more than just a virtual meeting app. It’s an intuitive collaboration platform that acts as a virtual workspace where your teams can always find each other—before, during, and after meetings. It offers small, remote companies a more dynamic, multiplayer experience with features that support side-by-side working. 

In Switchboard, you never have to worry about people zoning out during meetings because they’re active participants. Your people can view, edit, and collaborate on important content, and work alongside others in virtual rooms and canvases. They can also take an active part in brainstorming instead of watching one person present.

Think less lecture, more collaborative experiment where everyone can speak up, give feedback, and develop the project together on the fly.

Plus, whatever content you upload into your dedicated room stays there, whether someone’s in the space or not. 

Google Meet vs BlueJeans vs Switchboard: Get the multiplayer experience

Attending a lecture is a great way to learn, but only being part of a lab team offers a truly spontaneous, immersive experience and the chance to own the direction of your work—and the results.  

This is how your remote teams should experience video meetings—fun, engaging, and filled with opportunities to connect, surprise each other, and do great things together. But that’s not always the story with traditional web conferencing, which can feel one-sided, lacking the features you need for real-time and async collaboration. 

BlueJeans and Google Meet are two popular virtual meeting platforms that work well when you can’t get everyone together in the conference room. But they’re designed for communication, not side-by-side working.  

Highly collaborative teams in small remote companies need alternatives with features that make people feel like they’re hands-on as part of an exciting research project, not just passively sitting in a lecture hall. 

That’s why Switchboard goes beyond video conferencing to act as a dynamic virtual workspace where your teams can get together and get creative for more productive, engaging meetings. You can collaborate on projects together in real time or async and build relationships and community through the kind of spontaneous interactions you get when you all work in the same office.

Want to run more engaging team meetings where everyone can be hands-on?
Switchboard’s online meeting platform lets you share and work together inside a virtual room.
Sign up for free.