Scale
300 participants on Business and up to 1,000 with an add-on, plus webinars, events, and breakout rooms. Hiyve tops out at 50 in a Room and has no webinar product.
The short version
Different products, not a feature race
Zoom is a meetings suite with an AI assistant layered on top. Hiyve is a video platform built around an agent that works before, during, and after each call, with one persistent Room per client, project, or team. Which one fits depends on what your calls are for.
Choose Zoom if
- You host webinars, events, or meetings with hundreds of attendees.
- You want a free plan and can live with the 40-minute cap.
- Your company runs on Zoom Phone, Zoom Rooms hardware, or Zoom's app marketplace.
- Procurement needs a long, familiar list of certifications before anything else.
- Meeting notes are all you need from AI.
Choose Hiyve if
- Most of your week is calls with the same clients, prospects, or project teams.
- You want the AI to do the work: brief you, coach you live, write and send the follow-up, book the next call, update the CRM.
- You're tired of hunting for last week's link, recording, and notes across three tools.
- You'd rather pay one price with everything included than compare tiers and AI add-ons.
- You'll never need more than 50 people in one room.
Side by side
Hiyve and Zoom, feature by feature
Zoom figures come from zoom.us/pricing as published on October 26, 2026. Hiyve figures are our own. Where a row is a draw, we say so.
| What matters | Hiyve | Zoom |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A standalone AI-first video platform. The agent is part of the call, not an add-on. | A video meetings suite (Zoom Workplace) with AI Companion and the ZoomMate assistant layered on top. |
| Before the call | Pre-call brief from the Room: who's joining, what was decided last time, what's still open. Files and decks pre-loaded. | Calendar and prep live in ZoomMate and connected apps. Context from past calls isn't kept in one place per client. |
| During the call | Live coaching, talk-tracks and objection handling, mood and engagement analysis, and answers from the Room's history, mid-call. | AI Companion answers questions about the meeting so far and catches you up if you're late. Sales coaching is a separate Zoom product. |
| After the call | Summary and action items about 30 seconds after you hang up. Follow-up email drafted and sent, tasks created, next call booked, CRM updated. | Unlimited AI summaries on paid plans (3 a month on Basic). Follow-up emails and actions come with the paid agentic tier. |
| Where things live | One Room per client, project, or team. Calls, recordings, transcripts, notes, files, and decisions in one place behind a link that never changes. | Meetings and recurring links. Recordings and transcripts sit in Zoom's cloud, chat in Team Chat, files wherever you put them. |
| Audio and video | TrueTone full-duplex audio, so people can talk over each other without cutoffs. Adaptive HD video. | Excellent and proven at scale. HD video, strong noise suppression. Call it a draw. |
| Recording and transcripts | Cloud recordings, live speaker-labeled transcripts, and plain-language search across every call in every Room. | Cloud recording with transcripts on paid plans; local recording only on Basic. |
| Collaboration in the call | Whiteboard, chat, file sharing, notes, polls, questions, hand raising. The board and notes save to the Room. | Whiteboard, chat, polls, breakout rooms, plus Team Chat, Docs, Mail and Calendar across the Workplace suite. |
| Participants per call | Up to 50 in a group Room. | 100 on Basic and Pro, 300 on Business, up to 1,000 with the Large Meeting add-on. |
| Webinars and events | Not a webinar product. Live streaming is available as an add-on on request. | Zoom Webinars, Events, and Sessions. This is Zoom's home turf. |
| Free plan | No free tier. 7-day free trial with everything included, no credit card. | Basic is free: 40-minute meetings, 100 participants, 3 AI summaries a month. |
| Price | $16 per user per month, one plan, everything included, monthly or annual. | Pro $14.16 (annual) or $16.99 (monthly) per user. Business $18.33 or $21.99. Agentic AI and large meetings are paid add-ons. |
| Cloud storage | 20 GB included. Extra storage is $10 for 30 GB a month. | 10 GB per license on Pro and Business. |
| Ecosystem | CRM updates through the agent, a Developer Console, and an SDK. A far smaller app catalog. | A huge App Marketplace, Zoom Rooms hardware, Zoom Phone, and years of integrations. |
| Build it into your product | The Hiyve SDK: the same video, recording, transcription, and AI stack for React, Angular, React Native, and TypeScript, pay as you go. | Zoom Video SDK and Meeting SDK, priced separately. |
Zoom, Zoom Workplace, AI Companion, and ZoomMate are trademarks of Zoom Communications, Inc. Zoom's plans and prices change; check zoom.us/pricing before you decide. Nothing here is a claim about your specific Zoom contract.
Credit where it's due
Where Zoom is better
If any of these is central to how you work, Zoom is probably the right tool and we'd rather tell you now.
Free plan
Zoom Basic costs nothing and handles short meetings fine. Hiyve offers a free week, not a free tier.
Ecosystem
Phone, Rooms hardware, Team Chat, Docs, Mail, and a marketplace with thousands of apps. If you want one vendor for everything, that's Zoom.
Familiarity
Everyone has the Zoom client and knows how it works. Guests never need a walkthrough.
Compliance paperwork
Zoom publishes a long, mature list of certifications and offers end-to-end encryption options. If procurement needs a specific attestation, ask us before you switch.
Notes-only AI
If a summary after the meeting is all you want from AI, Zoom's paid plans include unlimited summaries and you don't need an agent.
Where Hiyve wins
The agent is the product
Zoom added AI to meetings. Hiyve built the meeting around the agent. That difference shows up in five places.
Before, during, and after
A brief before you join, coaching while you talk, and the follow-up handled when you hang up. One agent, the whole call, on every plan. See how it works.
Rooms, not meetings
One Room per client or project keeps every call, recording, transcript, note, file, and decision together. The link never changes, and the agent reads all of it.
Follow-up that actually happens
The follow-up email is drafted with the right attachments and can send itself. Tasks get owners, the next call gets booked, and the CRM gets updated without anyone typing.
One price, everything in
$16 per user per month covers Rooms, recordings, transcripts, summaries, coaching, whiteboards, and 20 GB of storage. No AI tier, no add-ons to price out. See pricing.
Built for the conversation
TrueTone full-duplex audio means nobody gets cut off mid-sentence, and mood analysis shows you when to lean in or change direction.
Same stack as an SDK
Everything Hiyve does on a call is available to build into your own product through the Hiyve SDK, from a five-line prebuilt room to every hook underneath.
What it costs
Per user, per month
Zoom's prices are its published US list prices on October 26, 2026. Hiyve's is the same whether you pay monthly or annually.
Hiyve Business
$16per user / month
One plan. 7-day free trial, no credit card required.
- Agent on every call: brief, coaching, follow-up
- Persistent Rooms, up to 50 participants
- Cloud recordings, transcripts, summaries, search
- 20 GB storage included
Zoom Workplace Pro
$14.16annual, or $16.99 monthly
Meetings up to 30 hours with 100 participants.
- Unlimited AI Companion summaries
- Cloud recording, 10 GB per license
- Agentic AI tier and large meetings cost extra
Zoom Workplace Business
$18.33annual, or $21.99 monthly
Everything in Pro with 300 participants and admin features such as SSO.
- Unlimited AI Companion summaries
- Cloud recording, 10 GB per license
- Up to 1,000 participants with an add-on
For a team of ten paying monthly, that's $160 on Hiyve against $169.90 on Zoom Pro or $219.90 on Zoom Business, before any Zoom add-ons. If you need the SDK rather than the platform, see SDK pricing instead.
Switching
What moving from Zoom looks like
Nothing to migrate
Hiyve runs at app.hiyve.io. Create a Room per client or project, send the link, and the next call is in Hiyve. Your calendar invites just point somewhere new.
Run both for a week
The trial is seven days with everything on. Keep Zoom running, put your next few client calls in Hiyve Rooms, and compare the follow-ups.
Keep Zoom where it's better
Plenty of teams keep a Zoom seat or the free plan for webinars and big all-hands, and move the calls that matter into Rooms.
Questions people ask
Is Hiyve a plugin or a bot for Zoom?
No. Hiyve is its own video platform with its own audio and video stack. You run calls in Hiyve, and the agent is built into the call rather than joining someone else's meeting as a bot.
Can we keep Zoom for webinars and use Hiyve for client calls?
Yes. Hiyve has no webinar product, so plenty of teams keep Zoom, or Zoom's free plan, for large broadcasts and run their client and team calls in Hiyve Rooms.
Does Hiyve have a free plan like Zoom Basic?
No free tier. Hiyve has a 7-day free trial with everything included and no credit card required, then one plan at $16 per user per month.
How many people can join a Hiyve call?
Group Rooms hold up to 50 participants. Zoom allows 100 on Basic and Pro, 300 on Business, and up to 1,000 with its Large Meeting add-on, so Zoom is the better fit for very large meetings.
What does Hiyve's AI do that Zoom's doesn't?
Hiyve's agent acts across the whole call: a brief before, live coaching and mood analysis during, and after the call a summary with action items, a follow-up email it can send, the next call booked, and your CRM updated, all from one Room per client. Zoom's AI Companion summarizes meetings and answers questions about them, and Zoom's paid agentic tier adds actions on top of the meeting product.
Try it on your next client call
Seven days free, everything included, no credit card. Or let us walk you through it on a real Hiyve call.