Yes, you’re really seeing that right. I, Alex Lanning, full-time doxy.me employee, am writing a blog post comparing doxy.me and Zoom as telehealth platforms. This isn’t a landing page highlighting a few cherry-picked features where doxy.me is better, nor is it a post that will ignore the benefits of Zoom. Spoiler alert: the largest video conferencing platform in the world does have some good things going for it. I want to make an honest comparison of the two products right now so that our potential customers can choose the one that’s right for them.
First of all, there are a few grounds on which this rivalry stands: those are the different tiers of subscriptions.
Free
When it comes to the free tiers, there are already a few huge differences. Free Zoom has access to many great video conferencing features right out of the gate: HD video, group calling, screen share, and a white board feature. All of these features are unavailable in the free version of doxy.me. However, these all come with a HUGE caveat: Zoom’s free version is not HIPAA compliant.
That’s right, it is not HIPAA compliant. If you are a provider trying to use Zoom for medical appointments, the free version of Zoom is putting you and your practice at legal risk. The other big advantage of doxy.me’s free subscription is unlimited call time. The free version of Zoom lets one-on-one meetings last for up to 30 hours which, while technically not unlimited, is good enough. However, if you want those group calls to last more than forty minutes, you’ll need to upgrade.
Paid
The paid subscriptions for both services change many things. Doxy.me gains the HD and group calls that are lacking from the free version, and Zoom becomes HIPAA compliant with the Zoom for Healthcare subscription. Honestly, both platforms gain so many features in the paid subscriptions that trying to represent them fairly in a table is arbitrary. I instead recommend checking out these two pages for information about what the different subscriptions have to offer: doxy.me and Zoom for Healthcare.
However, here are the two major advantages each platform has over the other.
Zoom has more features
As far as total number of features, Zoom has more, plain and simple. Not all of them are super important for healthcare, but some are great supplements. That said, doxy.me also has many of the most important high-tier features: things like EHR integrations, payments through the service, customizable waiting rooms (though Zoom’s customization is very limited compared to doxy.me’s).
However, Zoom shines in its ability to integrate with medical devices for remote monitoring. If you absolutely need some kind of remote monitoring device that you need to operate instead of your patient, Zoom may be the right choice for you—just make sure they actually have the integration you need. Zoom has a few other features that doxy.me doesn’t (like built-in recording and transcriptions), but those aren’t as large of a gap as the medical device integrations. With doxy.me, third parties make things like recording sessions pretty simple.
At doxy.me, if we could snap our fingers and suddenly have all the capabilities of Zoom, we probably would. However, reality is not so simple. They are a massive platform with more funding and more resources. Doxy.me cannot afford to integrate all the same capabilities that Zoom adds at the same speed. That’s why doxy.me’s philosophy is to only pay attention to what matters in the world of healthcare. At the end of the day, doxy.me is only focused on healthcare: the providers and their patients.
Doxy.me has the service, personalization, and focus on healthcare
At the high levels, it feels like the company’s missions are the big difference. Zoom is the giant video conferencing organization that focuses on business. Doxy.me is the telehealth platform that focuses on healthcare. How do these differences manifest?
- Simplicity—At doxy.me, we understand the demands of the healthcare system. Healthcare providers are some of the hardest working people on the planet, and we don’t want anything to get in the way of their care. That’s why doxy.me is extremely easy to set up and use.
- World class support—Zoom is also easy to set up, but they boast about not having an onboarding team. If doxy.me is simple to set up, why do we have a customer success team and an Enterprise onboarding team? Because we know the hospital environment is stressful. Healthcare providers and admins are busy people who, in many cases, don’t have experience with webpage building, marketing, or branding. That’s why our Clinic and Enterprise teams will handle those challenges for you.
- Perfect for patients—For patients preparing to have a telehealth call, the most important question is “how do I join the call?” Both doxy.me and Zoom have link invites, text or email invitations, and permanent, editable waiting room links. The big difference? Your doxy.me waiting room URL can include your or your clinic’s name. It’s super easy, and it comes automatically with any doxy.me account, even a free one. With a Zoom paid account, you can set up a permanent meeting room—but you need to go into your settings, create a ten digit code, and voilà! For your patients, imagine the comfort of seeing your name in a URL instead of a random string of numbers, ensuring they have the right place.
An eye on the future of healthcare
For doxy.me, the focus is and always will be healthcare. Even if you prefer Zoom now (which you’re allowed to do!) we will continue to work with the future of healthcare in mind. The only people we listen to are providers and patients: we will never consider the demands of unrelated fields. And we will never stop improving the ultimate telehealth experience.