Hangouts

Hangouts is a popular messenger and video calling app by Google Inc. It’s designed for making calls to groups of people and sending instant media messages to anyone around the globe within seconds. The service offers cross-platform capabilities and a very simple interface.  

Almost for Everyone

Pros

• Instant sharing. Everywhere – using Hangouts, you can share messages with individuals and groups of contacts in no time, independently from their location. You are allowed to attach photos, videos, and many other file types with your friends and colleagues. The file size is limited to 200MB, which is pretty good for an instant messenger. If you want to share larger files, you can send direct download links from your Google Drive, Dropbox, or another cloud storage;
• For personal use, – Hangouts is a robust solution for communication with individuals and small groups of people, including your family members. You can get together in the chat to exchange messages and instant voice recordings or create a room to talk to each other with video.  
• For business use – if you’re looking for a small or medium business solution, Hangouts may satisfy you too. The app lets you create group chats for up to 150 participants, while video rooms allow up to 25 participants. Due to the integration of Google Drive, sharing business-related files will become a matter of seconds.  
• Secure communication – all your chats and calls in the app are protected by peer-to-peer encryption technology. It means that your data can be viewed only on your own device or on the device of the receiver. Even if someone intercepts the code, it will be impossible to decipher under no circumstances.  
• High-quality with low traffic consumption – Hangouts is powered by a low-latency data compression technology that reduces traffic consumption of the app dramatically without affecting the quality of audio and video too much. As a result, you can enjoy high-quality video calls and save up on mobile traffic every day.  

Cons

• Too small for big companies – if your company requires a larger messaging solution, Hangouts won’t be helpful because it’s chat capacity is limited to 150 users. There’s no separate business account with unlimited paid capacity plans, so it’s impossible to scale up to your company size.  

High-Quality Communicator

Although Hangouts has some limitations, it’s still a worthy solution for personal use and business that doesn’t need more features than the app offers. The service is totally free and lets you talk to an unlimited number of people every day for up to 40 minutes per call. If you cannot find Hangouts in the store, look for Google Meet. It’s totally the same app, but with a new name.