There was a time, back in 2020, when Zoom was everywhere. People were working from home, and nearly every meeting took place online. People used it to socialize, for work and even to communicate with associates and their children’s teachers. During the peak of the Covid-19 crisis, the company was posting triple-digit revenue growth. In 2021, the company made more than $1 billion in profit.
Now the tables have turned.
Workers have gone back to the office, kids have gone back to school, socializing is happening in-person, and profits have taken a dip.
After peaking at an incredible 369% growth in the third quarter of 2021, Zoom reported its slowest quarterly revenue growth on record in August.
As the company looks to gain a foothold in the increasingly-crowded video-conferencing space, it’s branching out with new features and becoming an all-in-one solution SaaS for businesses.
This week, the company announced the beta of its email and calendar solution. The new email and calendar features go along with other capabilities Zoom recently added to its platform, including whiteboards, sales intelligence, and an omnichannel contact center solution.
At the Zoomtopia user conference, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan acknowledged that there are workers who spend a lot of their time on Zoom and said he wants to provide those users with the tools they need, so they aren’t switching between applications.
To use Zoom’s new calendar and email, users can connect to a Gmail or Microsoft Outlook account or server.
Appealing to SMBs
Small businesses are likely to see the greatest benefit from the new tools. At Zoomtopia, Yuan said SMBs that don’t have internal IT teams will be able to use Zoom to manage both the client and server side, making communications safer and more secure. Small business users will also be able to create unique customer domains with end-to-end encryption.
Unlike most consumer email services, Zoom’s hosted email service will function like a private platform with small cohorts sharing email. That cuts down on spam and junk messages and keeps networks more secure. From Zoom’s perspective, it also aligns businesses more closely with Zoom’s platform and decreases their reliance on third-party apps.
Zoom’s new add-on email and calendar features will be free for both paid and free-tier Zoom customers who connect via Gmail or Microsoft Outlook. Businesses that want an even more integrated system will be able to use the features as part of Zoom One Pro, or an upgraded subscription plan.
