Microsoft Teams vs Cisco Webex vs Zoom: Which Meeting Room Platform Has the Best Reliability?

This is the question IT Directors ask us most often when we're doing a fleet review: "Which platform is most reliable — Teams, Webex, or Zoom?"

The honest answer is more nuanced than any vendor's marketing will tell you.

The short answer

All three platforms are engineered by companies spending billions on cloud infrastructure. The fundamental reliability of the underlying video conferencing platforms themselves is broadly comparable at this point.

The reliability differences that matter in practice have almost nothing to do with the platform — and almost everything to do with the management layer on top of it.

What actually causes platform-specific failures

When we categorize failures across the Apollo-managed fleet, we see different failure signatures for each platform. Not because one platform is inherently worse, but because each has different architectural characteristics that produce different failure modes.

Microsoft Teams Rooms failures:

Teams Rooms is tightly integrated with Microsoft's identity and authentication infrastructure. The most common failure category is authentication-related — service accounts expiring, certificate renewals failing, Teams app updates introducing authentication regressions. Configuration drift is the second most common category: Teams updates frequently change default settings, and rooms can drift from their expected state after each update cycle.

Cisco Webex Device failures:

Webex devices tend to have more hardware-layer failures than Teams or Zoom — not because Cisco hardware is less reliable, but because Webex devices are often in rooms with more complex AV setups. The most common failure modes are HDMI handshake failures with room display systems and registration failures when Webex cloud infrastructure undergoes maintenance. Firmware updates are the third most common trigger.

Zoom Rooms failures:

Zoom Rooms failures are most frequently network-related. Zoom's signalling protocol requirements are well-documented but demanding — specific UDP port ranges, low-latency paths, and QoS markings that don't survive certain network configuration changes. When the network changes, Zoom Rooms are often the first to show symptoms.

The failure signature matters more than you think

Why does this matter? Because the management response to each failure type is different.

Authentication failures are resolvable with credential refresh — something Emily handles automatically. Configuration drift is resolvable by reverting to a known-good baseline — Emily handles this too. HDMI handshake failures require a device reboot — Emily does that automatically. Network path degradation requires a network-layer investigation — Emily detects it and escalates with a precise diagnostic.

The point is: the failure mode doesn't determine whether the room comes back up. The management layer determines that.

The real reliability question

The right question isn't "which platform is most reliable?" The right question is: "What is my mean time to resolution across my fleet when a room fails?"

On an unmanaged fleet, mean time to resolution is typically hours to days. The failure is detected when a user reports it, which is usually at meeting start time. An engineer is dispatched. The room is fixed. The next failure starts the cycle again.

On an Apollo-managed fleet, mean time to resolution is:

- 73% of failures: sub-5 minutes (Emily resolves remotely before anyone notices)

- 20% of failures: under 2 hours (human escalation with full diagnostic context)

- 7% of failures: hardware replacement timeline

That resolution profile applies whether you're running Teams, Webex, or Zoom. The platform doesn't change the outcome. The management layer does.

What about mixed fleets?

Most large enterprises run mixed fleets. A standard pattern we see is Teams Rooms in standard meeting rooms, Webex devices in executive suites or video conferencing centres, and Zoom Rooms in collaboration spaces with lower AV complexity.

The management challenge for mixed fleets isn't the platforms themselves — it's the tooling fragmentation. Three platforms means three vendor dashboards, three management consoles, three SLA conversations when something goes wrong. Apollo unifies all three in one pane — same testing logic, same Emily resolution layer, same ITSM integration, regardless of platform.

The conclusion you won't hear from vendors

The platform you choose matters much less than the management practice you build on top of it.

Microsoft, Cisco, and Zoom all have enterprise-grade infrastructure. All three will have failures — because all complex systems fail. What differentiates reliable organizations from unreliable ones isn't which platform they chose. It's whether they have proactive testing, automated remediation, and clear accountability for room uptime.

That's what Spacera provides. For all three platforms simultaneously.

See how Apollo handles mixed fleets →