Zoom won the meeting and then built a workplace around it. This page is about the direction of travel: a product that starts from the call and adds chat, next to one that starts from the chat and adds everything the conversation turns into.
Capability by capability
Every line about Zoom Workplace was read on its own pages on 24 September 2026. Where we are still building something, the table says so.
| Zoom Workplace |  |
|
|---|---|---|
| Conversation | ||
| Message retention on the free plan | Free accounts keep cloud chat for two years and it cannot be changed; local storage is about a year on the device, also not configurable. A configurable retention period requires a paid Zoom account. | Six months of chat history on Free and no cap above it — and your history comes with you, because migration is included on every plan. |
| Message and file limits | 4000 characters per message, 1 GB per file, 30 MB for video, 10 attachments per message. | A rich text editor with H1 and H2 headings, lists, quotes and code, so a long message stays readable instead of being split in three. |
| Meetings on the free plan | 40 minutes per meeting, up to 100 participants, local recording only. | A meeting starts from the chat’s top bar with the people already in the conversation, and a calendar event with a Google Meet or Teams link is one click. |
| From talk to work | ||
| Boards and process | Zoom Tasks lets people create, track and manage action items inside Zoom. Kanban boards, workflow templates with owners and conditions are not part of it. | Boards in kanban, list, table and Gantt views, plus workflow templates with steps, deadlines and a department answering for each stage. |
| People and focus | ||
| External users | External contacts can direct message, mention and start meetings, but cannot see members’ full profiles, cannot create channels in your account, cannot search your public channels and cannot connect apps or integrations. | A guest gets one named channel and one project on Boards, so a client can see the work, not just talk about it. |
| Single sign-on | Single sign-on via SAML 2.0 is on Business and Enterprise. | In development. |
| Culture, clients, tickets | ||
| Culture: kudos, surveys, eNPS | Not part of the product. | Feedback Friday, kudos, leaderboards, anniversaries and surveys from Free; pulse surveys and eNPS from Workspace. |
| Where it runs | ||
| Who you sign with | Zoom Communications, Inc. and its affiliates. The only regional exception in the agreement is India. All matters are governed by the laws of the State of California, with exclusive venue in the state courts of Santa Clara County and the federal courts of the Northern District of California. | HOMtu® sp. z o.o., a Polish company, under Polish jurisdiction. |
Sources: Zoom pricing · Zoom Chat specifications and limitations · Zoom: storing and retaining chat messages · Zoom: channel privileges for external users · Zoom Terms of Service. Checked against Zoom Workplace’s own pages on 24 September 2026.
Giving the point away
Three of them, and none is a throwaway. If these are what your team runs on, Zoom Workplace is the right answer and we would rather you knew now.
Zoom is the benchmark for video quality, reliability on bad networks, webinars, breakout rooms and interpretation. Our meetings start from the chat and are good enough for a working team; they are not a webinar platform, and we are not going to claim otherwise.
Your client, your accountant and your candidate all have Zoom installed and know what the buttons do. That is a real advantage on the day you need someone outside the company in a room within ten seconds.
Zoom keeps free-plan cloud chat for two years. Our free plan keeps six months. For a team that wants a long searchable record without paying, that is straightforwardly more.
Where the difference shows
A message becomes a task with an owner and a deadline, a reminder, or a calendar event, and the comments on that task come back as a reply in the channel they came from. Zoom Tasks collects action items; it does not close that loop.
Kanban, list, table and Gantt, plus workflow templates with steps, relative deadlines, a department answering for each stage and conditions that branch the path.
Zoom’s free plan caps a meeting at forty minutes. Our free plan is not built around the call at all: it is eight people with chat, boards, surveys, kudos and a dashboard, and the meeting starts from the chat when it is needed.
Feedback Friday, kudos, leaderboards, anniversaries and surveys from the free plan; pulse surveys and eNPS from Workspace. None of this exists in Zoom, so it becomes another vendor.
An agency or an accounting office lives in several client organisations at once. In taos you switch between them without logging out, with every notification from every module and every organisation in one list.
Zoom’s agreement is governed by California law with venue in Santa Clara County, and its only regional exception is India. Ours is a Polish company on European infrastructure, on every plan.