Zoom

Last-resort fallback

Zoom records, and almost everyone already has it installed — that's the entire pitch for podcasting. Audio is conference-call grade, multi-track is awkward, and the 40-minute free cap is constant friction. Use it as a fallback when a guest refuses anything new; never as the default for a real show.

Zoom is in this list because every podcaster eventually has to record a guest who refuses to install anything new, and Zoom is the universal lowest common denominator. Pricing is freemium with the well-known 40-minute group call cap on free, Pro at $13.33/user/mo on annual, and Business at $18.33+/user/mo. Recording works locally or to the cloud, and you can configure separate audio files per participant on some plans, though it's nowhere near as clean as a dedicated tool's multi-track output and the file names alone will make you sigh. The fundamental problem for podcasting is that Zoom is optimized for real-time conferencing, which means aggressive compression, noise suppression, and bandwidth-adaptive bitrates. The result sounds fine in a meeting but obviously 'Zoom-y' in a polished podcast — listeners with decent headphones will hear it on the first second. There's no local-first capture in the Riverside sense, so a wobbly connection during the recording becomes a permanent flaw in your master file with no way to fix it in post. Strengths are practical: ubiquity, calendar integrations, ironclad reliability across geographies, and a guest experience that requires zero friction or onboarding. Use it for emergency record fallbacks when a guest can't or won't use Riverside, recording reference takes, or internal meetings you might publish later. Don't use it as the default capture chain for a show you take seriously.