Why did Zoom grade C on churn?

Zoom scored 56 out of 100. The dominant drivers are security-incident recurrence (April 2025 remote-control exploit, 2026 CVE 9.9 in Zoom Node MMR) and competitive pressure from Microsoft Teams bundled free with Office 365. The video product remains strong. The churn is structural: teams already paying Microsoft have a free Zoom substitute, and trust erodes every time a new CVE drops.

Is Microsoft Teams killing Zoom?

Not killing, but compressing. Teams comes free with most Office 365 business plans. For organizations already paying Microsoft, the economic case to also pay Zoom is narrow. Public commentary cites mid-market teams (50-500 employees) as the most vulnerable segment. Zoom's core product is still best-in-class for meeting quality; the conversion-to-paid window is the problem, not the product.

What Zoom security issues should I know about?

April 2025: remote-control exploit disclosed. 2026: CVE-scored 9.9 vulnerability in Zoom Node MMR. Plus a brief domain outage via GoDaddy registrar issue. Each incident is individually patched quickly, but the aggregate pattern is what damages trust for security-sensitive buyers.

What are Zoom alternatives in 2026?

Microsoft Teams (free with Office 365) is the default alternative for enterprise. Google Meet for Workspace customers. For dev teams and async-first orgs: Loom, Tella, Around. Whereby for lighter-weight browser-based meetings. Jitsi for self-hosted. The meeting-tool market has commoditized, which is why Zoom's retention depends on brand + feature differentiation rather than product uniqueness.

Should we still use Zoom for customer calls?

External calls (sales demos, customer onboarding, investor meetings) are where Zoom retention remains strongest. Participants join without needing Microsoft accounts. Brand familiarity reduces friction. The churn risk is on internal-meeting use cases where Teams or Meet already cover the need. Segment your usage and evaluate accordingly.

Zoom's Trust Cracks: Security + Competition Analyzed

A RetentionCheck churn teardown of Zoom

TL;DR

Grade

C (56 / 100)

Sample

35+ public complaints (HN, Reddit, security advisories)

Top driver

Security incidents + Teams bundling eroding mid-market

April 2025 remote-control exploit. 2026 CVE 9.9 in Zoom Node MMR. Microsoft Teams bundled free with Office 365 compressing Zoom's paid conversion window.

Methodology: Public sources including TheHackerNews + BleepingComputer coverage of 2025 remote-control social-engineering campaign, Help Net Security coverage of the Zoom Node MMR CVE-2026-22844 (CVSS 9.9), zoom.us domain-registrar outage (April 2025), post-COVID enterprise competitive analysis. Analyzed with RetentionCheck.

Zoom dominated the pandemic. The post-pandemic story is different: Microsoft Teams bundled into every Office 365 seat, a string of security incidents in 2025, and a 40-minute free-tier ceiling that pushes casual users toward Google Meet or Teams.

The Churn Health Score

Zoom scored 56/100, grade C. One critical, one high, two medium. The product is still widely regarded as best-in-class for video quality. The churn story is about trust and competition, not core features.

The churn patterns

1. Security incident string in 2025 (critical, 80% confidence)

A hacking group dubbed "Elusive Comet" ran social-engineering attacks in April 2025 that exploited Zoom's remote-control feature, tricking users into granting screen access to attackers impersonating the Zoom app itself. Help Net Security and BleepingComputer both covered the campaign.

Separately, CVE-2026-22844 (CVSS 9.9) was disclosed in Zoom Node Multimedia Routers, allowing remote code execution via network access from a meeting participant. TheHackerNews published the advisory.

The zoom.us domain was also briefly shut down in 2025 due to a GoDaddy Registry communication error with Markmonitor, Zoom's registrar. Not Zoom's fault technically, but the outage compounded the trust narrative.

Security buyers in 2026 have seen too many Zoom incidents to treat them as isolated events.

2. Microsoft Teams bundling erodes mid-market (high, 78% confidence)

Microsoft includes Teams with every Microsoft 365 seat. For any organization already paying for Office, the marginal cost of Teams is zero. Zoom's pricing has to justify premium against a free competitor that IT already owns.

Mid-market customers increasingly renew on Teams simply because it's free with existing license. The decision is procurement, not product preference.

3. Free-tier 40-minute ceiling (medium, 72%)

The 40-minute meeting limit on the free tier drives casual and small-team users toward Google Meet (which offers longer free sessions) and Jitsi. A meaningful source of referral/virality loss.

For founders-first users picking video tools, the 40-minute cutoff is a well-known friction that competitors exploit in their marketing.

4. Post-COVID plateau visible in engagement (medium, 68%)

Post-pandemic, meeting volume per seat dropped. Zoom's growth narrative is no longer about new use cases; it's about retaining enterprise seats against Teams. Public earnings commentary from 2023-2025 reflects the shift. Secondary signal.

What Zoom does right

Video quality remains widely considered best-in-class. Reliability in the meeting itself (not the broader ecosystem) is strong. Developer platform and integrations are mature. The brand is synonymous with video calling, which is a durable asset.

Users who stay rarely cite the product itself as the issue. They cite ecosystem, pricing, or specific incidents.

3 things Zoom could fix

Public security roadmap post-2025 incidents. Transparent post-mortems for the remote-control exploit, the MMR CVE, and the domain outage. Silent fixes teach buyers that incidents are normal.
Drop the 40-minute free ceiling. Replace with feature-limit (no recording, limited participants). Content-limits on free tiers drive users to zero-friction alternatives faster than pricing does.
Develop a procurement-friendly answer to Teams bundling. Acknowledge the pricing disadvantage explicitly. Lean into specific product advantages (video quality, reliability, developer platform) rather than pretend the market dynamic doesn't exist.

What this means for your SaaS

Zoom's story illustrates how category-defining products can lose margin without losing reputation. The product is still good. The market moved around it.

For any SaaS facing a bundled competitor (Microsoft's favorite move), the lesson is to stop competing on price and start competing on specific depth. Zoom's video quality advantage is real. Its pricing advantage isn't.

If you have cancellation feedback sitting in a spreadsheet, run it through RetentionCheck in 30 seconds. The pattern is usually underneath the individual reasons.

Sources

Related teardowns

Asana + Notion: Both Graded F (Grade F) · 15 Trustpilot reviews, billing trust collapse
Notion's Mid-Life Crisis (Grade D) · 60+ HN complaints, feature bloat
Why Teams Are Leaving Linear (Grade B) · Narrow, bounded churn (the opposite story)
Figma's 2025 Pricing Hike (Grade C) · +33% + Penpot surge

Brian Farello is the founder of RetentionCheck. Other teardowns: Notion (D), Linear (B), Figma (C), Asana (D), Monday.com (C), Cursor (D), Evernote (F), Slack (C).