Looking for the best video conferencing apps and software has never been harder than it is now, and that's because there are just so many of them out there.
The video conferencing market has been massively competitive in recent years as the technology has made it possible to effectively conduct face-to-face meetings without the constant need for travel.
We've put together a list to help you choose the best video conferencing services. At a minimum, these services should offer support for video conferencing between three or more people and can be used for both work and home to avoid having to install multiple apps and services for this task.
There are dozens of options out there, but we’ve taken a look at them all and narrowed it down to our picks for the best video conferencing services based on price, features, and usability.
Zoom is far and away the market leader right now in video conferencing and for good reason. The app is available on every platform and is incredibly easy to set up and use. While the free tier limits your meetings to 40 minutes, the rest of the functionality is all there. This has made the service incredibly popular both for small business and personal use.
To use Zoom, you need to either download the app or use the web version. For business users, the end-to-end encryption, screen sharing, collaborative whiteboarding and support for unlimited-length meetings with up to 49 simultaneous video participants (1,000 total attendees for paid plans, and 100 by default) can make keeping in contact with a remote team much easier.
Zoom also offers the option to break meetings out into smaller meetings if groups need to discuss specific matters away from the primary call for a moment. And with the consumer crossover, you do get some fun features like the ability to change your Zoom background or touch up your appearance with a soft-focus lens option. Both the free and the paid tiers for Zoom are the best video conferencing option for most users today.
Cisco Webex Meetings has made some strong moves by revising its free tier and reducing pricing. The free tier comes with a 40-minute limit per meeting it now allows for up to 100 participants. You get most of the compelling paid features like screen sharing, interactive whiteboards, messaging, multimedia sharing, and the Q&A, polling and Raise Hand features.
Stepping up to the Webex Meet tier gets you support for up to 200 attendees and 10GB of cloud storage with recording transcriptions. Other critical features you get are user management and administrative controls, which is crucial if you are trying to use Cisco Webex Meetings to manage a large remote team remotely.
For personal use and for most small businesses, the free tier of Cisco Webex Meetings should be sufficient and is a strong contender versus the more free tier offered by Zoom.
BlueJeans Meetings is another excellent video conferencing service, which should tick all of the boxes for many users. But the lack of a free tier of service will turn off some ]. You do get a 7-day free trial to see if BlueJeans Meetings is right for you, but then the base plan starts at $12.49 a month if billed annually. This gets you support for up to 25 simultaneous video participants in a meeting with up to 100 total participants.
BlueJeans Meetings has apps for basically every platform, and if you just need to participate in a meeting, there is a web-only client that will do the basics. Meetings can be created as either a one-off or recurring event and you also have the option to simply hold an impromptu meeting on the fly. Up to 5 hours of meetings can be stored in the cloud with the option to keep them private or share them via a link.
Some of the included tools are a collaborative whiteboard, annotations, and, of course, screen sharing. Organizers also have complete control over participants' audio and can chat with the group or individuals via text if necessary. A couple of unique features to BlueJeans are the Facebook Live integration, which allows you to broadcast your meeting directly to Facebook, and support for Dolby-powered directional audio with the necessary hardware. While Zoom has a few advantages, like the higher attendee count and free tier, BlueJeans Meetings is a solid competitor.
GoToMeeting isn’t the powerhouse that it once was in the video conference market, but it still offers a reliable and intuitive service. Free users can have up to 40-minute meetings with up to four participants on video, while paid users jump up to 150 participants on the Professional plan and up to 250 participants on the Business plan
The Commuter mode is a nice new addition for mobile use that reduces the amount of data used when either hosting or attending a GoToMeeting on your smartphone. GoToMeeting has excellent security options as well, with end-to-end encryption including HIPAA compliance and a new “Risk-Based Authentication” feature that will automatically flag any suspicious logins to a meeting.
GoToMeeting has several advanced meeting tools, like a notes feature that can be automatically shared when the meeting is completed and a Smart Assistant that will automatically detect and highlight action items during a meeting. But these are only available at the Business tier and above, which starts at $16 a month (billed annually). GoToMeeting remains a solid option, but given the pricing, it’s hard to recommend over the market leader Zoom.
Join.me is a nicely designed and easy to use video conferencing solution, although its free tier is very restrictive. You can join meetings via voice, but video conferencing requires a subscription.
With the Lite plan, you can have up to 5 attendees on a call, but they can't stream video -- only screen share. The Pro tier adds up to 50 meeting participants and 10 video feeds, and the Business plan bumps that up to 250 participants. They cost $10/month, $20/month, and $30/month per user when billed annually.
Join.me offers screen sharing and an easy to use messaging feature for sending messages to the whole group or individuals during the video conference. Rather than the traditional square approach, Join.me uses circular bubbles for video feeds that can be rearranged as you like on your screen, which is a nice change of pace. Scheduling is quick and easy with support for Outlook or Google Calendar, and the custom URLs are a nice touch. Oddly, while the service does have a whiteboard feature, it is only available on iOS and iPad OS. If the free version meets your needs, Join.me works well and is visually appealing, but it lacks a lot of the more advanced features of the top-tier options and the paid plans are much too expensive.
