Cost Effective Zoom Alternatives

Worried about Zoom's lack of security features? Wondering what else is available and how price competitive are the alternatives? Here's a list of some competing video conferencing apps. Keep in mind that most providers offer discounts if you opt for an annual plan instead of monthly. Also, most free plans do not include audio conferencing so you'll either need to use a separate conference bridge for audio-only participants or upgrade to a paid plan.

For comparison purposes, we'll start with the pricing for Zoom. There is a free version that can host up to 100 participants per meeting and has a 40-minute time limit on meetings. Zoom Pro is $14.99/host/mo and includes 100 participants per meeting and meetings can last up to 24 hours. Zoom Business is $19.99/host/mo and requires a subscription minimum of 10 hosts ($199.99/mo), includes up to 300 participants per meeting, you get a vanity URL (ie companyname.zoom.us), includes the option for on-premise deployment in a virtual machine and Single Sign-on capability. Zoom Enterprise is $19.99/host/mo with a 100 host subscription minimum ($1,999/mo), scales up to 500 participants per meeting and adds more management features. There is also an Enterprise Plus plan that scales to 1000 participants per meeting but pricing for that is not on the website. Zoom Video Webinar pricing starts at $12.49/host/month. I'll cover webinar options and pricing in another post.

Join.me (owned by LogMeIn): Plan options are: Lite: $10/host/mo - up to 5 people per meeting, no webcam streams, no audio conferencing; Pro: $20/host/mo - up to 250 people per meeting, 10 webcam streams, audio conferencing included; Business: $30/host/mo - up to 250 people per meeting, 10 webcam streams, audio conferencing, adds SSO authentication.

GoToMeeting (owned by LogMeIn): There is a 14-day free trial that converts to a paid plan at the end of the trial period. The Professional plan is $14/host/mo for up to 150 participants per meeting, the Business Plan is $19.00/host/mo for up to 250 participants. There is an Enterprise plan that can host up to 3000 participants per meeting but you must call for pricing. You can also add GoToWebinar Lite to the Pro and Business plans for $20/host/mo and host webcasts for up to 100 participants per host.

Cisco WebEx: Cisco has temporarily upgraded the features available to give more capacity to the free plan. Free includes up to 100 participants per host (up from 50) and no meeting time limits, up from 40 minutes and now includes audio conferencing. The Starter plan is $14.95/host/mo, includes up to 50 participants per meeting, no meeting time limits, audio conferencing, 5GB of cloud storage, meeting recording, administrative controls and the ability to join from a video conferencing meeting room system. The Plus plan is $19.95/host/mo, includes up to 100 participants, all the features of the Starter plan, host pass capability, custom URL, and 24x7 customer support. The Business Plan is $29.95/host/mo, requires a minimum of 5 licenses per month ($149.75/mo), hosts up to 200 participants per meeting, all features of Starter and Plus, 10Gb of cloud storage, SSO, and Active Directory integration. There is a disclaimer on the Cisco website that says due to high demand, free plan users may see degraded audio and video performance.

Microsoft Teams: Microsoft is now offering a free version of Teams with no participant limits and 10Gb of file storage, however, meetings can't be scheduled or recorded and there is no audio conferencing bridge included in any of the Teams plans. Upgrade to Office 365 Business Essentials for $60/host/year ($5/user/mo with an annual commitment) and you can host up to 300 participants per meeting, you can schedule and record meetings, 1TB of OneDrive storage is included as is an email address and the web versions of Excel, Word, and Powerpoint. The Office365 Business Premium is $150/host/year ($12.50/mo with an annual commitment) is also limited to 300 participants per meeting but adds desktop versions of Outlook, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, and Publisher to the Essentials features, as well as several business apps.

Zoho Meeting: Free version can host up to 3 participants, or up to 10 webinar attendees. There is a 14-day free trial on Zoho Meeting, after which it is $10/host/mo and accommodates up to 100 participants per meeting. If you pay annually the price drops to $8/host/mo. There is only one paid plan option for Zoho Meeting. There are four price brackets for Zoho Webinar, a separate product - 25 attendees $19/host/mo, 50 attendees $29/host/mo, 100 attendees $39/host/mo and 250 attendees $79/host/mo.

BlueJeans: No free plan. Standard Plan is $12.49/host/mo, up to 50 participants per meeting, no time limits on meetings. Pro Plan is $17.49/host/mo, up to 75 participants per meeting, CRM and LMS integrations. Enterprise plan for 100 or more participants - call for pricing.

Google Hangouts: is a feature included in Google GSuite for Business plans, and each plan can now support up to 250 participants per meeting. Before the Covid-19 crisis, Basic was limited to 100 participants, Business 150 and Enterprise 250. Participants in a meeting do not have to have a Google GSuite account to join a meeting. Basic is $6/user/mo and includes Gmail, Meet for up to 250 participants per call, Chat, Calendar, Drive with 30GB of storage, Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Sites, and Keep, all part of the base GSuite. Business is $12/user/mo and Enterprise is $25/user/mo. Upgrading to Business or Enterprise adds more Drive storage, and features such as Vault for archival of mail, chat and files, Audit Reports, Endpoint Management and several others.

RingCentral Meetings: Free for one user, can host up to 100 participants, a 40-minute time limit per meeting. Essentials is $14.99/host/mo, can host up to 100 participants per meeting and meetings have no time limit. Advanced is $19.99/host/mo, can host up to 100 participants per meeting, no time limits per meeting and RingCentral provides SLAs and a Real-Time usage dashboard for administrators.

ClickMeeting: Primarily geared toward webinar presenting and hosting, the plans differentiate by storage for recording and replay of webinars. Free Trial (7 days) online meetings for up to 5 people for the 25-attendee webinar, then gives the option to upgrade to Live Plan for $30/mo or Automated Plan for $45/mo. If you need to scale up to larger attendee numbers, there are price brackets at 50-attendees (Live is $45, Automated is $55/mo), 100-attendees (Live is $79 and Automated is $95/mo, with increments up to 1,000 attendees at $309 and $359/mo). It scales larger on the Enterprise plan and pricing is customized.

LifeSize: Free plan (for six months, then goes to $16.95/host/mo) up to 25 participants/meeting. Small Teams (1-14 hosts) is $16.95/host/mo. Midsize Teams (15-49 hosts) is $14.95/host/mo - minimum 15 hosts, limited to 100 participants/meeting. Large Teams (50+ hosts) is $12.95/host/mo with a minimum of 50 hosts, with 1,000 participant/meeting limit.

Skype: The Skype for Business (formerly MS Lync) product is set to be discontinued in 2021, so you won't find pricing anywhere on the Microsoft website, you'll simply be redirected to the Microsoft Teams site. Old school Skype, however, is still available for download and personal use for up to 50 people on a group video call. Call recording is baked into the app, as is participant chat and screen sharing. Skype is also end-to-end encrypted and includes the background-blur function that is also in high-priced paid plans from other video conferencing vendors. Add OBS (free open-source video recording and live-stream software) and either switchboard.live or Boxcast and live stream your calls to Youtube, Facebook and other platforms. Switchboard.live is $35, $99 or $350/mo based on team members and simultaneous live stream destinations. Boxcast is $99/month for one broadcast stream to unlimited destinations. You can add concurrent broadcasting and re-broadcasting features as well as automated captioning, and password protection among other features.

Intermedia AnyMeeting Video Conferencing: The Starter plan is free for up to 4 web participants. Lite Plan is $9.99/host/mo for up to 10 participants. Pro plan is $12.99/host/mo for up to 30 participants. There are price breaks at 26-100 hosts (Lite: $8.49, Pro $11.99) and 100+ hosts (Lite: $7.99, Pro $9.99). The website has special pricing on Pro through the end of 2020 if you call.

Whereby: Free Plan for 1 user with 1 meeting room, up to 4 guest participants. Pro plan is $9.99 for 1 user, 3 meeting rooms, up to 12 meeting participants per room. Business Plan is $59.99/mo for 10 meeting rooms ($5.99/user/mo seems to be the math), there can be up to 50 participants in a meeting, but only 12 are able to participate with video streams, the rest (38) are audio-only. It seems to be geared toward small teams that do mostly one-on-one or meetings with less than 12 participants.

Other options include WhatsApp Business, Spike, Facetime, Tox.chat and Google Duo but each of these has severe scalability limitations. WhatsApp is limited to 5 participants, Spike is heavily tied to GMail usage, Facetime is Apple-only, Tox.chat is peer-to-peer and a bandwidth hog, and Google Duo, while cross-platform requires a Gmail account and is limited to 12 participants on a call.