Which is the Best Video Conferencing App?

Video conferencing software isn't just a software for enterprise anymore; it's the central place meetings happen. It's a genuine requirement in small businesses, in hybrid businesses, and it's growingly vital in businesses that mostly work in physical offices.

So, video calls with poor quality are just not a niche problem – they're bad for business revenue and productivity all around. Every dropped call leads to major annoyance, and it's also not appreciable to waste time waiting for somebody to set up a video conferencing app that's not intuitive.

Meetings are way easier than they were in the past. Companies didn't have a ton of options, most of them were too costly, and video quality was always low. However, video calls are as convenient as pressing a button these days. There are various video conferencing apps. Still, video conferencing needs a little extra from customer-level video chats. You need powerful video conferencing software that supports a bunch of people with a list of features. It should be reliable and stable for business meetings. There are some really good services in this space. 

Here are some of the top video conferencing apps for users. Companies considering a video meeting app also typically compare Zoom with Google Meet and look at differences between Skype and Google Meet. Mobile-heavy business users also often consider which is best between Zoom and Skype and consider Facetime vs. Zoom when deciding which system is best for their company. Comparing advantages and disadvantages of Google Meet, Skype, and Zoom can help a company determine which system will bring the most value to a business.

For now, Zoom seems to be the ruling service, and many professionals, businesses, and other organizations started using it when the COVID-19 broke out.

According to PC Magazine, even before the pandemic, according to a report by FlexJobs, 3.9 million employees from the United States were working from home at least half of the time. This is an increase of 115% from 2005. 

The crucial thing for video conferencing space is video quality. That goes beyond how the picture appears – the best quality in the world doesn't change if people drop or cut out the calls instantly. We tested each platform to see how they performed when the quality of the internet connection shifted. 

But that's not the only thing we were concerned about. There are a lot of customer-facing video chat apps such as FaceTime that wouldn't work as a video conferencing service. Businesses need more than just robust video connection software to do online meetings. Here are some best examples of video conferencing platforms:

1.     Zoom

2.     Google Meets

3.     Zoho Meeting

4.     Webex Meetings

5.     Google Hangouts

Video conferencing is here to stay longer, but which video conferencing software is worth your commitment? Here are some details of the best software for video conferencing:

1.     Offers HD video quality with advanced features

2.     Makes it easy to start, schedule, and join meetings. Ideally, you can quickly schedule and add meetings to your calendar ideally, and there should be clear links to click when it's time to join a meeting. 

3.     Include core features such as screen sharing, virtual backgrounds, unlimited meetings, and chats. The best apps also offer whiteboarding or even direct collaboration features.

4.     Allows for video recording. Not every individual can join every meeting – recordings help bridge the gap.

5.     Video conferencing apps make it convenient to add people outside your company. Anybody should join your meeting by clicking a link without much fuss (although there should be standard features for security to keep unwanted participants out.

We considered all of these features while choosing the best video conference services, then focused on these basic features while testing. 

These are the best video conferencing options for reliable, large meetings, long video calls, and audio conferencing.

Zoom

Best app with a massive feature list and high participant capacities for best performance. You already know the name Zoom. It's the most popular video conferencing software out there, and for personal to professional reasons: it just works. 

You can conduct a Zoom meeting only by sharing a meeting link and feel confident that everybody will join it. There are apps for every big platform, and at this point, you can assume everybody has already installed them. Entering a meeting is as simple as clicking the link. It's hard to overemphasize the value that is: nothing bears down a meeting quite like a participant not being able to join. 

The app is extremely reliable. It will usually keep your video going even through a "not so good" internet connection, just at a low-quality level. You can record meetings of any length, and participants can use the text chat feature for group or private messages. You can share the entire screen or just one section of the screen. Zoom video conferencing allows you to schedule calls in advance, chat and connect with any of your contacts. Overall, it's a nearly perfect app for video meetings.

Zoom Price: for up to 100-participants, it offers free services with a 40-minutes time limit, from $14.99/ month per host with the pro plan, which comprises reporting, unlimited meeting length, and user management. 

Cisco WebEx Meetings

An industry-standard service, especially for larger businesses with a huge number of team members or an exceptionally large enterprise. The app is quite popular with business users with some amazing features like joining a meeting with a single click, customizable video layouts, and you can schedule and organize meetings directly from the app. The audio quality and video quality are stable and decent. However, the app is a bit clunky. Most complaints involve minor audio issues, occasional login issues, and the clunky UI of the app. 

Cisco’s WebEx video conferencing app functions like a mash-up of voice calling and web conferencing services. It enables joining online meetings or through phone-based on participant's location and internet connection at the time. Cisco is a ruling manufacturer of video conferencing hardware. 

Users can download the app to join the meeting; the installation is relatively easier. The collaborative features are specifically noteworthy. Users can share documents during the meeting. There's also a brilliant virtual whiteboard corresponding to Microsoft Teams' offered with shapes, text, drawing, and other basic features. 

WebEx Price: there’s a free plan for meetings with up to 100 participants. But it misses some important features like recordings and screen sharing. From $25/ user per month for the business plan for advanced features. 

Google Hangouts

Google abandoned Google Hangouts as a consumer product. Still, it's thriving as a business and enterprise software. Google Hangouts Meet is a free service offered by Google's G Suite Software. It supports up to 50 participants with good video and sound quality. It also synchronizes with Google Drive and Google Calendar and comes with a range of features. This is the genuine option for schools, businesses, and environments already utilizing G Suite. It might even be ideal to consider G Suite for your business. Still, G Suite and Hangouts Meet need locking yourself into Google's ecosystem, whereas many other apps are similar to standalone services. For free G Suite Basic customers and Gmail, Google Hangouts permits up to 10 people to chat in a video call. The participants can join conferences or simultaneous video chats through a shareable link or email.

Google Hangouts Price: Google Hangouts is free, and the other plans depend on a user's Google Workspace plan. Apps like Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Docs are free for every Gmail account user. To use these apps with additional features, you must pay for a Google Workspace plan. Paid plans are for businesses, while individual users usually use Google's free app version. Business Starter plan starts with $6 per user per month for a 14-days free trial with Workspace. The business standard plan costs $12 per user per month, the Business Plus plan costs %18 per user per month, and you can contact the sales team for big industries or organizations. These plans have additional features regarding cloud storage, security, and video meeting participants. 

Zoho Meeting

Super convenient and most accessible video conferencing app to start a webinar or video conference. Zoho is one of the most powerful video conferencing solutions for businesses looking for reliable online meeting software for the webinar and video conferencing needs. With Zoho meetings, people can avail new ways to collaborate and attend/ organize virtual meetings. 

The beauty of Zoho is that it’s simple and user-friendly. Joining a webinar or conference call is easy. When you invite participants to your Zoho meeting, you can either call-in number or send a link. Users don’t have to deal with the mess of creating an account, like they would, such as for Google Hangouts. Participants can either click the link or open the conference call through their browser, or they can call in with their phones.

If it’s a constant effort to get everybody you want on the same conference call, Zoho will surely alleviate that process. Users can share a screen for their PowerPoint presentation, document, or video of their achievements and activities with their friends.

The webinar features of Zoho are just brilliant. It gives you all the tools you need to begin. The registration program by Zoho is the best thing. So that users can easily track who's going to join the webinar. Moreover, you get tools to broadcast, send emails, and moderate the meeting participants. What you pay for the webinar support is based on how many participants you plan on having. 

Zoho Meeting Price: Free plan of Zoho Meeting allows 2 participants, but no recording can be done. Meeting-10 plan costs $3 per user per month, with 10 participants in meetings and 10 recordings can be stored. Meeting-25 plan costs $5 per user per month with 25 participants with 10 recordings can be, Meeting-50 plan costs $8 per user per month with 50 participants, and 10 recordings can be stored. Meeting-100 plan costs $10 per user per month, allows 100 participants to join the meeting, and 10 recordings can be stored. 

Google Meet

The best app to synchronize everything with your Google account.

Google Meet was created for enterprise customers. This Google conference call software is an updated version of Google Hangouts created for teams. Google Meet is made around scheduled video meetings among colleagues and employees with similar features like Zoom such as conference room booking, calendar syncing, and an improved user interface.

The app previously known as Google Hangout has been given a new name about four times in the past. So, there was Google Hangouts Chat, Google Messages, Google Hangouts Meet, and Google Duo. It all feels like different names for the same thing. For those of you who are Google account users for everything, Google’s video conferencing platform synchronizes with your Google Calendar and contacts list.

Google Meet is an extension of your existing Google account. Contrary to Zoom or Skype, you won’t have to look for people’s contact details with Meel because chances are they’re already on your Google contacts list. All you have to do is hit the Hangouts button with one of your contacts in the list, and you can easily start a conference call. Google Meet offers big cloud storage space to its users. You can record and save a great number of video conferences with Google Meet. 

Google Meet Price: To leverage all the benefits from Google Meet like unlimited meetings with a time limit of up to 300 hours, 250 attendees, and the capability to live-stream to up to 100,000 viewers and 24x7 online support, you can contact the G Suite sales team for your personal quote. Business Starter Plan costs $6 per user per month with 100 participants to join a meeting and 30 GB of cloud storage for recordings. Business Standard plan costs $12 per user per month with a limit of 150 participants with 2 TB cloud storage for recordings. The Business Plus plan costs $18 per user per month, allowing 250 participants with 5 TB cloud storage. Google Meet has no free option for its users, which is a drawback.

There are many other video conferencing solutions out there, and some might be an ideal fit for you. Here are some more best mentions to have the best video conferencing experience.

1.     Slack – it comes with video conferencing automatically, but you can’t have more than 15 attendees at a time. Slack serves best when you want a simple 1-on-1 video call.

2.     FaceTime – it supports 32 participants joining a video conference at a time, but everybody on the video conference call must be using an Apple device.

3.     GoTo Meeting – it’s an all in all video conferencing app as good as Google Hangouts, but its only drawback is that it’s a little pricier than the other options. If you already use GoToMeeting at the office, you can sync your calendar to your mobile device to join meetings and use the commuter mode to save up to 90% of data when joining a mobile conference. (digitaltrends.com) 

4.     Wire – this up-and-coming video conferencing platform that's completely committed to security. It presently allows 4 participants during a video call, but it offers secure video conferencing space to its users.

5.     WhatsApp – it permits 16 participants on a video conferencing call at a time. It works both on Apple and Android devices. 

6.     Discord – this app was designed for gamers, but it works as a stand-alone video chat app. It's completely free for beginners, and you can have 10 video conference participants at a time.

7.     Free Conference – this app is not as free as it looks, but it offers a free-tiered plan to its users with a maximum of 5 participants at a time for video conferencing. You can choose a paid plan that offers additional features and support for many international call-in numbers.

8.     Skype – skype was designed to offer free video conferencing. It allows you to talk for hours with at least 4 participants, and you can avail yourself of this service for free. 

Zoom is the game-changer in the video conferencing space because of the several options and admin features in every plan. The platform also supports crystal clear audio, flawless video, and instant sharing capabilities, making it the best video conferencing app. Zoom caters to the most reliable audio and streaming of all video conferencing services. Users enjoy the least latency and the top-possible frame rate for their internet connection with Zoom. 

With many options on the market for audio and video streaming, identifying what's the best match for your needs and is not only the modern or recently launched model can be difficult. Most of us are working from home at present, and working practices will grow moving forward, while basically all conferencing solutions should be of quality, be adaptable and cater collaboration tools and operational demands of the conferencing solutions must be considered to make sure the app meets your requirements, and the purchase is sound and cost-effective.