Zoom / Google Hangout Alternatives

With the need to do more video conferences and meetings many are turning to Zoom and Google Hangouts. Technically I’ve always thought Google Hangouts was pretty mediocre and Zoom, while a better user experience has shown time and time again not to be trustworthy software.

One item of homework for myself is to investigate alternatives for my own meetup and other projects that better respect the privacy of users. So far some recommendations I’ve gotten from friends:

• Jitsi - Jitsi is a set of open-source projects that allows you to easily build and deploy secure videoconferencing solutions. At the heart of Jitsi are Jitsi Videobridge and Jitsi Meet, which let you have conferences on the internet, while other projects in the community enable other features such as audio, dial-in, recording, and simulcasting.
• Whereby - Whereby is a flexible tool providing you with video meetings in the browser – no downloads & no logins for guests
• Nextcloud Talk - Screensharing, online meetings & web conferencing without data leaks.

If you have anymore recommendations please let me know. I’ll share my notes when I’m done but wanted to get this out now so others can tests the waters as well.