6 Best Zoom Alternatives

Although Zoom is a popular small business video conferencing tool, it has some drawbacks. You can’t get meeting transcripts or branding without buying 10 or more monthly licenses. Cloud storage is limited to 1GB on paid plans and users can’t log in on multiple devices. Unlike some Zoom alternatives, the free version restricts meetings to 40 minutes and doesn’t offer dial-in numbers. To that end, here are the six best Zoom alternatives based on use type, costs, features, and meeting capacity.

According to our evaluation, the six best alternatives to Zoom for video conferencing are:

• RingCentral: Best overall Zoom alternative, and best for companies that prefer feature-rich free and paid plans
• BlueJeans: Best Zoom meeting alternative for a small business wanting in-depth analytics and enterprise-grade features
• GoToMeeting: Best alternative to Zoom for hosting mid-size video conferences
• Microsoft Teams: Top choice for organizations needing to host meetings with up to 10,000 participants
• Google Meet: Best option for teams using Google Workspace in everyday workflows
• 8×8: Best Zoom video conferencing alternative for businesses looking for a unified communications (UC) solution with phone and video

Zoom and Best Alternatives at a Glance

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RingCentral: Best Overall All-in-One Zoom Alternative

RingCentral[/fitlink] is a voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) provider offering a cloud-based unified communications platform and a standalone video meeting app. It stands out because it’s scalable, from a robust free version for 100 participants to its feature-rich, yet reasonably priced plan for 200 attendees. As a result, RingCentral works equally well for small to mid-sized businesses and enterprises.

While you don’t need a credit card to use the free version, you may want to check out the VoIP subscriptions, which come with RingCentral Meetings and unlimited calling. Learn more about RingCentral services and features in our RingCentral review. One drawback for RingCentral is that it doesn’t offer transcriptions like you’ll find in GoToMeeting’s Business plan tier, which starts at $16 per user, per month.

RingCentral Pricing at a Glance*

• RingCentral Video Pro: Free for unlimited 24-hour meetings, 10 hours of recording storage, calendar integrations, and up to 100 conference attendees
• RingCentral Video Pro+: $14.99 per user, per month for 100 hours of cloud storage retained for a year, the call me/callout feature, up to 200 participants, and business app integrations

*The free plan’s 24-hour meeting duration is for those subscribed by December 2021. Save up to 33% with annual prepayment and receive volume discounts for more than 100 users.

RingCentral Features

• Flexible ways to schedule and join meetings: After connecting your Google or Outlook calendar, schedule meetings using the RingCentral app or your calendar, and participate using the app, browser, or phone. You can also view and join meetings on different platforms, including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, WebEx, Join.me, UberConference, GoToWebinar, GoToMeeting, and BlueJeans.
• Admin controls: The host is able to lock the meeting, mute or unmute all attendees, or send a request allowing the moderator to turn on all cameras. The RingCentral video app also lets you eject participants and allow anyone to share their screen.
• Glassboard mode: Mimic on-site presentations by putting yourself on the screen while sharing a video or using whiteboard tools. Your image will be transparent so you’re not blocking the presentation.

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BlueJeans: Best Zoom Alternative for In-depth Analytics

BlueJeans is a video conferencing platform featuring an updated user interface and a centralized command center. Like RingCentral, BlueJeans lets you view up to 25 participants (less than the 49 supported by Zoom). However, BlueJeans’ lower-tier plans include many features that are only available on Zoom when you buy more than 10 licenses.

For instance, access to Zoom’s admin portal, recording transcripts, and branding require a minimum monthly payment of $199.90 (10 licenses). In contrast, BlueJeans charges $19.99 per month (one license) for brand customization, real-time transcriptions, and the live command center. Unfortunately, BlueJeans doesn’t offer a free plan, so for a free Zoom alternative with meetings up to 24 hours, consider RingCentral.

BlueJeans Pricing at a Glance*

• BlueJeans Standard: $12.49 per user, per month for up to 100 participants, unlimited meeting duration, five hours of stored recordings, and smart meeting features
• BlueJeans Pro: $17.49 per user, per month for up to 150 attendees, 25 hours of meeting recordings, command center analytics, and Slack and Microsoft Teams integrations
• BlueJeans Enterprise: $19.99 per user, per month for up to 200 participants, unlimited cloud storage, command center live, and automated closed captioning
• BlueJeans Enterprise Plus: Get a quote for custom support options, such as an onboarding specialist, technical account manager, or customer success manager

*Save up to 20% with yearly prepayment.

BlueJeans Features

• Smart meetings: Simplify follow-up conversations by capturing 40-second meeting clips, assigning tasks from the meeting highlights, and sending recaps to your team or company via email.
• Command center analytics: While many tools provide reporting and analytics features, BlueJeans goes further by unifying analytics in one dashboard. It includes historical reports and video conferencing performance metrics, including endpoint and geographic distribution and user feedback summaries.
• One-click scheduling: Make it easy for employees to join your video conference with a Google or Microsoft Outlook integration. Any meetings added to these calendars let users click to join your event without a password, pin code, or conference ID.

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GoToMeeting: Best Alternative to Zoom for Hosting Mid-size Video Conferences

GoToMeeting is one of several video solutions offered by GoTo, along with VoIP service, webinars, and rooms. It’s a better option than Zoom as far as small business paid plans go because you get more features at a lower price, including single sign-on (SSO), telephone support, and administrative tools.

Although Microsoft Teams has an enterprise package for up to 10,000 meeting attendees, overall, Microsoft Teams is a better fit for companies using Microsoft products. In contrast, GoToMeeting connects to Google, Microsoft, and Calendly calendars and allows enterprise users to host meetings with up to 3,000 attendees. With Zoom, you must purchase the large meeting add-on, where you are still only able to host up to 1,300 participants.

GoToMeeting Pricing at a Glance*

• Free: No charge for unlimited 40-minute meetings with up to three participants, screen sharing, meeting chat, and mobile apps
• Professional: $12 per organizer, per month for up to 150 participants, unlimited meetings, no meeting time limits, calendar and Salesforce integrations, and dial-in numbers
• Business: $16 per organizer, per month for 250 meeting attendees, unlimited cloud recording, meeting transcriptions, and the smart assistant
• Enterprise: Contact GoToMeeting for volume discounts, meetings with 3,000 participants, a customer success manager, and custom onboarding and training options

*All prices are based on an annual prepayment, and monthly subscriptions aren’t available.

GoToMeeting Features

• Smart assistant: This feature uses machine learning to transcribe meetings and automatically detect action items and highlights. View key meeting details, search for keywords, view color-coordinated speaker timelines, and filter your view by the speaker.
• Slack meeting launcher: Like Zoom, you can join or start a video meeting without leaving the Slack platform, allowing your team to move from chat collaboration right into a face-to-face meeting without changing applications.
• Meeting reports: GoToMeeting provides several reporting options, including performance analysis for user-level troubleshooting, management logs, and a unified admin center.

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Microsoft Teams: Best for Hosting Large Video Conferences

*Microsoft Teams has been offering higher limits since 2020, but their original free plan supports 100 attendees and 60-minute meetings.

Microsoft Teams is a natural video conferencing choice for companies relying on Microsoft tools like SharePoint, Word, and Excel. It can replace applications like Slack to give your team a central workspace for online collaboration, instant messaging, and video communications. Plus, the free version offers more cloud storage, app integrations, and a longer meeting duration than Zoom.

Like GoToMeeting, Microsoft Teams easily scales to support a higher number of event attendees at a reasonable price point of $12.50 per user, per month without a minimum license purchase. Likewise, enterprise users may prefer the email capabilities and desktop versions of Microsoft software, which aren’t available with any other Zoom alternative.

Microsoft Teams Pricing at a Glance*

• Microsoft Teams: Free for unlimited instant messaging, 300 meeting participants, 2GB files for content sharing, and web versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
• Microsoft 365 Business Basic: $5 per user, per month for meeting recordings, email hosting, 1TB OneDrive storage, phone support, and SSO
• Microsoft 365 Business Standard: $12.50 per user, per month for desktop versions of Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, and webinar hosting features
• Office 365 E3: $20 per user, per month for hosting online events with up to 10,000 people, unlimited cloud storage, and everything in the business standard plan

*Annual prepayment required for paid packages.

Microsoft Teams Features

• Meeting recap: Keep everyone up to date with a comprehensive meeting review that includes the meeting recording, transcript, shared files, and chat messages. The summary is automatically shared under the meeting chat tab.
• Transcription languages: Although Microsoft Teams offers fewer language options than Zoom—28 versus 35—other tools, like RingCentral and GoToMeeting, require a third-party app for transcriptions in languages other than English.
• All-in-one collaboration: While most Zoom alternatives support content sharing and in-meeting interactions, Microsoft Teams serves as a virtual workplace. You may be able to use one application for meetings and collaboration instead of using multiple tools like Slack and Trello.

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Google Meet: Best Zoom Alternative for Small Team Collaboration

Google offers many services tailored to small business and team collaboration, including Google Meet, Chat, and Gmail. The user interface for Google Meet looks like other Google products, so current Google users won’t experience a learning curve. In addition, all plans come with free Google Drive storage, allowing you to save content in the cloud.

Google Meet is similar to Microsoft Teams because the plans give you access to all Google collaboration tools. It also supports a higher number of meeting participants at a lower price than Zoom. However, you’ll need to install a third-party app for meeting transcriptions.

Google Meet Pricing at a Glance

• Google Meet: Free for unlimited one-to-one meetings, 60-minute video conferences with 100 participants, and 15GB of Google Drive storage
• Business Starter: $6 per user, per month for unlimited video meetings up to 24 hours with 100 participants, local and international dial-in numbers, 30GB of cloud storage, and business email
• Business Standard: $12 per user, per month for unlimited conferences with 150 participants, 2TB cloud storage, polling, recording, and breakout rooms
• Business Plus: $18 per user, per month for unlimited meetings with 250 participants, attendance tracking, and advanced endpoint management
• Enterprise: Contact Google for a quote on in-domain livestreaming, a security center, and noise cancellation

Google Meet Features

• Breakout rooms: Google is the only provider on our list of Zoom alternatives offering up to 100 breakout rooms, compared to 50 with RingCentral and Zoom. Move people manually to different rooms, use the shuffle feature to randomly mix up groups, or let attendees choose a room.
• Native integrations: Like Microsoft Teams, Google Meet tightly integrates with Google products. You can share content from Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides and collaborate via chat. Plus, you can start a video meeting during a chat session or from Gmail.
• Accessibility: Zoom only supports the use of one device per user during a meeting, but Google Meet lets you watch the video meeting on your computer while using a phone for audio. This works well for those with poor internet connections or additional accessibility needs.

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8×8: Best Alternative to Zoom for Inexpensive Voice, Chat & Video Services

8×8 is the only Zoom alternative on our list offering unlimited calling, messaging, and video meetings for $12 per month. Although GoTo Connect, RingCentral, and Zoom all offer voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) services, the monthly cost for each is more than the 8×8 Express plan.

With 8×8, you can connect Apple, Google, and Microsoft calendars, take advantage of VoIP business phone features like an auto-attendant, and participate in group or private chats. 8×8’s X-series plans support unlimited international calls from 14 to as many as 47 countries. In contrast, Zoom requires an add-on package costing $10 per user for unlimited calling to 18 countries per month. Learn more about 8×8’s VoIP services by reading our 8×8 review.

8×8 Pricing at a Glance

• 8×8 Express: $12 per user, per month for unlimited meetings, messaging, and calling in the U.S. and Canada, meeting recording and transcription, and up to 100 conference attendees
• X2: $32 per user, per month* for unlimited calling to 14 countries and unlimited recording storage with a 30-day retention period
• X4: $44 per user, per month* for unlimited calling to 47 countries, unlimited recording storage with a 130-day retention period, and supervisor analytics

*Save up to 25% with annual prepayment.

8×8 Features

• Remote desktop control: 8×8 is an excellent option for training and user support sessions because you can remotely control the desktop of a meeting participant and share their screen with other attendees.
• Captions and transcripts: Automatically subtitle your meetings in real time, then share meeting transcripts with other team members or use them to review meeting details post-event.
• International dial-in numbers: 8×8 provides dial-in access for more than 50 countries, including 13 domestic and international toll-free numbers on its cheapest plan, which costs less than Zoom’s video conferencing or phone plans.

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How We Evaluated the Best Zoom Alternatives

We identified Zoom alternatives offering features Zoom lacks in entry-level plans, such as multi-screen sharing and meeting transcription. We compared free and paid plans, overall value, and ease of use. Plus, we looked at different business use cases to pick the best video conferencing tools for specific business needs.

Scoring 4.72 out of 5 stars, RingCentral was the clear winner. The free RingCentral Video app supports unlimited 24-hour meetings, dial-in by phone, and 10 hours of recording storage. The paid plan comes with live phone and chat support, 500 minutes to call participants directly, and advanced analytics. RingCentral’s free plan doesn’t require a credit card, so give it a try and see how it stacks up to Zoom.

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Here’s a breakdown of the criteria we used to measure each provider:

Bottom Line

Although Zoom upgraded its security to end-to-end encryption after 2020’s pandemic-induced debacle, you may feel more comfortable using a Zoom alternative. Alternatively, your business might need a video conferencing option offering more features or including more features at a lower price point than Zoom. Either way, the best option for your company will differ based on your budget, desired features, and participant capacity needed.

The best Zoom alternative for video conferencing is RingCentral. Compared to Zoom’s free plan, RingCentral provides more cloud storage, includes dial-in numbers, and currently offers unlimited meetings for up to 24 hours at a time. Plus, the paid RingCentral plan is the same price as Zoom’s entry-level option but RingCentral gives you more, allowing up to 200 participants and 100 hours of cloud storage.

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