Remote work and hybrid work require businesses to invest in the best video conferencing tools and unified collaboration and communication apps as video conferencing is now becoming the norm in collaborating and communicating with your employees, clients, and leads.
Read More: 5 Of The Best Video Conferencing Software For Small Businesses To Connect With Your Team
A video conferencing platform lets your team attend remote work meetings from anywhere without booking expensive, crowded conference rooms/co-working spaces or traveling far away.
However, with a lot of video conferencing platforms available in the market, it may be difficult to choose which platform is suitable for your business.
In this article, you will know the best video conferencing platforms/apps you can use for your business that will suit your work setup either remote work or hybrid work setup. Also, you will have an idea of their commonalities in terms of meetings, messaging, rooms, workspace, and collaborations.
Here are the best video conferencing software/apps that you can choose from whenever you want to have remote work meetings, hybrid work events, and even sales presentations:
Zoom is a widely used software for hosting online video and audio conferences, webinars, and live chats. It's easy to use that’s why it's a popular choice for connecting with others online, whether for work or personal reasons because it's cloud-based.
Zoom has many helpful features that you can use to work better with your team, such as Whiteboard, Breakout rooms, recording, and screen-sharing. These features make it easier to collaborate with others.
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You can choose from four different Zoom plans: Basic, Pro, Business, and Enterprise. The free Basic plan has good video and audio quality but can only have up to 100 people in a meeting and lasts for 40 minutes.
Moreover, if you need more, a paid subscription/plan costs about $19.99 and lets you have up to 10,000 meetings that can last up to 30 hours. It also gives you more advanced features like more cloud storage and real-time transcription.
Google Meet is an online meeting platform that is easy to use for all individuals that have a Google account.
Like Zoom, Google Meet has tools that help you work with your teammates, and reach out to your clients and leads, such as Whiteboard, screen-sharing, live captions, and recording meetings.
Read More: The Best Video Conference Camera For Google Meet 2023
Google Meet has a free plan with good video quality, but you can also pay for Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, or Enterprise plans that give you extra features. The free plan lets you have a one-on-one meeting for up to 60 minutes per meeting. You can have up to 100 people in the meeting. If you want more features like international dial-in numbers, live streaming, recording, and admin controls, check out their paid plans!
Microsoft Teams is a tool that helps businesses and organizations work together. You can use it for chatting, video meetings, group conversations, and sharing files. It puts everything in one place so it's easy to find.
You can use Microsoft Teams to chat with team members one-on-one or in groups. You can also have video meetings and share files. During meetings, you can do things like show your screen, use a virtual whiteboard, and use breakout rooms to work together more effectively.
Read More: Microsoft Teams’ Helpful Changes For Remote Work In 2023
Microsoft Teams has different plans: Home (Free, Microsoft 365 Personal, Microsoft 365 Family) and for Business: Free, Essentials, Business Basic, and Business Standard. The Free version has a lot of useful features, like unlimited text chats, one-on-one meetings for up to 30 hours, group meetings for up to 24 hours with up to 100 participants, and 5 GB of storage.
If you want more features, you can upgrade to a monthly paid plan for $4 to $12.50. This will give you more cloud storage (up to 1 TB), longer group meeting duration, the ability to host webinars, integration with Office 365, and more.
Skype has been a popular video conferencing tool for a long time. Recently, Microsoft launched Skype Meet Now, which allows anyone to join or host a meeting without needing an account. This is useful if you need to quickly connect with colleagues or clients. Simply enter the name of your meeting and click "create free video call" to begin.
If you're looking for a free option to Zoom, Skype is a great choice. It has all the features you need, like recording meetings, scheduling, messaging, audio calling, and screen sharing. You can even chat with participants, share files, send audio or video messages, and create polls after the meeting.
Dialpad Meetings is a tool that allows you to have virtual meetings with your team online. It used to be called UberConference and has a user-friendly interface. You can chat, make calls, and collaborate with your teammates remotely.
The free version allows meetings of up to 10 people and lasts for 45 minutes. The Business tier costs around $15 and lets you host meetings with up to 150 people that can last up to 5 hours. It also has AI-powered transcriptions, post-meeting summaries, and customizable features.
Webex is a web-based suite of applications that have video conferencing features designed to facilitate remote collaboration with colleagues. It provides an online platform for messaging, audio, and video meetings, and sharing of ideas among team members.
Moreover, Webex Meetings has four pricing options: Basic (Free), Meet, and Enterprise. The free version lets you have meetings for up to 40 minutes with up to 100 people, breakout rooms, chat, and polls.
You can upgrade to a monthly paid subscription ranging from $14.50 or more for more features such as longer meeting times, more participants, post-meeting transcriptions, closed captions, meeting highlights, and hand gesture recognition. Additionally, Webex is a great option for hosting webinars and can accommodate up to 100,000 attendees.
To hold meetings and webinars, Verizon offers BlueJeans, an interoperable video conferencing software. It provides premium video conferencing and detailed analytics to increase productivity at work. BlueJeans has four pricing plans - Standard, Pro, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus.
Choose the standard plan for $9.99 a month with BlueJeans. You can have unlimited one-on-one and group meetings, up to five hours of meetings, and features such as screen sharing, private and group chat, whiteboarding, annotation, and breakout sessions. The plan also offers intelligent meeting recaps and other smart meeting features.
For higher-priced plans ranging from $13.99 to $16.66, you can have all the standard features plus an increased meeting capacity of up to 200 participants, 25 hours of meeting duration, and integrations with collaboration tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams.
If you have a video conferencing platform in your mind that best suits your business, the next you need to focus on is to find and invest in the best video conference camera; It should be compatible with the platform you chose and should offer you high-quality and crisp audio.
Some of the best video conference cameras you may consider are Coolpo video conference cameras: Coolpo AI Huddle Pana, Coolpo AI Huddle Mini, and Mini Lite.
They are AI-powered, easy to set up and secure to use. Also, they are compatible with almost all of the mainstream video conferencing platforms mentioned above.
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In conclusion, video conferencing has become essential for remote work and hybrid work setups. There are many video conferencing software/apps available in the market, and it can be challenging to choose which one is suitable for your business.
The seven best video conferencing software/apps are Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Skype, Dialpad Meetings, Webex, and BlueJeans. Each of these platforms has different features and pricing plans.
It is important to evaluate your business needs and budget before choosing the most suitable platform for your company.