In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, video conferencing is now a big need, so I decided to do some research and come up with a list of video conferencing solutions.
I haven’t tried any of these, except for Skype–and that was with only one other person. I would welcome your comments describing your experience with any of these solutions.
Some of these solutions offer Android and/or iPhone support, so if that’s important to you, be sure to check for that on the product website.
I am presenting only the cheapest plan for each service. Depending on your needs, you may need to purchase a more expensive plan–so be sure to check the details on the plans.
The list below is in no particular order.
| Service | Cost | Participant limit | Free version limit |
| Ring Central | Free | 100 | 40 minute meetings |
| Blue Jeans | $9.99/month | 50 | n/a |
| Goto Meeting | $12/month | 150 | n/a |
| WebEx | Free | 100 | personal use only on free version |
| Avaya | Free | 50 | voice only on free version |
| Skype | Free | 50 | none |
| Zoom | Free | 100 | 40 minute meetings |
| Hangouts | Free | 10 | requires Google account for all participants |
| Freeconference | Free | 5 video/1000 voice | none |
| Jitsi | Free | none | none |
| Intermedia | Free until 2021 | 4 video/200 voice | none |
| Zoho | $8/month | 100 | n/a |
Russ Judge 
Here are my 2 cents. I teach and all my classes have gone 100% virtual since the pandemic and now I use video conferencing instead of face-to-face classes. The university where I teach gave all instructors a Zoom Pro account and it is great. The 2 main features that help a lot for teaching is being able to share your screen and to create Breakout groups. I can take my class of 9 students and put them into 3 groups of 3 to work on a task together. As the instructor, I can pop in and out of each of the breakout groups to follow up.
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I’ve stood up a Jitsi VM for $employer as a proof of concept/just in case since we aren’t traveling to other facilities or having many face to face meetings at the moment.
We use Skype for an international customer/supplier and it works well, as long as both sides have a decent Internet connection. I’ve not used any of the paid portions of Skype.
I’ve used BlueJeans as a participant only, and it worked OK.
A local company I volunteer for is going to be using Zoom for the monthly required meetings, it shall be interesting to see how that goes, as let’s just say some (but not all) of the folks aren’t the most technologically savvy ….
I can’t comment on any of the others on the list, as I’ve not used/don’t have experience with them.
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