Free Video Conferencing Tools to Keep You Connected

Sean Downey Blog March 17 2020

Working from home doesn't need to be difficult.

With the spread of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) many employers, municipalities and educational institutions are encouraging people to stay home. This is a smart practice not only at this time but for productivity as a whole.

Many large companies and educational institutions subscribe to conferencing tools, but if you are a small business, nonprofit or just an individual that wants to have the same access without all the cost and fuss, the following is a list of available free and low-cost options:

Zoom

Zoom has become one of the leading video/web conferencing solutions in the market. It offers a 100% Free option for up to 100 participants with unlimited meetings up to 40 minutes. If you need more time, you can easily upgrade (even mid-meeting) to a very reasonable plan starting at $14.99/mo./host.

Try Zoom

WebEx

Cisco WebEx offers a free plan with up to 100 participants for unlimited time and number of meetings, video conferencing and a slew of collaboration features. Currently, they have made their pay plan free for 90 days for new businesses.

Try Webex

GoToMeeting

A leader in online meetings for decades, GoToMeeting by LogMeIn is offering much of their premiere functionality to eligible municipalities, educational institutions, healthcare providers and nonprofit organizations.

Try GoToMeeting

Google Hangouts Meet

Chances are you have a Gmail account, but you didn’t know about Google’s G-Suite messaging, voice and video calling app Google Hangout? Google has announced it will offer the paid version of Hangout Meet for free through July 1, 2020. Functionality includes an increased limit of 250 participants per call, live streaming and the ability to record meetings and save them to Google Drive.

Try Google Hangouts Meet

UberConference

A slightly less known option by OWLLabs, the free version of UberConference is available for up to 10 participants, unlimited meetings with call recording and screen/document sharing. Their paid programs start at $15/mo./host.

Try UberConference

Microsoft Teams

If you have a subscription to their Office product, you already have Teams, but Microsoft has announced they are making their Teams product available for everyone.

Try Microsoft Teams

Workplace from Facebook

Facebook offers conferencing for free for up to 20 people per call which includes live video streaming, auto-translate and 5Gb of file storage. You can upgrade your account for an extremely reasonable $4/mo./host.

Try Workplace from Facebook

Skype

Skype has been around for years and was purchased by Microsoft which plans to replace Skype for Business with its Teams service on July 31, 2021. You can still use Skype for personal and even business purposes for free with video, messaging, call recording, and screen sharing.