Top 3 Video Conferencing platforms
Video meetings, at this point, should just be called “meetings”—it’s the in-person meetings that are the exception now. It’s true in remote companies, it’s true in hybrid companies, and it’s increasingly true in companies that mostly work in physical offices.
So low-quality video calls aren’t a niche problem—they’re bad for productivity all around. Every dropped call is a major annoyance, and it’s also not acceptable to waste time waiting for someone to set up software that’s not intuitive.
That’s why we did our homework for this article. We considered over 30 video conferencing apps and spent a lot of time testing to see how they stacked up. Here are the five best.
The 5 best video conferencing platforms
Zoom for reliable, large video calls
Webex Meetings for video quality
Google Meet for Google Workspace users
Microsoft Teams for combining team chat and video conferencing
Whereby for a lightweight option
What makes a great video conferencing app?
The most important thing for video conferencing is video quality. That goes beyond how the picture looks—the best quality in the world doesn’t matter if people cut out or calls drop constantly. We tested each online meeting app to see how well it performed when the quality of the internet connection changed.
But that’s not the only thing we were thinking of. There are many consumer-facing video chat apps—Apple’s FaceTime, for example—that wouldn’t work as a video conferencing app. Businesses need more than just a solid video connection to do meetings. In summary, the best video conferencing apps:
Offer high-quality video and audio, reliably. If web conferencing software can only do one thing, this has to be it.
Make it straightforward to start, schedule, and join meetings. Ideally, meetings can be quickly scheduled and added to your calendar, and there should be obvious links to click when it’s time to join the call.
Include collaboration features. Screen sharing and chat are the bare minimum. The best online video conferencing apps go beyond this to offer whiteboarding or even direct collaboration features.
Allow for video recording. Not everyone can make every meeting—recordings help bridge that gap. Recording a meeting should be as simple as clicking a button in your online meeting software.
Make it simple to add people outside your organization. Anyone should be able to click a link and join your meeting without much fuss (though there should also be security features to keep out unwanted participants).
We kept all of these features in mind while considering which Zoom alternatives to test (let’s face it—that’s what they are), and also focused on these features while testing.