Best Video Conferencing Software Of 2023
Why We Picked It
Zoom is one of the most popular video conferencing software systems on the market because of its affordable pricing, impressive feature set and exceptional usability. Additionally, Zoom offers an impressive number of integration capabilities with third-party applications. Whether you use the service on your desktop or mobile device, Zoom has a lot to offer just about any small business.
Zoom’s free plan is a perfect way to try out the software for yourself. With that in mind, group calls on the free plan are limited to 40 minutes in length and only support up to 100 people at once. At some point, you will probably want to upgrade to one of the company’s paid plans:
- Pro: $15.99 per license, per month for meetings for up to 100 people, 30-hour meeting lengths and social media streaming
- Business: $19.99 per license, per month for meetings for up to 300 people and automated meeting transcriptions
- Business Plus: $25 per license, per month for meetings for up to 300 people and phone, translated captions and workspace reservations
- Enterprise: Priced on a custom basis for meetings for up to 1,000 people and unlimited cloud storage of recordings (requires at least 50 licenses per plan)
All plans come standard with access to the company’s mobile apps and call controls for screen sharing and muting participants. For an additional $50 per month, Zoom also offers a “Large Meetings” upgrade that increases your meeting capacity to 500 people at once. This is especially useful if your company hosts frequent webinars for audiences.
As great as Zoom is, there have been unfortunate controversies surrounding its security flaws. The company has been very public about improving its security since the “Zoom-bombing” scandals, but teams that plan on sharing sensitive information over video calls might want to keep this in mind when researching services.
Zoom offers end-to-end encryption or E2EE. One downside to E2EE (which you can choose to enable and disable) is that it blocks features such as cloud recording when in use. Additional security measures include passcodes, the ability to lock meetings, screen share watermarks, audio signatures and the ability to directly control who can join and which attendees are allowed to record the session.
Zoom is one of the biggest players in the video conferencing space given its reliability and powerful feature set. Any business in the market for a new service should consider Zoom, especially since it offers a completely free version.
Who Should Use It:
Zoom is one of the best all-around solutions on the market today. As such, we find that it’s a good choice for just about any kind of company.