It’s an obvious fact that communication is more effective if you can see the person you’re communicating with. Online meetings can help employees to effectively work from home.
Face-to-face communication is really important for remote working employees when you can’t meet them in-person. With a video conferencing solution, teams can work in sync with others or with customers and clients effectively, irrespective of their location.
The world is going through a coronavirus pandemic and people are advised to stay. All the companies allowed their employees to ‘work for home’. But, an effective communication channel is required to manage the work operations.
With video conferencing tools, companies can easily conduct their regular meetups, regardless of how dispersed the team members are.
We’ve assembled a list of all the leading conferencing software platforms, with a high-quality video conferencing and full-featured collaboration tools. While many of those video conferencing platforms also offer live streaming and webinar capabilities, our focus here is totally on virtual meetings.
Here are the top 5 video conferencing tools for remote working
- Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams, a successor to Skype for Business. Anyone can check-in for the free version of Microsoft Teams with a Microsoft account and that tier supports up to 300 members with guest access, one-on-one, and group video and audio calls, file sharing (2GB per user and 10GB per team), screen sharing, and document colouration using online Office apps.
It gives excellent performance and delivers its full features as a video conferencing solution when used in incorporation with the Enterprise version of Office 365.
The admin of the tier has access to all the features of management, security, and compliance tools. Team members can share files (up to 1TB per user), schedule meetings directly from Outlook, record meetings, and collaborate on documents using the desktop Office programs and SharePoint Online.
Paid plans and features also support online training sessions and webinars.
For organizations that are not merely embedded within the Microsoft Office way of working, the Teams feature set are often baffling. Except for anyone who is already familiar with SharePoint and Outlook, Microsoft’s conferencing software should be a decent fit.
- Google Hangouts Meet
Google’s ever-evolving lineup of communications and collaboration apps split in two back in 2017, with the classic version of Google Hangouts video conferencing software. Google Hangouts Meet is the business version, enabling video meetings for G Suite subscribers. External participants also can connect.
Naturally, the service can only be accessed within the Google Chrome browser, and mobile apps are available on iOS and Android both. The precise feature set of the software depends on the G Suite version, the number of participants.
For instance, it is restricted to 100 for G Suite Basic, 150 for Business, and 250 for Enterprise. For features like live streaming, meeting recorder and saving them to Google Drive, you will need G Suite Enterprise.
If your business is standardized on Google’s productivity and email tools, this video conferencing option should get on your shortlist.
- Skype
Skype’s free version works well for businesses with small teams having a maximum of 10 total members. It is a good communication tool if you need a simple way to video chat from your computer, phone, or tablet and tends to have smaller group meetings or 1-1 conversation.
Skype also offers a tool called Skype in the Classroom specifically designed for online education. It has many amazing features that include: HD video calling, screen sharing, video call recording, interactive video chats and lastly, location sharing.
- Zoom
Zoom solidified its status in the video conferencing industry after a successful IPO in 2019. Now it is considered as one of the best video conferencing service providers for businesses
This conferencing software allows simple one-to-one chat sessions which can escalate into group calls, training sessions, and webinars for internal and external audiences.
Also, it allows global video meetings with up to 1,000 participants and as many as 49 HD videos on-screen simultaneously. All the video conferencing calls are secure with end-to-end encryption, role-based user security. It offers easy-to-use screen sharing and collaboration tools.
Meeting invitations integrate smoothly with calendaring systems, and meetings are often recorded as local or cloud-based files, with searchable transcripts.
The free tier allows unlimited 1-on-1 meetings but limits group sessions to 40 minutes and 100 participants. Paid plans start at $15 per month per host and proportion to full-featured Business and Enterprise plans.
- BlueJeans
Need a video conferencing tool that works across many various sorts of devices, including room devices?
BlueJeans combines simple, easy-to-use apps with support for a good range of devices so you’ll start a call from your PC, let colleagues join it from mobile or Linux devices, and stream it to your room so everyone can take part.
Its apps are as easy to use because of the more consumer-focused video call apps but are designed to be used on larger teams. And if you would like to present to a crowd, it includes webinar tools also.
The sole downside is that its apps weren’t quite as responsive as a number of the others we tested—and it’s Enterprise pricing isn’t public, so you will need to contact its team once your trial is over.
Conclusion
In the period of remote working, video conferencing is an important part. Teams can easily connect with each other via such platforms for any kind of project discussion.
When all the employees are working remotely, it gets wearisome for a manager to be in touch with each of them. But, with video conferencing software, the manager can connect with the whole team at a time for the discussion.
All the mentioned tools will help you manage your remote team during the COVID-19 lockdown, and help you to create an effective work environment even when everyone is miles apart. Many mobile app development companies and IT companies are using these tools to synchronize their teams and connect with their clients.
There are some popular open-source & self-hosted solutions as well like Jitsi Meet. It is one of the most secure self-hosted solutions for video conferencing. If you’re really concerned about your privacy, then we suggest you start self-hosting Jitsi Meet.