During these unprecedented times, the vast majority of the professional services and knowledge industries are working from home. Fortunately we live in an age with a vast array of services and platforms, to help us stay connected and keep working. Below we have listed some current popular services that can be used for online meetings and video conferencing, with a short description for each of who they might best suit.

Webex
Webex (by Cisco) can host up to 200 people, using their business platform. Their enterprise platform can host up to an impressive 3,000 participants. participants. However with this comes a cost, from £11.25 to £25.00 per user per month. This service tends to be used by enterprises and governments.

Zoom
A (lately!) well-known and new (in technical terms) platform, Zoom can host up to 100 people using their business platform, and up to 500 using add-on services. Zoom’s shares are currently soaring due to the increase of interest in and use of this particular platform recently. There is a free version of Zoom for up to 100 participants with a 40 minute limit on the meeting. For more fully featured paid accounts, prices start from £9.99 per user per month. Zoom also offers add-ons for webinars, teaching, presentations, events and more – taking it beyond just an internal comms solution.

Teams
Best for Microsoft environment users, and potentially already available at no extra cost if you are using Office 365. As a Microsoft user, Teams will be familiar and is quite simple to use – with the capacity to host 250 participants. Teams now features a handy tool to blur backgrounds when video calling, a very clever way to keep professional whilst at home or out and about. Without pre-existing subscriptions, Office 365 pricing via Direction Forward starts from as little as £3.60 per user per month.

Skype for Business
Skype for Businesses (previously known as Lync) has been replaced by Teams. It still exists for some larger organisations, but most have or are transitioning to Teams. We do not recommend this deprecated platform.

Skype
Skype – the home user version – is still available free, and this is typically used more by friends and family. This is free for up to 50 participants, and can also be used to call international phone numbers at additional cost, which is helpful to connect those not online or who do not have the devices to receive video calls.

Hangouts Chat & Hangout Meet
Hangouts works well for those already with a Google or G Suite account. Hangout Chat is free for those with a free Google account (e.g. @gmail.com) for up to 25 people. Hangout Meet is for paid G Suite users, for up to 250 participants – and has additional features such as higher resolution video. G Suite starts from £4.60 per user per month via us.

FaceTime
Only available for Apple device users with at least iOS 12, FaceTime is now available to make group video calls with up to 32 people. Combined with the fact that FaceTime is preinstalled on all Apple devices and requires little to no setup, this makes it a good choice for Apple users – as long as they are calling other Apple users only(!).

Slack
For those using this messaging, comms and collaboration platform, conference and video calls can be done at ease. Subscriptions start from £5.25 per user per month. This allows video calls to be made for up to 15 participants and other functionality such as very smooth and easy screen sharing. Simply due to the nature of the platform and how it works, Slack tends to be used more for internal communications.

WhatsApp
As an extremely popular messaging app, many are using WhatsApp for group video calls. This is generally used for friends or family, but can and does spill over to commercial use for business meetings. There is a limited number of four people on a group video call and due to data and privacy concerns we don’t recommend using WhatsApp at work.

Whereby
Whereby offers simple video conferencing for small meetups of up to four people. Although it requires a registration, it is good as a quick tool for ad-hoc meetings. The owner of the meeting can “lock” the room, which requires guests to “knock” when they visit the link. Whereby also includes screen sharing and common text chat features.

Talky
Talky offers free video conferencing with no sign-up. All that’s needed is to enter a room name on the homepage and from there share the URL with others. Screen sharing and room locking is available on Talky. The app recommends a maximum of six people for best performance. This is pretty cool if you don’t want to create yet another account with login details to remember!

FreeConference
FreeConference offers powerful video conference calls. There are more business-oriented features on this service than the others, such as dial-in numbers with a focus on audio participants. The free plan is limited to 1,000 audio callers (with free international dial-in) and five users in the online meeting. Plus or Pro plans start from £13.00 per user per month.

As a Microsoft partner, we are now able to offer a six month free trial of Teams to help you keep communicating during the COVID-19 pandemic. Please note that this is for new licenses only and does not include other Office 365 services and features. Contact us to learn more.

For advice and further recommendations on the services discussed in this post, please contact us.

All prices mentioned in this post are subject to VAT.