Great Free Open Source Alternative for Video Conferences

My Views on Jitsi: An Open-Source Video Conferencing Software

It is very useful for quick meetings as we don't need to download or launch a dedicated software, which often hangs the system. It allows us to record meetings with the in-built recorder. Therefore, we don't need to download third-party software to record meetings. Its UI is very easy to use and friendly, so none of our clients hesitate to join our monthly meetings.

Pros

Jitsi is the best open-source and free video conferencing tool. Where every tool in the market charges a lot just to provide some basic features, it comes with all of the advanced features yet at no cost. We don't need to create an account either; we just need to give a name to our meeting and it'll generate a link for us to share it with the other participants to join. The audio and video output are in high definition quality. Meetings can be embedded almost everywhere or can be integrated with any other software. The UI is neat, and there is a big community backing it if anything unpleasant occurs. This ultimate free tool comes with a bundle of advanced features: live screen presentation, live public and private chat, security option, noise suppression, audio-video sharing, live streaming, etc.

Cons

There are a few drawbacks, which I realized. There is a limit of 100 participants. It won't help if an organization needs to have more than 100 people at a conference. As it doesn't require an account to begin with a meeting, sometimes random people join a meeting if one forgets to set a meeting password. Sometimes voices begin to break for all of the participants if End-to-End Encryption is turned on.

The best open source for online conference

The experience with Jitsi is overall fantastic. Like I mentioned, it's a little difficult to set it up the first time if you are installing it in your server. But, anyway, there's a docker-compose version (with a very good documentation on their github repository) that takes care of almost everything you need in order to get the software working.

Pros

As a user, the best part about Jitsi is that it doesn't need for people you invite to a conference to register anywhere. You only need to provide them the link to click and Voila! they're in the conference! The audio and video quality is awesome! It also has a feature that makes peer to peer conference in case there are only two people in the conference. It automagically switches to conference mode the moment a third participant joins the conference.

Cons

A con about Jitsi is that, if you're setting it up in your server, there aren't very detailed guides on how to set up each one of the components that it needs to work (although they aren't part of jitsi itself, but would be desirable to have a guide for installing and setting up each component). Also, if you download and want to modify the source, there isn't a very detailed step-by-step that tells you how to do it for each one of the components (there is the mobile app and the web application).

Alternativa a las herramientas de reuniones empresariales

Lo utilizamos durante tres meses en mi trabajo anterior, en el comienzo de la pandemia. Pero terminamos utilizando opciones como Google Meet y discord por estar más acostumbrados a utilizar fichas herramientas, principalmente la suite de Google.

Pros

Cuenta con las mismas opciones que las herramientas del mismo rubro. La interfaz me pareció un poco más cuidada que las alternativas.

Cons

Al momento de utilizarlo nos pareció un poco más complicada la opción de agendar reuniones vinculadas a herramientas como Google Calendar.

Un outil de visio peu performant

Pros

C'est une solution libre, qui permet de faire quasiment tout ce qui est nécessaire : présentation, partage d'écran, visio, appel audio, chat.

Cons

Nombreux bugs, avec des utilisateurs qu'on n'entend pas, qui ne nous voient pas, des partages d'écran qui plantent, des options qui manquerait, comme pouvoir mettre en silencieux quelqu'un d'autres.