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Tele­com rel­a­tive­ly long ago made it pos­si­ble to con­duct video con­fer­ences with many par­tic­i­pants. And many com­pa­nies are already active­ly using this meet­ing for­mat, when its par­tic­i­pants can be at their work­places, at home, or even thou­sands of kilo­me­ters from the office. But, appar­ent­ly, a “tec­ton­ic” push in the devel­op­ment and pop­u­lar­iza­tion of video­con­fer­enc­ing occurred in 2020. As they say, every cloud has a sil­ver lin­ing — the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has lit­er­al­ly forced hun­dreds of mil­lions of peo­ple around the house to go into quar­an­tine and work from home. With the help of the best video con­fer­enc­ing soft­ware, of course. In the mean­time, the prophe­cies of Alvin Tof­fler from The Third Wave about the tran­si­tion to remote work in many sec­tors of the econ­o­my are com­ing true, let’s see what soft­ware is suit­able for it.

Top 10 rating according to KP

1.Zoom

A video con­fer­enc­ing ser­vice whose pop­u­lar­i­ty and cap­i­tal­iza­tion has grown ten­fold since the begin­ning of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. The secret of the suc­cess of this par­tic­u­lar pro­gram is not only in the func­tion­al­i­ty, but also in the fact that the cre­ators real­ized in time what poten­tial video con­fer­enc­ing has in the cur­rent con­di­tions.

For exam­ple, for schools in Japan, Chi­na, Italy, and the US, Zoom gives you unlim­it­ed min­utes of tem­po­rary video chats on any account. A huge plus of this par­tic­u­lar video con­fer­enc­ing pro­gram is the advanced abil­i­ty to con­duct webi­na­rs and pre­sen­ta­tions. How­ev­er, there are quite rea­son­able claims against Zoom. Con­cerns are raised about con­fi­den­tial­i­ty — the soft­ware has been repeat­ed­ly com­plained that data can leak some­where “to the side”. Anoth­er bug (or fea­ture) can be con­sid­ered the abil­i­ty to install a looped video in the chat, which employ­ees who are too lazy to sit in front of the com­put­er did not fail to take advan­tage of.

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Pros and cons

Almost the most fash­ion­able video con­fer­enc­ing plat­form for 2022, even with a free account you can do a lot

Data pro­tec­tion can be a let down

Download:

Zoom
Google Play
App Store

2. Skype for Business

The good old Skype, known to almost every Inter­net user for many years. Under the pre­fix “for busi­ness” lies an extend­ed ver­sion, which has sev­er­al fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ences. The max­i­mum num­ber of con­fer­ence par­tic­i­pants is 250. It is pos­si­ble to make phone calls and share the screen. Of course, as a Microsoft prod­uct, mod­ern Skype has full inte­gra­tion with Win­dows, and this oper­at­ing sys­tem remains dom­i­nant in the cor­po­rate and busi­ness seg­ment. The dis­ad­van­tages of this ser­vice, per­haps, are also known to every­one — con­stant freezes and a con­fus­ing indi­ca­tion of the sta­tus of the inter­locu­tors.

Pros and cons

Wide­spread and almost every­one knows about it, deep inte­gra­tion with Win­dows

Over the years, the sta­bil­i­ty of work has not improved, but even wors­ened

Download:

Skype
Google Play
App Store

3.Discord

Dis­cord was orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed as a free VoIP and video con­fer­enc­ing mes­sen­ger for gamers. Now this ser­vice has become much more pop­u­lar, even among the busi­ness audi­ence. The great thing about Dis­cord is that it’s free. The pro­gram (and there is also a full-fledged web ver­sion) with a low load on device resources pro­vides high sound qual­i­ty, thanks to the use of the Opus audio codec. As the devel­op­ers assure, the appli­ca­tion is reli­ably pro­tect­ed from DDoS attacks, which adds con­fi­dence that the video con­fer­ence will be held with­out prob­lems.

Pros and cons

Free plat­form, high-qual­i­ty sound trans­mis­sion

A lot of extra func­tion­al­i­ty that gamers need, but oth­er users will only con­fuse

Download:

Dis­cord
Google Play
App Store

four. Google Hangouts

A ser­vice from Google that has lost pop­u­lar­i­ty in recent years, but is still very suit­able for the role of a video con­fer­enc­ing pro­gram. Espe­cial­ly if you have an Android smart­phone or tablet, this soft­ware is pre­in­stalled out of the box. Of course, Hang­outs does not impress with its capa­bil­i­ties, so here the max­i­mum num­ber of par­tic­i­pants in a video con­fer­ence is lim­it­ed to ten. The qual­i­ty of video com­mu­ni­ca­tion, to the shame of the “cor­po­ra­tion of kind­ness”, is lame on both legs — often the delay can reach sev­er­al sec­onds, and the pic­ture often tends to break up into “squares”. But it’s free, it has all the basic func­tions for con­fer­ences and excel­lent inte­gra­tion with oth­er Google ser­vices, espe­cial­ly Docs.

Pros and cons

“Out of the box” in every Android smart­phone, a sim­ple and intu­itive inter­face

Video call sta­bil­i­ty is low, only up to 10 par­tic­i­pants, Google may sud­den­ly close its not the most pop­u­lar ser­vice

Download:

Hang­outs
Google Play
App Store

5. TrueConf

Soft­ware from the list of the best video con­fer­enc­ing soft­ware, capa­ble of hold­ing con­fer­ences in 4K for­mat. Do not rush to say that this is redun­dant. Most mod­ern smart­phones have front cam­eras capa­ble of deliv­er­ing such res­o­lu­tion, and “web­cams” ​​are not rare. But the “bot­tle­neck” will be the con­nec­tion speed, for such high-qual­i­ty stream­ing video you need a wide com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel, mobile com­mu­ni­ca­tions, even 4G, this is unlike­ly to pull. How­ev­er, True­Conf is not only inter­est­ed in 4K.

Depend­ing on the ver­sion, up to 1,000 par­tic­i­pants can con­nect to one con­fer­ence (at the height of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, “a thou­sand” became free for all gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tions, pri­vate com­pa­nies and edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions in Rus­sia). The pro­gram has the abil­i­ty to make calls to land­line phones, and also “out of the box” can record a video con­fer­ence.

Pros and cons

Con­fa in 4K is cool, up to 1000 video con­fer­ence par­tic­i­pants

Some­what out­dat­ed and con­fus­ing inter­face

Download:

True­Conf
Google Play
App Store

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6.MyOwnConference

A fair­ly pop­u­lar ser­vice in the world, which is tai­lored for inter­na­tion­al video con­fer­enc­ing. For exam­ple, there is simul­ta­ne­ous sup­port for 16 lan­guages, and upon indi­vid­ual request, 5,000 par­tic­i­pants can join the con­fer­ence. There is also a video con­fer­ence record­ing, and a quick upload to YouTube. The devel­op­ers say that the data servers are scat­tered all over the world, so there should be no prob­lems with the con­nec­tion. The advan­tage and “Achilles’ heel” of MyOwn­Con­fer­ence is that the ser­vice does not have mobile appli­ca­tions — you can work with it only by going to the pro­jec­t’s web page.

Pros and cons

Download:

MyOwn­Con­fer­ence

7. Mind

One of the most advanced and func­tion­al video con­fer­enc­ing appli­ca­tions, which is very pop­u­lar with cor­po­rate clients around the world. You won’t be able to use the pro­gram for free, there is only test­ing with a lim­it­ed time.

Oppor­tu­ni­ties depend on the tar­iff plan — the max­i­mum ver­sion gives up to 500 par­tic­i­pants and pic­ture qual­i­ty up to 4K. An unlim­it­ed num­ber of con­fer­ences can be held at the same time. You can also join it using your phone, there is also a demon­stra­tion / con­nec­tion to the desk­top.

Pros and cons

Download:

Mind
Google Play
App Store

eight. GoToMeeting

A well-deserved and very pop­u­lar video con­fer­enc­ing ser­vice in Eng­lish-speak­ing coun­tries. It has a free ver­sion that lets up to three peo­ple video call, shar­ing files and show­ing their desk­top along the way. The basic tar­iff plan will already allow you to con­nect 10 peo­ple, and the max­i­mum one — 100. There is even a func­tion to work on one doc­u­ment. As usu­al, there were some short­com­ings — the Samar pro­gram does not know how to record video con­fer­ences, and for some rea­son the devel­op­ers did not pro­vide sup­port for the Russ­ian lan­guage.

Pros and cons

Download:

GoToMeet­ing
Google Play
App Store

9.VideoMost

Domes­tic devel­op­ment, which is loved by com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ment agen­cies of Rus­sia. The pro­gram can hold video con­fer­ences for up to 1000 par­tic­i­pants, and there should be no prob­lems with con­nect­ing seri­ous equip­ment. There is a stan­dard set of fea­tures for this kind of appli­ca­tions: desk­top shar­ing, file shar­ing and inte­gra­tion with busi­ness appli­ca­tions. A high lev­el of pro­tec­tion of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel is also promised, along with sup­port for 4K images.

How­ev­er, this pro­gram has enough dis­ad­van­tages — from a hope­less­ly out­dat­ed inter­face to con­stant lags and com­mu­ni­ca­tion delays. And yet, mobile appli­ca­tions can work a lit­tle strange.

Pros and cons

Download:

video most
Google Play
App Store

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ten. Proficonf

An online plat­form that does not have appli­ca­tions, but which also sup­ports mobile devices. It is based on WebRTC tech­nol­o­gy. In the free ver­sion, two peo­ple can con­nect to the con­fer­ence, while the pre­mi­um ver­sion offers up to 250 par­tic­i­pants. Con­fer­ence record­ing is also the pre­rog­a­tive of paid accounts. Although the max­i­mum pic­ture qual­i­ty here is declared at the Full­HD lev­el, it is quite sta­ble (of course, tak­ing into account the high-qual­i­ty Inter­net chan­nel). There are even draw­ing tools here, which can enrich the pre­sen­ta­tion dur­ing a video con­fer­ence.

Pros and cons

Download:

Profi­conf

How to choose a video conferencing software

Remote work tools sur­vive in 2022 year unprece­dent­ed growth, and in the future, may become almost the main soft­ware in many areas of busi­ness. Share prac­ti­cal tips with us Head of Infra­struc­ture Depart­ment of an IT com­pa­ny Sergey Ereminwhich, on duty, often encoun­ters video con­fer­enc­ing pro­grams.

If you want quality, pay. But it is not exactly

Prob­a­bly, the main prob­lem of all video con­fer­enc­ing pro­grams is the sta­bil­i­ty of the pic­ture and sound dur­ing these. Free and share­ware soft­ware, like the Google ser­vice (Hang­outs — ed. note), likes to con­stant­ly tear it, which can sim­ply break the event. There­fore, if you, rough­ly speak­ing, con­duct com­mer­cial activ­i­ties using the pro­gram, then do not save mon­ey, oth­er­wise it will come out side­ways. How­ev­er, from expe­ri­ence we can say that there is such soft­ware that it will fail in the paid ver­sion and “put” broad­casts.

Is 4K really that important?

The ultra trendy res­o­lu­tion is tech­ni­cal­ly sup­port­ed by some of the best video con­fer­enc­ing soft­ware. And it seems that every­thing is ready for him — the cam­eras of smart­phones, in any case, for sure. But UHD res­o­lu­tion in stream­ing video is still more of a mar­ket­ing sto­ry. Let me explain — even if the pro­gram serv­er can cope with such a load, then what about the client com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel? But no way, espe­cial­ly if you are “in the fields” from a smart­phone. No, you can cheat and inter­po­late, that is, stretch the pic­ture to the noto­ri­ous 4K. But there will still be no nor­mal clar­i­ty, so do not chase these num­bers.

office options

Pre­vi­ous­ly, every­thing was sim­pler — a sim­ple video link was enough. Now we need addi­tion­al fea­tures that are on the same lev­el as pic­ture and sound in impor­tance. And access to the desk­top, and syn­chro­niza­tion with con­tacts, and joint pre­sen­ta­tions will not be super­flu­ous. So, pay atten­tion to such oppor­tu­ni­ties and, in par­tic­u­lar, to how it is imple­ment­ed.

It is inter­est­ing

The best appli­ca­tions for exer­cis­ing at home: a review of “KP”

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