We Tested 6 Zoom Alternatives - Here's How They Compare

Zoom is a video conferencing platform offering HD video and audio calling, cross-platform messaging, end-to-end encryption, mobile apps, and other valuable features.

While Zoom certainly has its benefits, it may lack the specific features and functionalities, pricing tiers, or security protocols your business needs.

Below, we’ve outlined the best Zoom alternatives for small business video calling and remote meetings. We’ll discuss available pricing and plans, standout features, and the ideal user base for each provider.

The Best Zoom Alternatives

• RingCentral Video - Best for small teams with weekly meetings seeking a better phone system
• Dialpad Ai Meetings - Best for teams that need AI automation and presentation capabilities
• Microsoft Teams - Best for daily file collaboration, advanced co-authoring, and Microsoft 365 users
• Cisco Webex - Best for on-the-go teams and SMBs without phone systems
• Google Meet - Best for startups, Google Workspace users, and quick meeting needs
• GoTo Meeting - Best for teams seeking affordable AI-powered conferencing with unified tools

At-a-Glance Comparison

How We Evaluated These Alternatives

We used the below criteria to evaluate Zoom alternatives:

• Pricing and Plans: We evaluated each provider's available pricing, plans, affordability, and overall scalability. We also explored which platforms offered webinar capabilities and add-on features
• Meeting Limitations: We looked at each Zoom alternative's maximum participant capacities, meeting time limits, and cloud storage space
• Available Features: We reviewed each platform's video conferencing features, including in-meeting collaboration tools (chat, whiteboards, annotations, screen sharing) meeting recording and transcription, available views and filters, analytics, and more
• AI Capabilities: In addition to the standard meeting features mentioned above, we examined each provider's AI-powered capabilities, including automated call summaries, in-meeting captioning/translations, suggested action items, etc.
• Third-Party Integrations: We explored each Zoom alternative's available third-party integrations with popular CRM systems, marketing tools, collaboration and task management apps, messaging platforms, etc. We also examined API access and the strength of each platform's developer community
• Customer Support:  We evaluated the quality of each provider's customer service by looking at available support channels and hours, self-service tools like online knowledge bases and video tutorials, live vs. automated support, paid support upgrades, and more
• Security and Reliability: We reviewed each platform's network reliability and security standards, checking for essential compliance certifications (HIPAA, GDPR, etc.), access controls, end-to-end encrypted video calling, and more

RingCentral Video

RingCentral Video is a cloud-based, no-download video conferencing application for desktop and mobile devices.

Available on desktop and mobile devices, RingCentral Video has a Large Meetings add-on that allows for up to 500 participants to meet for 24 hours. AI-powered noise reduction with automatic background noise cancellation, HD voice, and virtual backgrounds ensure distraction-free meetings.

Team collaboration tools like persistent and in-meeting chat, always-on Team Huddle video rooms, task management and monitoring, and user presence cut down on miscommunications and improve workflows.

Top Features

• Team Chat Messaging: Internal and guest users can favorite, bookmark, forward, mark as unread, edit, quote, and emoji react to messages in group, direct, or team-based channels. Additional messaging features include one-click phone/video calling, file/link sharing, message threading, user tagging/mentions, message search/filter, task creation from messages, and desktop/mobile notifications
• AI Meeting Insights: Automatically generated meeting summaries with video highlight reels, complete meeting transcripts, keyword-based clips and topics,
• Collaborative Notes: Simultaneous in-meeting note-taking, task creation/assignment, image/file sharing, and post-meeting shareable notes
• AI Live Transcription: In-meeting closed captioning, post-meeting shareable and searchable transcript

Pricing

RingCentral Video offers 1 free plan (50-minute meetings, 100 participants) and one paid plan from $10-$15/user per month (24-hour  meetings, 200 participants). Video users can upgrade to RingCentral Webinar for $30-$54/user month. Note that RingCentral is available as a standalone application or as a part of the RingCentral RingEX cloud communications platform, which offers scalable pricing from $20-$45/user/month and up.

For additional information, please see our RingCentral pricing page.

Best For

• Small remote/blended teams that host 1-2 internal video meetings each week
• Efficiently sharing key information between departments and teams–without requiring everyone to attend the live meeting
• Teams looking for a robust Zoom One alternative with a better business phone system

Dialpad Ai Meetings

Dialpad Ai Meetings is a no-download desktop and mobile video conferencing application with pre-built third-party integrations, HIPAA compliance, and AI-powered workflow automation.

Up to 150 participants can meet for a maximum of 5 hours without a meeting PIN. Team chat messaging with user presence, file sharing and collaboration, and custom messaging notifications are available. An always-on drop-in open audio room lets team members quickly communicate via voice messaging without leaving the chat interface.

Meeting Social Profiles display each attendee’s name, profile photos, company email address, and even information imported from third-party social media channels like Twitter, Salesforce, and LinkedIn.

Top Features 

• Third-Party Integrations: Salesforce, Slack, Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365), Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), Intercom, HubSpot, Miro, Zendesk, Evernote, and more
• Meeting Countdown Timer: Real-time meeting time elapsed/time remaining time visible to all participants, five-minute warning before meeting end, enable/disable automatic meeting end when timer elapses
• Built-in AI: Post-meeting automated summaries with meeting transcripts and recordings, custom and auto-suggested action items, sentiment analysis, key meeting moments with filterable moments list, live meeting transcription with speaker differentiation
• Picture-in-Picture: Allows current presenters/those sharing their screens to also view participant video streams without toggling between display modes–ideal for engagement tracking

Pricing

Dialpad Ai Meetings offers 1 free plan (45-minute meetings, 10 participants) and 1 paid plan from $15-$20 per user/month (5-hour meetings, 150 participants.)  Dialpad Ai Meetings is available as a standalone application with one free and one paid version or as a part of the Dialpad Business Communications suite, which offers three plans from $15-$35/user/month and up.

For more information, please see our Dialpad Ai Meetings review.

Best For

• Teams with frequent short meetings that would benefit from AI automation
• Small businesses that often give video presentations to clients/external users
• Teams needing in-meeting access to high-level third-party integrations

Microsoft Teams 

Microsoft Teams is a web conferencing and team collaboration platform for teams using video conferencing platforms as their primary means of internal communication.

Teams (a popular Skype replacement) is designed to seamlessly work alongside other popular Microsoft 365 tools like PowerPoint, OneDrive, Sharepoint, and Outlook

Users can host instant or scheduled 30-hour video meetings with up to 300 participants. Advanced Teams plans include webinar software features like custom themes, presenter bios, registration tools with custom approvals and waitlists, polling, and webinar reporting.

Top Features 

• Team Chat: Public/private chat channels, message threads, message translation, reactions, in-chat file sharing, task management with Approvals hub, Praise app for team member recognition, polling, Microsoft Forms for data collection, suggested replies,
• Microsoft Whiteboard: 41 premade templates, 12 sticky note colors, note grids, add images/shapes/reactions, hand-drawn image sharpening
• Collaborative Annotations: Enables users to add live annotations, reactions, comments, notes, etc. to shared screens and files with pen tracking
• File Co-editing: Real-time guest/internal file co-editing in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files with comments, user edit tracking, live word counts, and in-file team chat

Pricing

Microsoft Teams offers 1 free plan (60-minute meetings, 100 participants and 1 paid plan for $4.00 per user/month (300 participants, 30 hours.) Microsoft Teams is also available as a part of the  Microsoft 365 suite, which offers two plans from $6.00-$12.50 per user/month and up. The top-tier Microsoft 365 Business Standard plan also gives users access to webinar capabilities.

For more details, see our detailed Zoom vs Teams comparison.

Best For

• Remote/in-house businesses heavily reliant on daily file collaboration between teams, departments, and external guests/employees
• Teams needing advanced co-authoring and co-annotation tools with edit tracking and file versioning
• Current Microsoft 365/Microsoft app (Outlook, PowerPoint, etc.) users needing video conferencing

Cisco Webex

Cisco Webex Meet, available as a free tool as part of the Webex Calling+Meeting Suite, is a video conferencing tool with participant engagement features, HIPAA compliance, and AI-powered capabilities. You can share your screen, collaborate on documents, and demonstrate ideas to your team in real-time.

One of the key benefits of Webex is its focus on security to ensure that your meetings and data remain safe and protected. The tool lets you schedule and join meetings easily, making it convenient for teams to connect whenever needed.

Top Features 

• Voice Intelligence: Smart audio uses audio processing and deep learning to distinguish between main/background speakers, suppress background noise, turn on music mode, and provide more accurate meeting transcripts
• People Insights: Allows users to create, edit, and display profile information visible to other internal/external meeting participants. Information can be added entirely by the user themselves, or automatically pulled from the company directory or public website data. Users can add photos, work history, professional titles, education, short bios, news articles, reporting structure, internal contact information, etc.
• Polling and Q&A by Slido: Ideal for webinars and large meetings, Webex meeting hosts can hold Q&As and post in-meeting polls with live results shown to all participants. Hosts can choose from quizzes, open-ended questions, surveys, ratings, rankings, word clouds, and multiple choice. All data can be exported/shared post-meeting
• Chat Messaging: Message threading/editing/flagging/forwarding/pinning, user tagging, document sharing/co-editing, two-way whiteboard, personalized spaces (channels), E2EE, third-party integrations

Pricing

Webex Meetings offers 1 free plan (40-minute meetings, 100 particiapnts) and 1 paid plans from $12.00 per user/month and up (24-hour meetings, 200 participants).  In addition to the standalone apps, Webex Meetings is available as a part of 2 Webex Suite plans that combine video conferencing and Webex Calling. Webex Suite pricing starts at $22.50 per user/month and extends meeting particiapnt capacity to 1,000 attendees. Webex also offers 2 online event platforms with pricing from $225 per user/month and scalable plans for up to 10,000+ attendees.

For more details, check out our head-to-head Webex vs. Zoom comparison.

Best For 

• On-the-go teams needing mobile video conferencing app features like screen sharing, automatic transcription, team chat with real-time user presence updates, and in-meeting device switching
• SMBs that currently don’t need a business phone system, but may want to add voice calling capabilities to their video chat applications in the future
• Former BlueJeans video conference users looking for a replacement platform

Google Meet

Google Meet is a free and paid video calling tool with in-meeting chat, screen sharing, and other basic video conferencing solution features.

Known for its user-friendly, uncluttered interface and compatibility with other Google Workspace products, Google Meet allows up to 1,000 participants to attend meetings with a maximum duration of 24 hours.

As part of the Google Workspace suite, Google Meet is designed to work alongside Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Chat (formerly Google Hangouts), Google Sheets, and more.

Top Features 

• Google Calendar: Integration with Google Calendar lets users set recurring/one-time instant or scheduled video meetings, automatically add meetings to Calendars, add meeting descriptions, copy/share meeting link, and invite participants directly in the Calendar interface
• Jamboard: In-meeting/persistent digital whiteboard for up to 50 simultaneous co-editors, search/upload Google Images in whiteboards, upload Google Drive files, add sticky-notes/text boxes/shapes, access freehand drawing tools/highlighters/laser pointers/erasers
• In-meeting presentations: Lets presenters access and share Google Slides in video meetings, assign co-presenters, open in-slide links or play embedded media, share Slide presentations in chats
• Companion Mode: Feature designed for hybrid teams that lets in-conference room attendees join Google Meet meetings on a second screen so they can access in-meeting tools like present screen, chat, hand raising, etc.

Pricing

Google Meet is available as a free standalone tool (60-minute meetings, 100 participants) or as a part of 4 paid Google Workspace from $6.00-$18.00 per user/month and up (24-hour meetings, 1,000 participants.)

For more details, check out our detailed Zoom vs Google Meet comparison.

Best For 

• Startups and micro businesses with less than 5 employees needing free, lightweight video conferencing tool
• Current free Gmail, Google Calendar, or other Google Workspace app users
• Teams using meetings for quick check-ins or whiteboard brainstorming sessions, not advanced planning and collaboration

GoTo Meeting

GoTo Meeting by LogMeIn is an HD video communication platform and collaboration tool providing meetings of unlimited length for up to 250 participants.

It also provides business chat messaging, unlimited cloud recording, and workflow integrations with Salesforce, Slack, Microsoft 365, and Google Workspace (among others.)

The platform relies heavily on AI, meaning it’s ideal for hybrid or fully remote teams that need to automate as many business processes as they can. As a part of the GoTo SaaS ecosystem, GoTo Meeting users can integrate their video calling tool with other GoTo apps like GoTo Webinar, GoTo Connect, and GoTo Contact Center.

Top Features 

• Meeting Drawing Tools: In-meeting whiteboard/drawing tools for uploaded files or shared screens, includes spotlight icon, highlighter, laser pointer, pen, multiple pen/text colors, co-annotation with pen tracking,
• AI-Powered Collaboration: Slide to PDF tool automatically combines all slides–even from multiple presentations–shared during a meeting, puts them in order, then sends them to participants in a shareable PDF. Note Taking tool allows for shareable in-meeting notes. Smart Assistant automatically creates a post-meeting summary with highlight reels, suggested action items, stores automated meeting recordings/transcripts, creates time stamps and speaker differentiation
• Mobile App: Automatic bandwidth adjustment, mobile meeting reminders, commuter mode with large, color-coded buttons for safe driving, voice commands with Siri, and mobile cloud recording

Pricing

Unlike all the other providers on this list, GoTo Meeting doesn't have a free plan. However, all three paid plans include an unlimited meeting duration and pricing from $12.00 per user/month (150 particiapnts) to $16.00 per user/month and up (250 particpants). A 14-day free trial is available. GoTo Meeting is available as a standalone app or as part of the GoTo Connect platform. GoTo also offers a webinar platform with 4 plans from $49 per user/month (250 participants) to $399 per user/month (3,000 particiapnts.)

For more details, see our Zoom vs GoTo Meeting comparison and our GoTo Meeting pricing breakdown.

Best For 

• Teams prioritizing affordable video conferencing software with AI-powered automations, and unlimited meeting duration on all plans
• Teams wanting to streamline webinar, contact center, employee training, and business phone system tools within a single platform from one provider

What is the Best Zoom Alternative?

The best alternative will depend on your budget, the level of daily team collaboration, and whether your workforce is fully remote, in-house, or blended.

Our picks for the best alternatives to Zoom Meetings are:

Best Overall: Cisco Webex 

Cisco Webex is the best Zoom Meetings alternative because it offers robust free and paid plans, lets teams host up to 1,000 video meeting participants, and includes excellent attendee engagement features like advanced in-meeting polls, multi-lingual interpretations, whiteboarding, and People Insights.

Like Zoom One, Webex users can choose to scale up to a combined VoIP phone system and web conferencing tool with Webex Suite Plans.

Best Free Alternative: Microsoft Teams

The Microsoft Teams free plan lets 100 participants meet for up to 60 minutes and allows 1:1 video calls to last for up to 20 hours.

It also includes an unlimited team chat app for 100 users, in-meeting screen sharing, real-time meeting captions for accessibility, and integrates with other free versions of Microsoft 365 collaboration tools.

Best Paid Alternative: Dialpad Ai 

With high-level automation and AI-powered sentiment analysis, meeting summaries, and suggested action items, Dialpad Ai allows users to get the most out of every team meeting.

Tools like picture-in-picture mode, real-time closed captioning, and online meeting countdown time limits make video presentations more efficient and engaging, while Social Profiles encourage networking and team collaboration.

FAQs

Below, we’ve provided answers to some frequently asked questions about web conferencing.