are there any alternatives to zoom that have alot of features out of the box like live streaming to youtube support plus doesnt make you pay money to get extra features?
the big ones out there are BigBlueButton and Jitsi. they have a lot of public instances, so you can easily check if they fit your needs.
where can i find some big blue button instances?
I only know German ones: senfcall.de or bbb.digitalcourage.de
I’m not sure about all of the features but you could look into https://jitsi.org/
The official instantce, meet.jit.si, now requires an account to be made through Google, Facebook or Apple (for the host). Community hosted instances still allow anonymous meetings but may not have all the features in the main instance (since some require hosting other services, like etherpad and excalidraw)
Looks like it’s Google, Facebook, or GitHub.
If you use Brave, try the built-in Brave Talk. It’s forked from Jitsi and doesn’t require any account. You can also bring people on even if they have other browsers, it’s just that the end-to-end encryption is only available if everyone is using Brave. If E2EE isn’t a concern though, it should suffice entirely.
Isn’t Brave problematic in its own right?
Thanks for posting this. Zoom creeps me out. They try to force-download their POS app, they seem to have begun degrading service for browser-based users, their app won’t behave properly. I’m also in the market for alternatives.
Maybe https://www.senfcall.de/en/
I haven’t looked into all of its features but it’s worth looking at.
The conference software used for this service is called BigBlueButton and is probably the nicest FOSS online classroom solution there is.
I recently noticed that it’s now integrated into Canvas, a FOSS online learning management software which my college (and my high school, and my middle school) have used.
To bad no one bothers with it, forcing everyone to use zoom instead. Which sucks, because the first day of online classes, zoom permissions weren’t set up properly, meaning no one could join the meeting. Probably wouldn’t have happened with BigBlueButton.
Isn’t Signal an option??
Nothing that can stream directly to YouTube that I know of. But a good free solution for personal low usage is whereby.
I haven’t seen it mentioned, but a great option that I’ve used a few times before is Mirotalk. There’s two versions, Mirotalk SFU and Mirotalk P2P.
Mirotalk SFU uses a central server where your stream can be sent to, and you’ll receive others’ streams from that same server. Mirotalk P2P, as expected is P2P with WebRTC, and doesn’t require a server (other than the website your watching from). The only downside with the P2P is that it doesn’t handle a lot of users in a single call very well.
Mirotalk is open source, doesn’t require an account, and has nice features like built-in chat, whiteboard, file uploads, and the ability to play YouTube videos directly from the web client.
For Mirotalk SFU, you can either use the demo instance, or you can host your own server to use.
- Link to Mirotalk SFU: https://sfu.mirotalk.com/
- Source Code: https://github.com/miroslavpejic85/mirotalksfu
- Link to Mirotalk P2P: https://p2p.mirotalk.com/
- Source Code: https://github.com/miroslavpejic85/mirotalk
- Link to Mirotalk SFU: https://sfu.mirotalk.com/
There’s also https://opentalk.eu/ but I have not used them.
Brave Talk might be worth checking if you use Brave. Doesn’t require an account, people can join from any browser, optional E2EE if all parties are joining in Brave.
Isn’t Brave problematic in its own right?
Not at all, it’s one of the best resources for people interested in privacy and digital freedom.
