When we all have to stay at home and work remotely for indefinite periods of time, it can begin to feel pretty isolating as a lot of us will miss the office chit-chat; brainstorming with others, and the Friday night get-togethers that were staple in a world before COVID-19 struck.
However, with high-speed internet readily available and the rise of video conferencing software means that for all working professionals, we’re just a click away from conversations with colleagues.
The biggest problem facing most teams and companies right now is for them to find the best conference call services, whether they are free to use or paid they need to fulfil each company’s needs and supply their staff with the correct video conferencing equipment.
What Are The Best Video Conference Tools?
With the mass availability of online meeting apps in the modern world, it can be easy to get lost in the motion of finding the right one for your company, which is where we provide you with our picks for the best software products in 2021.
QNext
Qnext is a multi-platform chat and conferencing application that allows users to interact in a multitude of ways, including instant messaging; media sharing; audio calls and video chats. It has the benefit of running on OS X, Windows, Linux and various mobile devices and can support video conferencing between up to 4 users.
QNext, similar to iChat, is completely free to use and also supports text chatting with users of different networks such as AIM and Gtalk. It does have to be installed on any devices requiring use of the video conference feature in order for the software to connect each device to a video call.
Discord
Founded in 2015, Discord is a free to use instant messaging, audio and video call software that is available to users on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Having primarily been used by gamers, this software is not rooted in professionalism and can come across as more childish and less professional to use that the other software mentioned.
Discord allows users to make and join servers where they can be focused on different topics or points that effectively make up large communities of people and give them the means to communicate remotely. It does require installation on devices you wish to use it on and creation of an account, but Discord is highly secure and free to use for anyone with internet connection with the added benefits of also working on mobile devices for messaging, audio, and video calls. With a great starting point for video calls being able to stream in 30 FPS and at 720p, this software is ideal for companies and teams that need free-to-use software to remotely call and message each other during work hours.
Slack
Similar to Discord, but founded in 2009, Slack is an alternative paid-for software that works in the same manner as Discord but has more professional connotations and is used more frequently by big businesses. Slack has an app that has to be downloaded onto devices, and once there, an account can be set up for users.
One of the main benefits of this app compared to Discord is the use of threads, this keeps any text space used on Slack clear of clutter and gives direct responses to different users, and also keeps them separate from each other, should users need to find specific answers or responses to questions asked or comments made.
Slack also has the added benefits of partnering and working with other professional applications such as G Suite, Trello, and Droplr, giving it more functionality and making it worth the money paid for it as Discord does not have these integrations that work for it.
GoRemote
At the beginning of the global pandemic, the team being GoRemote could see that companies would have to quickly switch to remote work with very little time to prepare their employees for these changes. In order to combat this, the video conferencing solution software was born. Similar to Slack, this software offers integrations with different companies and products that make sharing work easy for users and also requires a download onto the Mac system for it to be used.
One of the biggest core features that GoRemote offers their customers is the availability of unlimited video calls, which also provide password protection, a highly important security measure after Zoom had numerous amounts of calls hacked. With its reliability and ease of use, the software provides end-to-end encryption as well as GDPR compliance, thanks to the company being hosted in Europe. Their customer support also offers IT experts who are able to assist in hosting data from a location of customer choice safely, which is worth the money in our view for companies that either don’t know how to use this or don’t have the staff available to do it.
