Zoom Workplace alternatives: 11 video conferencing tools compared
Zoom Workplace alternatives are sought by three kinds of buyer. Some only wanted a meeting room and now pay for a suite of chat, mail, calendar and whiteboard. Some hit the 40-minute cap on the free plan and find the price page gives no figure until they sign in. Others must control where video traffic is processed. They move to simpler browser rooms, to bundles they already own, or to platforms they can host themselves.
Short answer: The first three alternatives to Zoom Workplace in our video conferencing software ranking are Whereby, Zoho Meeting and Jitsi Meet. Places 1 to 3 go to challengers, vendors outside the best-known brands in a category, wherever the category has them; the established names follow from place 4 in their ranked order. Choose Whereby if you want a fixed meeting link per person and a price list you can read in one minute. All 11 alternatives below are ranked products from Best Video Conferencing Software in 2026, and each says where it differs from Zoom Workplace.
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Pricing: Free Basic plan; Pro and Business billed per user per month
Established in: United States
Built for: Companies whose clients and partners already join Zoom meetings regularly
Not for: Buyers wanting one flat price for everything they use
01
Why buyers look past Zoom Workplace
01
The free plan stops at 40 minutes
Zoom's Basic plan allows 100 participants but ends each meeting after 40 minutes. The 30-hour limit and 10 GB of cloud storage start on Pro. A team that meets in sessions of an hour therefore ends up on a paid seat sooner than it expected, and often compares what Google, Zoho or a browser-room vendor gives away at that length.
02
A suite is sold where a room was wanted
Meetings now sits inside Zoom Workplace next to Chat, Phone, Mail, Calendar, Canvas, Scheduler, Whiteboard and Clips, with AI note-taking on the paid plans. For a company that already has a mailbox and a document tool, most of that is duplication. Phone, Rooms and Webinars and Events are separate products, so the bill is not the Workplace plan alone.
03
The price needs a login or a quote
The euro price list on zoom.com loads its figures dynamically, so the plan pages we fetched showed seat tiers and limits but no amounts. Buyers who want a number before a procurement conversation compare vendors such as Whereby and Google that print theirs. Hosting is the other trigger: Zoom Communications, Inc. is a US company, and teams that must choose where video is processed look at European or self-hosted options.
Usage-based per participant minute; first minutes each month free
Video call infrastructure for developers, billed by participant minute
you are replacing Zoom's meeting SDK inside a product rather than replacing the meeting app staff use
#12
03
What each one does differently
1
Whereby
Norway · Free plan; paid plans per host per month, published
Rooms open in the browser at a fixed URL and the price sheet is short: Free gives one room, 4 attendees and 30 minutes, Pro costs $10.99 per month for 100 attendees, Business $13.99 per host for 200 with a three-host minimum. The plan lists no chat, mail or phone, and its largest room is smaller than Zoom's Business cap of 300.
Switch from Zoom Workplace if you want a fixed meeting link per person and a price list you can read in one minute.
India · Free plan; paid tiers by participant count, billed monthly or annually; 14-day trial
The Free plan advertises meetings of up to 60 minutes with 100 participants, and paid plans are sold by participant count from 10 to 250, with a 14-day trial that needs no card. Breakout rooms, a custom domain and API access sit on Professional. It is sold by Zoho Corporation Private Limited, and it fits best for companies that already use other Zoho products.
Switch from Zoom Workplace if the 40-minute cap is the complaint and you want paid tiers sized by how many people join.
United States · Free hosted service; open source Apache 2.0; self-host on your own server
Open source under Apache-2.0, with a hosted instance at meet.jit.si that needs no account, and a choice between running your own server or paying the maintainers' hosting service, Jitsi as a Service, sold by 8x8. There is no calendar or mailbox bundled in, and the hosted service has no per-seat plans like Zoom's, so administration and support depend on whoever runs the instance.
Switch from Zoom Workplace if you want free calls today and the option to move the whole stack onto your own servers later.
France · Quoted per organisation; 30-day trial; cloud, private cloud or on-premises
A French vendor built around end-to-end encrypted video, certified by ANSSI (CSPN). It sells TixeoCloud, a SecNumCloud-hosted PrivateCloud and an on-premises server, with unlimited meetings and duration. The cloud edition starts at 10 organisers and omits SSO and directory links, which arrive on the higher editions. No prices are published.
Switch from Zoom Workplace if a regulator or client requires encrypted video, European hosting or an air-gapped install.
United States · Free for Google accounts; paid tiers bundled into Workspace per user per month
Meet comes inside Google Workspace rather than as a separate subscription. The free tier gives 100 participants for 60 minutes, and Workspace plans listed at EUR 6.80 (Starter), 13.60 (Standard) and 21.10 (Plus) per user per month raise rooms to 100, 150 and 500 participants. It makes sense only if the team already lives in Gmail and Docs.
Switch from Zoom Workplace if your company already pays for Google Workspace and a second meeting licence is the odd one out.
Not stated by the vendor · Free plan; paid plans per host licence; enterprise quoted by sales
Free allows unlimited meetings of up to 40 minutes and 100 attendees, the same ceiling as Zoom Basic, so it solves nothing on length. Paid access works through host licences, one per concurrent meeting, and Enterprise, sold by contacting sales, lifts the cap to 1,000 attendees with FedRAMP-authorised security and a long list of toll dial-in countries.
Switch from Zoom Workplace if you need more than 300 attendees per meeting or FedRAMP-authorised security from a mainstream vendor.
United States · Sold by plan with annual discount; contact sales for a configuration
Meetings come bundled with RingEX, the phone and messaging system, so you replace Zoom Phone and Zoom Meetings together or not at all. Add-ons carry their own prices: Town Halls from $30 per month (annual) for 500 attendees and up to 10,000, Rooms from $39 per room. The RingEX plan itself needs a sales configuration.
Switch from Zoom Workplace if your office phone system is also being replaced and you want one contract for calls and video.
Norway · Quoted per organisation; sold through resellers and cloud marketplaces
Not a meeting app for ordinary teams but a platform for defence, government, justice and healthcare. Data can stay entirely self-contained, with no external processing, not even by Pexip. Its Connect product links rooms across Microsoft, Google and Zoom. Sold through sales, resellers and cloud marketplaces, from a Norwegian company with ISO 27001 and 27701 certification.
Switch from Zoom Workplace if classified or regulated meetings must run on infrastructure you control, or rooms on three platforms must interconnect.
Canada · Open source, free of licence fees; run on your own server
A virtual classroom licensed LGPL-3.0, started at Carleton University in Ottawa in 2007. It offers a multi-user whiteboard, breakout rooms, polling, shared notes and learning analytics, and is the default virtual classroom in Canvas, Moodle Cloud, Sakai, Jenzabar, D2L and Schoology. It is shaped for teaching, so sales calls and board meetings fit worse.
Switch from Zoom Workplace if the meetings are lessons or training and you run, or buy hosting for, your own server.
Not stated by the vendor · Free, open source (GPLv3 or later), donation funded
A GNU project under GPLv3 or later that connects people directly, peer to peer, with end-to-end encryption and no relay server or personal data needed for an account. It handles group video calls and screen sharing, and doubles as a SIP client. Donations pay for it, so there is no seat licence, no admin console and no vendor contract.
Switch from Zoom Workplace if a small group wants private calls with no account provider in the middle.
Not stated by the vendor · Usage-based per participant minute; first minutes each month free
A developer platform, not a meeting app: you build video into your own product with an SDK or its prebuilt interface. The first 10,000 minutes each month are free, then video costs between $0.0015 and $0.004 per participant minute, with recording at $0.01349 per recorded minute. Nobody can join unless your software issues the room.
Switch from Zoom Workplace if you are replacing Zoom's meeting SDK inside a product rather than replacing the meeting app staff use.
Zoom remains the sensible choice when many external people join your calls and you want them to arrive with a familiar client, when meetings routinely exceed 100 participants (the Business plan admits 300) or when staff already use Zoom Phone, Rooms or Webinars and the single admin console is worth more than the saving. A team that already runs on Zoom Workplace's chat, whiteboard and AI notes loses that continuity by moving to a room-only product, so count those hours before calling the alternative cheaper.
05
What moving off Zoom Workplace involves
01
Recurring links are the real migration
Every recurring meeting, calendar invite and external partner holds a Zoom link. Export the list of recurring meetings first, then reissue invites in batches by team. Whereby gives each host a fixed room URL and Jitsi lets you pick the meeting name, which makes the new links easier to recognise.
02
Recordings and notes do not travel
Zoom's cloud recordings, My Notes output and chat history stay in the Zoom account. Download what you must keep before the plan ends, since the 10 GB of cloud storage on Pro is tied to the paid seat. Check how long each alternative retains recordings, and whether Zoho's per-host 5 GB or Whereby's local recording fits your volume.
03
Rooms, phones and legal review go first
If you run Zoom Rooms hardware or Zoom Phone, those contracts need their own exit plan, because room hardware and phones need their own replacement; Pexip Connect and RingCentral Rooms address room systems, and RingCentral also sells the phone system. For regulated buyers the vendor's contracting entity and hosting region (Tixeo in France, Pexip in Norway) belong in the data processing review before the first pilot call.
06
Questions about replacing Zoom Workplace
6 answers
What is a free alternative to Zoom without the 40-minute limit?
Google Meet and Zoho Meeting both advertise free meetings of up to 60 minutes with 100 participants. Jitsi Meet describes its public service as free to use all day with no account.
Whereby's free plan is tighter, at 4 attendees and 30 minutes, and Webex Free has the same 40-minute cap as Zoom.
Which Zoom alternative can I host on my own server?
Jitsi Meet (Apache-2.0), BigBlueButton (LGPL-3.0) and Jami (GPLv3 or later) are open source. Tixeo sells an on-premises TixeoServer edition from 50 organisers, and Pexip is built so that data stays self-contained.
Jitsi, Tixeo and Pexip are the ones set up for business meetings; BigBlueButton is for teaching.
Is Microsoft Teams covered here?
Microsoft Teams is not among the tools in our video-conferencing ranking, so we have not assessed it and list no alternative that depends on it.
If you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, check what meeting size and recording limits it includes before buying a second licence.
Which Zoom alternative is best for European data protection needs?
Tixeo (France) offers end-to-end encrypted video with SecNumCloud hosting, and Pexip (Norway) is built for self-contained data control.
Whereby is a Norwegian company whose terms name Whereby AS as the contracting party. Check the data processing agreement and hosting region of the specific plan, not the vendor country alone.
Can I replace Zoom if I need more than 100 attendees?
Zoom Business admits 300 participants. Webex Enterprise lifts the cap to 1,000 on a quoted plan, Google Meet offers 500 on Workspace Plus and 1,000 on Enterprise, and RingCentral Town Halls reach 10,000 attendees as an add-on. Zoho Meeting sells tiers up to 250 participants.
How do I price a switch when Zoom shows no figures?
Count the seats that actually host meetings, since Webex, Whereby and Zoho price per host or per participant tier.
Add the hardware, phone and webinar contracts that Zoom sells separately. Then ask Zoom for a quote in euros, because the pricing page we fetched showed no amounts.
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Sources
Checked 27 October 2026
Zoom Workplace pricing: Basic free with 40 minutes and 100 participants; Pro 30 hours, 10 GB cloud storage, AI note-taking; Business 300 participants; figures load dynamically.
Zoom Meetings product page: Meetings inside Zoom Workplace with Chat, Phone, Mail, Calendar, Whiteboard, Rooms and separate Webinars and Events products.
Whereby Meetings pricing: Free 1 room, 4 attendees, 30 minutes; Pro $10.99; Business $13.99 per host, minimum 3 hosts, 200 attendees; 14-day trial.
Zoho Meeting pricing: Participant tiers 10 to 250, 14-day trial without card, Standard and Professional features, 5 GB recording storage per host, premium support add-on.
Zoho terms of service: Zoho Corporation Private Limited as owner of the Zoho trademarks.
Jitsi Meet: Free, no account, open source, meet.jit.si, Jitsi as a Service, trademark of 8x8.
Jitsi Meet on GitHub: Apache-2.0 licence; JaaS described as the managed option from 8x8.
Tixeo offers: TixeoCloud, PrivateCloud, Server; organisers from 10 or 50; E2EE; ANSSI CSPN; SSO and directory links not on TixeoCloud; no published prices.
Google Meet product page: Free: 100 participants and 60 minutes per meeting, no time limit on 1:1 calls; 24-hour meetings and 1,000 participants on premium plans.
Google Workspace pricing: Starter EUR 6.80, Standard EUR 13.60, Plus EUR 21.10 per user per month; Meet rooms of 100, 150 and 500 participants; Enterprise by contacting sales.
Webex pricing: Free: 40 minutes and 100 attendees; host licences and concurrent meetings; Enterprise 1,000 attendees, FedRAMP; toll dial-in countries.
RingCentral Video: Meetings with RingEX; Town Halls from $30 for 500 attendees, up to 10,000; Rooms from $39.
Pexip Secure Meetings: Classified communications, no third-party processing, interoperability with Microsoft, Google, Zoom, ISO 27001 and 27701, Pexip AS.
BigBlueButton: Virtual classroom, Carleton University 2007, default in Canvas, Moodle Cloud, Sakai, Jenzabar, D2L, Schoology, features.
Jami: Peer to peer, GPLv3 or later, GNU project, no personal information for an account, group video, screen sharing, SIP client, donations, Savoir-faire Linux.
Daily video pricing: 10,000 free minutes monthly; $0.0015 to $0.004 per participant minute; cloud recording $0.01349 per minute.
Founder of The Knowledge Engineers and of 2 Steps Ahead, an AI search visibility agency. Editorially responsible for every page on this site; research and drafting are AI-assisted.
Written, edited and fact-checked by Sebastiaan Smits. Last reviewed
27 October 2026. How we review.
