Free alternatives to Zoom for remote classrooms

10 Alternatives to Zoom for Teaching Your Class Online

Zoom is a popular video-conferencing tool which has attracted a lot of attention recently. This is due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic forcing many companies and schools to embrace online workspaces. But the Zoom service has also become infamous due to its recent security issues.

If you’re looking for alternatives to Zoom breakout rooms for remote teaching during lockdown, here are 10 options for you. By using any of these services, you’ll be able to get your classroom online and your students learning English again.

Skype

1. Skype

Skype is now owned by Microsoft and is probably the most well-known video calling service, other than Zoom. It supports up to 50 simultaneous callers for free.

GotoMeeting

2. GotoMeeting

Millions of people use GotoMeeting for online meetings and collaboration. This service is quite well-optimised for fast response times across a variety of devices.

Google Hangouts Meet

3. Google Hangouts Meet

Google retired their classic Hangouts offering in late 2019, replacing it withΒ Hangouts Meet. This business edition of Hangouts allows for video meetings for G Suite members, whilst still allowing external participants to connect.Β The number of simultaneous callers on G Suite Basic is limited to 100. For the Business tier this is up to 150 and 250 for the Enterprise version. If you wish to live stream with up to 100,000 audience members, you’ll need a ‘G Suite Enterprise’ subscription.

Zoho Meeting

4. Zoho Meeting

Zoho‘s focus is on empowering remote presentations. The service allows you to reach global customers within minutes and deliver your product demos or sales pitch with ease. That being said, Zoho is also quite well-suited to virtual classrooms or remote teaching.

Microsoft Teams

6. Microsoft Teams

Microsoft TeamsΒ is built into Office 365, but anyone can sign up for theΒ free versionΒ of Teams with their email address. The low tier membership supports up to 300 members, one-to-one and group video calls, screen sharing and file transfers of up to 10GB per file. The business plans offer even more. You will then have access to their security and management tools. Teams can transfer files of sizes up to 1TB and collaborate using desktop Office programs.

Join.Me

6. Join.Me

Join.Me is a great service for reviewing documents and designs collaboratively. It is a very simple screen sharing tool for meetings on the go.

Cisco Webex

7. Cisco Webex

WebEx is an enterprise solution for video and audio conferencing, online meetings, screen sharing and webinars. It is a very feature-rich and robust service from the company behind most of the internet’s connectivity hardware.

BlueJeans

8. BlueJeans

BlueJeans brings video, audio and web conferencing together with everyday collaboration tools. It is the first cloud service to connect desktops, mobile devices and meeting room systems in one online meeting. BlueJeans makes meetings quick to join and simple to use.

EZTalks

9. EZTalks

EZTalks is a video conferencing service which allows users to access collaboration services such as webinars, online meetings, audio and video conferencing.

TeamViewer

10. TeamViewer

TeamViewer is actually a remote IT support and access service that lets you securely connect to and control remote devices, such as laptops, mobiles and certain IoT devices. However, TeamViewer is free and could be used for remote teaching on a one-to-one basis.


This is certainly not an exhaustive list of alternatives to Zoom – some other honourable mentions include:

If you are looking for resources to help you teach online, see our downloadable ESL worksheets, activities and games.

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