Meetings from Home: Tools

Mar 16, 2020

working-from-home tools

Are you working from home? Here’s a list of some great tools that you can use for free.

If you have anything to add to the list, please give me a shout at @andrioid.

Video Conferencing and chat

Jitsi Meet

Not quite as polished as some of the commercial options, but quite capable. Works best with Chrome, but seemed to work fine in Firefox too.

  • No account required: ✅
  • No organization required: ✅
  • Open Source: ✅
  • Self Hostable: ✅
  • Screen Sharing: ✅
  • Chat: ✅

Team.video

Does exactly what the names says. No account required, very simple to use.

  • No account required: ✅
  • No organization required: ✅
  • Open Source: 🚫
  • Self Hostable: 🚫
  • Screen Sharing: ✅
  • Chat: ✅

Whereby (formerly Appear.in)

Used to be my favourite video-conferencing tool.

  • No account required: 🚫
  • No organization required: ✅
  • Open Source: 🚫
  • Self Hostable: 🚫
  • Screen Sharing: ✅
  • Chat: ✅

Slack

Needs no introduction. A chat app that also has voice and video features.

  • No account required: 🚫
  • No organization required: 🚫
  • Open Source: 🚫
  • Self Hostable: 🚫
  • Screen Sharing: ✅
  • Chat: ✅

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft’s answer to Slack. Needs your organization to have a Microsoft account and the Teams feature activated.

  • No account required: 🚫
  • No organization required: 🚫
  • Open Source: 🚫
  • Self Hostable: 🚫
  • Screen Sharing: ✅
  • Chat: ✅

OpenVidu

Free, but you have to host it yourself or pay for it. Has multiple types of rooms.

  • No account required: 🚫
  • No organization required: 🚫
  • Open Source: ✅
  • Self Hostable: ✅
  • Screen Sharing: ✅
  • Chat: ✅

BigBlueButton

More focused on teaching than meetings. Integrates to learning-systems. You need to host it yourself or pay for the hosting.

  • No account required: 🚫
  • No organization required: 🚫
  • Open Source: ✅
  • Self Hostable: ✅
  • Screen Sharing: ✅
  • Chat: ✅

Whiteboarding

Excalidraw

An excellent tool that makes it quite easy to draw diagrams or simple drawings.

  • Diagrams: ✅
  • Live collaboration: ✅
  • Free form: 🚫