Since the start of the global coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Zoom has experienced unprecedented growth. In April 2020 only, the use of Zoom jumped 30-fold.
Zoom Video SDK
To make more enterprises adopt the usage of Zoom video conference, the company Zoom has also released Zoom video SDK that allows developers to integrate all the Zoom video conference features into their own apps. With the Zoom video SDK, developers can access Zoom video conferences’ powerful and comprehensive features while designing their applications’ GUI and business logic.
Disadvantages and problems
With the surge of Zoom usage, many users have experienced significant pain points, including Zoombombings, data leakage, and user privacy. These pain points have caused a lot of concerns from video conference users.
Zoombombing means a situation where uninvited users appear in an online meeting room, they might listen in silence, or they might send inappropriate information, none of which is acceptable. According to VICE, the Zoom setting automatically adds same-domain emails to the same company. For the thousands who signed up with personal email IDs, their email IDs and photos were shared with random strangers who used the same email provider.
How do Video SDK Providers Like ZEGOCLOUD Resolve The Issues?
ZEGOCLOUD has been cautious and strict with user authentication from its startup and can eliminate the Zoombombing issue completely. ZEGOCLOUD is an RTC technology solution provider with a global presence. It provides real-time video and voice SDK for clients to build a real-time video call app and a SaaS video conference system called Talkline.
ZEGOCLOUD adopts private protocols to transmit datagrams and encrypts the data on transmission. Even if hackers intercept its datagrams, they cannot unencrypt. ZEGOCLOUD also performs stringent authentication on user identity, ensuring that any user joining ZEGOCLOUD meetings is valid and legal.
Top 5 Best Alternatives to Zoom Video SDK
ZEGOCLOUD
The market sees ZEGOCLOUD as a cloud service provider with expertise in real-time communication, but it also provides a state-of-art video conference product Talkline. ZEGOCLOUD is renowned for voice and video quality in online conversation and a complete path of project advancements, including real-time communication SDKs, online collaboration features add-on content like gaming and karaoke and metaverse products.
ZEGOCLOUD ensures the quality of voice and video conversation by two extraordinary measures,i.e., a global coverage data transmission network and a state-of-the-art terminal media engine.
The global coverage data transmission network is MSDN, i.e., Massive Serial Data Network. When the network condition weakens, the media engine can decrease the bit-rate to consume less bandwidth. When the network condition is recovering, the media engine can predict and increase the bit-rate to enhance video and voice quality. In addition, the media engine does a great job in acoustic noise suppression, acoustic echo cancellation, and automatic gain control.
Video Conference
ZEGOCLOUD allows users to share screens and documents and interact with online whiteboards in a video conference context. In a ZEGOCLOUD video conference, the documents shared can be Zoomed in to the maximum, and they still remain high definition quality, and fonts won’t become blurring. When multiple users try to draw on the whiteboard simultaneously, the ZEGOCLOUD video conference offers a mechanism to reconcile the racing conditions. Each user will feel free to remove on his will without struggle.
Recently, ZEGOCLOUD has invested heavily in the metaverse field and launched a series of products, including metaverse karaoke, metaverse avatar, and ZEGOCLOUD land, a demo app to demonstrate ZEGOCLOUD’s technological abilities in the metaverse field. By combining all the features and SDKs, developers can build a video conference in a virtual world, allowing each participant to join the discussion as a self-avatar.
Google Meet
Previously known as Google Hangout, Google Meet is a video conferencing platform from the folks at Google. The app is free if your team already has a G Suite or Google Workspace account.
While Google Meet is mainly geared toward business users, individuals can also use this video conferencing and collaboration tool to video chat with their families. On top of that, teachers can use Meet to create a virtual classroom to conduct teaching at various scales, such as mini-class, medium-class, or large classes.
Google Meet is cloud-based and can be accessed through a web browser from anywhere worldwide. It is straightforward and can be used on any device only if a web browser can run well on it. This makes it the best choice for launching a quick meeting with a first-time-contact client.
Video Chat features
For its significant features, it can support up to 100 participants per meeting, with 16 meeting participants visible at a time. It can preview your screen to check your camera, mic, and who is present before you enter the online meeting. Screen sharing is available for detailed explanations. Meeting hosts can control the meeting by removing attendees, muting, etc.
For its pros, meeting participants can use its live captioning feature to take detailed meeting notes during a virtual event. It has the same security setup as any other Google app and encrypts all data. It integrates with other Google apps like Gmail and Google Calendar for better ease of use.
However, it is reported that it can crash on some Mac devices and is limited to 60-minute meetings. There is no private chat, and you have to message the entire group even if your message only aims to reach someone.
Cisco Webex
Webex’s free plan is one of the most comprehensive, allowing up to 100 participants per meeting for a maximum of 50 minutes.
The cheapest paid-for plan increases the meeting length to 24 hours, but you have to jump two more tiers before the participant allowance increases to 200. The Premium plan enables up to 100,000 participants and unlimited hosts.
It’s suitable for collaboration, with the free tier offering screen sharing plus an interactive whiteboard and messaging feature. However, you’ll still need to upgrade for recording capability and storage, dial-in access, and international call-ins.
All paid-for plans include transcriptions, file transfer, chat, “raise a hand,” and polling features. Live customer support is available with all but the free version. Webex is hot on security, offering firewall compatibility, SSO, and secure scheduling options.
The minimalist design can make some user controls tricky to find, and there have been complaints about the slow down, particularly in screen-share mode. It has mobile apps for both Android and Apple smartphones and integrates with Google Drive, Microsoft 365, and Salesforce.
Jitsi
Jitsi is an advanced open-source video conference project; it is free and requires no user accounts or setup. Inviting team members to a meeting is a breeze. The quality of Jitsi’s audio and video is of the highest standard.
The software also offers features like YouTube playback in meetings and secure live streaming. This makes Jitsi a good option for educators who stream live classes or everyday users who want to chat without hassles.
Since Jitsi is primarily web-based, it works on any mobile or desktop device. The app also comes with Android and iOS apps and is an easy and fun way to connect with colleagues and friends.
Despite Jitsi not being optimized for enterprise environment needs, it is perfect for small startups and friends’ meetings. In addition, Jitsi has optimal privacy and security policies designed to protect the privacy rights of the average Internet user. Jitsi’s data is strictly not for sale.
Compared to Zoom, however, Jitsi is cloud-based, while Zoom also offers desktop and mobile device clients in addition to the web-based version.
More tech-savvy users can download the source code and set up their servers with Jitsi access control rules. This ensures that user data never leaves the owner’s sphere of control.
Since it is an open-source project, it allows you to do further customized development, like what you can do with Zoom video sdk. You can incorporate the project into your own app project and build the video conference features into the app.
Linphone
Linphone markets itself as the leading Skype alternative in the market today. It comes with double, open-source, and commercial (for voice and video calls) licenses.
The software’s components are utilized in many sectors, including IoT, security, home automation, telecommunications, and health.
Linphone comes packaged in native mobile apps for iOS and Android and features desktop clients for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Standout features of Linphone include VOIP-based video chats, mobile clients, and a strong Skype alternative.
Linphone’s security is so advanced that major players in the security sector use it. The state-of-the-art encryption is based on SIP/TLS, advanced ciphering algorithms, end-to-end message encryption, and ZRTP encryption for video and voice calls.
Zoom is primarily an application for unifying cloud video conferencing, online meetings, software-defined conference rooms, and group messaging for remote users. On the other hand, Linphone is focused on providing internet phones and VoIP.
Compared to the myriad of features in Zoom, Linphone only does instant messaging in addition to VoIP but does it very well.
Conclusion
During the global pandemic, people have developed the habit of collaborating online through video conferencing. Zoom is one of the video conference systems that people use often. It also provides Zoom video SDK to developers to create their own video conference systems.
However, since Zoom might not be able to resolve its significant pain points quickly, there are a few best alternatives to Zoom video SDK, like ZEGOCLOUD video SDK, which will give developers more leeways to explore the possibility of having video conferences in a virtual world.
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