Zoom earned its place by making video meetings boring in the good way: a link opens, audio usually works, screen sharing is obvious, and hosts get the controls a class, sales call, or all-hands needs. The friction starts when every meeting has to cross Zoom's cloud and policy surface, or when a growing organization finds the features it depends on sitting behind host licenses and add-ons it cannot shape. Open source alternatives let you move the conferencing stack closer to your own rules: run the web client, signaling, and media bridge yourself or through a provider you choose, tie rooms to your identity system, and keep recordings and metadata under your own retention policy while still covering browser join, chat, moderation, and screen sharing.
Jitsi Meet is an open source video conferencing platform for web and mobile. It supports browser-based meetings at meet.jit.si, mobile browser use, and mobile apps, with Google, Facebook, or GitHub required to start a meeting on the hosted service.
BigBlueButton is an open-source virtual classroom designed to help teachers teach and learners learn. It supports online tutoring, flipped classrooms, group collaboration, and online classes, with real-time audio, video, slides, chat, and screen sharing for remote learning sessions.
Jami is a distributed, open source communication platform. Rather than routing conversations through a central service, it is built as a distributed system, which keeps communication in the hands of the people using it.
Jitsi Meet and BigBlueButton are two proven servers aimed at different meetings: open conferencing versus the virtual classroom.
Best general-purpose conferencing: Jitsi Meet Jitsi Meet covers everyday meetings with browser join across current browsers, HD audio and video, screen sharing, chat with private messages, reactions, polls, and virtual backgrounds. Web and native SDKs let you embed meetings inside your own applications, and it self-hosts through Debian packages or Docker, with hosted meet.jit.si available if you prefer not to run it. It is Apache-2.0 licensed and built by the Jitsi team at 8x8 and the community.
Best for teaching and structured sessions: BigBlueButton BigBlueButton is a virtual classroom rather than a plain meeting tool. It pairs real-time audio, video, slides, and screen sharing with multi-user whiteboards, polling, shared notes, breakout rooms, and a Learning Analytics Dashboard for moderators, plus session recording and playback. It installs on Ubuntu with the GreenLight front end and an API, making it a fit for tutoring, classes, and collaborative sessions, and recorded sessions can be played back and shared afterward.
Replacing Zoom is less about finding a video button than about matching the meeting contract your users already rely on. Zoom bundles guest access, calendar invites, waiting rooms, cloud recordings, breakout rooms, chat, dial-in, admin policy, and identity controls behind one service, and an open source replacement often splits those across conferencing, storage, authentication, and scheduling. Decide first which behaviors are mandatory: browser join without an account, predictable links for outside guests, SSO enforcement, recording retention, and your largest recurring meetings. Jitsi Meet leans toward general-purpose meetings with browser join and embeddable SDKs, while BigBlueButton is built around the virtual classroom, with whiteboards, polling, and breakout rooms.
The real gaps show up around polish and edge cases. Zoom has mature desktop and mobile clients, PSTN dial-in, webinar workflows, room-hardware integrations, and a support model nontechnical users recognize. Open source tools can work well, but you may need to operate TURN relays for difficult networks, tune bandwidth, test browsers, and write guest instructions. Jitsi Meet installs from Debian packages or Docker and offers hosted meet.jit.si if you would rather not run it; BigBlueButton installs on Ubuntu with GreenLight as its front end and records sessions for playback. Treat the move as a communications-platform change, not a like-for-like app swap.
Migration is mostly inventory and replacement rather than a clean import. Download the cloud recordings, transcripts, chat files, and attendance or registration reports you need to keep, because meeting IDs, personal links, recurring links, and waiting-room settings do not carry over as live objects. Update calendar events, booking pages, help docs, room signage, and automated reminders with new links, and recreate host permissions, SSO groups, and recording retention rules. Expect the longest cleanup around old recording links and recurring meetings embedded across many future calendar invites.
Often yes. Jitsi Meet supports browser-based meetings across current browsers, so an external guest can click a link and join without an account or download, and it also has mobile apps. BigBlueButton runs in the browser too. Quality still varies by browser, device, and network, so test the exact guest path: invitation click, name entry, camera permission, screen share, and rejoin after a dropped connection, before you invite customers or vendors.
They target different meetings. Jitsi Meet is general-purpose conferencing: HD audio and video, screen sharing, reactions, polls, virtual backgrounds, and web and native SDKs for embedding meetings into your own apps. BigBlueButton is a virtual classroom built for teaching, with multi-user whiteboards, polling, shared notes, breakout rooms, a Learning Analytics Dashboard, and session recording. Choose Jitsi for meetings and embedding, BigBlueButton for tutoring, classes, and structured collaboration.
It depends on architecture and operations. Large meetings stress media routing, CPU, bandwidth, TURN relays, browser limits, and moderator tools. Test with the participant counts, screen-sharing patterns, cameras-on expectations, and geographic spread you actually use. BigBlueButton adds presenter and moderator controls and session recording that suit classes and all-hands; Jitsi Meet scales but benefits from careful server sizing. Validate audience controls and recording behavior before committing to webinars.
Calendar scheduling is the obvious one, but do not stop there. Check SSO and provisioning, webhooks, chat notifications, learning platforms, CRM meeting links, help-desk workflows, room systems, transcription tools, and recording archives. Jitsi Meet's web and native SDKs help you rebuild embedded-meeting integrations, and BigBlueButton exposes an API for scheduling and management. Build the inventory from real usage logs and admin settings rather than asking teams to remember every connection.
Expect more variation. Zoom's mobile apps handle backgrounding, notifications, audio routing, and poor networks in ways many users know well. Jitsi Meet ships Android and iOS apps plus mobile browser support; BigBlueButton is browser-based, so mobile use depends on the device browser. Test iOS and Android separately, including Bluetooth audio, screen share, joining from a calendar link, and switching between Wi-Fi and cellular, before you roll out widely.
Yes, but plan for more than a single web app. Real-time video usually needs media routing, TLS, a TURN service for participants behind strict firewalls, monitoring, and enough bandwidth for peak meetings. Jitsi Meet installs from Debian packages or Docker; BigBlueButton installs on Ubuntu with GreenLight as its front end. If guests join from corporate networks, hotels, or mobile, TURN capacity matters, so test with real guest networks before going live.
They keep pointing at Zoom until you edit or replace them. Recurring meetings are the hardest part, because one link can be embedded across many future calendar instances, reminders, documents, and onboarding pages. Audit shared calendars, booking tools, CRM templates, email signatures, and event pages. For external events, send a clear update with the new link rather than relying on guests to notice that it changed.
