Alternative for Zoom?

Hello people,

As Zoom basically is spyware, and with its AI integration, I’m looking for an alternative to Zoom for my group.

It needs support for:

  • Text chat
  • Audio talk
  • video talk
  • screen sharing (including sharing of a single window)
  • Ability to call in via a normal phone (like using the regular phone network)
  • Admin password and admin tools
  • Ability to hide it behind a password (my group quite often gets bothered by trolls, we want to limit that)
  • Ability to raise hand during a meeting

Is there an open source system, which we preferably don’t need to host ourselves (lack of people with the appropriate technical skills) which provides all these features. Yes, we need all of the above.

When I run meetings for our association I choose whatsapp as it just works and our management team lives on it. But our president always chooses google meet. Our Trésorier always chooses teams.

Google is limited to 1 hour and we always over run so drop back to whatsapp.

Both teams and google have issues on some browsers with sound not working but it could be user issues as its always the same member who has problems.

Whatsapp on linux is not very good you have to use an alternative but cannot remember its name off hand as i tend to use my tablet.

Check Matrix!

You may self-host its server-side service, but it’s not required.
It has clients for all major platforms.

May give you more info

Does Matrix support dial-in? So, not connecting via the internet, but the basic phone network?

Have you tried Jitsi (https://meet.jit.si/)?

I’m not sure if it supports phone dial-in (Edit: just checked, it does)

There is also the BBB (Big Blue Button) which I believe is paid but works pretty well