If your organization is like most others, you have multiple team members spread out in different locations, or even just working remotely from home or another location. Whatever the case, these remote team members usually interact with your in-office employees, making it crucial to have systems in place that can allow for this communication.

And as much as remote work can benefit an organization (and never has this been more apparent than during the current pandemic), remote workers also regularly report feelings of isolation — which can ultimately have a negative impact on productivity.

One of the most useful tools for increasing the engagement and productivity of remote workers has proven to be video conference, allowing for a sense of connection among coworkers.

While video conferencing apps are not new, they have certainly never been used to the degree in which they have over the last couple of months. With this in mind, let’s take a closer look at 5 of these video conferencing apps that have become household names.

Zoom

Zoom is undoubtedly one of the most popular video conferencing solutions out there. This platform is rich in features, with different plans based on your individual needs. The prices range from free options for basic personal meetings to large scale enterprise solutions that work on a per month/per host charge (with a minimum of 100 hosts).

For the enterprise-level plans, there can be up to 200 meeting participants and these plans offer unlimited cloud-based storage, custom emails, a customizable meeting URL, and more.

Google Hangouts 

Google, a household name in and of itself, introduced Google Hangouts as part of its video conferencing services. Hangouts is considered to be more of an individual use service, due to not having as many features as other enterprise and commercial-scale services.

But for smaller businesses, or for businesses that already utilize Google’s G-suite across their organization, Google Hangouts can be a great tool to use for video communication. An added bonus: the cost is relatively low, depending on your organization’s G-suite subscription settings, which can start as low as $6 per month.

Google Meet

Think of Google Meet as sort of the big brother of Google Hangouts, created for enterprise-scale customers. Google Meet is designed around scheduled video conferences among team members and offers similar features to the Zoom platform, such as the ability to sync with calendars, conference room booking, and a more polished, professional-looking user interface.

GoToMeeting

GoToMeeting has been a long-standing popular choice among professionals and has many helpful features, including instant meetings or the ability to schedule meetings in the future, meeting transaction services, and the ability for in-app messaging between meeting participants. Pricing for GoToMeeting starts at $14 per month for groups of 10 or fewer and goes up to $29 per month for larger groups (up to 150 participants).

Cisco WebEx

Cisco WebEx is an industry-standard for video conferencing, especially for those with a large number of team members. Cisco’s WebEx service acts as a sort of a hybrid of web conferencing video and voice calling services, as you have the ability to join meetings online or via telephone, depending on each participant’s availability and preferences at the time of the meeting.