Should you build or buy Video Conferencing?
Video conferencing software enables real-time audio, video, and screen-sharing meetings between remote participants. Organizations use it for internal team meetings, client calls, webinars, and all-hands events, typically through browser or desktop clients connected to cloud infrastructure.
The build-vs-buy decision for Video Conferencing turns on whether your use case is meeting replacement for the whole organization or embedding video as a product feature, and how much the compliance and governance burden around recording and legal hold actually costs you; the specifics of volume, regulation, and vendor pricing trajectory decide it.
Build it, buy it, or bridge?
When building makes sense
The build case for video conferencing is strongest when video is a feature of your product rather than an internal communication tool. WebRTC infrastructure is well understood, and building on it with Daily.co, Jitsi's embedded SDK, or raw browser APIs gives you a conferencing surface that you control completely — pricing, layout, recording logic, participant permissions. Several product teams embed this rather than paying per-seat to Zoom when the video call is the product itself. The second genuine build case is for organizations with GDPR or data residency requirements that prohibit routing audio or video through US cloud vendors. Jitsi Meet is documented in production for EU-based teams (Meetily uses it explicitly for GDPR compliance), and BigBlueButton serves universities and government organizations that need data on-premise. Compliance-driven self-hosting adds real engineering overhead — TURN servers, signaling, monitoring, scaling — but it's the right call when the regulatory requirement is real.
When buying makes sense
Buying earns its keep for organization-wide meeting replacement, where the compliance, recording, legal-hold, and governance requirements add significant complexity to a self-hosted Jitsi or BigBlueButton deployment. Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams handle TURN/signaling infrastructure, bandwidth scaling, and regulatory compliance as part of the service. Their pricing has drifted up — Microsoft Teams Premium and AI-enhanced Zoom tiers add meaningful per-seat cost — but for most organizations this remains cheaper than the engineering time required to operate a reliable equivalent. The more important consideration is that video conferencing embedded in M365 or Workspace comes at no incremental license cost; the standalone tool is often already paid for. Buying is the right default when video is a communication utility and not a product surface.
The desk read
Video conferencing pricing has been drifting up. Microsoft Teams Premium and AI-enhanced Zoom tiers add meaningful per-seat cost on top of base licenses that were already bundled into productivity suites. At the same time, Jitsi Meet is a documented, production-grade self-hosted alternative that schools, research groups, and privacy-focused organizations run in place of commercial options. For organizations building products that embed video as a feature, the build case using WebRTC infrastructure is well-established and often cheaper at scale.
Buying earns its keep for company-wide meeting replacement, where the compliance, governance, legal-hold, and recording requirements make a self-hosted Jitsi deployment significantly more complex than its core simplicity implies. The infrastructure to support TURN servers, signaling, monitoring, and scaling under load is straightforward to describe and tedious to operate reliably. The buy-vs-build question is cleaner when video is the product rather than a communication utility.
Vendors in Video Conferencing
Each file covers what the product is, its funding history, and when the index last verified it alive.
Frequently asked
What is Video Conferencing software?
Video conferencing software enables real-time audio, video, and screen-sharing meetings between remote participants. Organizations use it for internal team meetings, client calls, webinars, and all-hands events, typically through browser or desktop clients connected to cloud infrastructure.
When does building Video Conferencing make sense?
Building makes the most sense when video is a feature of your product rather than an internal communication tool, or when GDPR and data residency requirements prohibit routing calls through third-party cloud vendors.
When does buying Video Conferencing make sense?
Buying earns its keep for organization-wide meeting use, where compliance, recording, and legal-hold requirements make a self-hosted deployment significantly more complex than the core simplicity of Jitsi implies — and where it's often already bundled into existing M365 or Workspace licenses.
What are the main Video Conferencing vendors?
Representative vendors include Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom. B4 Pro includes the category score and the full vendor list.
Is Jitsi a viable self-hosted alternative?
Yes. Jitsi Meet is production-grade, free, and documented across schools, research groups, and privacy-focused organizations. The challenge is operating the full TURN/signaling/monitoring stack reliably at load, not the initial deployment.