Jitsi Meet Review: Pricing, Pros, Cons & Alternatives

Overview

Jitsi Meet is a fully encrypted, 100% open-source video-conferencing application that can be used free without an account on the public meet.jit.si service or deployed on an organisation’s own servers^[11]. The Jitsi trademark belongs to 8×8, Inc., which also offers Jitsi as a Service (JaaS), a hosted version run by the team that builds Jitsi^[11].

Features include desktop and presentation sharing, invitations by custom URL, integrated chat and emoji, collaborative document editing through Etherpad, HD audio using the Opus codec and encryption by default with advanced security settings^[11]. Because the code is open, developers can modify and embed it, and many organisations self-host Jitsi to keep meeting data on their own infrastructure.

The trade-offs are those of open-source software: the public service has no service-level guarantee, self-hosting requires server administration and capacity planning, and features such as large-meeting management, AI summaries and admin consoles are less developed than in commercial products.