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There are many good alternatives. We look at data centres and local servers, platform depth and authentication.
There are many Zoom alternatives, and some of them are excellent products. We are an official Zoom partner and are, of course, biased. So we will not criticise anyone, and we will not pretend that the alternatives are poor. They are not.
Instead, here are three questions worth asking any platform, including ours:
If another platform has better answers, take it. We mean that.
One caveat straight away: this is software. Everything written below is correct as at the date of publication. Tomorrow it may be different — for us and for everyone else. Check the picture at the moment of the decision, not at the moment of reading. If you need a detail examined for your case, write to us.
Let us say this at once, so that the rest of the conversation is honest.
Twenty people in the company, all meetings internal, no webinars, no equipped meeting rooms? Almost any modern platform will cover the task. There is no point paying for depth you do not use.
Data must be stored in Russia, the organisation belongs to the public sector or to critical infrastructure? The regulator has already made the choice for you. That is fine.
The whole team lives in one messenger, and the call is needed "just to press a button"? The built-in call will win — there is nothing to switch to.
In all three cases we will say the same thing in conversation. Selling what is not needed is a poor strategy: in a year you drop the licences, and we lose more than we earned.
What follows is about the cases where the difference starts to cost money.
Video communication is not a website. What matters here is not "server speed" but the path of the packet between participants in real time. When a meeting has people from three countries, the traffic meets somewhere. The question is where.
For Zoom this is a network of sites on six continents. According to Zoom's documentation, meeting reports show data centres in San Jose, Virginia, Washington, Toronto, Vancouver, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Osaka, Sydney, Melbourne, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Tianjin, São Paulo, Mexico City, Jeddah and Riyadh — plus a global reserve.
The point of the list is simple. A meeting between Almaty and Frankfurt does not have to go through North America. For a distributed company this is the difference between "as clear as the next room" and "say again, you are breaking up".
Storage is a separate matter from routing. A paid Zoom account chooses the region where cloud recordings, transcripts, whiteboards, telephony and contact centre data are held: Australia, Brazil, Germany, Canada, Mexico, Singapore, USA, Switzerland, Japan.
The region can also be pinned: Regional Data Center Controls tie the processing and storage of some data to a chosen cluster. And if a site fails, traffic moves to a neighbouring one — that is how distributed redundant data centres work.
What to ask any platform: how many sites and on which continents, whether you can choose the storage region, and what happens when a site fails.
This is a separate conversation — and the part of Zoom that people most often do not know about.
The platform does not have to be used entirely from the cloud. Part of it can be placed on your infrastructure, leaving in the cloud only what cannot be avoided. The set of modules is called Zoom Node, and it covers different tasks:
Zoom Mesh stands apart — a delivery network of your own inside the company. In a large webinar the stream arrives at several parent machines and is distributed over the local network, instead of every viewer pulling their own stream from the internet. For a thousand listeners in one office this is the difference between "the channel is down" and "nobody noticed anything".
If an even shorter path is needed, there is Direct Connect — a direct connection from your network to Zoom data centres, bypassing the public internet, with dedicated lines and backup terminations.
Why all this is needed is clear from a figure from our practice: when the platform is in operation, peak loads reach 40 Gbps, and the network has to be prepared for them in advance. This is one of the five reasons why companies fail to roll out Zoom on their own.
What to ask any platform: whether media traffic can stay inside the perimeter, whether a meeting survives a cut in the external channel, whether there is a delivery network of its own for mass broadcasts, and whether your SIP terminals can join it.
"A Zoom alternative" is a phrase that quietly narrows the conversation to a single button. Meanwhile, video conferencing is about a seventh of the platform.
What else lives inside the same licence:
Not "calls in an app", but a full PBX: a work number, call forwarding, voicemail, call recording, taking calls from a laptop and from a phone.
Broadcasting to hundreds and thousands of listeners: registration, branding, rehearsal, speakers, moderators. Above that are multi-day conferences with a lobby, an expo and networking. How a webinar differs from an ordinary meeting is covered separately, and how events differ from webinars is here.
Enquiries, queues, routing to agents.
with channels, linked to meetings: the discussion continues before and after.
that lives separately from the meeting rather than disappearing with it.
meetings with breakout rooms, recording and screen sharing.
all of these are parts of Zoom Workplace.
Zoom Rooms and SIP/H.323 support: hardware you have already bought is not thrown away. What to put in the room — an equipment review.
if the platform has to be built into your own product.
archiving, data loss prevention, your own encryption key, end-to-end encryption of meetings, Compliance Manager.
meeting summaries, notes, suggestions. The assistant is called ZoomMate.
What to ask any platform: which areas the same licence covers, which are bought as add-ons, and which you will have to take from another supplier. And how many suppliers will end up in your contract portfolio.
And a question to ask yourself rather than the supplier: what communication without a platform costs. We calculated this through payroll — time spent travelling, business trips, approvals — and the figure is unexpected. Why a company needs video communication and what it saves — the full calculation is there. What the platform itself costs is on the pricing page and in the breakdown of Zoom plans.
The dullest-looking item, and the most expensive to get wrong.
A meeting link is a door without a lock. Anyone who has the address gets inside. While meetings are internal, this does not matter. As soon as a deal, personal data, salaries or an unpatched vulnerability are discussed, the question "who has just joined under the name Ivan" stops being theoretical.
Authentication lives on three levels. Check all three.
In Zoom these are authentication profiles. The host admits to the meeting only:
There is also the reverse: a list of blocked domains and targeted exceptions, when an external speaker has to be let into a closed meeting without opening it to everyone.
Plus what is visible to the eye: a waiting room with manual admission, a passcode, webinar registration, co-host rights.
The point is one. A participant is not a line saying "Ivan" in a list, but a corporate account. Ivan leaves the company and access is revoked with one move in the directory. How this works from the administrator's side — identity management.
Alongside it are information barriers, which limit who can communicate with whom at all, and encryption by default for everything else.
A meeting room is a participant too, only a hardware one. It has its own account, its own rights, its own management from the admin panel. A separate question is what happens to equipment you have already bought: is SIP/H.323 supported, or will the meeting rooms have to be re-equipped.
What to ask: whether rooms can be managed centrally, whether the administrator sees their status, and whether changing platform will turn into replacing hardware. At Zoom this is handled by the management dashboard and the device manager, and at workplaces with virtual desktops by VDI support.
The least obvious level — and the one where things break most often.
A licence bought on someone else's card or through an intermediary lives inside someone else's account. The owner is not you. The administrator is whoever bought it: they manage your users and see your settings. You cannot contact Zoom support directly, because the account is not yours. There are no closing documents, and the expense cannot be booked to costs. In a dispute, access is switched off by someone other than you.
This is the third authentication: who confirms that the licences belong to your company.
RightConf is one of Zoom's first partners worldwide and its only partner in Russia. An official contract, transparent payments, closing documents. The licences are issued to your legal entity, and your administrator manages the users. We work with legal entities in Russia, the CIS countries and Europe. The purchase procedure — how to pay for Zoom from Russia. What exactly a partner gives beyond what is on the Zoom site we covered in the note "Why RightConf".
Here we are ready to say it directly rather than hide behind a checklist. We do not know of another video platform that goes as deep into the Apple world as Zoom. That is our opinion. Here is what supports it.
The Zoom Rooms requirements list Mac mini on M1, M2 and M2 Pro, the Mac mini M4 of 2024 (10 cores, 16 GB unified memory) and Mac Studio on M2 Max and M2 Ultra. For each configuration it states how many screens it supports: two or three. This is supported hardware in the manufacturer's documentation, not "it should work in principle".
Zoom Rooms for Touch mode turns an iPad into a meeting room for a small space or into a Zoom for Home device. There is also a separate controller application: an iPad on the table manages the room, starts and ends meetings, and shows the schedule.
The native visionOS application came out in February 2024 — among the first professional applications on the platform. Persona instead of a static window, spatial presence scaled to you, starting and scheduling meetings straight from the headset, working with three-dimensional objects, pinning participants in your room.
The desktop application works from macOS 10.15 onwards. A fleet of machines of different years does not have to be renewed for the sake of video communication.
This item usually raises eyebrows. Zoom has an application for Apple TV, free, in the App Store on the box itself. The television serves as the screen. The box takes the camera and microphone over the air from your iPhone or iPad — through Continuity Camera in tvOS 17. No separate webcam is needed, and no cables. A meeting room is assembled from the television and the phone that are already in the room.
The scenario is not exotic: a small room, a manager's office, a home office, a temporary office. Where a full meeting room kit is excessive and gathering around a laptop is awkward, Apple TV closes the task in an evening.
The point is not the list of devices. In a company on Apple there is usually not one device per person but a set: a Mac on the desk, an iPad in the meeting room, an iPhone on the move. A platform that behaves on each of them like a native application rather than a browser tab saves the very thing all this was started for — the time before the meeting begins.
Which of this suits your room is a matter of selection: we have a section on Zoom Rooms and an equipment review.
What to ask any platform: whether there are native applications for macOS, iPadOS, visionOS and tvOS; whether the Mac is supported as a meeting room computer; what is lost on Apple compared with Windows.
Go through it with any supplier, including us.
Geography
Depth of the platform
Are there native applications for Mac, iPad, Apple Vision Pro and Apple TV — or "open it in a browser"?
Authentication
Supply
Who is responsible for the rollout and the training — and what do they answer for in making sure the platform is actually used?
Everything written above is a snapshot as at a date. We put that date against every fact, and not out of pedantry. Platforms change quickly: a feature appears within a quarter, a capability moves from the middle plan to the senior one, a storage region is added or disappears. This applies to Zoom exactly as it applies to any alternative.
Hence a practical conclusion: do not decide on the basis of a review six months old, including ours. Check the points that matter to you at the moment the decision is actually being made.
If you cannot find an answer, ask us. We will examine the detail for your case, even if in the end you choose something other than Zoom: an honest answer is worth more than one deal. Send us a request — we will reply within one working day.
That is not a problem. The platform should fit the task, not the other way round. If another solution wins on the checklist, take it.
In a year something will change: the geography will grow, webinars will appear, the security team will ask a question about SSO. Come back then and we will discuss it.
What begins next is not a purchase but a rollout: the mix of licences for the task, domain and single sign-on configuration, recording and retention policies, meeting room equipment, training for hosts, support in Russian.
And here it is worth saying something that is not in a licence seller's interest to say. Licences that are bought and not used are simply money thrown away. They cost the same as working ones but bring nothing. A company has paid for fifty seats, twelve people use them — the real price of one working seat has gone up fourfold, and this is not visible in the accounts.
It does not correct itself. The interface is friendly, and it seems that people will work it out themselves. In our experience, learning it on your own takes 30–50 hours per person, and some capabilities are not described even on the Zoom site. People are inert: until they are taught and asked, they work the way they are used to. Five reasons why an in-house rollout stalls are here.
That is why a licence is only the beginning: the Zoom price list covers the first step, and the other three — rollout, training and support — are our work. What that gives over buying on the Zoom site is covered in the note "Why RightConf".
Where to start depends on the task:
A licence is only the beginning. Send us a request and we will examine your task on the merits.
There are several, and among them are worthy products. It all depends on the task. If regulatory requirements oblige you to store data in Russia, the question is settled without us. If the geography is wider than Russia and you need depth of platform, compare using the checklist above.
Yes. The restriction concerns only retail payment by a Russian bank card: the purchase goes through an official partner.
In depth and in authentication. A video call is one feature. Here there is telephony, webinars, a contact centre, meeting rooms, an API and access management through a corporate directory. For a team of twenty the difference is imperceptible; for a company of three hundred it is decisive.
In our view, better than anyone. Native applications for macOS, iPadOS, visionOS and tvOS. Mac mini on M1, M2, M2 Pro and M4 and Mac Studio on M2 Max and M2 Ultra are listed in the requirements as meeting room computers. The iPad can be both a controller and the room itself. For Apple Vision Pro there is a separate application with Persona and spatial presence.
Yes. The application is free in the App Store on the box. The television works as the screen, and Apple TV 4K takes the camera and microphone over the air from an iPhone or iPad through Continuity Camera in tvOS 17. For a small room this is enough.
Partly out of date — this is software, and it changes for everyone. We put a date against every fact so that you can see the age of the information. Before deciding, check the key points or ask us.
Partly, yes. Zoom Node modules keep media traffic, recordings and telephony inside your perimeter, Zoom Mesh distributes mass broadcasts over the local network, and Direct Connect takes traffic off the public internet.
No, and this is the main mistake when buying any platform. A licence that is not used costs the same as a working one. You need configuration for your infrastructure, training for administrators and staff, and support — otherwise the money is spent and nobody has started working in a new way.
Look at the checklist above: geography of sites, depth of platform, authentication, supply terms. If another solution wins on your points, take it.
Recordings, whiteboards and chat contents migrate differently — it depends on where you are moving from. Tell us what you have now and we will look at the specific case.
We'll give you a remote demo Monday to Friday, 10:00–16:00 Moscow time, answer all your questions and provide trial access so you can explore the system yourself.
Please note: we work with legal entities only.