Best Apps for Video Call & Chat
Find out the best apps for video calls and chat for online classes, office meetings, and conferencing.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the education system tried out the online method of teaching. This has increased the search for good Apps for Video calls.
Apart from online classes, online office meetings and conferencing have escalated the need for a smooth video call experience.
Top 5 Best Mobile Apps for Video Chat & Calls (Online Classes and Conferencing)
Here we have short-listed the top 5 apps for video calls and chat to help you interact, study, learn and meet remotely.
This includes mobile apps for both iOS and Android, that offer amazing Video Calling, Conferencing, and interaction Features.
- Zoom (iOS, Android, Web)
If you have taken an online class or attended an online meeting then you probably have heard of the ZOOM application.
It is one of the best for virtual teaching and it is the most popular choice for teachers as well.
It is so simple and convenient to use that it has become a top choice for teachers and students during this pandemic.
One of the main perks you get after installing zoom is that you can host free one-on-one video calls with no time limit and group calls with up to 100 people as long as you don’t talk for more than 40 minutes free.
If you want to talk for more than just 40 minutes in a group then you have to select a paid plan for a zoom which is also affordable then you can talk unlimitedly and invite up to 1000 people.
In short, you can host a whole seminar here with a zoom app with a video calling feature.
Zoom doesn’t just add numbers to the meeting but it is also incredibly reliable software. It manages to get the best out even if your internet is not good enough to host such meetings.
Zoom automatically drops the quality of video quality instead of dropping the whole internet connection. This is done in order to achieve a smooth and lag-free experience.
Moreover, zoom has got a built-in call recorder so you can record the whole lecture and see it when needed, so you do not require any third-party software for this task.
You can even chat and send messages during a call and even share your screen with other participants during the zoom meeting.
You can even schedule your meetings in advance.
- Microsoft Teams (iOS, Android, Web)
Microsoft Teams is a communication hub where your team can collaborate and chat. It is basically a workspace where you can use all the tools that Microsoft Office 365 has to offer.
You can create private and public channels in this application and then add people accordingly.
In these channels, you can schedule meetings, chat with each other or even upload files and it will instantly share them with people present on that channel.
One of the most important features of this application is that you can directly take notes during a meeting.
We can also see the presence of the participants in the meeting with the indicators and this helps teachers to monitor the presence of students.
We can discuss any question in the chat and this will create a thread now all the discussion regarding that question will be in that thread and you can review it later on.
You can easily access the shared files in Microsoft teams by just clicking the files option and it will reveal all the shared documents.
Now with Microsoft Teams you can even create new documents directly, upload them and even sync them on all your devices and this is a great app with a video calling feature.
You can create different groups of people known as teams for different periods of time. We can select the nature of the team that we want in this group for a limited time or a long time as well.
Microsoft teams allow us to choose the nature of the group as well we can choose public or private. In public, anyone within your organization can join while in private they need permission to join.
We can schedule a meeting and sync it with the Microsoft calendar as well.
- Google Meet (iOS, Android, Web)
Google meet is an online communication hub that allows users to stay in touch with clients and teams globally.
The most prominent feature of this application is its integration with GOOGLE’s other apps.
You can directly get the invite link as you create a meeting in google calendar and your attendees can easily join this meeting just by clicking the join link.
When you’re in the middle of a call, you can find files from Google Drive and Apps and share them in chat, without leaving your call and you can even start a meeting directly from G-mail.
Google meet is unique from others as it includes live captioning which is a huge deal for accessibility. Well, the only thing is the
at it can detect only English Language at the moment but it works fairly well with English.
It also has a tab-sharing feature that allows you to share media with lag-free steaming a short video within a group. Google meet is a great app that can add up to 100,000 participants but only in view-only mode.
The leader presents in the call while other participants only listen to the call when you invite too many people. it’s a decent option if you just need one or two people to present to a large group. So in other words it is all in all a complete app for online learning.
Moreover, it is a perfect app to sum this up if you want a conference call or use it to teach a large group of people remotely.
This is one of the best applications for team collaboration and with Google Meet’s deep integrations with the rest of Google Workspace, just may turn into the best way to talk with your team.
- Cisco Webex Meetings (iOS, Android, Web)
Well, this one is a little different from the rest of the applications we discussed. This is from one of the most professional meetings clients available in the market and it got every essential feature to make it the best choice for its users.
Cisco is the leading manufacturer of video conferencing hardware and this is software designed for large-scale collaboration.
As this is a completely professional video conferencing app so it is not for everyone it has a fairly complex user interface as compared to others but it has got all the features that make it one of the best applications for conferences.
The most prominent feature is its ultra-clear high definition Audio as compared to other applications.
The feature that outstands the rest is Webex’s virtual whiteboard. This application gives you the advantage of using your screen as a blank white space and it also has a wide range of sketching tools, text, and geometric shapes to draw and explain your ideas more accurately to the attendees of the meeting.
You can create different pages on the whiteboard and save them later for review. Moreover, you can even view them as thumbnails for later, the best feature is that everyone can participate in the discussion and use the whiteboard at the same time.
All in all, this is a professional application for communication, if you want a video conference then it has an option for that and if your team needs to participate in the lectures then Cisco’s companion Webex Teams app adds team chat and one-click calls to your video collaboration.
This is a perfect app for teaching students as this app supports video calling and it has very reasonable paid plans. Click Here to view plans and download this application.
- GoToMeeting (iOS, Android, macOS, Windows)
GoToMeeting is a project of LogMeIn that is a provider of software as a service and cloud-based remote work tools for collaboration.
This application allows you to have a discussion with your team or you can broadcast a web seminar to thousands of viewers. You can even schedule meetings ahead and then simply join calls, share your screen, and present to audiences.
The best thing is that you can choose a recurring session or start a one-time call while scheduling a call.
GoToMeeting lets you create a custom link for your meeting, which is a great feature if you’ll be inviting people outside your organization or running a publicly available virtual event like a webinar, and this is a great app for video calling.
The custom link feature is an amazing feature. This app offers all the features of a video conferencing tool aimed at professionals, including call recording, and dial-in numbers.
It also has the option to call all the participants automatically and all they have to do is answer the call.
GoToMeeting also offers an additional feature to monitor the audio levels during the call, which is a huge addon because you can see how loud you are during the call.
To sum this up GoToMeeting is a professional video calling app that you can choose to collaborate with your teams and you can add up to 6 participants for High-Definition video calling.
The only downside of this application is that this app can be a little confusing due to all the features and options available. Other than this it is a great app.
Final verdict
We have discussed the applications for conducting online studies and all of them are professional apps with video-calling features.
Some of them are free and some of their features require payment.
Apart from the mentioned apps, we have also listed some of the amazing apps below that will help you to take notes and coordinate.
These are not mandatory but they change your whole online experience and for this reason, we recommend them.
Google Classroom
Google Classroom is one of the best applications for managing assignments and sharing your notes with the rest of the class.
Students can make their own class and exchange notes at the end of the lecture. In this way, you can stay organized which makes it easy to create classes, distribute assignments, and communicate.
- Ever Note
Taking notes during a lecture is a very difficult task and organising them is another headache. But do not worry about this anymore because EverNote allows you to capture and manage ideas, projects, memories, and to-do lists, so nothing gets missed.
Write notes, attach documents, scan images, and take voice memos or clips from the web.
You can easily organize everything from big projects to personal moments in a single place, accessible on your computer, tablet, or phone.