Question
Has anyone tried WhereBy Video Conferencing?
So, as the privacy-focused individual that I am, I was a little bummed to read the Vice article yesterday that said Zoom on iOS shares your data with Facebook. I get it why, but it has caused me to look for alternative options.
I was referred to WhereBy - a web-based video conferencing tool that doesn't require any software downloading. You just click your room link and you're in.
Super simple, clean and works.
I've only used it twice so far and it seems to work great. Has anyone else used this? And more importantly, is anyone else bummed that Zoom is sharing data with Facebook?
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Whereby is pretty great for quick calls, especially since you don't need to download anything. I used it a while back when it was called appear.in; then you didn't even need to sign up to start a call which was amazing.
Perhaps the best Whereby feature is that you can make a meeting room with a unique link, for sortof a persistent 3rd place for your team to meet whenever anyone wants to hang out.
It was pretty early to the Slack integration game, too—I think the original way I'd used it was typing /appear in Slack and boom, there's a video link for everyone to jump in. That's table stakes now though so...
I like how they charge you a fee instead of providing your usage data to Google for ad targeting. That is awesome. As we know, free isn't really free when you are the product (i.e. Facebook, et al).
Quick and easy to use and for $9.99 USD a month (plus $5 for meeting recordings) it's a good deal in comparison to Zoom with its many privacy issues. The free plan does the trick if you don't need to see the face of the person talking during screen shares and if you have meetings w 3 or fewer guests.
Fav feature: Room w unique url (e.g. whereby.com/blah). Easy to remember and share.
Is Whereby your team's primary video call tool? Found the video/audio quality generally reliable even on calls with larger teams?
Yes. I am a company of one but work with teams of clients. Never needed more than a small call. All worked perfectly. Zoom feels like a very out dated tool to use compared to Whereby. Like if Polycom made it.
Haha I do have to admit that Zoom's UI feels dated—though fwiw when my team at Zapier first switched to it from GoToMeeting it felt like we'd moved a decade into the future. Zoom's main feature is that its video calls have been consistently reliable—and work with large groups, and back when I'd used Whereby (appear.in then) I believe it had a low cap on how many people could use it at once.
Small 1-4 per room. Large 12 per room. So it’s more for teams vs. company wide or webinar use.
WhereBy Video Conferencing looks good and seems to be at par with likes of Zoom, R-HUB HD video conferencing servers, Webex etc.
Looking for a better way to plan remote meetings across time zones, and keep up with events. What software is doing that best today?
Yeah, so far when I've used it with team members, it was a simple, "Can you talk real quick? Here's my link."
It definitely doesn't have all of the features that Zoom does, so I might use it more depending on who my audience is and all that good stuff.