· 920 words · 5 minute read

Google Meet ➡️ kMeet?

I’m moving away from American services in favor of European ones. In this article I’m exploring videoconferencing tools.

Before I became a happy Google Workspace user, I tested the offerings of both Microsoft and Apple. The Apple offering was simple and included in my iCloud-subscription, but only offers videomeeting through Facetime. Microsofts proposition is extensive and confusing: it comes with Office included (or not, or wait, yes, or… ehm only cloud I think), loads of space (except for email) and a weird selection of other cloud-products. All of it felt clunky.

My office-stack now looks as follows:

  • Fastmail for email and calendar
  • iCloud for online storage (yes, that too will need to move one day)
  • Offline apps for text-editing and Excel-work
  • No app for videomeetings

I’m not a regular video-meeter, but I do like to have the option for client calls or interviews. For the latter it would be great to be able to record so I can transcribe it easier.

Requirements #

The requirements for virtual video calls are straight forward:

  • it should work reliable
  • the app should have a professional and trustworthy design. The video meet is in some cases my first introduction to clients
  • support multiple people
  • participants can share screen
  • participants haren’t hassled with unnecessary steps to participate: no app or plugin necessary, without registration
  • I should be able to record a session
  • I can generate a specific url for calendar invites
  • there is a chat with the meeting, as I share urls to a Miroboard in a call
  • it would be nice to have a booking page
  • it would be nice to have a desktop/mobile app: with google meet I get tired of the “enable camera”-dance

The contenders #

Oof! Videomeeting-space is a clusterfrack. Propositions are all over the place, with complicated pricing structures and unnecessary features.

The strongest European contenders are:

  • Jitsy (German 🇩🇪): free, opensource and secure. Feature complete and I’ve used it in large groups reliably. But no recording unless you add a bot, which quickly complicates matters. There are hosted services for Jitsy, like Fairmeeting (which asks all participants for donations, LOL)
  • NextCloud Talk (German 🇩🇪): NextCloud is a ridiculously complete private server solution. Offering document editing, drive, games (yes), photo-sync, AI-assistants and more. According to the NextCloud documentation you can record talks, but I’ve seen mentions not all servers support this. It also includes an email and calendar client, but no email or calendar hosting. Free when self-hosting.
  • Infomaniak (Switzerland 🇨🇭): complete business suite including email hosting, drive, document editing. All free. You can even get domain, hosting, VPS and loads more from them. But the name, would you trust a link that says “Infomaniak”? Luckily we can rebrand it for 50 euro per year to our own URLs.
  • Vectera / Teamleader (Belgium 🇧🇪): has a free tier without recording, but with scheduling. Up to 10 people is 22 euro p/m.
  • Whereby (Norway 🇳🇴): reliable and simple. I’ve used it in the past. The main selling point of Whereby is reusable rooms (“standup.whereby.com”), which is simple to add to a meeting. But the downside of this is that others can simply guess your meeting-location. Although they cannot join automatically, it feels weird. 10 euro p/m.
  • Opentalk (Germany 🇩🇪): has a good look and feel. Is from the same people who make mailbox.org. You can get Opentalk as a separate product for 7,50 euro p/m, or as part of Mailbox (for 3 euro p/m, I have no clue how that pricing works). Recording meetings is “planned” or “rolled out” depending on the page you visit…

There are more ‘videoconferencing’ tools made in Europe, but they are targeted more towards large web conferences: DigitalSamba (Spain 🇪🇸 starting at 99 USD/month), ClickMeeting (Poland 🇵🇱 starting at 23 euro/month) and Livestorm (France 🇫🇷 starting at 80 euro/month).

Out of the options listed above, three fit the bill: Whereby, Opentalk and Infomaniak (yuk, that name). Others are too expensive, or require a separate server (which I’d have to find or setup).

I decided to give InfoManiak a go.

Trying Infomaniak kMeet #

Registration requires an address and a phone number (which will need to be confirmed) and you need to validate your location through a separate app. Loads of hurdles.

I then entered into a dashboard with lots of new options. I can buy domain names, get a VPS… Dizzying. It really is an all-in-one solution.

The kMeet tool is built on top of Jitsi and works well when testing it by myself. I can record conversations and there is a desktop app (a simple Chromium wrapper). I can plan meetings with a kMeet-link, but only for calendars managed by ‘kCalendar’.

Colors and logo are customizable, meaning I can get rid of the silly infomaniak naming. Even at my domain name: meet.matthijszwinderman.nl (or maybe kmeet…).

With a name like Infomaniak kMeet I expected the worst. Instead, it works okay. Who knows? I might even decide to transfer my email and calendar one day.

Trying OpenTalk #

I briefly tried Opentalk as well. It has a nicer, friendlier feel than kMeet. But German-clunkiness around some corners, like the meeting-planner, or the sign-up:

I confirm that I am not acting as a consumer, but as an entrepreneur or for a corporation or other organization in the course of its statutory activities

Sigh. That sounds like the most German thing ever.

Conclusion #

I don’t make that many video-meetings, I mainly use the tools of the clients.

For now the decision can be pushed forwards, but when the time arises, I’ll try kMeet.