- JioMeet is a new made-in-India app that takes on Zoom with similar features.
- It lets people host 24-hour-long video meetings for free.
There’s a new Zoom competitor on the market and it’s made by India’s largest telecom operator, Reliance Jio. Called JioMeet, the platform brings all the familiar features of Zoom in a completely free-of-cost package.
JioMeet: A true-blue Zoom copy
Right of the bat, you’ll notice that everything in JioMeet has been copied from Zoom. Even the white-on-blue logo of the app is pretty much the same as Zoom’s.
You can sign up for JioMeet using your mobile number or email address and host unlimited free video calls with up to 100 participants. In fact, the platform claims that it lets people host 24-hour-long uninterrupted meetings, all free of charge. In comparison, the free Zoom plan only lets you hold a meeting for a maximum of 40 minutes.
Elsewhere, JioMeet functions in the same way as Zoom. It lets people share password-protected meeting links, create waiting rooms, share screens, chat during calls, and more. It even gives hosts the ability to control what other participants can or cannot do during a meeting, just like Zoom.
As for device support, JioMeet is available on Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, as well as legacy video conferencing systems. One JioMeet user can have five different devices logged in at the same time and seamlessly switch between them during ongoing calls.
In terms of security, the JioMeet website does say that calls are encrypted, but it doesn’t confirm if it’s using end-to-end encryption. Zoom on the other hand just upgraded its encryption infrastructure and has been quite transparent about its security practices of late. If JioMeet plans to become a viable competitor to Zoom or any other video calling service, it definitely needs to make users feel safe.
Where is JioMeet available?
It’s unclear right now if JioMeet is a global service like Zoom or if it’ll work only in India. However, some people in our team do have access to it from the Google Play Store in other parts of the world. Still, we’ve reached out to Reliance Jio to get more clarity on this.
The company has a tendency to offer free services when it launches a new product so we expect JioMeet to remain free-of-cost for some time. However, that might not be a permanent thing. The service is very new right now and already has over a million installs on the Google Play Store. So if it keeps growing in popularity, Jio could very well introduce some paid tiers for it.
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