The last month has been a rollercoaster of uncertainty and bad news. I felt disappointed by some people and lifted by others. I haven’t seen much of my family and friends, although most of us live in the same city.
One more, I feel so proud of my mom using all the wonderful tools of technology, and following me on social media. She is always put to date with my latest posts and the first one to react. And she learnt to use tools like Skype and Whatsapp because I used to travel so much and we needed to find ways to keep connected.
And during those times of social distancing and isolation, we have to keep in touch with our family and friends. Here’s a list of free video call apps that you can use to keep in touch with friends and family.
Here are 7 free video and voice call apps available online — and how to get them.
Social media apps that allow you to do video call
Since most of us already have social media accounts, we can use the video call feature to call our friends and loved ones, since they are already there. Let’s examine each social media app that has a video call feature.
Video call quality: 4/5
Instagram has over one billion monthly active users. It’s more than an app on which you post pretty pictures. Users post and share posts with their followers or just with their close friends. The Direct message feature is heavily used as it is the app’s native instant messaging service. From the Direct message (DM) window, users can call each other.
Also, you can set up a DM group on Instagram and call the group. Up to 6 people can join the video call.
Video call quality: 3/5
Facebook has 2.5 billion monthly active users and its most used feature is the messenger.
Facebook Messenger is an app on its own for mobile, and it can be used also for video calls. The app supports up to 50 people at a time for Voice chat. Video will only show up to six people at a time.
Video conference apps
Not all free video and voice call apps require users to have social media accounts. In fact, some of the best voice and video call apps are focusing on just this feature.
Skype
Video call quality: 5/5
Skype is one of the most famous video call apps in the world. It was famous before Facebook introduced the video call feature. It is free to use, but you need to sign up for an account.
Yes, This is a free app (and one of the best) and you can now have up to 50 people in a video call, all at once. According to their policies:
Group video calls are subject to a fair usage limit of 100 hours per month with no more than 10 hours per day and a limit of 4 hours per individual video call.
Zoom
Video call quality: 5/5
Zoom is a professional video conference app, used especially by larger companies. But they do offer a free plan, which allows 40 mins limit on group meetings. Video call can have up to 100 participants and unlimited one-on-one meetings.
Google Duo
Google Duo is offering “Simple, high-quality video calls” for all your devices. It’s free and it supports group video calls of up to 8 participants.
House party
House party is proclaiming to be a “face-to-face social network”. Its target audience are teenagers and it offers free video calls of up to 8 participants.
Marco polo
It’s true that I have recently discovered a bunch of existing video call apps, and Marco Polo is one of them.
Marco Polo combines the best of texting, social media and video chats – all in one private, easy to use app.
Marco polo is more like a social media network where people communicate using videos. The app offers free and unlimited video calls to groups or one-to-one participants. You can also save your videos in the cloud, forever.
That’s so cute how your Mum follows you and keeps in touch with you however she can!