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To help you track what’s going on with video-conferencing A-listers, check out this new guide where I have reviewed and compared all the best free and low-cost video conferencing tools, conveniently separated in one-to-one and multi-party solutions.

Photo credit: Mac Doctors

Once reserved to pro users with big wallets, shiny hardware, and high-speed internet connections, video conferencing tools now let you create, host, and join online meetings completely free, or for a very reasonable price.

What is more, it’s not really a problem which kind of hardware or operating system you have. Most of the video conferencing tools are in fact web-based. You don’t have to install anything on your hard-disk, and be free to use any computer you run into. Some video conferencing tools even work on Windows Mobile-based phones or iPhones.

Video conferencing tools often integrate some complementary features, such as the ability to make VoIP phone calls, do screen-sharing, record sessions, transfer files, or whiteboarding. And all of this already at a free level. Anyway, if you are willing to spend a couple of bucks, some pro features like better video quality, more participants, or advanced control and customization for your conferences are usually available.

To select which video conferencing tool is the one for you, I have here selected some basic criteria for each one of the two main groups (one-to-one and multi-party solutions), and prepared two comparative tables so that you can easily evaluate what you need.

Here the criteria:

1) Platform: Type of tool (software / web-based).

2) Video channels: Number of parties that can participate to a video conference at the same time (refers only to multi-party tools).

3) Public conference: Ability to make a video conference fully public.

4) Embeddable widget: Flash widget embeddable on web sites or social media sites.

5) Session recording: Feature to record your conference session for later review or publishing.

6) Text chat: Ability to text-chat other participants.

7) Other features: File transfer, screen-sharing, live annotation, whiteboarding, etc.

8) Pro starting price: Price and additional features of the first advanced pricing level.

Here the best free and low-cost video conferencing tools: