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Video Conferencing

BigBlueButton

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by BigBlueButton Inc. · bigbluebutton.org

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Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Accessibility Advocate

Weighted verdict

Judges the product by whether a deaf colleague and a screen-reader user can run the meeting, not merely attend it. Wants live captions, keyboard operation, a published conformance report, and dial-in for people with no usable connection. Treats an accessibility page with no report as a marketing page.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Accessibility Advocate

The meeting itself

How this is scored

Whether the call works: participant capacity, video and audio quality under load, screen sharing, breakout rooms, moderation, and what happens on a bad connection.

0 — Small meetings only, no screen sharing worth the name, no moderation controls, and the call degrades without telling anyone.

3 — Standard meetings with screen sharing and mute-all, but low participant limits, no breakout rooms and no bandwidth adaptation stated.

5 — Meetings at the scale most teams need with screen sharing, breakout rooms, host moderation, and documented behaviour on constrained connections.

8 — Large meetings and webinars with published capacity limits, per-participant moderation and waiting rooms, layout control, simulcast or adaptive bitrate stated, and reliable behaviour on mobile networks.

10 — Scale and control are engineering claims the vendor stands behind: capacity published per plan and per region, selective forwarding with adaptive quality documented, live streaming, hardware-room support, and diagnostics an admin can read after a bad call.

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The Accessibility Advocate

Breakout rooms are real and richly governed — up to eight rooms, random or self-select assignment, moderator invitations — alongside per-user moderation (promote, remove, make presenter), participant-permission locking that tells participants when it takes effect, and a lobby with moderator review. I found no public information on published participant capacity, adaptive bitrate or low-bandwidth behaviour, or what happens on a mobile network, so the call's behaviour under strain rests on faith. 2 4 5 9

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Encryption & meeting access

How this is scored

What is actually encrypted and against whom, plus who can get into a meeting. Judged on documented mechanism rather than on the word "encrypted".

0 — Transport encryption only, undocumented; meetings joinable by anyone with a link and no lobby.

3 — TLS in transit and encryption at rest, with the vendor holding all keys; access control is a passcode.

5 — The above plus a lobby or waiting room, host-controlled admission, per-meeting passcodes, and a clear statement that the vendor can technically access media.

8 — Optional end-to-end encryption for meetings with the trade-offs named (which features stop working), documented key handling, SSO-gated joining, and per-meeting access policies.

10 — End-to-end encryption available without surrendering the product — its cryptography documented or open source, key management explained, identity verification for participants, and the vendor stating plainly what it can and cannot see.

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The Accessibility Advocate

The privacy policy offers only 'reasonable administrative, technical and physical measures' — a legal phrase, not a mechanism — and I found no public information on transport or at-rest encryption, key handling, or end-to-end encryption. Admission control is better evidenced, with arrivals held in a lobby under 'Always ask moderator', 'Always accept' or 'Always deny' and beta SAML sign-in tested with Shibboleth and Azure AD, but on documented mechanism alone the encryption story is unevidenced. 3 5 6

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Reach & accessibility

How this is scored

Whether everyone who needs to join can: browser without an install, dial-in, low bandwidth, guests without accounts, captions and keyboard operation.

0 — A desktop client is the only way in; guests must create an account.

3 — Browser joining exists but is degraded, guests can join by link, and there is no dial-in and no accessibility statement.

5 — Full-feature browser joining without an install, guest access by link, mobile apps, and a stated accessibility posture.

8 — Telephone dial-in with numbers listed, live captions, keyboard-navigable and screen-reader-tested interface, and documented low-bandwidth behaviour.

10 — Reach is designed for: browser parity with the client, dial-in across the regions the customer operates in, live captions and translation, a published accessibility conformance report, and a usable experience on a poor mobile connection.

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The Accessibility Advocate

Here the product earns its keep: live closed captions a moderator can enable and each viewer toggles with a CC button, three routes to captions (browser speech recognition, Chrome Live Caption, self-captioning at join), keyboard operation without a mouse, and a WCAG 2.0 Level AA conformance statement validated in September 2023 by an external CPWA expert that names its exceptions — presenter view, Shared Notes, tutorials — and JAWS screen-reader usability testing. The reach side is thinner: I found no public information on telephone dial-in, caption translation, or documented low-bandwidth behaviour, so a deaf colleague can run the class but a colleague with no usable data connection has no documented way in. 7 8 11 12

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Recordings, retention & admin control

How this is scored

A recording is personal data about everyone in the room. Who may record, who is told, where it is stored, how long it lives, and what the works council can switch off.

0 — Anyone can record, storage location unstated, no retention rule, no admin policy.

3 — Host-only recording with a notification, but storage region unstated, retention manual, and no organisation-wide policy control.

5 — Admin policy over who may record, participant notification and consent prompt, stated storage region, and manual deletion that works.

8 — Automatic retention and deletion per policy, recordings encrypted at rest with access logged, transcription handled with its own retention rule, and attendance or analytics features that can be switched off for co-determination.

10 — Built for a works agreement: every recording, transcript and analytics feature independently switchable and documented, retention executed and evidenced, an audit trail of who accessed which recording, and no participant-level behavioural scoring at all.

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The Accessibility Advocate

A recording never starts itself — a moderator must press start, can pause, and admins can search, rename, delete and set recordings unlisted-by-default, viewable only by direct URL. But I found no public information on a participant recording notification or consent prompt, storage region, a retention rule beyond one free-hosting offer's 'recordings expire after 7 days', or access logging; and the Learning Analytics Dashboard scores each student's participation, which a works council will want able to switch off. 9 10 11 12

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Integrations & deployment

How this is scored

Calendar, identity and the wider stack — plus, in this category, whether the product can be run on the customer's own infrastructure at all.

0 — No calendar integration, no SSO, no API; cloud-only with no alternative.

3 — One calendar integration and basic SSO, no API worth building on, cloud-only.

5 — Calendar integration for the major suites, SAML or OIDC SSO, a documented API for scheduling, and room-system support.

8 — The above plus SCIM provisioning, embedding via SDK, webhooks for meeting events, and either a self-hosted option or a documented private-cloud deployment.

10 — Deployment is the customer's choice: a genuine on-premises or private-cloud option with the same features, open protocols or open source, embeddable SDKs, and identity integration that does not require the vendor's directory.

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The Accessibility Advocate

Deployment is the customer's choice in the fullest sense — the software is open source, any institution can set up its own server, and the Moodle integration is deep: core in Moodle 4.0, Premium plugin status, plus Canvas, Sakai, D2L, Jenzabar and Schoology, with beta SAML sign-in against an institution's own identity provider. I found no public information on calendar-suite integration, a documented scheduling API, SCIM provisioning, webhooks, or room-system support. 1 6 11 12

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where media and metadata are processed, who the contracting entity is, which subprocessors carry the traffic. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; scored here as this buyer weighs it — which in this category is heavily.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, media routed through unstated regions, subprocessors unnamed.

3 — EU data residency for storage while media relays or metadata remain non-EU, or the contracting entity sits outside the EU.

5 — EU hosting and an EU contracting entity, but parts of the chain — relays, analytics, support tooling, transcription — are non-EU without an explained safeguard.

8 — Media and metadata processed in the EU on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, complete subprocessor list published, any non-EU processing named with its legal basis.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: media never leaves the EU, every subprocessor European, certification published, and an on-premises option that removes the question entirely.

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The Accessibility Advocate

The contracting entity is BigBlueButton Inc. at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, and I found no public information on where media or metadata are processed; the privacy policy names Google Analytics and says servers 'may be hosted by a third party service provider' without naming the provider or publishing a full list. The one structural mitigation is that the software is open source and self-hostable on the customer's own EU infrastructure, but as published nothing evidences EU processing, an EU entity, or a complete subprocessor disclosure. 1 3 11

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Pricing transparency not rated — the vendor publishes no price

How this is scored

Whether a buyer can compute the annual invoice for their host count — including the capacity, dial-in and recording storage they actually need — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — A per-host headline exists, but participant caps, dial-in minutes or recording storage are unpriced or unmentioned.

5 — Per-host prices public with billing period stated and capacity limits given, but at least one commonly needed piece (webinar capacity, dial-in, storage) sits in an unpriced add-on.

8 — Every tier and add-on priced publicly with per-host maths, capacity limits, dial-in rates, storage allowances, minimum term and VAT treatment stated.

10 — Complete price computability: a calculator producing the annual invoice for a given host count, meeting size and recording volume, including overage and per-region dial-in.

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The Accessibility Advocate

The one public price is a free tier — Blindside Networks hosting for Moodle 4.0 sites with 'class sizes up to 25 users', 'maximum of 60 minutes per session', moderator-only webcam, and recordings that 'expire after 7 days'. I found no public information on per-host prices, paid tiers, capacity limits, storage allowances or dial-in rates; paid capacity routes through a 'Find Hosting' page to third-party hosts, so a buyer cannot compute an annual invoice from public pages. 1 11

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Data residency Not determined — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (12)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Project homepage bigbluebutton.org Checked 16 Sep 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Product page bigbluebutton.org Checked 16 Sep 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Privacy policy bigbluebutton.org Checked 16 Sep 2026 Details →
  4. 4 The meeting itself — found from sitemap bigbluebutton.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 The meeting itself — found from sitemap bigbluebutton.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Encryption & meeting access — found from sitemap bigbluebutton.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Reach & accessibility — found from sitemap bigbluebutton.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Reach & accessibility — found from sitemap bigbluebutton.org Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Recordings, retention & admin control — found from sitemap bigbluebutton.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Recordings, retention & admin control — found from sitemap bigbluebutton.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Integrations & deployment — found from sitemap bigbluebutton.org Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Integrations & deployment — found from sitemap bigbluebutton.com Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →