Jitsi Meet

Jitsi Meet is an open-source video conferencing platform that runs entirely in the browser. Participants join via a link with no account, no app install, and no time limit. The hosted version at meet.jit.si is free to use for small calls. Self-hosting gives you full control over call data and removes dependency on 8x8’s infrastructure.

The IFrame API is what makes Jitsi useful beyond stand-alone video calls. You can embed a fully functional video conference room into any web page with a few lines of JavaScript, controlling the UI, disabling features, and handling events through an API. This is how many SaaS products add video functionality without building video infrastructure themselves.

Call quality at scale is the real self-hosting consideration. Jitsi uses a Selective Forwarding Unit architecture via Jitsi Videobridge, which means the server relays media streams rather than mixing them. Resource usage scales with participant count — a meeting with 5 people is manageable on modest hardware, but 20 simultaneous participants requires a properly resourced server with enough upstream bandwidth to handle multiple video streams simultaneously.

The deployment is more involved than most Docker Compose setups. Jitsi requires a TURN server to handle NAT traversal for participants behind strict firewalls, valid SSL certificates, open UDP port ranges, and a working XMPP server (Prosody). The Docker Compose setup handles most of this, but getting it right on a server with complex networking takes effort.

For small teams who need occasional video calls, meet.jit.si is the zero-maintenance path. Self-hosting is worthwhile for organisations with data residency requirements or products that need embedded video.

Jitsi Meet: Pros & Cons