Best European Alternatives to Webex

Why people leave Webex

Most reasons to leave an American conferencing tool do not apply to Webex, and this page is going to say so before it says anything else. Cisco runs Webex data centres in Frankfurt with a second site in Amsterdam.

Encrypted user-generated content — meetings, messages, whiteboards, files and the metadata around them — is stored in the organisation's own region. The encryption keys for your users are created and stored in that region too. If your requirement is that European meeting data sits in Europe, Webex meets it, and the usual scare story does not.

The argument that survives is narrower and harder to answer. Keys held in Frankfurt are still keys held by Cisco Systems, Inc. of San Jose, California. Residency describes where a key sits; it does not describe who can be ordered to use it. That is a distinction a data centre map cannot close, and no configuration in Control Hub closes it either.

The second reason is structural rather than legal: there is no version of Webex you can run. Cisco will sell you a region, an SLA, a Control Hub and a room full of certified hardware. It will not sell you the software to operate yourself. For a university, a hospital or a ministry that has to guarantee custody rather than location, that is the whole problem, and it is why two of the four tools below are things you install.

• The keys are in Frankfurt and Cisco holds them Webex creates and stores encryption keys in your organisation's geographic region, which is genuinely more than most of its competitors do. It is still Cisco that operates the key management service. The distinction that matters for a risk assessment is custody, not coordinates: an American corporation that can decrypt your content remains an American corporation that can be compelled, and moving the servers to Hesse does not change which company holds the capability.
• Your region may not be the one you think EU storage for Calling, Meetings and Messaging applies to organisations provisioned after 1 July 2022. Organisations created before that sit in the North America and Rest of World region until a data centre migration plan is run for them, and for Meetings the site time zone is part of what determines where data lands. Control Hub now shows an administrator exactly where their organisation's data lives. A great many administrators have never looked.
• There is no self-hosted Webex This is the gap that cannot be bought around. Whatever region, contract or certification you obtain, the software runs on Cisco's infrastructure and the operator is Cisco. An institution that needs recordings of students, patients or citizens to stay on machines it controls has no Webex-shaped answer to that, and has to choose something it can install instead.
• It is priced and shaped for an IT department Webex assumes a deployment: identity integration, managed clients, provisioned room systems, an administration console and somebody whose job includes all of it. The free plan carries 100 participants with a 40-minute limit, and paid plans start around $14.50 per user per month, roughly $12 billed annually. For a fifteen-person consultancy that machinery is overhead, and the alternatives below are deliberately unmanageable in the sense that there is nothing to manage.

What you have to replace, not just match

Separate the three things Cisco sells under one name, because a Webex account usually covers more ground than the people leaving it realise.

There is the meeting: a scheduled call with colleagues and outsiders, which is what most users mean. There is the estate: room devices, desk phones, calling plans and the Control Hub that provisions them, which is capital expenditure with a depreciation schedule attached. And there is the embedded video some organisations run inside their own applications, in support workflows, field service or telehealth.

Whereby and Jitsi replace the first, and BigBlueButton replaces a particular version of it that Cisco never served well. eyeson replaces the third. Nothing here replaces the second, and if your Webex is fifty room systems on the wall, this page is a conversation about part of your estate rather than all of it.

The alternatives compared

How each alternative compares to Webex

What actually breaks when you switch

Check Control Hub before you commit to anything. If the reason this evaluation started was a belief that your meetings sit in the United States, the fix may be a data centre migration plan from your account team rather than a new supplier — EU storage applies to organisations provisioned after 1 July 2022, and older ones move only when a plan is run. Finding that out in month three is an expensive way to learn it.

The hardware is what makes a Webex migration long. Certified room devices, desk units and calling plans are provisioned through Control Hub and have no counterpart anywhere on this page, so the realistic outcome is meetings moving now and rooms moving at the next refresh. Two tools for two years is the normal shape of this, and it should be said out loud at the start.

Then there is the habit of the external participant. Large customers, public bodies and hospitals often standardise on Webex and will send you their link regardless of what you have chosen, which means you will keep a Webex account to be a guest on other people's meetings long after you stop hosting your own. Budget for one licence rather than none.

If Webex already stores our data in Frankfurt, what is left to worry about?

One thing, and it is worth stating precisely so the conversation with your IT department goes somewhere. Cisco stores encrypted content and the corresponding encryption keys in your organisation's region, which is a stronger arrangement than a simple storage-location promise. It means the key material for European customers is in Europe.

It does not mean the key material is out of Cisco's hands. The key management service is Cisco's, operated by an American corporation, and the ability to decrypt is what a disclosure order is interested in. Location is a property of the storage; compulsion is a property of the company.

So if your requirement came from a data-location clause in a procurement document, Webex answers it and switching tools would be an expensive way of answering it twice. If the requirement came from a sovereignty assessment about who can be compelled, only an operator outside that reach, or software you run yourself, answers it.

How do I find out which region our organisation is actually in?

Control Hub. Cisco added a view that shows an administrator where the organisation's data is located, and it is the first thing to open before anyone argues about alternatives.

The reason to check is that the EU option is not retroactive by default. Organisations provisioned after 1 July 2022 can hold Calling, Meetings and Messaging data in the EU; organisations created earlier stay in the North America and Rest of World region until Cisco runs a data centre migration plan for them. For Meetings specifically, the site time zone is part of what determines whether data lands in Frankfurt.

This is a common and expensive misunderstanding. A team spends a quarter evaluating European alternatives because it assumes its data is in Virginia, when the actual answer was a migration request to its account team.

We are a university. What changes the calculation for us?

Two things that do not apply to a commercial buyer. The first is that what you record is not a business meeting: it is a seminar containing identifiable students, a tutorial with a minor in it, an examination, or a pastoral conversation. The second is that your data protection assessment has to survive an internal audit rather than a procurement checklist.

BigBlueButton is on this page for exactly that situation. It is open source and self-hosted, so recordings stay on infrastructure the institution controls and the institution remains the sole controller, with nothing to negotiate with a vendor. It integrates with Moodle, Canvas and other learning platforms, so a session is launched from inside the course rather than pasted into an email — which is the difference between something the institution adopts and something individual lecturers use.

It is also built for teaching rather than meeting: a multi-user whiteboard rather than a screen share, breakout rooms as a first-class feature, polling and shared notes. You provide and operate the servers, and conferencing is genuinely demanding to host at scale, so this is an infrastructure decision rather than a subscription decision.

What happens to our room systems if we leave?

They become the most expensive part of the question. Certified Webex room devices, desk units and the Control Hub that provisions them are capital you have already spent, and none of the tools on this page has a comparable hardware programme or a certification list to check a device against.

The realistic pattern is therefore split rather than clean. Rooms stay on Webex until the hardware refresh, while laptop-to-laptop meetings, external calls and teaching sessions move to something cheaper or something you host. That is two tools for a period measured in years, and pretending otherwise is how these projects lose credibility internally.

If you are approaching a refresh cycle, that is the moment the whole estate is genuinely reconsiderable. Outside it, treat the rooms as fixed and move the meetings around them.

Which one to pick

If the objection is that a US corporation holds the ability to decrypt, self-hosted Jitsi Meet is the only option here that removes that ability from anyone but you, and the public meet.jit.si instance is not that option.

If your Webex is mostly meetings and the administration around it is overhead you never wanted, Whereby is the cheapest honest answer from $10.99 a month, with nothing to deploy — though its free tier is far thinner than Cisco's, so evaluate it on a paid plan.

If you are an institution recording students, BigBlueButton is the answer and the reason is custody rather than cost, though the cost argument is also decisive at scale.

And if what you actually bought was room systems, calling plans and a contact centre, none of this replaces it. Verify your region in Control Hub, keep the estate, and move the parts of the meeting workload that do not need a certified device in the ceiling.