- Category
- Video calls · Self-host
- Cost
- Self-host
- Country
- Canada
- Licensing
- FOSS
Pros and cons
- +LGPL 3.0 with no proprietary core; stewarded by BigBlueButton Inc. (Blindside Networks) in Ottawa
- +Native LTI integration with Moodle, Canvas, Sakai, D2L, and Schoology, the main differentiator over Jitsi
- +Purpose-built classroom features: whiteboard, breakout rooms, polls, shared notes, presentation upload, hand-raising
- +Default install does not ship telemetry; logs stay with the operator
- −No end-to-end encryption; the server can access all media in memory
- −Heavy stack to run: FreeSWITCH, Redis, mediasoup, Etherpad, Nginx, Docker for LibreOffice, on Ubuntu 22.04 with 16 GB RAM and 8 cores recommended
- −Recordings, chat, and presentations sit on disk under the operator's responsibility; retention and access are your problem to solve
- −Heavier to operate than Jitsi Meet for a comparable call; overkill if you don't need the classroom features or LMS hooks
Privacy notes
Self-hosting puts call data on infrastructure you control, with operational privacy defined by the operator and the host's jurisdiction. By default, media uses DTLS-SRTP transport encryption, which the server (mediasoup since BBB 3.0, with experimental LiveKit support) terminates in memory to mix and route streams. There is no end-to-end encryption: the server sees decrypted audio, video, and screen sharing. Recordings, chat logs, shared notes, uploaded presentations, and whiteboard state live on the operator's box and are kept only if the operator enables them. The default install does not phone analytics back to BigBlueButton Inc. Hosted BBB is available through Blindside Networks (the project's stewards) at bigbluebutton.com, through community providers like Senfcall in Germany, and via university-run instances; the FOSS project itself ships only the self-hosted stack.
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