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BigBlueButton vs Microsoft Teams
March 10, 2025 | Author: Adam Levine
11★
Web Conferencing System Designed For Online Learning. BigBlueButton provides real-time sharing of audio, video, slides, chat, and screen. Students are engaged through sharing of emoji icons, polling, and breakout rooms.
55★
Microsoft Teams is the chat-based workspace in Office 365 that integrates all the people, content, and tools your team needs to be more engaged and effective. Supports video meetings with up to 1,000 participants.
BigBlueButton and Microsoft Teams have a lot in common, in the same way that a spaceship and a high-speed train both get you places but with wildly different vibes. They both let you chat, wave at people through a tiny rectangle and share your screen in a desperate attempt to explain why your Wi-Fi isn’t working. Both record meetings so that future generations may marvel at the precise moment you lost your will to live in a three-hour call. They integrate with various other systems, run on browsers or apps and provide tools to keep people engaged—though no technology has yet solved the problem of existential boredom in virtual meetings.
BigBlueButton, as the name suggests, is a button you press to make big things happen—except it’s actually an open-source virtual classroom system that’s been quietly shaping online education since 2007. Born in Canada, it requires either self-hosting or the benevolence of a third-party host, meaning it’s less of a plug-and-play corporate behemoth and more of a highly customizable teaching machine. Unlike the more business-focused competition, it comes packed with breakout rooms, whiteboards and various ways for students to express their confusion without actually unmuting their microphones. It does not, however, integrate seamlessly with Microsoft’s omnipresent suite of office tools, meaning Excel enthusiasts might experience mild distress.
Microsoft Teams, on the other hand, is less about fostering educational enlightenment and more about ensuring that businesses remain tightly chained to Microsoft’s ever-expanding ecosystem. Unleashed upon the world in 2017 from the depths of the United States, it runs entirely in the cloud and boasts enterprise-grade security, presumably to stop people from escaping their meetings. It is deeply embedded within Microsoft 365, making it the perfect tool for anyone who finds comfort in an endless array of spreadsheets, emails and calendar invites. It even includes VoIP and telephony, ensuring that, no matter where you are, your boss can always reach you.
See also: Top 10 e-Learning software
BigBlueButton, as the name suggests, is a button you press to make big things happen—except it’s actually an open-source virtual classroom system that’s been quietly shaping online education since 2007. Born in Canada, it requires either self-hosting or the benevolence of a third-party host, meaning it’s less of a plug-and-play corporate behemoth and more of a highly customizable teaching machine. Unlike the more business-focused competition, it comes packed with breakout rooms, whiteboards and various ways for students to express their confusion without actually unmuting their microphones. It does not, however, integrate seamlessly with Microsoft’s omnipresent suite of office tools, meaning Excel enthusiasts might experience mild distress.
Microsoft Teams, on the other hand, is less about fostering educational enlightenment and more about ensuring that businesses remain tightly chained to Microsoft’s ever-expanding ecosystem. Unleashed upon the world in 2017 from the depths of the United States, it runs entirely in the cloud and boasts enterprise-grade security, presumably to stop people from escaping their meetings. It is deeply embedded within Microsoft 365, making it the perfect tool for anyone who finds comfort in an endless array of spreadsheets, emails and calendar invites. It even includes VoIP and telephony, ensuring that, no matter where you are, your boss can always reach you.
See also: Top 10 e-Learning software
