Open-source alternative to Webex Webinars

Which open-source platform replaces Webex Webinars for town halls and training

Jitsi Meet with Jibri suits one-to-many streaming such as company town halls, and BigBlueButton suits presenter-led training where slides, polls and breakout rooms matter. Either way, registration, Q&A moderation and capacity planning are not included in the core product and must be built, assigned or bought separately. This page covers Webex Webinars and Events only, not general Webex meetings, which are covered on the sibling pages. Jitsi with Jibri records or streams a meeting to a broadcast destination, so attendees watch without joining the conference. Jibri runs as its own container in the official Docker setup, alongside web, prosody, jicofo, jvb and jigasi, so it needs a host with enough capacity for the recording or streaming workload. BigBlueButton keeps presenters, moderators and viewers in one virtual classroom, with slides, annotations, polling, a whiteboard and breakout rooms, and it is embedded in many learning management systems. Its 4.0 release requires a clean installation on Ubuntu 24.04, because direct upgrades from 2.6, 2.7 or 3.0 are not supported. Decide early which tool fits each event type, and assign owners for the surrounding work. Someone must own registration pages and attendee lists, usually through Greenlight rooms with OpenID Connect sign-in for BigBlueButton or a separate form tool for Jitsi. Someone must moderate and triage questions, since neither platform replaces a dedicated event Q&A product. Capacity planning must match the expected audience against the server and bandwidth requirements in the vendor documentation, and you should confirm those numbers with your own load tests before a live event.

How Webex Webinars capabilities map to open-source options

This table maps the main Webex Webinars capabilities to Jitsi Meet with Jibri and to BigBlueButton, and flags where neither platform provides the feature out of the box. Confirm each row against the current Jitsi and BigBlueButton documentation for your target version, because webinar features change between releases. The main takeaway is that both platforms cover live meetings and recording well, while registration, moderated Q&A and attendee analytics usually need add-ons or custom build.

Capability	Jitsi Meet with Jibri	BigBlueButton	Gap or build note
Live presenter video	Yes, multi-party audio and video in the browser through Jitsi Videobridge	Yes, webcam and audio for presenters and attendees	Confirm how many presenters and attendees your load test supports before committing
Audience broadcast	Viewers join as participants, so large audiences need a live stream or a moderation policy	Viewers can be restricted to listen-only and view mode, suited to lecture-style sessions	Confirm mute and listen-only controls for your audience size
Recording	Jibri records a meeting and stores the file on the server	Built-in recording, with 500 GB of disk recommended for recordings on a BigBlueButton 4.0 server	Plan storage retention and a file handoff process for recordings
Live streaming to a public or internal channel	Jibri can stream to RTMP endpoints, so you need your own streaming service or CDN	Streaming is not a core feature, so teams usually relay through an external RTMP service	Build note: confirm streaming options and CDN costs with your platform team
Slides and whiteboard	Screen sharing is available, but no built-in slide deck with annotation	Slides with annotations and a multi-user whiteboard are included	BigBlueButton covers this row more directly
Polling	Not a native feature, so polls need an external tool	Built-in polling for presenters	Confirm poll results export for your reporting needs
Q&A moderation	Gap: no native moderated Q&A queue, so use a separate tool or chat moderation	Chat and public questions are available, but structured moderated Q&A needs confirmation	Treat as an add-on or build item and confirm current capability
Chat	In-meeting chat is available	Public and private chat is included	Confirm moderation controls for chat in each version
Breakout rooms	Not a standard feature in the basic Jitsi Meet setup	Breakout rooms are included	Confirm breakout support in your Jitsi version if this is required
Registration and attendee management	Gap: no native registration, invitations or event pages	Gap: no native event registration, so Greenlight or an LMS usually handles access	Build item: connect a form or identity provider and confirm the sign-in path
Analytics	Gap: attendee analytics are limited, so use logs and external monitoring	Gap: session analytics exist, but attendee reports need confirmation and usually custom reporting	Add-on: plan reporting before cutover and confirm with the vendor documentation

When Jitsi with Jibri fits and when BigBlueButton fits better

Jitsi Meet suits town halls and broadcast-style events where the audience mostly watches and the presenters need a simple, browser-based room. Jibri is the optional component that records a conference or streams it live to a platform such as YouTube, which is the piece most relevant to a Webex Webinars replacement. Scale comes from adding Jitsi Videobridge instances, since the scalable setup guide states that videobridges scale horizontally and that the default install is already configured for that.

Live streaming and recording: Jibri runs as its own container in the official Docker setup, with separate containers for web, prosody, jicofo, jvb and jigasi, so you operate one more moving part.
Horizontal capacity: The scalable setup guide suggests a 4 CPU, 8 GB machine for the central server and 4 or 8 CPU with 8 GB RAM for each videobridge, which you should validate against your audience size.
Audience model: Jitsi handles open rooms well, but built-in polling, breakout rooms and shared notes are not part of the core product.
HTTPS requirement: Jitsi's guidance states that HTTPS with a proper domain certificate is necessary for audio and video to work, and self-signed certificates cause problems, especially on mobile clients.
Operations cost: The recurring effort sits in keeping Jibri recording storage, streaming keys and videobridge capacity healthy during live events.

Confirm with your team whether Jibri's streaming destinations and recording storage meet your retention and access rules before committing to this design.

What open-source tools leave to you for registration, Q&A and capacity

Jitsi and BigBlueButton handle the live session, but registration, attendee access, moderated questions, capacity and post-event reporting are not webinar features they ship with. Each card names what the open-source tool gives you, what your team must build or buy, and what to confirm before you commit to a Webex Webinars replacement.

Registration and invitation lists

Neither Jitsi Meet nor BigBlueButton provides a native event registration form, approval queue or confirmation email workflow of the kind Webex Webinars offers. Jitsi relies on room links and access control, and BigBlueButton expects rooms and users to be created through its API or Greenlight. You will need a registration source of record, such as a form tool or your identity system, that issues links or accounts and keeps invitee lists. Confirm with the vendor how the chosen front end maps registrants to rooms.

Moderated Q&A and attendee questions

BigBlueButton offers polling, chat and shared notes that presenters can use during sessions, but a dedicated, moderator-controlled question queue with upvoting is not something to assume from either platform. Plan for a separate Q&A tool or a documented moderator process, and test how questions raised in chat are captured for follow-up. Confirm which chat and poll features your chosen version exposes to attendees in listen-only mode before you design the moderation workflow.

Attendee identity and access control

Access control is yours to design. Jitsi supports JWT token authentication and recommends a separate anonymous domain for guests, while Greenlight v3 supports external sign-in through OpenID Connect configured with environment variables, and the docs suggest Keycloak for Google, Microsoft and SAML logins. Decide which attendees sign in and which join as guests. Confirm the token claims or OIDC configuration with the vendor and test expiry and revocation for ticketed sessions.

Capacity for concurrent viewers

Size for peak concurrent attendees, not for the number of registrants. Jitsi scales by adding videobridges, and the scalable setup guide suggests a 4 CPU, 8 GB central server and 4 or 8 CPU with 8 GB RAM for each videobridge. A BigBlueButton 4.0 server needs at least 16 GB of RAM with swap, 8 CPU cores and 250 Mbit/s symmetrical bandwidth, and Scalelite can distribute sessions across several servers. Run a load test with your own presenter and viewer profile before the event.

Streaming destinations

Jitsi's optional Jibri component records and live streams a conference, which lets large audiences watch without joining as participants. Streaming to a public platform, a CDN or a hosted player is a separate build: you must provision the destination, stream keys and any viewer access controls yourself. Confirm the Jibri host requirements, the supported output targets and the retention of recordings with your team, since storage for recordings is a separate sizing decision.

Post-event reporting

Webex Webinars produces attendance and engagement reports without extra work. With open-source tools, attendance data depends on what the server logs and what your front end stores. Plan to export join records, poll results and chat transcripts into your reporting store, and define who owns attendee personal data and how long it is kept. Confirm with the vendor which session events are exposed through the API, and test the export against a dry run before relying on it.

Running webinars next to the rest of your Webex suite during the transition

Plan for a period when webinars, meetings and recordings live in two places at once. Webex Webinars often sits beside Webex Meetings, Video Mesh and Control Hub, so a team moving town halls to Jitsi or BigBlueButton may keep some events on Webex while others move. Before the first open-source event, decide which system owns each event series, who can create events on each side, and the date after which new events are no longer created in Webex. Confirm with your Webex administrator which sites, users and licenses are in scope, because Control Hub settings and licensing are not moved by a self-hosted deployment.

Keep the attendee experience consistent by fixing three things early: the event URL, the calendar invitation and the recording location. Choose a stable domain for each open-source platform, publish it in the invitation template and reuse it for the same series so that a regular town hall does not change address between sessions. Check that the invitation, reminder and join instructions name the correct platform, and test the links from outside your corporate network. Recordings do not move automatically: existing Webex recordings stay in Webex and must be exported separately, and Jitsi or BigBlueButton recordings are written to the server you run, so agree on one archive location and naming convention for both before the cutover.

Treat the migration of meetings, recordings and messaging as separate projects with their own owners, even if one team runs them. The sibling pages on migrating from Webex to Jitsi Meet and to BigBlueButton cover meeting and training workflows in detail, and the export guidance for Webex covers what can be taken out of the site before the contract ends. Ask your implementation partner to document which event types move, which stay on Webex until the subscription lapses, and who signs off each change, so that no webinar is left without a working join link or a findable recording.

How open-source webinar tools fit beside the rest of the suite

A webinar platform rarely works alone. Sign-in, speaker chat, scheduling and recording storage are the points where a self-hosted meeting tool meets the rest of the Webex estate. Each card below names the integration effort and what to confirm before you commit.

Sign-in with OpenID Connect or JWT

Webex signs presenters and staff in through its own identity settings, often federated with your directory. Open-source options use different mechanisms: Jitsi can authenticate with JWT tokens, LDAP or internal accounts, and Greenlight v3 accepts OpenID Connect configured with environment variables. Integration effort is mostly in mapping your identity provider claims to roles such as host and moderator. Confirm which Webex sign-in methods and SSO connections your organization uses today, and whether guests need a separate anonymous path.

Chat for speaker coordination

Presenters and producers often coordinate in a side channel during a webinar, sharing links, timing cues and Q&A triage. Webex usually handles this inside its own messaging or meeting chat. Jitsi and BigBlueButton provide in-session chat, but cross-session coordination needs a separate team chat tool. Decide whether the coordination channel moves with the webinar or stays in your current messaging product, because that choice determines whether you add another system to run. Confirm where your speakers and producers already talk and who administers that space.

Calendar scheduling and invitations

Webinar registrants expect calendar invitations and reminders that match the session time. Webex Events and Webex calendar integrations generate these automatically. Self-hosted meeting tools do not provide a complete event calendar on their own, so you typically connect room links to your existing calendar system through invitation templates or a scheduling tool. The effort depends on how many calendars and time zones you must support. Confirm which calendar platform sends invitations today, whether Outlook or Google Calendar integrations are required, and who owns the invitation templates after cutover.

Storage for recordings and archives

Webex stores recordings in its cloud, and Zoom and Teams export formats differ from what a self-hosted server writes. Jibri in Jitsi and BigBlueButton's recording pipeline write files to the server or a mounted volume, so retention, backup and access control become your responsibility. BigBlueButton lists 500 GB of disk for recordings as a sizing baseline, and that figure grows with event length and volume. Confirm how many years of recordings you must keep, where they must reside, and whether an archive from Webex can be imported into the new library.

Moving a webinar program from Webex Webinars to self-hosted tools

This sequence moves town halls and training events from Webex Webinars to a self-hosted platform one event at a time, so each session has a tested stream, a registration path and a known capacity before the Webex link is retired.

Inventory upcoming and recurring events
The events owner lists every scheduled town hall, training series and external webinar, with date, expected audience, presenter count, whether the session is streamed to a wider audience, and whether it is recorded. Recurring events are flagged separately because they set the cutover order. The step is done when the list is signed off by the business owners of each program and each entry has a named contact who will approve its move. Confirm with your Webex administrator which event types exist on your site, since Webinars and Events features are licensed and configured differently.
Export recordings and attendee lists
Your Webex administrator pulls recordings and any attendee or registration exports that the site allows, and stores them in a location your records team controls. Confirm what the site permits before planning around it: export options, file formats and retention rules depend on your Webex edition and settings, so verify them in your own tenant. Registration data is personal data, so record who approved the export, where the files are held and when they will be deleted. The step is complete when every recording in scope is accounted for in a register and the gaps are listed for the business owner to decide on.
Build the platform and pilot one town hall
The platform team deploys the chosen self-hosted stack, such as Jitsi Meet with Jibri for live streaming or BigBlueButton for presenter-led sessions, and serves it over HTTPS with a valid certificate on a proper domain. The team then runs one internal town hall with a small panel, a live stream to a test audience and a recording. The pilot is done when audio, video, screen sharing, the stream and the recording have all worked from a corporate laptop, a home network and a mobile device. Confirm stream destinations and the provider of the certificate with your security team before the pilot.
Set up registration and Q&A
Because open-source video tools do not include a full webinar registration module, the events team defines how attendees register, receive join links and submit questions. Options include a form tool hosted on your own servers, identity-based access through your single sign-on, and a moderated question channel. Restrict the room with authentication, such as JWT tokens for Jitsi or the external sign-in options for Greenlight, so join links cannot be shared outside the audience. The step is done when a test registrant can sign up, receive the correct link, and submit and moderate a question during the pilot.
Load test at expected concurrent viewers
The platform team simulates the largest expected audience for a planned event, including presenters and moderators, and measures media servers, bandwidth and stream stability. For Jitsi, this covers the number of videobridges and their CPU and memory. For BigBlueButton, it covers the server specification in the install documentation, including its bandwidth and UDP port range. Confirm the audience figures with the events owner, and do not treat a single pilot as proof of capacity. The step is done when the load test results are recorded and any shortfall has an agreed fix, such as adding videobridges or limiting interactive participants.
Cut over event by event
The events team moves one program at a time, starting with lower-risk internal sessions and leaving large external webinars until the process has run cleanly. Each event gets a runbook covering the room link, the moderator, the stream destination, the recording location and a fallback plan. Hypothetical example: a monthly internal update moves first, while a quarterly customer webinar stays on Webex until two clean internal runs. The step is done for each event when a post-event review confirms that attendees joined, the recording was saved and the question log was archived.
Retire Webex event links
Once every program in scope has moved, the Webex administrator stops issuing new event links, updates invitation templates and calendar entries, and sets a redirect or notice for old links where the site allows it. The owners confirm that recordings have been archived, that the export register is complete, and that any retained Webex data is held under your records policy. Confirm the license end date and any retention obligations with Cisco and your legal team before the subscription lapses. The step is complete when no active Webex event links remain and the decommissioning record is signed by the business and security owners.

What does it cost and take to replace Webex Webinars?

What cost components apply when replacing Webex Webinars with self-hosted tools?

The main components are servers, bandwidth, storage for recordings, staff time, registration and attendee tooling, and external support. Servers and bandwidth are paid to your cloud provider or data center. Storage grows with every recording you keep. Staff time covers installation, configuration, monitoring and upgrades, and it is usually the largest line for teams without existing Linux and video operations skills. Ask any quote to break these out separately so you can see which costs stay with your own budget and which move to a provider.

Which costs are one-time and which recur every year?

One-time costs include the initial design, installation, TLS certificate setup, hardening, integration with your identity provider and the first round of testing. Recurring costs include compute and bandwidth for every event, recording storage, certificate and domain renewals, staff time for patching and version upgrades, and any retainer for ongoing support. Open-source licenses for Jitsi Meet (Apache 2.0) and BigBlueButton (LGPL-3.0) carry no license fee, but that does not make the platform free to run. Ask the provider to split the quote into one-time and recurring lines.

What drives the cost of a self-hosted webinar platform up or down?

The biggest drivers are the number of concurrent viewers and presenters, how many events run at once, whether you record or stream, and how much bandwidth you need on each server. BigBlueButton 4.0 documents a minimum of 16 GB of memory, 8 CPU cores, 500 GB of disk for recordings and 250 Mbit/s symmetrical bandwidth on one server, so recording volume and peak concurrency decide how many servers you need. Jitsi scales by adding videobridges, so cost follows peak participant load. Registration tooling, SSO integration and the support level you choose also shift the total.

Can our team replace Webex Webinars without outside help?

Yes, if your team already runs Linux servers, reverse proxies, DNS, TLS certificates and UDP-based media services, and has time to own the platform after go-live. Installation scripts and Docker setups exist for both Jitsi and BigBlueButton. The harder parts are capacity planning, streaming to external platforms, registration and Q&A workflows, and operating the service during a live town hall. Many teams split the work, with internal staff owning operations and an external partner covering design, hardening or testing. Confirm your in-house skills before deciding.

What does the work need from our internal team?

Plan for named owners in networking, identity, security and the business team that runs events. Networking staff must open TCP 80 and 443 and the UDP ranges used by each platform, and confirm the firewall and NAT paths for attendees. Identity staff connect single sign-on or Greenlight authentication. Security staff review TLS, access controls and shared secrets. Event owners define the run book for registration, moderation and Q&A. Ask the provider to list each role and the hours it needs during design, cutover and steady-state operation.

How long does a replacement take to deliver?

The duration depends on scope, which is the number of platforms, the integrations you need, the number of event types, and how much recording history must move. No timeline is fixed in advance, so ask for a written schedule tied to the scope before work starts. Most engagements are fixed-scope, with scope, deliverables and timelines agreed in writing first. Ask whether the plan includes a pilot with real attendee volumes, a cutover window that avoids your Webex renewal date, and a parallel-running period for the first live events.

Can Jitsi or BigBlueButton stream webinars to external platforms?

Jitsi can record and live stream through Jibri, which is an optional component in the official Docker setup and the Debian and Ubuntu packages. Streaming to YouTube or other destinations is a configured Jibri function, so confirm the destinations, the stream keys and the bandwidth on the Jibri host with the provider. BigBlueButton records sessions on the server and documents its own streaming and playback options, so confirm which external destinations your version supports. Ask for a test broadcast to every destination you need before go-live.

How DeployOpen scopes and delivers a webinar platform replacement

DeployOpen is a Chainscore Labs company that plans, implements, hardens, backs up and documents self-hosted open-source platforms inside the client's own cloud accounts, data centers or air-gapped networks. For a webinar replacement, we start from the sessions you actually run, then build the streaming, registration and support path around them.

How we scope

We list the webinar formats in use, such as town halls, training and external events, with audience sizes and recording needs.
The written scope names which platform covers each format, for example Jitsi Meet with Jibri streaming or BigBlueButton for presenter-led sessions.
Engagements are fixed-scope, with deliverables and timelines agreed in writing before any work starts.

How we build

We size and install the servers, network ports and HTTPS certificates the chosen platform requires in your environment.
We configure authentication, room access and the registration or sign-in method that your attendees will use.
We test streaming, recording, capacity and Q&A workflows with your presenters before any live event is scheduled.

How we hand over

You receive runbooks for scheduling events, starting streams, managing recordings and rotating certificates and secrets.
Documentation covers the controls and evidence needed for internal reviews and for independent compliance assessments, which DeployOpen does not issue.
We walk your operations and event staff through the platform and confirm who owns each task after handover.

How we support

Ongoing support, upgrades and continuous testing are available as retainers after handover.
Upgrades follow the platform's own release process, and we plan them around your scheduled events.
Backups and restore tests for recordings and configuration are included in the operational scope we agree with you.