Verified September 2026
Virtual classroom software, compared for teachers
The short answer
Virtual classroom software is where you teach a class live — video, a shared whiteboard, breakout rooms, polls and a record of who attended. Prolaud is the one on this list that also takes the money: it runs the room and the checkout against a single student record, so attendance lands on the record that took the payment. It charges 0% commission on every plan, starts free and is $18/month on Pro. Where it loses: breakout rooms. Zoom is still the benchmark there and the better room if small-group work is the core of your teaching. For schools already inside Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, Meet + Classroom or Teams is the sensible default; for language schools and 1:1 tutoring LearnCube is purpose-built, and BigBlueButton is the option if you want to self-host.
Every tool below is judged on the same six things, and the section straight after this one explains when you genuinely don't need any of them. No competitorpricing appears on this page on purpose — their numbers move, and a stale figure in a comparison is worse than no figure. Ours is the exception because we control it and it is the same number our pricing page bills at. Check current pricing on each provider's own site before you commit.
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First: you may not need any of this
A comparison page that can't say “don't buy” isn't worth reading. In all three of these cases, a plain video call is the correct answer and will stay correct for a long time.
- 1.You teach one weekly session to people who already paid you some other way. A plain video call and a shared link is the whole job, and it will stay the whole job for a long time.
- 2.Your students are colleagues or existing clients inside one organization. Whatever meeting tool that organization already pays for will beat anything you go and buy.
- 3.You are testing whether anyone wants the class at all. Run it on the free tier of any call tool, collect the money by a payment link, and only buy a classroom once the class exists and repeats.
What separates a classroom from a video call
Six criteria, useful even if you end up picking something on this list other than us.
| Criterion | Why it matters | The good answer |
|---|---|---|
| Does it know who attended? | A meeting tool gives you a participant list. A classroom ties attendance to a student. | Attendance lands on the student record automatically |
| Does that student record hold the payment? | If the class is paid, the room and the receipt should not live in different products. | One record: bought, attended, progressed |
| Breakout rooms | Small-group work is the reason many teachers need more than a link. | Create, assign, broadcast, merge back — on every device |
| Collaborative whiteboard | Explaining maths, grammar or a diagram live is the core of most teaching. | Multiplayer, in-browser, saved with the session |
| Engagement in the room | Polls, raised hands and quick quizzes are what stop a live class becoming a webinar. | Built in, not a second tab |
| What happens after | The recording is most of the value for anyone who missed it or wants to revise. | Recording attached to the class, available to the right students |
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9 virtual classroom tools, compared
| Tool | Best for | Sells | Attendance | Breakouts | Whiteboard |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prolaud | Teachers who sell the class they teach | Yes | Yes | Partial | Yes |
| Zoom | The meeting itself, at any scale | No | No | Yes | Partial |
| Google Meet + Classroom | Schools already inside Google Workspace | No | Partial | Yes | Partial |
| Microsoft Teams | Universities and companies standardized on Microsoft 365 | No | Partial | Yes | Yes |
| LearnCube | Language schools and 1:1 tutoring | No | Partial | Partial | Yes |
| BigBlueButton | Institutions that want to self-host | No | Partial | Yes | Yes |
| ClassPoint | Teachers who live inside PowerPoint | No | No | No | Partial |
| Kaltura / Engageli | Large institutions buying on procurement | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Moodle | Structured courses, assignments and grading | Partial | Partial | No | No |
Prolaud— Teachers who sell the class they teach
The live room, the storefront and the student record are one product. Host the class with a multiplayer whiteboard, screen share with annotation, raised hands, live polls and in-class quizzes; the recording and the attendance write straight onto the record that took the payment.
The catch: Breakout rooms are the weakest part: they work in the browser on desktop but are not yet real sub-rooms with their own media, and mobile breakouts were removed. If your teaching is mostly small-group breakout work, Zoom is still the better room.
Zoom— The meeting itself, at any scale
The most reliable video call there is, and the benchmark for breakout rooms — create them, assign people, broadcast to all rooms, pull everyone back. Recording and a basic whiteboard work well.
The catch: It has no idea who bought anything. Attendance is a CSV you download and reconcile by hand, and nothing connects a no-show to a paying student.
Google Meet + Classroom— Schools already inside Google Workspace
Free with a Google account, familiar to every student, and Classroom adds assignments, grading and a roster alongside the call.
The catch: Built for institutions with existing students, not for selling to new ones. There is no checkout, and the two products stay separate surfaces.
Microsoft Teams— Universities and companies standardized on Microsoft 365
Strong meeting tooling, breakout rooms, transcription and deep integration with the rest of Microsoft 365. Education tenants get classroom features layered on top.
The catch: Heavy to administer for an independent teacher, and it is a collaboration suite before it is a teaching product. No storefront.
LearnCube— Language schools and 1:1 tutoring
Purpose-built as a virtual classroom rather than a meeting tool — lesson materials, a teaching whiteboard and a classroom that opens straight in the browser with no download for the student.
The catch: Focused on delivering the lesson. Selling courses, memberships and a catalog sit outside it.
BigBlueButton— Institutions that want to self-host
Open source and genuinely built around classroom workflow — multi-user whiteboard, breakouts, polls, shared notes. Integrates with Moodle and other LMSs.
The catch: You are running infrastructure. Someone has to host, scale and patch it, which is a real cost even though the license is free.
ClassPoint— Teachers who live inside PowerPoint
Turns a PowerPoint deck into an interactive lesson — live quizzes, annotation over slides and class responses without leaving the deck.
The catch: It is an add-in, not a classroom. You still need something else to host the call, and something else again to take payment.
Kaltura / Engageli— Large institutions buying on procurement
Enterprise virtual-classroom platforms with deep engagement analytics, video management and LMS integration, sold to universities and large training providers.
The catch: Priced and contracted for institutions. An independent teacher is not the buyer these are designed for.
Moodle— Structured courses, assignments and grading
The most established open-source LMS — course structure, assignments, gradebook, quizzes and certificates, with a huge plugin ecosystem.
The catch: It is not a virtual classroom at all. Live teaching means bolting on BigBlueButton, Zoom or Teams, and the live session stays a guest in the course.
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Related guides
This page is the non-geo classroom category. Two neighbours go deeper on narrower questions.
- Live teaching platforms in India — the same question with Indian payments attached: who takes UPI, who meters live hours.
- Best online teaching platforms in India — the wider platform question for Indian teachers selling courses, not just teaching live.
- How live classes work here — the feature page, for when you already know what you are looking for.
Common questions
Frequently asked
- What is virtual classroom software?
- Software for teaching a class live over the internet, with the structure of a class rather than a meeting: video, a shared teaching surface such as a whiteboard, engagement tools like polls and raised hands, breakout rooms for small-group work, and a record of who attended. The line between it and a plain meeting tool is that a classroom knows who your students are — who enrolled, who showed up, what they scored — while a meeting tool hosts the call and forgets it happened.
- What is the difference between a virtual classroom and Zoom?
- Zoom is an excellent meeting tool that can be used to teach. A virtual classroom is built around the class as an object: the session belongs to a course, attendance attaches to a student, the recording is available to the people who enrolled, and the whiteboard is saved with the lesson. Zoom gives you a participant list you export as a CSV and reconcile yourself. If you teach one group you already know, that difference may not matter to you — and this guide says so plainly before it compares anything.
- Do I need virtual classroom software, or is a video call enough?
- A video call is genuinely enough for a lot of people, and we would rather say it than sell past it. If you run one weekly session for a group you already know, nobody pays you through a link, and you are content tracking attendance in a spreadsheet, a call plus a calendar invite is the whole job. Classroom software starts paying for itself when you sell seats, run more than one group, or lose students quietly between sessions and only find out at renewal.
- Which virtual classroom software has breakout rooms?
- Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, BigBlueButton and the enterprise platforms (Kaltura, Engageli) all have mature breakout rooms — create them, assign people, broadcast a message to every room, pull everyone back. Zoom is the benchmark. Prolaud's breakouts work in the browser on desktop but are not yet true sub-rooms with their own media, and mobile breakouts were removed, so if small-group work is the core of how you teach, Zoom is still the better room and this page will not pretend otherwise.
- Can I sell access to a live class from the same software I teach in?
- Almost never, and this is the real dividing line in the category. Meeting tools (Zoom, Meet, Teams) have no commerce layer at all. Purpose-built classrooms (LearnCube, ClassPoint, BigBlueButton) focus on delivering the lesson and leave selling to something else. Enterprise platforms are sold to institutions that already have students. Prolaud is on this list specifically because the room and the checkout run against one student record — you sell the seat, teach the class, and the attendance lands on the record that took the payment.
- Is there free virtual classroom software?
- Yes, with trade-offs. Google Meet is free with a Google account and caps group calls at 60 minutes. BigBlueButton is open source and free to license, but you are then running and scaling the infrastructure yourself, which is a real cost. Prolaud's free Starter tier includes the live room so you can teach and take a first payment without a card. What is not free anywhere is the combination of unmetered live time and a storefront — someone has to pay for the bandwidth.
- What should teachers look for in a virtual classroom?
- Six things, roughly in this order: does attendance land on the student record automatically; does that record also hold the payment; are breakout rooms real and available on every device; is the whiteboard multiplayer and saved with the session; are polls, raised hands and quizzes built in rather than a second tab; and what happens to the recording afterwards. Video quality is broadly a solved problem across all of these tools, so it is rarely the thing that should decide it.
- Is a virtual classroom the same as an LMS?
- No, and confusing the two is the most common mis-purchase in this category. An LMS such as Moodle organizes courses, assignments, grades and certificates — it is where learning is structured and recorded. A virtual classroom is where the live teaching actually happens. Moodle has no live room of its own and integrates BigBlueButton or Zoom for that; most virtual classrooms have no gradebook. A few products do both, which is worth checking before you buy two things.
Teach the class and sell the seat in one place
Live room, multiplayer whiteboard, polls and raised hands — with attendance landing on the same student record that took the payment. Free to start, no card.