The 5 Best Screen Sharing Software Tools for Small Businesses

If your team members regularly work from home, you’ll need a screen sharing solution to help you present visual information, remotely manage your staff and projects, and collaborate on tasks.

Screen sharing, or desktop sharing, is an easy way to foster teamwork when your team is remotely distributed.

There are many benefits to screen sharing, such as reducing the burden of sending out presentations to attendees, and instead, guiding them along with you on one screen, providing clients with live, yet remote, product demonstrations, and remote tool training.

Here, we’ll go through the five top screen sharing software options (which also double as video conferencing tools) to help you decide which one is right for your business needs.

Here are our top picks for the best screen sharing software for small businesses:

• Zoom Meetings
• Skype
• GoToMeeting
• Webex Meetings
• Google Meet

What to consider when choosing screen sharing software

Every business is different, and each has unique remote tool needs. Though software features are the most important aspect of choosing a screen sharing tool, you’ll need to consider the platform’s other qualities, too.

1. Features

The ability to share your screen is vital, but think about other features you need. Do you want a simple tool that just allows you to share what’s on your desktop screen, or are you looking for a tool that can help attendees interact with the shared material, record screens, and set sharing permissions?

2. Pricing

Cost of the tool should also be an important consideration. You can find plenty of free screen sharing options, but if you’re looking for a more robust tool that offers extra features and functionality, you’ll need to consider a paid tool that fits your budget.

3. Ease of use

Sharing your screen should be easy and intuitive, and shouldn’t complicate or disrupt the flow of remote meetings. Screen sharing features should be accessible and easy to enable. Free trials and demos are a great way of figuring out if the tool is easy and enjoyable to use before committing.

5 best screen sharing software options for small businesses

In this list of the five best screen sharing platforms, we’ll cover each solution’s screen sharing functionality, additional features, and pricing tier breakdowns.

1. Zoom Meetings

Zoom Meetings is a free video conferencing solution that offers a wide range of features such as screen sharing, whiteboard and drawing tools, personal meeting rooms, meeting transcription, and webinar functionality.

It’s a scalable platform suitable for small businesses, individual users, enterprises, educational institutions, healthcare organizations, and a wide variety of industries. Many have pivoted their businesses online and are using Zoom to support their business models.

In terms of screen sharing functionality, users can select from seven screen options. They can share:

• Their entire desktop or phone screen
• A specific application
• A portion of their screen
• Zoom’s whiteboard
• Audio from their speaker
• Video from a secondary camera
• Their iPhone/iPad screen

Hosts can lock the screen share, meaning only they can share their screen, and users can also record calls so participants can watch content later, or send out recordings to participants unable to attend.

Mobile users can also get in on the action, share their screens, and annotate. Joining chats from mobile is useful because it lets employees screen share whether they’re at their desks or elsewhere.

Zoom Meetings offers seven shared screen options. Source: Zoom Meetings.

Zoom Meetings plans are priced per host, and have three pricing plans:

• Pro plan: $14.99/month, per host. This plan includes a 24-hour duration limit on meetings.
• Business plan: $19.99/month, per host. This plan provides automatic meeting transcripts and a maximum of 300 participants per meeting.
• Enterprise plan: $19.99/month, per host. This plan offers a 500-participant limit and a dedicated customer service manager.

Zoom Meetings also offers a free version that allows up to 100 participants per meeting and unlimited meeting usage. However, using the free version, meetings are limited to 40 minutes.

Read The Ascent’s full Zoom Meetings review

2. Skype

Skype is a free screen sharing and video conferencing tool that supports up to 50 meeting participants, meaning it’s suitable for businesses on the smaller side, while larger businesses might need to search for tools that can support more attendees.

Users can share their screen using both the desktop and mobile app, enabling them to share their full screens, presentations, and videos. The tool has interactive functionality for holding polls during meetings, too, to make collaboration between attendees even easier.

Users can also drag and drop files into the conversation window during a meeting, giving everyone in the meeting access.

Users can split their screens while screen sharing with Skype. Image source: Author

Skype is free to use, but offers several pricing options for extra features such as voicemail, SMS texts, and calls to a landline number.

However, these pricing options are a little confusing, so we recommend that you read our full review of Skype to understand the difference between their subscriptions, Skype Credit, Skype Number, and Skype to Go options.

Read The Ascent’s full Skype review

3. GoToMeeting

GoToMeeting is another video conferencing tool that offers screen sharing functionality. With no free version of GoToMeeting, it’s not suitable for smaller businesses, but rather those in the midsize range.

Users can share and present real-time documents and presentations via screen sharing, and meeting attendees can switch presenters so multiple people can share their screens at different times during a meeting.

Users can share their entire screens or just an individual app, page, or document. Call and meeting recording is also included with GoToMeeting plans.

As well as screen sharing, each plan offers a large feature set that includes phone dial in, unlimited number of meetings, business messaging, personal meeting rooms, and meeting room locking.

Screen sharing can be accessed by users on multiple devices with GoToMeeting. Image source: Author

GoToMeeting offers no free version, and it offers three pricing tiers:

• The Professional plan costs $14/month, per organizer for up to 150 meeting participants.
• The Business plan costs $19/month, per organizer for up to 250 meeting participants.
• Enterprise plans can be custom made for larger businesses, and support up to 3,000 meeting participants. Those interested need to call GoToMeeting’s sales team for a quote for an enterprise pricing plan.

Read The Ascent’s full GoToMeeting review

4. Webex Meetings

Webex Meetings is a video conferencing tool that’s suitable for any business size due to its pricing points and feature sets.

Webex Meetings allows users to screen share from their browsers, desktop app, and Android and iOS devices. Users can share the following content:

• Individual files or documents
• Entire application sets, such as productivity tools or web browsers
• Videos
• Entire screens

Webex will also automatically scale a shared document or presentation for optimal viewing for each attendee.

Webex Meetings’ interface is clean and uncluttered, making it easy to select and share a content source. Image source: Author

Webex Meetings offers a free version, which allows up to 100 meeting participants. Paying customers may choose from three pricing bands:

• The Starter plan allows up to 50 participants per meeting, and costs $13.50/month per host.
• The Plus plan allows up to 100 participants per meeting, and costs $17.95/month per host.
• The Business plan allows for up to 200 participants per meeting, and costs $26.95/month per host.
• For those who need an enterprise level solution, Webex Meetings also offers custom pricing plans that can support up to 1,000 meeting participants.

Read The Ascent’s full Webex Meetings review

5. Google Meet

Google Meet is a video conferencing solution that’s especially suitable for Google account holders and those who already use G Suite. It offers a free version for Google account holders, making it suitable for all business types and sizes.

Google Meet is a no-frills solution, and its screen sharing features are no different. Users can choose exactly what they want to share with other attendees, including their entire screen, or a specific window, application, or document. Users can also share videos with other participants using the screen-sharing feature.

The solution also offers multiple video screen layouts, real-time captioning, and noise canceling features.

Users have three screen sharing content options inside Google Meet: the entire screen, an individual window, or a Google Chrome tab. Image source: Author

Anyone who has a Google account can access the free version of Google Meet, which offers up to 100 meeting participants, who must also be Google account holders.

Beyond that, anyone who wants to access extra Google Meet features must pay for a G Suite plan. Google Meet is not available for purchase as a separate solution.

G Suite offers three pricing bands:

• The Basic plan costs $6/month, per user.
• The Business plan costs $12/month, per user
• The Enterprise plan costs $25/month, per user.

Read The Ascent’s full Google Meet review

Next steps for choosing screen sharing software

With the rise in remote working, businesses are looking for multifunctional tools to help them maintain business efficiency.

When selecting a screen sharing app, businesses should consider the differences in features offered by various vendors and identify which extra features could make an impact on employees’ productivity while working remotely.

Demos and free trials are a great way to experience each tool’s features without making a commitment.