Every recruiter knows the moment. Twenty minutes before the interview, the candidate emails: “I don’t have a Google account, can we use something else?” Or the Zoom free-tier 40-minute timer fires mid-conversation. Or the IT team blocks the Microsoft Teams meeting link because the candidate’s domain isn’t in the allow-list. For SMBs running ten interviews a week, these small frictions add up to dozens of rescheduled calls a month — and a couple of withdrawn candidates. This month Flowxtra shipped a native Jitsi Meet integration — fully open-source, zero-account video interviews that run inside the platform. No candidate signup, no time limit, no per-user license, and no data leaving the EU unless you choose otherwise. It works on every Flowxtra plan, including the free tier of our free recruiting software, with no credit card required. Why we added a third video option Flowxtra already integrated with Google Meet and Zoom. Both work well and both are staying. We added Jitsi specifically because three customer requests kept repeating: No candidate account. A candidate joining a Jitsi room needs nothing — they click the link, type their name, allow camera and mic, and they’re in. Google Meet now requires a Google login for many flows; Zoom asks the candidate to install the desktop client. No time limit. Zoom’s free tier cuts calls at 40 minutes. Google Meet’s free tier caps at 60. Real interviews with rating-sheet walkthroughs routinely run 45–75 minutes. Jitsi has no cap. EU data residency. Some of our customers in the public sector, healthcare, and legal verticals can’t use US-hosted video conferencing for candidate calls under their internal GDPR posture. Jitsi runs on EU-hosted infrastructure by default, and customers who want full control can point Flowxtra at their own self-hosted Jitsi server. For most other interviews — internal team syncs, hiring-manager debriefs — Zoom and Google Meet still make sense. Jitsi is the option you reach for when the candidate experience or the data-residency requirement matters more than the polish. How the integration works inside Flowxtra When a recruiter schedules an interview from a candidate profile, the Meeting panel now offers three providers: Google Meet, Zoom, and Jitsi. Pick Jitsi and the system: Generates a unique room name with a 6-character random suffix (so the URL cannot be guessed by anyone scraping the careers domain). Saves the room URL on the interview record and emails it to both the candidate and the recruiter. Optionally signs a 24-hour JWT (HS256) for self-hosted Jitsi servers that require token authentication — useful for customers running Jitsi on their own infrastructure with moderator-only entry. Adds the meeting to the candidate’s reminder schedule (email + push + chat — the same unified notification system we shipped last week). The interview itself runs in a normal browser tab. Recording, screen-sharing, dial-in, and breakout rooms are all supported — Jitsi parity with Zoom on the features that matter for hiring is already high in 2026. Side-by-side: video conferencing options for recruiters CapabilityZoom FreeGoogle Meet FreeFlowxtra + Jitsi Time limit on calls40 minutes60 minutesUnlimited Candidate account requiredApp install recommendedGoogle accountNone Cost per recruiter / month$0 (with 40-min cap) or $14.99 Pro$0 (60-min cap) or Workspace plan$0 Self-hosted option❌❌✅ Point at your own Jitsi server EU data residencyPaid tier add-onPaid tier add-onDefault Native Flowxtra ATS integration✅✅✅ Open source code base❌❌✅ The honest summary: Zoom and Google Meet have nicer mobile clients, better noise suppression, and more polished AI features. Jitsi wins on cost, candidate friction, and data residency. The reason Flowxtra now offers all three is that no single video provider is the right answer for every interview. Self-hosted Jitsi: when it matters About one in twenty Flowxtra customers ends up self-hosting Jitsi. The profile is consistent: a public-sector or healthcare hiring team with an internal CIO mandate that video calls about candidates must run on infrastructure the company controls. For those customers, Flowxtra’s plugin lets you configure multiple Jitsi servers per company simultaneously — the public meet.jit.si for low-sensitivity calls and a self-hosted server for executive or clinical-staff hires. The JWT token auth (HS256, 24-hour expiry) means even self-hosted rooms remain inaccessible without a freshly-signed token from the Flowxtra dispatcher, so a leaked room URL has a short usable lifetime. That detail matters in regulated industries where audit logs are checked quarterly. How it fits the candidate experience The candidate side is the part we’re proudest of. The flow looks like this: Candidate accepts the interview invite, picks a slot. Confirmation email lands in their inbox in their language (we shipped 17 locales for notifications last week). Push notification fires 10 minutes before the call from Flowxtra’s PWA on their phone. Candidate clicks the link. Browser opens. They type their first name. They’re in the room. No app install. No Google login screen. No “please wait, the host will let you in” — the recruiter is already there because the same calendar entry shows up in their dashboard. The friction-removal compounds with the rest of the platform — including the AI recruiting agent that drafts the post-interview rating sheet automatically. Where this fits in the bigger plugin family Jitsi is the fourth communication plugin Flowxtra shipped this month, alongside Slack notifications, Discord notifications, and the Telegram conversational bot. The pattern is intentional: recruiters use the tools their team already lives in, so we’re building Flowxtra’s ATS recruiting software as a hub that integrates outward instead of forcing teams to come into our chat. The same principle applies to social channels — see the social media recruiting module for LinkedIn, Facebook, and X. Pricing — included on every plan Jitsi Meet integration is part of the platform core. No per-meeting fee, no per-minute cost, no “video integrations add-on”. We charge per workspace; the video provider you choose is your decision, and using the free, self-hostable one costs you exactly zero per interview. How to enable it If you have a Flowxtra workspace, the Jitsi option is already live on the Schedule Meeting panel. If you want to point it at your own self-hosted server, the Jitsi Plugin page accepts a custom domain and optional JWT shared secret. If you don’t have a workspace yet, signup is the fastest path — all four video providers, the unified notification stack, and the full applicant tracking system ship on the free plan. Start free today — no credit card, no sales call, no 40-minute interview timer.