How to Install a Self-Hosted Video Conferencing Server (Jitsi Meet)

Jitsi Meet is a free, open-source video conferencing platform — giving you a self-hosted alternative to commercial video call services, with no participant limits imposed by a vendor and full control over your data.

Prerequisites

  • Ubuntu 22.04/24.04 VPS: 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM (video conferencing is resource-intensive, scaling with concurrent participants)
  • A domain name

Step 1 — Set the Hostname

sudo hostnamectl set-hostname meet.yourdomain.com

Step 2 — Add the Jitsi Repository

curl -sL https://download.jitsi.org/jitsi-key.gpg.key | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/jitsi-keyring.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/jitsi-keyring.gpg] https://download.jitsi.org stable/" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jitsi-stable.list
sudo apt update

Step 3 — Install Jitsi Meet

sudo apt install jitsi-meet -y

The installer prompts for your domain and offers to automatically configure a Let's Encrypt certificate.

Step 4 — Allow Required Firewall Ports

sudo ufw allow 80/tcp
sudo ufw allow 443/tcp
sudo ufw allow 10000/udp

Port 10000/UDP handles the actual video/audio media traffic.

Step 5 — Access Your Jitsi Instance

https://meet.yourdomain.com

Step 6 — Start a Meeting

Enter any room name to create/join a meeting — by default, Jitsi Meet allows open access without authentication, appropriate for public/casual use.

Restricting Meeting Creation (Recommended for Business Use)

sudo nano /etc/prosody/conf.avail/meet.yourdomain.com.cfg.lua

Configure authentication so only registered users can create new rooms, while guests can still join existing meetings with a link — consult Jitsi's official documentation for the current exact configuration steps, since this involves multiple coordinated config files.

Sizing for Concurrent Meeting Capacity

Video conferencing is genuinely resource-intensive — a single VPS comfortably handles a limited number of concurrent participants; for larger-scale deployments, Jitsi supports a more complex multi-server architecture separating the video bridge component for horizontal scaling.

Enabling Recording (Jibri, Optional)

Jitsi's recording component (Jibri) requires separate installation and is resource-intensive — consider whether recording is genuinely needed before adding this additional complexity and resource requirement.

Customizing Branding

Jitsi Meet's interface (logo, welcome page text) can be customized by editing the relevant configuration and static asset files — useful if deploying for a specific organization's branded internal use.

Common Errors

Video/audio doesn't connect despite the room loading — almost always the UDP media port (10000) not being open in the firewall; verify this specifically, since signaling (which uses 443) can work while media (which uses 10000/UDP) fails separately.

Poor performance with several participants — verify adequate CPU/RAM for your actual concurrent usage; video conferencing scales resource needs significantly with participant count.

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