There are many reasons to use Skype. Free multi-user audio calls between PCs, video chat with quick and easy connectivity, and (if you’re willing to pay) multi-user video chat and PC-to-phone audio calls. Of course, there are also quite a few reasons why you might not want to use Skype.

Aside from its recent acquisition by Microsoft (maybe you’ve got something against the big M – who knows?), there’s the fact that its chat service occasionally borks out for no apparent reason, the fact that it charges users for a service that others provide for free, and the fact that it’s support is, if word of mouth is to be believed, rather nightmarish.

If you’re fed up with Skype and looking for video chat alternatives, have a look at these:

Google Hangouts

A feature of Google’s (reasonably) new social media platform Google +, Hangouts really impressed me when I took it for a test run. Hangouts allows multi-user video chat for up to ten users and intuitively displays the face of the user who’s speaking at any given moment in the center of the chat window. Users can also share videos with one another (linking a YouTube video in a Hangout will play the video for all users in the chat).

The one problem with Google Hangouts is that it doesn’t exactly allow for private chats. Anyone in your circles can join one of your hangouts. Still it’s fast, it runs well, it’s convenient, and-more importantly, it’s free.

Tinychat

If you’re looking for a clean, simple multi-user chat software without any unnecessary bells and whistles, grab Tinychat. It’s a flash-based video chat client that allows up to twelve users to chat simultaneously with one another. The basic service is free and doesn’t require a log-in – just load up the service, create a chat and you’re good to go. Once your chatroom’s been created, you can share the url you’re given with other users to bring them into the chat. You can also share your desktop with other users in the chatroom – a great feature for developers.

FaceTime

I put a lot of focus on PCs (mostly due to the fact that I have one), so here’s a little something designed exclusively for Mac users. If you’ve got a Mac, your system’s going to come with FaceTime pre-installed. FaceTime offers free video chat of qualities up to 720p. Unfortunately, while it’s simpler than Skype, FaceTime only allows people to chat with folks who also have Macs, and doesn’t support multi-user video chat.

Still, if you’ve a Mac, FaceTime’s a good reason to never have to install Skype.

Google Voice

Whether or not Google Voice is useful to you is directly correlated with whether or not you live in the United States. If you’re an American, Google Voice is downright awesome providing multi-user video chat, a free phone number for personal use and SMS, and the ability to place free calls anywhere in the States. There’s also voice mail, conference calling, call screening and voice message transcription.

All in all, rather excellent, no?

Oovoo

Oovoo used to provide free multi-user video chat (with up to six people chatting simultaneously), but some time ago the company behind it decided to remove the ‘free’ functionality of Oovoo’s video chat. While it’s still a powerful, easy to use video chat and voice chat platform with clients available for Mac, PC, and a huge spectrum of mobile platforms, in functionality it’s not that much different from Skype. Really, it’s Skype for people who don’t want to use Skype.

Image Credits: FreeVideoChatForVets

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