Web Conferencing Programs
Web meetings or web conferences are saving a lot of business people time and money. Although real meetings are always better than virtual ones, the trade off is more than worth it considering the amount of travel costs and time that are saved. These days, web conferencing programs are getting more nice features, with most having some type of desktop/document sharing capability, video, and VoIP.
Web meeting programs are, these days, very easy to use, which is important when you want to want a meeting to run efficiently. They also have very few technical issues. If you want to utilize a web conferencing program for your business you’ll have to pay more if you want, say, 30, rather than only 15 people in a meeting. You can expect to pay around $50 per month for a web conferencing program.
Gotomeeting and Webex are the two most popular web meeting solutions, although Webex is slightly more popular. Although you have to pay more if you use Webex, you also get to have 10 more users in each meeting that you have (25 vs. 15). Because you pay per month, rather than per user, you can use them as often as you want.
Before you buy any web conferencing solution, you have to check if it makes financial sense. Are you buying it just to buy it? Can you get by, by using a free product such as Skype, which allows for up to 5 people in a conference, or the free version of Yugma, which allows 15 participants in a meeting?
Aside from looking at the features of a program, when shopping for one, pay special attention to how many users can be in a meeting and how difficult (or easy) it is to set up for users of the meeting.
Ultimately, what program you get depends on your needs. If you are, for example, a digital design firm and wish to share your work, you may choose Fuze Meeting because it allows you to communicate in HD format. If you want a lot of features to impress clients, go for Microsoft Office Live Meeting.
Jeremy is the author of Best Web Conferencing and Interactive Web Meeting.