Web conferencing showdown: What’s the best software for online meetings? - lockhartthereenewhe
It's become a maxim of neo professional life: Your most important meeting of the year won't take home in a conference room, but rather online with all attendees screening a common computer screen.
It's impersonal. It's detached. And it's often quite disagreeable. Simply joining the Web meeting terminate sometimes be a problem. Simply if you harbour't checked out these online services lately, you mightiness equal surprised by how much they've developed, or their wide range of pricing and features. Whether you'Re looking for simple screen-sharing to produce a PowerPoint beautify, or whiteboard and collaboration tools for deeper interaction, chances are thither's a Net app to fit your of necessity and your budget.
While some of these—WebEx, for example—have been around for several years, cloud providers are constantly updating. We run-drove chisel four small-business-focused services that can serve with varied types of meetings, and were generally impressed past their current levels of finesse.
MeetingBurner
Sometimes you just motivation a quick meeting to make up the team. If you don't need a lot of bells and whistles, MeetingBurner's free version (Mac or Personal computer) for up to 15 participants includes screen sharing and a phone-in line.
Supported Flash and Java, MeetingBurner takes only a couple of transactions to set up, after which you as organizer pose a dashboard from which you rear align settings (there aren't too more), docket a meeting, or simply launch one right away. The service gives you a tailor-made URL (yourname.meetingburner.com) and phone number to divvy up with participants.
You start by running a Java applet that creates a miniature operate windowpane where you can specify whether to share the entire block out, an application program, or a custom region. It's likewise bad that participants see a cloudy rectangle in the surface area covered aside the control window, but you can at least move the window around so that IT doesn't conceal important information.
If you partake in your whole screen, participants can see a navigation bar with information most you based on your settings, the name of your meeting, the dial-in number, and a confabulate window (if you've authorized one). You also scram a leaning of participants, and MeetingBurner lets you make any one of them the presenter—though that person must download and run the test-sharing applet.
Drawbacks? MeetingBurner's interface is cluttered and not forever intuitive.
More importantly, the escaped version does not let you record the transactions. To record a confluence and share that transcription, you must subscribe either the $40-per-month MeetingBurner Pro (for adequate 50 participants) or the $100-per-month Premier edition, which supports rising to 1000 users and adds analytics to the mix.
Citrix GoToMeeting
Citrix GoToMeeting's approach is both exquisite and brimful-featured. Erstwhile you've installed the software, the organizer can set skyward a meeting with a single click in the app: This produces a midget control venire with a group meeting number to distribute to invitees, who must enter information technology when they visit JoinGoToMeeting.com.
Attendees don't learn the control panel window. For the labor organizer, it has buttons for actuating screen share-out, using or muting microphones and webcams, designating another attendee as presenter (once they've installed a small applet), or summoning a teeny pallette of markup tools (such as a pen, a mark, or a highlighter). The markup tools, however, don't actually alter the document.
Eastern Samoa for the control panel's claver window with audio options GoToMeeting aside default uses a computer's built-in speaker and mic, but you can opt to get a phone line and sound PIN to use with your meeting total. Another release initiates a recording, which you can save for playback in GoToMeeting Oregon Windows Media Player. You as wel see how much place is left for your recording.
GoToMeeting nicely lets you hide parts or all of the control dialog box. Also, you don't need to go to a web site to get cracking: The desktop app has you up and running in seconds (although initial setup of the computer software does accept a few transactions).
Attendees at my test meeting complained that information technology wasn't obvious that they needed to click on a button to activate role of their computer's sound system (I didn't try the bridge deck line), but they other reported that the app worked as advertised. Participants can choose whether to use the phone trace operating theatre the figurer.
GoToMeeting supports up to 25 attendees on Macs, PCs, iPads, iPhones, and Mechanical man devices. There's a free trial, merely none free version: An organizer account that lets you hold unlimited meetings costs $49 per calendar month or $468 per year, and Citrix offers pricier services for large crowds—state, for webinars. It's not a bad deal if you hold a good deal of meetings where people cooperate on projects.
OmniJoin
At this writing, Crony's OmniJoin whole kit and caboodle only on a Microcomputer running Windows XP or later. If that's not an hinderance, this is a capable and highly customizable Web conferencing tool. Launched from your account page on OmniJoin, the app creates a customizable meeting room. This interface borrows heavily from the Microsoft Office innovation aesthetic, using a ribbon with tabs to expose most features. Unluckily, this likewise consumes infinite—a drawback along a laptop screen.
Brother touts the select of the audio frequency and telecasting. In our tests, video recording quality in a petite windowpane was indeed good. You can use either PC audio frequency or a phone line (that you can dial or have call you) provided as depart of the service.
You can arrange the various meeting-room panes—such as the video feed, the participant list, and the workspace—by using either preset or tradition layouts. A Meeting tab has buttons for invitatory others, transcription a group meeting, and leaving and ending your coming together.
Merely the rattling action takes put up in the Share lozenge. You can share all or part of your desktop, a PowerPoint presentation, a text file, a whiteboard, a media file, a Web browser windowpane, or even handouts or some other files. You hind end set up windows with different content in the workspace area and on/off switch between them. You can also hand off presenter duties, Ulysses Simpson Grant others entree to your desktop, Oregon request remote-manipulate access to a participant's desktop.
I did find the audio frame-up confusing: The app prompted me to set up a telephone dial-in line, and lone by excavation did I key that you could use the data processor's audio system. Too, at this writing OmniJoin hadn't yet enabled meeting recordings. [Editor's note: OmniJoin has since enabled the ability to record a meeting.]
OmniJoin's basic plan for a single organizer costs $49 per calendar month, supporting busy 30 users (merely single adequate to 12 webcam streams), 720p television (more-dearly-won plans bump the video upper-class adequate 1080i), and unlimited meetings. The company hopes to launch a Mac interpretation this fall, which will get to OmniJoin a more serious competitor to the likes of WebEx.
Cisco WebEx
WebEx was a pioneer in Web conferencing, and it corpse a formidable competitor. WebEx offers a full roll of sharing options—desktop, application, file, and whiteboard—as asymptomatic as webcam and either computer or phone-melody audio. You fanny invite participants by email, phone call, surgery SMS text message, and succeed up with reminders from within the browser-founded app, which, unlike Citrix's GoToMeeting, doesn't require you to preinstall software. You can record meetings and upload the results to a meeting blank space, to which you give notice also upload related files.
You stool start a meeting on the tent-fly or set one up too soon, allow participants access to shared applications (so they can type in a Word of honor document or an Surpass spreadsheet, for illustrate), and designate another participant as the presenter.
One nice feature about WebEx is that lonesome a little strip of a menu appears when you hover your cursor at the top of the screen, and so you don't hide a great deal of the content you're sharing.
WebEx offers a free plan for meetings with nobelium to a higher degree three people, standard-definition picture, and computing device-only audio frequency. The free plan does not allow application unselfish, but it does let you share your desktop, documents, and whiteboards. It includes 250MB of meeting-infinite storage.
The cheapest compensated architectural plan costs $24 per month per boniface. This includes meetings with up to eight participants; high-definition video; and computer, toll-call, or optional Call in Me fee call-in audio. You likewise get lotion joint and remote, plus 1GB of storage. A $49-per-month plan allows adequate to 25 meeting participants.
WebEx's diverse plan offerings, slick user interface, and robust features make it valuable consideration for some business that's serious about getting puzzle out through with in a collaborative online environment.
Overall, if you're looking for a freebie for rounding error up a couple of people, either Meeting Burner or WebEx will exercise the job. Still, WebEx has Sir Thomas More in store if you necessitate to step up to a bigger get-jointly later. In addition, there's zero preinstallation required, its pricing for a small group is better than that of GoToMeeting, and, different OmniJoin, IT serves not-Windows users.
[Editor in chief's Note, Oct 15, 2012: Article updated to reflect that Omnijoin meetings can now be recorded.]
Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/461407/web-conferencing-showdown-whats-the-best-software-for-online-meetings.html
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