Online Meeting Reviews & Prices

WebEx Review: Online MeetingGo to Site | Back to Chart

WebEx is nearly synonymous with the online meeting industry. A product of networking giant Cisco, it's probably the most widely used online meeting solution available. At $49.00 per month (per host), it's also one of the most expensive, though you can have up to 25 participants for that price. Is WebEx worth the premium? Mostly, we'd have to say so.

Hosting a meeting requires the WebEx software, which downloads rather quickly and runs on Windows, Mac, Solaris and Linux. Attendees just need to download a browser plug-in to facilitate screen sharing and annotation. WebEx is a full-featured system, offering document sharing, screen sharing, remote control, whiteboards, chat, video, VoIP, and a call-in number. It's also one of the few to facilitate in-conference video sharing; just upload a video file and you can watch it together with your participants. Don't expect instant performance, however. Each participant must download the video. Also there are no video annotation tools such as those found with Fuze Meeting.

WebEx has an intuitive tab-based system for keeping track of the various presentation modes. For instance, you may have a whiteboard in one tab, a video in another, and an Excel document in a third. Like all web conferencing systems, WebEx allows you to share your screen, and you can decide if you'd like to share everything, or just selected windows or applications. You can annotate web pages or shared files using a remote-like menu which hovers over other windows. The drawing tools are very fluid and it's a snap to save your annotations.

Meetings can be set up using the web interface, which allows for advanced scheduling and password protection. These may seem like no-brainers for an online meeting product, but not all services offer them.

It's hard to fault WebEx on anything, though it lacks some of the panache and fun of Adobe Acrobat Connect and the HD polish of Fuze. It's been in the game for a long time, and given that it comes from a networking company like Cisco, potential customers should feel secure in WebEx's performance. In fact, WebEx had the best audio/video performance we saw, allowing five of us to share full-motion video that was nearly flawless.

Also worth mentioning is the WebEx iPhone app. You can use it to host an audio conference using your WebEx bridge number. You can also use it to attend a conference; it dials the meeting and allows you to see anything shared by the presenter's computer-based client. It will not allow you to view screen sharing, but documents uploaded to WebEx work fine. We were able to follow an uploaded PowerPoint presentation with ease.

WebEx gives you a 14-day trial period, with no credit card required. While WebEx does have the highest monthly cost, on a per-participant basis it comes out on par with Adobe Acrobat Connect. While you certainly pay for all the features and performance, small companies with a need for a robust online meeting solution will want to give this product serious consideration.

Adobe Acrobat Connect Review: Online MeetingGo to Site | Back to Chart

Once upon a time, Adobe Acrobat was just a program for reading the ubiquitous PDF file. Now, Adobe has made it the foundation for its online collaborative tools, including its online meeting service Adobe Acrobat Connect.

At $39.99 per month for 15 participants, Acrobat is a bit pricey on a cost-per-participant basis, but it's as full-featured as they come. Acrobat Connect gives you two options for audio conferencing: VoIP and a bridge number for teleconferencing. The bridge number is probably going to be your best bet; the audio wasn't nearly as clear as WebEx or GoToMeeting.

Acrobat Connect works as a total collaborative environment by offering seamless white boarding and document editing to all participants (at the presenter's discretion). This functionality is not particular to Adobe's product, but the feel is. Multiple participants can mark up a whiteboard, and the same tools can also be used to annotate any shared content. Of all the online meeting solutions we tried, Adobe's whiteboard and markup tools worked the smoothest, owing to the company's ownership of Flash and its expertise in painting programs. Other tools include chat, shared notes, and file sharing (with a max file size of 10mb).

Acrobat's most novel feature is its custom url capability. When you sign up, you decide on a simplified, easy-to-remember Adobe Connect url for your virtual meeting room (based, for instance, on your name). It's a useful tool for sales professionals. You still decide who can enter your meeting room at the time of your meeting, so you don't have to worry about unwelcome guests. Still, we would have preferred to have password control.

We did run into a few hiccups along the way. Running a meeting between a Mac and a Vista-based PC, we had no problem taking control of the PC with the Mac, but could not take control of the Mac with the PC (something that may owe to the Mac's more stringent firewall). Using the annotation tools on the Mac, we lost our meeting controls when those controls were on a second screen.

For basic meeting functionality no download is required. As with most services we reviewed, a download is necessary for advanced functions like screen sharing. Acrobat Connect runs on any computer or mobile device that uses Flash.

Overall, we think Adobe Acrobat Connect is a fun, fluid, and intuitive meeting program. Adobe will even let you try it out free for fifteen days. We would love to have meeting scheduling and password control, but those aren't big marks against the product given its enormous collaborative features. Provided that you're not looking for a VoIP meeting solution, Acrobat Connect gets our recommendation.

Dimdim Review: Online MeetingGo to Site | Back to Chart

Dimdim is an extremely affordable online meeting solution at $19.00 per month for 50 participants (two of which can broadcast webcams). Those who don't need all the bells and whistles can even use a stripped-down free version. Dimdim differentiates itself with its social media integration and easy branding options. This makes it an excellent choice for those who are looking to use online meeting tools to build their brand.

Dimdim allows conference scheduling through a web interface. When you do, it creates a schedule widget that you can share on MySpace, Facebook, Microsoft Live, Wordpress, Twitter, and other blogs and social networking sites. This is a great feature for salespeople or those who give small web seminars. It's one of the things that sets Dimdim apart.

Dimdim also offers you a choice between passworded entry to meetings or a lobby function where you grant access to participants as they request entrance. We really like having this choice.

There's whiteboarding functionality with Dimdim, so you can illustrate ideas. Other participants can also work on the whiteboard. Dimdim does not allow for annotation on your screen share, so you can only use the drawing tools on uploaded material or on the dedicated whiteboard. As for the uploaded material, you're limited to PDFs and PPT docs.

Our only real complaint about Dimdim is a noticeable lag where audio and video were concerned. Broadcasting to just one computer, there was a one-second delay on the video, even though the motion was incredibly smooth and we could see a good amount of detail. Dimdim offers you extensive control over the video quality settings, though we were never able to mitigate the delay.

Dimdim records the audio and video of your meeting (though not the screen sharing). When your meeting is over, you receive an email with links to view and/or download the video and the chat transcripts. The recorded video is a flash file, and while not as good as the broadcast video, the audio isn't bad. Still, don't expect to be able to get a lot of visual detail out of the playback.

All-in-all, Dimdim is a nice product at a great price. Those that already use social networks to communicate with clients or customers will appreciate the widgets. Given the audio and video delays, it's probably better for presentation work than collaborative meetings wtih a lot of back-and-forth.

Fuze Meeting Review: Online MeetingGo to Site | Back to Chart

Call Wave's Fuze Meeting sets itself apart from the rest of the pack by specializing in "high definition" content sharing. And it does so at a reasonable price; at $29.00 a month, it's cheaper than its big name competitors. There's also a money-saving annual subscription plan, as well as a pay-as-you-go option.

Fuze sells itself on its HD content sharing, something it accomplishes by allowing you to upload your content in advance of your meeting. While many online meeting services offer this, Fuze makes it a central part of its offering, giving you 2 Gigabytes of online storage for this purpose. Fuze accepts all kinds of content including MS Word docs, PowerPoint presentations, Excel Sheets, JPEGs, MOVs, WMVs, MP3s, and more.

We shared a powerpoint meeting, which worked fairly well except for some hiccups that sent some participants back to the beginning of the presentation. But Fuze is meant for multimedia, so we uploaded a 480p high definition animated film. The movie played very well, and we were able to stop the video, mark it up using the annotation tools, then skip through to the frames we marked up. You can upload as much as 2 gigabytes worth of content (or more with an upgrade), besting the file sharing capabilities of the other services we tried. For those collaborating on multi-media, Fuze is the best option. Not only can you view media and make annotations, you can zoom into a pretty amazing level of detail without losing resolution.

Fuze has recently incorporated a number of improvements to its contact management system, and has built-in support for putting meeting or webinar invites on Facebook or Twitter. Also improved is the meeting archiving, which allows you to send links to password-controlled meeting recaps. While meetings aren't recorded, all the materials, including any mark-ups are available for viewing. Shared videos can also be downloaded (although the mark-ups are only available through the online meeting interface). Fuze runs on any computer that runs Flash, and only requires a software download if you want to utilize screen sharing. Fuze also offers a novel iPhone app that allows you to connect to a Fuze teleconference, see your meeting schedule, and even watch the host's screen share. It's a neat idea, and the execution is not bad either. You cannot view all of the uploaded media, but we could see the desktop of the host computer and were able to zoom in on an Excel sheet on the host's desktop. It's not seamless, and the refresh of the iPhone screen can be a little choppy. It's also worth noting that we were on Wi-Fi, not AT&T's 3G network. However, it's better than nothing if you're stuck somewhere without a computer.

Fuze also has a great calling function that it calls "fetch." Just click on a participant's name and Fuze will call that person, patching it in to your teleconference when the participant picks up. Ostensibly it allows you to have the meeting on Fuze's dime, so to speak, since participants don't have to call the toll-charge number. Those who regularly schedule meetings with people who 'forget' to call in will realize it serves a more useful function: pestering the perpetually late.

So, what does Fuze lack? There's no support for webcam or VoIP, so you'll be using the provided teleconference numbers. And, while you can mark-up any uploaded docs, there's no remote collaborative features, so participants can't make actual edits to documents being screen-shared.

Fuze is not going to be the solution for everyone, but for some individuals it will be perfect. Anyone who collaborates on multimedia projects such as video, graphic design, or advertising will find it invaluable.

GoToMeeting Review: Online MeetingGo to Site | Back to Chart

GoToMeeting is $49.00 per month for 15 users, one of the highest cost-per-participant online meeting providers we reviewed. It's not as fully fleshed-out as some others, and lacks whiteboarding, webcam, filesharing, and other collaborative functions. It's best to think of GoToMeeting as a web-enabled teleconference system. Mac users should consider another option as the Mac version lacks some of the PC version's functionality, such as recording and specific screen-sharing options. It's also worth noting that the GoToMeeting site crashed our Mac Firefox browser whenever we tried to log into a meeting.

Unlike most other online meeting solutions, GoToMeeting requires a software download for even its most basic services (for both presenters and participants). The download took less than a minute and was easily installed. The user interface is nice, and much smoother than GoToMeeting's flash-based competitors. The software controls the meeting and allows you to set up a conference, including start-time, password protection, and audio preferences. There are two options for the latter, VOIP or a teleconference bridge number.

Audio using the built-in VoIP was great: very clear and responsive. Screen sharing was also pretty nice. Giving control to another user was fast and easy. We liked how smoothly the attendee could move windows around on the host's computer. These are GoToMeeting's strengths.

If you're primarily looking for VoIP conferencing with augmented screen sharing, GoToMeeting is an excellent choice. Those who make a lot of outside sales calls should consider that the software download may put some people off. If Webex is the Rolls Royce of online meeting solutions, GoToMeeting is the Chevy Truck: a robust, no-frills product meant to do a few things well.

Yugma Review: Online MeetingGo to Site | Back to Chart

Yugma is the cheapest online meeting solution we reviewed. In fact, there's a basic free version that you can use for as long as you want. It will be ok for casual users, but lacks some of the functionality of the $14.95-per-month Pro version. With both versions you can meet with 20 people, but only the pro version gives you features such as white boarding and file sharing. Unfortunately, Yugma is a bit cumbersome to use and lacks many special features of its costlier competitors.

Like other online meeting solutions, a software download is optional, but necessary if you want true interactivity. Our participants had a lot of trouble downloading the Yugma client. Once they did, the process of connecting was also unbearably slow, taking longer to establish a connection than any other meeting software we used. The software sometimes seems to work at odds with the website itself, particularly where scheduling was concerned.

Yugma does boast a nice user interface, though we found some functions (particularly "start" and "stop") to be counter-intuitive. The file sharing process was also extremely sluggish. Yugma's white board features were cumbersome, compared to Adobe Connect and Fuze, making for rather jerky lines. There's also no webcam support.

We did like how easy it was to give desktop control, and while it was a bit choppy, it worked well enough to add some text to an Excel spreadsheet. You would not want to do much more than that, as there's quite a bit of latency.

Yugma is definitely the low-cost leader in this space, and if you only want the very basics there's also the free option (which includes a free, two-week evaluation of the paid product that we reviewed). Although even there we would probably recommend Dimdim's free service over Yugma.'s While we didn't have much success running a meeting with multiple clients, it worked fine running an unscheduled meeting between two computers. Still, if cost is not your main concern, we suggest you look for a different solution.

Voxwire Review: Online MeetingGo to Site | Back to Chart

Voxwire offers an average-priced online meeting solution. Starting at $39.00 per month it seems to have pretty good offerings: VoIP, multiple webcams, file sharing, chat, and screen sharing. The VoIP even worked pretty well. But we find it hard to justify the price for the service. So, what's not to like?

Voxwire runs right in your browser, requiring only the download of a system extension for screen sharing. Unfortunately the simplicity of working in the browser is belied by a confusing jumble of nested windows in a claustrophobic frame set. There are a number of different layouts to choose from, and even a custom option, but the windows are hard to juggle. Worse, you're locked into a screen-viewing aspect ratio that's more in line with the square CRT monitors of five years ago than the widescreens of today. It really is frustrating as it forces a cramped, cut-off view of the presenter's screen.

Further complicating things, each little module has its own preference menu. In general Voxwire required more fiddling than any other service we used. Video was particularly difficult to configure. Moving in and out of widescreen mode caused our video panel and other controls to disappear. Also, during our group testing with eight participants, two users had their browsers crash.

It's not all bad news for Voxwire. The audio on the VoIP was pretty responsive, and the refresh rate for the screen sharing was on the same level or slightly better than the competition (though it slowed considerably with more users). It also allows a number of webcams to connect. We also liked the ability to set a password for a meeting.

Still, for the price, we would have to recommend Adobe Acrobat Connect. It simply works better and has a far more attractive and intuitive UI.