GoToMeeting on iPad
GoToMeeting is the most practical and easiest way to be present at online events – and now you can take it to go! Download the free app and be a part of online conference on your iPad in a few moments just by hitting the weblink in your invitation e-mail. View presentations, style mockups, excel spreadsheets, reports – whatever conference speakers discuss on-screen.
GoToMeeting has superior video quality than other systems out there – and it has little to do with quality as that is mostly about information and hosting server potential, but rather its efficient auto-adjustment of it video streaming quality.
Features
– Be present at online events wherever you are – at no cost.
– Be a part of events by just hitting a weblink in an email.
– View demonstrations, mockups and reviews – whatever the speaker shares on-screen.
– Touch-to-zoom-content capability.
– Change between portrait and landscape.
– See who is organizer, who is presenting and who else is participating.
– Get connected to audio through your iPad or using your phone.
How to join a meeting?
You do not need to purchase an account to use GoToMeeting on iPad. Download the free GoToMeeting app. Follow below methods to be a part of a meeting:
– Open the weblink in the invitation e-mail and then follow the instructions.
– Tap the GoToMeeting daisy icon on your iPad and fill-in the Meeting ID provided by the meeting organizer.
Upon joining, you’ll automatically get connected to audio through your internet connection.
– Use the mic and speakers in your iPad.
– Connect earphones into your iPad.
– Switch in to the business contact using your cellphone.
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Want to host a meeting?
GoToMeeting app allows you to use your iPad to join meetings organized on a Mac or PC by anyone with a GoToMeeting account.
Use GoToMeeting to organize your meetings.
Fuze Meeting vs. GoToMeeting
Fuze Meeting:
Fuze allows conducting live meeting from any web browser. Its intuitive user interface is easy to understand and doesn’t require user to download or install additional software. All that is required is a phone line and a flash-enabled web browser.
Has a simple user-interface along with reliable performance. Has instant messenger platform that works with popular chat clients. User can easily import contacts.
Key Points:
– Audio quality and video conferencing worked exceptionally well during our tests.
– It is easier to use both for host and attendees. However, its mobile application is less intuitive than its desktop application.
– It has good collaboration tools; however, some lacking features really counts on its usability.
– Had strong presence under presentation category.
– Has mobile apps for iOS and Android devices. Users can join a meeting that is already in progress from their iPhone. However, the iPhone software application is not as intuitive as its desktop version.
– Price to value ratio not as strong as GoToMeeting. It charges for basic features like recording and extra audio minutes.
– No meeting recording feature for Personal and Plus plan. Need to upgrade to Professional plan ($69/month) to use this feature.
– Doesn’t have reliable and built-in VOIP feature and is in beta phase. Whereas, GoToMeeting has excellent VOIP feature, thus helping users save a lot of money over long distance calls.
– Have limited annotation tools that don’t work on all devices (iPad, iPhone and Android) and also not during screen sharing. Furthermore, it doesn’t work when another participant takes control of the meeting.
GoToMeeting:
GoToMeeting allows you to meet, present and collaborate with up to 25 people – so as to increase work productivity. Users can participate in meetings from their desktops, iPhone/iPad or Android devices.
It is one of the top choices for many meeting participants because it is superior in certain aspects and it also works very well with particular preferences.
Key Points:
– Usability: Best reliability along-with fastest performance. Supports both PC and Mac.
– Audio and video performances were solid. Brings best-in-class conferencing to online meetings.
– Presentation features: Great presentation features especially when on Windows machines.
– Collaboration features: It’s again our top pick in collaboration category. Its great annotation tools give clarity to the presentation along-with providing ease in passing control to other attendees.
– Mobile features: Attend meeting from any iPad, iPhone, or Android device, however, the mobile clients are somewhat limited. GoToMeeting has said more features are coming soon.
– Lovely presentation features, especially on windows machines.
– Users can attend meeting from any iPad, iPhone or Android device.
Compare Online Meeting Software:
| Online Meeting Service | Fuze Meeting |  GoToMeeting |
| Pricing |
– $29 (Personal Plan) – $49 (Plus Plan) – $69 (Professional Plan) |
$49/month. First Month Free. |
| Ratings | ||
| Usability |  |
 |
| Call Quality and Features |  |
 |
| Video Quality and Features |  |
 |
| Collaboration Features |  |
 |
| Presentation Features |  |
 |
| Mobile Clients |  iOS/Android |
 iOS/Android |
| Free Trial |  14 Days Free |
 30 Days Free |
| Standard Meeting Capacity |
– 25 attendees |
25 attendees |
| Desktop Sharing |  |
 |
| Meeting Recording |  only on Professional plan |
 Windows Media |
| 24/7 Support |  |
 |
| Overall Rating: |  |
 |
| Fuze Meeting Review | GoToMeeting Review |
Google Hangouts vs GoToMeeting
Google Hangouts:
It is latest online meeting feature from Google. It’s extremely user-friendly and fun to use. Only requires a plug-in installation for the first time and then users can start using it. Each session holds up to 10 people using video.
Key Points:
– It’s not a business-specific tool unlike GoToMeeting, Microsoft Lync and Webex.
– Audio quality and video streaming, although stalled sometimes, worked well during testing.
– Presentation features: Users can’t share presentations but have to have to upload presentations them YouTube in order to share with participants.
– Collaboration features: It lost its point here as it isn’t as accessible towards other tools. Compared to it, GoToMeeting annotation tools gives clarity to your presentation.
– No native mobile applications, at time of this review.
GoToMeeting:
GoToMeeting allows you to meet, present and collaborate with up to 25 people – so as to increase work productivity. Users can participate in meetings from their desktops, iPhone/iPad or Android devices.
Key Points:
– Usability: Best reliability along-with fastest performance. Supports both PC and Mac
– Audio and video performances were solid. There were no disruptions at all.
– Presentation features: Great presentation features especially when on Windows machines.
– Collaboration features: It’s again our top pick in collaboration category. The annotation tools give clarity to the presentation.
– Mobile features: Attend meeting from any iPad, iPhone, or Android device, however, the mobile clients are somewhat limited. GoToMeeting has said more features are coming soon.
Compare Online Meeting Software
| Online Meeting Service | Google Hangouts | GoToMeeting |
| Pricing | Free to use | $49 First Month Free |
| Ratings | ||
| Usability |  |
 |
| Call Quality and Features |  |
 |
| Video Quality and Features |  |
|
| Collaboration Features |  |
|
| Presentation Features | |
 |
| Mobile Clients | |
 iOS/Android |
| Free Trial | Free to use |  30 Days Free |
| Standard Meeting Capacity | 10 users with video | 15 attendees |
| Desktop Sharing |  |
|
| Meeting Recording |  |
Windows Media |
| 24/7 Support | |
|
| Overall Rating: | |
|
| Google Hangouts Review | GoToMeeting Review |
Microsoft Lync vs. Webex
Microsoft Lync:
Microsoft’s latest online meeting service is ‘Lync Online’. Either buy it in a bundle with Microsoft Office 365 or purchase it as a stand-alone product (Microsoft Lync Server) .
However, the purchase options for Lync are confusing unlike WebEx Meeting Center Plans. Also, there is no way to purchase its stand-alone subscription for cloud service. The meetings can’t be recorded either (until unless Lync Server is purchased).
Key Points:
– Microsoft Lync Online is decent for those who are deeply entrenched into Microsoft’s software ecosystem.
– Audio quality, video conferencing and desktop sharing worked well during testing.
– Its user-interface has considerably improved over the time, and is much easier to use than its previous versions. However, it’s not as user-friendly as WebEx Meeting Center and other dedicated online meeting services.
– Collaboration features: It lost its point here as it isn’t as accessible towards other tools. Compared to it, WebEx annotation tools gives clarity to your presentation.
– Presentation features: Being integrated into Microsoft’s Office suite, it’s easy to share powerpoint and other documents.
– No native mobile applications, at time of this review.
WebEx Meeting Center
WebEx has been the de facto choice for enterprise web conferencing software from the past 10 years. It is now most preferred online meeting product from Cisco for small business.
Meeting Center has mobile apps for iOS, Android, and Blackberry. The standard version has ample and decent capacity.
WebEx Meeting Center scores significantly on its interface, layout, feature rich packages and security.
Key Points:
– WebEx has feature-rich web conferencing application. Annotation tools, Meeting options, Change Presenters, Whiteboard, Chat, Outlook integration, Recording, Selective application & file sharing makes it for some great features.
– It has a dedicated audio network that improves the sound quality and reliability significantly.
– Video conferencing looked perfect in our tests. Even the desktop sharing showed why it is known to bring best-in-class video conferencing experience.
– Collaboration features make it a preferred choice for team projects.
– Presentation controls were both easy to use and powerful.
– WebEx Meeting Center is a leader in mobile with native apps for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry. The mobile app, usage is equally convenient and hassle free.
Let’s take a sneak peak evaluating the two applications. WebEx Meeting Center scores healthier on all essential parameters, a clear representation of Most Preferred Meeting Center available in the current set up.
Microsoft Lync vs. WebEx Meeting Center:
| Online Meeting Service | Microsoft Lync | WebExMeetingCenter |
| Pricing | – $24/per user per month, First month free | $24/month, Upto 8 people |
| Ratings | ||
| Usability |  |
 |
| Call Quality and Features | |
 |
| Video Quality and Features | |
|
| Collaboration Features |  |
|
| Presentation Features | |
|
| Mobile Clients |  |
 iOS/Android/Blackberry |
| Free Trial | 30 days free |
14 days |
| Standard Meeting Capacity | 250 users | 25 attendees |
| Desktop Sharing | |
|
| Meeting Recording | |
Proprietary |
| 24/7 Support | |
|
| Overall Rating: | |
|
| Microsoft Lync Review | Meeting Center Review | |
If Don Draper Worked Today
I found this infographic on the Citrix website. It’s cool to compare workplaces from different eras.
Web Conferencing on Mobile Devices
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Discover which web conferencing services offer mobile clients.
The growth of mobile devices and applications has exploded over the last five years. In fact, some experts are predicting that more people will access the web on mobile devices by the year 2015, than with desktop computers.
This technological shift has changed everything. Making products and services available on mobile devices is a top priority for every company. It’s no surprise that leading web conferencing companies are investing millions of dollars, and dedicating their best employees to their mobile products.
Web conferencing and mobile go together like peanut butter and jelly. One of the primary reasons people and organizations gravitate to web conferencing software is mobility. What good is a remote office or offsite meeting if you’re shackled to your desk?
When evaluating web conferencing services it’s paramount to consider their mobile products. Even if mobile meeting applications aren’t important to you, chances are you will have a vendor, customer, or employee who will want to participate from their mobile device.
Web Conferencing Services with Mobile Clients
Here’s a list of top web conferencing services that offer mobile software clients, including device compatibility:
| Vendor | iOS | Android | Blackberry |
| GoToMeeting | Yes | Yes | No |
| WebEx | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Adobe Connect | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Fuze Meeting | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Join.me | Yes | Yes | No |
| iMeet | Yes | No | No |
| Microsoft Lync | No | No | No |
| Skype | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| AnyMeeting | No | No | No |
| Intercall | Yes | Yes | Yes |
As you can see, the big three (GoToMeeting, WebEx Meeting Center, and Adobe Connect) all offer mobile clients on the most popular smartphone platforms. As you might expect, these mobile clients are stripped down compared to their desktop counterparts.
Meeting Attendees
As a meeting attendee, your mobile meeting experience will be similar to the desktop (just smaller). You can use your mobile device to dial-in to the teleconference, or use your WiFi connection for audio, so you don’t use your mobile minutes.
Once you’re logged in, you can view the desktop or presentation of the meeting organizer. You can chat with other attendees, and collaborate.
Meeting Organizers
If you’re a meeting organizer, we recommend sticking with the desktop clients (for now). The mobile web conferencing clients lack features you need to share your screen, record meetings, and control the meeting.
If you just need a simple teleconference, without the need for screen sharing, the mobile client works well.
Let People Know You’re Mobile
If you haven’t done so already, make sure you test out the mobile client for your online meeting provider. This will help you know the capabilities and limitations on each platform. Once you’re up to speed, let your clients, partners, and vendors know they can connect to the meeting from any device, they’ll appreciate the flexibility.
GoToMeeting vs. WebEx – Customer Satisfaction
When we review online meeting services we go out of our way to measure and evaluate vendors objectively. When we’re comparing features side by side, this is easy to do. But measuring subjective things like audio/video quality, reliability, and customer support is a lot harder to measure.
How You Measure is More Important Than What You Measure
Who has the highest customer satisfaction – GoToMeeting or WebEx? See who came out ahead in our showdown.
To maintain our objectivity, we go outside of our labs to survey and interview other users. We diligently research and analyze other websites and publications too.
For example, if you were to measure customer service based on your own experience, you wouldn’t have enough data to rate the service. I could call GoToMeeting, talk to one of their top customer support reps, and rate them exceptional. I may call WebEx, talk to one of their reps on the firing block, and rate their service as terrible. These two isolated incidents don’t necessarily reflect the overall quality of their customer support and satisfaction.
How We Measure Customer Satisfaction
Here’s an overview of the 4-step process we use to evaluate customer support and satisfaction for online meeting providers:
- We follow each brand on Twitter using Hootsuite. We monitor tweets and evaluate responses from each web conferencing vendor.
- We read and analyze other website reviews.
- We subscribe to online meeting forums, blogs, and social media sites to monitor and analyze conversations about each company.
- Personal experience
As you can see, this process is not difficult, but it takes a lot of time to cull all of those sources and do meaningful analysis.
Customer Satisfaction Showdown: GoToMeeting vs. WebEx
We recently re-evaluated all of the online meeting services on this site. We used our reliable four-step process to measure each vendor. We also added some new tools to our arsenal to improve our measurements and analysis. Here’s a breakdown of our latest evaluation:
We follow GoToMeeting and WebEx on Twitter. We see the good, the bad, and the mundane tweets about each company. We also monitor the replies to see how each company responds.
1. Twitter Winner – GoToMeeting
GoToMeeting's Social Media team is quick to respond to customer comments – both good and bad.
GoToMeeting has an active social media presence. They have a small team of dedicated personnel handling support and customer service on Twitter. When people reach out for help, somebody from the team is there to respond within minutes (in most cases). When customers express trouble or dissatisfaction, GoToMeeting doesn’t shy away – even when their customers are grumpy about something.
GoToMeeting’s tweets are not automated. They’re handcrafted and curated by their social media team.
From what we’ve observed, WebEx also has a dedicated team handling their Twitter account. They use their Twitter persona to respond to customer support issues, promote their product, and share web conferencing tips and ideas. WebEx has an active blog, and they’re constantly sharing useful and interesting content on Twitter.
The WebEx social media team is also actively monitoring customer mentions on Twitter. We’ve seen them provide excellent support and service, however, their response time lags when compared to GoToMeeting. We’ve also noted that some customer support and tweets go unanswered. We’ve also noted that they’re not as likely to respond to a customer who has expressed dissatisfaction.
WebEx appears to use a combination of humans and robots to handle their Twitter account. For example, we’ve seen promotional tweets go out on the weekend and during non-business hours (suggesting a tweet bot), but their support goes dormant during these times.
While neither social media team is perfect, both are head and shoulders above other online meeting vendors. In this particular showdown, we give the edge to GoToMeeting.
2. Website Reviews Winner – GoToMeeting (by a slight margin)
Finding objective reviews of online meeting services is a challenge. Whether we like to admit it or not, every publisher suffers from bias. Sometimes bias comes from personal experience (not objective). In other cases bias comes from advertiser/vendor relationships. Therefore, one must take each individual review with a grain of salt, and aggregate them to come up with an overall score. It’s also important to read comments and discussion from the website’s user community.
In the reviews that we analyzed, 2/3 of the sites rated GoToMeeting higher than WebEx. Our sources included PC Magazine, Top10 Reviews, Cnet, MacWorld, and others. We noted that many of the reviews were very close. In fact, many of the reviews were within a half a point.
GoToMeeting’s victory was not as decisive in this category, but they still came out ahead.
3. Social Media and Community Winner – GoToMeeting
We use Amplicate and Google to determine overall sentiment and customer satisfaction for online meeting services.
Measuring opinions on community and social websites is particularly difficult. First, you have to understand the context behind the post, tweet, or status update. Once you understand the context, you must quantify it as either a positive or negative experience with the company.
In addition to our own research, we use a free tool called Amplicate, which measures love/hate opinions across social media websites. Their algorithm is simplistic, but it’s able to analyze 1000x more data than than our editors .
According to Amplicate, 77% of people “love” GoToMeeting and 59% “hate” WebEx. These scores are based on hundreds of individual social network messages. Amplicate views the world in black and white (or love/hate). Because it’s an algorithm, it doesn’t interpret results with 100% accuracy.
Another way to analyze customer satisfaction is with Google. By typing in queries like “GoToMeeting problem” (491 results) or “WebEx problem” (1,140 results) you can see how many search result pages are returned that include these phrases. Conversely, if you search for “Love GoToMeeting” (1,440 results) and “Love WebEx” (749 results) you can see how many people have mentioned each service in a positive context. As you can see from these results, GoToMeeting has fewer complaints, and more love than WebEx.
4. Personal Experience Winner – GoToMeeting
As real customers of both services, we have personal experiences worth sharing.
The first thing worth noting is the accessibility of customer support. If you visit GoToMeeting’s support website, you will notice two big buttons – one for phone support, and another for live chat. Their support desk is available 24/7.
If you go to the WebEx support website, you will see plenty of help desk articles, and a help ticket submission system, but no phone number or live chat.
Our experiences with both support teams was positive, but we give GoToMeeting the edge because of their accessibility (easy to find support, and 24/7 availability).
Customer Satisfaction and Support Conclusion
Grading subjective factors like customer support and customer satisfaction isn’t easy. In fact, some may disagree with our methodology. But if you apply the same measurement standards and criteria to each service, patterns start to emerge. In our testing, GoToMeeting came out ahead in all four tests.
Resources:
GoToMeeting Review | WebEx Review
GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar Open Up APIs
GoToMeeting with HDFaces. Try it free.
Citrix’s popular online collaboration products (GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar) now offer an open API to third party developers. The software was previously closed, with the exception of a handful of premier partners and large corporate customers. By opening its platform to the development community, Citrix is likely to see a new wave of innovation with its products. Continue reading
Remote Working – More Important than Money?
Most new workers would rather work remotely, than make more money.
Ask an employer what the most important factors for choosing a job, and you’ll get a variety of answers. The most obvious ones are competitive salary, performance/bonus pay, health/retirement benefits, and a comfortable working environment. But for college grads and young workers new to the work force, there’s something even more important – the flexibility to work from anywhere!
Cisco recently published an infographic highlighting the new “workplace currencies”. They interviewed hundreds of college grads and young workers from around the world. Here are some interesting facts from the survey:
- 3 out of 5 young workers said they want to work remotely with a flexible schedule.
- 7 out of the 10 people surveyed said the think going into the office regularly is unnecessary.
- 1 out of 4 people felt their productivity increased working outside of the office.
What’s most interesting to me is the paradox that a majority of people surveyed wanted to work remotely, but only 1 out of 4 felt like their productivity would increase from home. I’m not sure this helps their case for a remote working arrangement.
In 2011, the concept of “the office” has changed. A generation ago it was unthinkable for office employees to work remotely. The tools and technology didn’t exist for them to produce and stay connected to the team. But now that we have tools like cloud storage, broadband Internet, laptops, and smartphones, working remotely is more feasible, and in many ways more cost effective.
A business can realize significant cost savings with a mobile workforce. Imagine being able to lease/buy a smaller office (or no office). Utilities would certainly shrink. You wouldn’t have to stock the fridge with as much food and drink. But most important, you would be able to tout remote working as a benefit.
Before setting up your mobile office, you need to carefully plan what tools, technologies, and services your company will need. Furthermore, you’ll need to create some processes and boundaries for your remote work force.
Here are some quick tips for setting up a mobile office:
- Use cloud-based email and file storage. My favorite is Google Apps. They offer plans from either $5/mo per user, or $50/user per year (almost a 20% savings). They also offer a free plan with less storage and no support. Cloud-based email and document storage eliminates the need for a dedicated server and IT professional.
- Use web conferencing software for collaboration – There’s no need for everybody to drive down to the office for a meeting. With modern web conferencing applications, you can whiteboard, chat, video-conference, and collaborate from the convenience of your home. You can also record meetings, so that team members who missed the live meeting, or didn’t take good notes, can refer back to the online meeting.
- Use reliable laptops and smartphones – One of the interesting notes from Cisco’s survey was that workers preferred to choose their own hardware. If you’re a small business on a shoestring budget, you can encourage workers to use their own devices. According to the survey, most workers would prefer this. If that’s not an option, just make sure you invest in good hardware and software. To make your life even easier, buy everybody the same models. This will eliminate calling a dozen different hardware and software vendors when issues arise.
These are just a few quick tips for setting up a remote office, but as you can see it’s not that difficult. As technology and mobility continue to improve, expect more of your workers to want this kind of flexibility.
Here’s the infographic created from the Cisco survey.
Project Nirvana with GoToMeeting Workspaces
Online meetings have always worked well for synchronous projects and communication, but what happens when everyone can’t be at the same meeting at the same time?
Citrix GoToMeeting understands the challenges facing project collaborators, and is looking to solve the problem with GoToMeeting Workspaces. Continue reading
