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).

 
Get Special Pricing For WebEx Meetings
 

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.

 
Get Special Pricing For WebEx Meetings
 

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

 
Get Special Pricing For WebEx Meetings
 

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:

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:

1. We follow each brand on Twitter using Hootsuite. We monitor tweets and evaluate responses from each web conferencing vendor.
2. We read and analyze other website reviews.
3. We subscribe to online meeting forums, blogs, and social media sites to monitor and analyze conversations about each company.
4. 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:

1. 3 out of 5 young workers said they want to work remotely with a flexible schedule.
2. 7 out of the 10 people surveyed said the think going into the office regularly is unnecessary.
3. 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

GoToMeeting HDFaces

One thing that really stands out about GoToMeeting is the quality of their video and audio service. I found this video on Youtube that illustrates just how good GoToMeeting HDFaces is.

As you can see there are no noticeable delays, flickers, or buffering issues with the video.

What is GoToMeeting HDFaces

GoToMeeting realized that face to face interactions are important. It’s one of the main reasons people setup meetings. In the past, web conferencing software consisted of  voice, text, and screen sharing for collaboration. The key component missing from online meetings was faces.

With HDFaces you can share your webcam with meeting attendees. Up to 6 people can share their webcam at the same time. Anyone with a webcam and broadband Internet connection can participate. HDFaces is included with every GoToMeeting package.

The Benefits of GoToMeeting HDFaces

Being able to share your face, and view the faces of other meeting attendees is extremely valuable. There are several compelling reasons to use HD Video in your next web conference:

Selling with a Personal Touch

Ask any salesperson what the most effective sales medium is, and they would say a face to face meeting. Being able to take your prospects to lunch, or meeting with them at their office, allows you to personalize your sales approach. You can customize your sales pitch, and modify your responses, based on the real-time feedback you’re getting from the clients voice and facial expressions.

But what do you do when your client is on the other side of town, another state, or even different country? You could fly out and do your sales pitch, spending thousands of dollars, and wasting valuable time traveling… or you could setup a GoToMeeting with HDFaces.

GoToMeeting HDFaces gives you the same selling advantage that a face to face meeting does. You can instantly see how effective your presentation is by observing your prospects reactions and subtle facial expressions. You can customize your delivery to keep them engaged, and close the sale.

Team Collaboration

One of the biggest benefits of a live meeting is brainstorming and collaborating with your team members. Getting together with your team in a conference room with a whiteboard can help you leverage the strength of your team for solving problems and coming up with new ideas.

But in today’s world, not everybody is in the same location. If you work in a modern organization, chances are you have some employees and consultants working out of the office, and vendors all over the world.

When an organization is so spread out, it’s important for you to have real meetings, where people feel connected to the group. Setting up a web conference is certainly better than group emails, instant messages, and teleconferences, but it’s not as intimate as a face to face meeting.

With GoToMeeting’s HDFaces, you can keep everyone together. It’s easier to engage your team members, and keep them interested in your discussion, when people can see each other. If you’re relying on voices alone, you won’t know if anybody is even paying attention.

What’s Included with GoToMeeting HDFaces

• Share your screen and faces at the same time – Load your screen, and activate your webcam to see how people are reacting to your presentation in real time.
• Smart bandwidth adjustment – GoToMeeting will automatically adjust the quality of the video based on the bandwidth of meeting participants. Even if your on a slow connection, you can still benefit from face to face interaction.
• No extra equipment is needed – All you need is a webcam and an Internet connection. The software doesn’t require any additional configuration – it just works out of the box try this website.
• Organizer controls – You can hide video streams, or request a stream from a meeting participant with a single click. You can mute attendees if there’s too much background noice coming from their location (e.g. a barking dog).
• Secure and encrypted video communications – GoToMeeting protects video streams using the same advanced encryption methods they use for regular meetings. This gives you confidence to speak freely.

Try GoToMeeting HDFaces in Your Next Meeting

Once you’ve experienced a meeting with HDFaces you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it. The personal connections you create through HD Video are almost as good as meeting in person.

Try GoToMeeting

Online Meeting Survey and Infographic

WebEx released an interesting infographic based on a survey of 800 knowledge workers.

WebEx published an interesting infographic this month, illustrating the “irony of meetings“. When done correctly, meetings can be effective for collaboration, sharing, and brainstorming. But when meetings get out of control, they waste time and cause frustration.

WebEx created the infographic based on a survey of 800 workers. Here are some of the most interesting findings:

We Say We Don’t Like Meetings, But Spend a lot of Time in Meetings

9 out of 10 workers prefer to interact in any other way than meetings. Yet we spend more time in meetings than any other form of interaction. We spend more time interacting in meetings than email, telephone, social media, and IM.

What People Don’t Like About Meetings

Common reasons people don’t like meetings include: Nothing getting accomplished, lack of a clear agenda, and the needed people not attending the meeting.

What People Like About Meetings

Despite these annoyances, people do find meetings helpful for some things. For example, people feel that meetings are good for: getting or sharing important information, brainstorming and problem solving, and building relationships.

What Happens When Meetings Get out of Control

Perhaps the biggest problem with meetings is that it stops us from producing. In fact, because of meeting overload people often stay at the office late to finish work, or end up having to take time to work from home, so they can minimize distractions. It’s no wonder that people have such a strong disdain for meetings.

How to Get the Most out of your Online Meetings

Meetings themselves aren’t bad, it’s meetings done poorly that tend to irk us. Here are some tips for mastering your meetings:

1. Have a Clear Agenda – Don’ even announce the meeting until you have a clear idea of what you want to cover, who you want to attend, and each persons contributions. Make sure that people know what their role in the meeting is too.
2. Use an Online Meeting Service – Don’t make people commute to your meeting, or go out of their way to attend. An online meeting minimizes the time that people spend away from work, keeps distractions to a minimum, and allows you to record the meeting for those who couldn’t attend. Read our reviews of online meeting services.

Summary

There’s no reason meetings have to be a waste of time and productivity. When done correctly, using the right online meeting software, meetings can help you achieve more, connect with others, and come up with better ideas.