Cheap Web Conferencing
Are you looking for a way to reduce company expenses on offsite
meetings? Want to utilize the company’s meeting budget on production
instead? Then why not choose cheap web conferencing?
Web conferencing
provides an alternative means to conducting important corporate meetings and
training seminars. And with more and more businesses wanting to reduce the cost
of travel, low cost web conferencing is fast becoming the means to conducting
meetings with employees, customers, clients, and partners.
Web
conferencing is a time saving, cost effective tool for use in several aspects
of business. Whether it is for training, sales presentations, distance
learning, or quarterly meetings, web conferencing is good means to reducing
corporate costs. Cheap web conferencing allows businesses to meet with key
personnel in their many departments situated in different parts of the country
or the world without having the leave the relative comfort of the office.
Instead of flying to a hotel in a city where the company headquarters are, you
can just sit in front of your computer at your desk and attend a virtual
meeting via the Internet.
The term “web conferencing”
refers to a form of discussion that is conducted online providing you with a
way to meet with the staff, discuss new projects, make sales presentations, and
exchange real-time communication with business partners, resulting in increased
productivity and faster decision-making. Utilizing various media in order to
improve communications, web conferencing applications let you take advantage of
the benefits of audio, video, and interactive polling and graphical options in
order to present information in an organized way that is conducive to learning.
Participants communicate with each other through their computers via
one or all of the following:
- Posted text messages (forums, message boards, or bulletins)
- Instant messages (real-time chat)
- Video feeds
- Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
- File sharing, desktop collaboration, co-browsing, etc.
Because the meeting is virtual, meaning that it is entirely
conducted on the web via computer, there is no longer any need to leave the
office in order to attend it. Inexpensive web conferencing is quickly replacing
face-to-face meetings and businesses are beginning to follow this trend in an
effort to reduce travel costs.
Web web conferencing exhibits its
advantages not only in meetings but in other aspects of the business as well.
The training of employees for instance can be made easier with the use
of low cost web conferencing. Reaching out to colleagues, customers, and
clients has been made simpler with the introduction of cheap web conferencing
into the market. Using its application or desktop sharing feature, web
conferencing allow presenters to walk guests through the operation of any
software application, including those that are web-based. Remote features allow
presenters to relinquish control to users so they can work remotely within the
application which is good since the more hands-on the training is, the more
conducive it is to learning. Online training with the aid of cheap web
conferencing helps reduce travel costs and optimize productivity.
The
reach of your sales team can be extended even as you reduce the cost of travel.
Cheap web conferencing offers you that advantage, allowing your sales team to
give multiple daily presentations without leaving the office. With the use of
PowerPoint presentations, you can unlock a virtual conference room and make
your pitch to potential clients online.
Distance learning is also
another aspect which economical web conferencing directly affects. With web
conferencing, you can reach out to students across the globe using the virtual
classroom. PowerPoint options lets you create a lesson plan and import in into
the online classroom. You can also utilize the Whiteboard feature of most
conferencing tools as a blackboard to display course work.
"Cheap" doesn’t always mean "Affordable"
In theory,
web conferencing software is a great money saving concept and allows you to
save a bundle on business travel and yet, still keep far-flung clients and
employees engaged and up to speed. But the problem with web conferencing
software these days is that because it is still a relatively new concept with
very little competition, mainstream vendors offer them at steep prices. And
sometimes when you do find the cheapest web conferencing package, it generally
turns out to have very little features so that it hardly seems worthwhile.
The main industry giants in web conferencing are WebEx, Macromedia, and
Microsoft. The software packages they offer have become the standard and
several companies rely on these vendors for their web conferencing packages
despite the steep prices. But most small businesses cannot afford these
expensive solutions.
Affordable Packages
Fortunately,
there are several developers of web conferencing software emerging in the
market that provide cheap web conferencing software alternatives. And, as the
increase in demand has spurred the growth in numbers and the speed with which
software is developed and improved, it is now possible for average businesses
to afford web conferencing technologies.
Now, not only do you have the
industry giants, such as Microsoft, Macromedia, and WebEx dominating the
market, but you also have such companies as Hot Conference, offering their own
two cents to the more affordable web conferencing solutions.
Compare Hot Conference to these companies
|
Company |
Monthly Fee |
Includes |
Each Additional User |
Setup Fee |
|
$49.00 |
10 people |
$0.33/user/minute |
none | |
|
$37.00 |
10 people |
$2.08/person/mo. |
none | |
|
$75.00 |
5 people |
$15 per user |
none | |
|
$200.00 |
25 people |
.15/user/minute |
none | |
|
none |
unlimited |
.30/user/minute |
none | |
|
none |
N/A |
$34/user/month |
none | |
|
$350.00 |
5 people |
$30/user/month |
none | |
|
$399.95 |
10 people |
.50/user/minute |
none | |
|
$19.50 |
3 people |
$3.90/person |
$15.00 | |
|
$49.95 |
10 people |
$0.15/user/minute |
none | |
|
$375.00 |
5 people |
$0.32/user/minute |
none | |
|
$99.00 |
1000 people |
N/A |
none | |
|
|
|
|
$14.99 |
More about Web Conferencing
About Web
Conferencing
It should be noted that web conferencing doesn’t just
mean a real-time online discussion between individuals on the web. It has come
to mean more than that as technology continues to expand.
Benefits of a Web Conferencing
System
Advances in technology and the Internet have brought about the
rapid increase in development of web conferencing systems. So much so that web
conferencing systems are fast replacing email lists in disseminating
information through the web.
How Web Conferencing Works
During web conferencing, each participant of the meeting sits at his own
computer that is connected to others' computers via the Internet. The Internet
therefore serves as the matrix by which the whole web conferencing network
relies on.
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