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| Best for Large Teams |  |
| Best for Small Teams |  |
| Best for One Time Payment |  |
Okay, you work from home and need to make a video conference call, but do you know which service to use? You are not alone, and there are so many choices. With virtual teams popping up everywhere and collaborating with others using video conferencing on the rise, knowing the best way to share information with one another in a virtual workplace is increasingly important. Let’s face it — a phone call doesn’t always do it these days. Being able to share screens, documents, and video is much more simple, efficient and cheaper through an online meeting than traveling across the country. This also applies to how you interact with clients and even potential new customers. We compare the best video conferencing software and discuss why some of the most recognizable companies may not be the most popular or best online meeting services available.
Adobe Connect Review
| #1 |  |
Our pick for the best online meeting service for large teams is Adobe Connect. It has all the features you are seeking for online meetings, and it comes at a competitive price. We love the endless customization options which include ways to record and measure engagement during and after the meeting. It is not the easiest service to set up, but this powerhouse software isn’t designed as a “one size fits all” solution. There are many tutorials and support services out there to help new users get started with Adobe Connect. However, first-time participants in meetings won’t need any training since the interface is very user-friendly. You can use this for smaller teams too, but for the most part, smaller teams have smaller budgets, so we suggest taking a look at our pick for small teams.
Pros | Cons |
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Pricing
Adobe Connect has three different video conference offerings, and they are all available with a free trial: Meetings, Webinars and Learning.
Adobe Connect Meetings
Adobe Connect Meetings works well for online, digital meetings. Pricing starts at $500/year.
Adobe Connect Webinars
Adobe Connect Webinars are made for marketers.
- 100 Webinar Participants: $1,250/year/webinar manager
- 500 Webinar Participants: $4,500/year/webinar manager
- 1,000 Webinar Participants: $5,500/year/webinar manager
- +1,500 Webinar Participants: Contact Adobe
Adobe Connect Learning
Adobe Connect Learning is great for online classes. Also, Adobe Connect works well on mobile platforms.
- 200 Virtual Classroom Participants: $3,500/year/manager
- +200 Virtual Classroom Participants: Contact Adobe
Google Hangouts Review
| #2 |  |
Google Hangouts is our pick for best video conferencing software for small teams. It is a completely free service that is great for smaller organizations. The web video version is called Google Hangouts and is what our team uses at We Rock Your Web. The clean, organized look of Google Hangouts paired with its simple user interface are just a few of the pros. The biggest issue is that there is a maximum number of 10 devices or users allowed at a time for a meeting, but it works great if you have fewer than 10 devices connecting. Since it is owned by Google, your privacy is always a concern so proceed with caution when sharing sensitive conversations or data. Google Hangout is compatible across many devices and participants can collaborate in other Google features like Google Docs.
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Pricing
- Free
TeamViewer Review
| #3 |  |
TeamViewer takes the best web conferencing service award for one-time payment because it works on all platforms, has an easy setup and is simple to use. Also, it has a one-time payment, so it doesn’t have an ongoing monthly price. It requires a huge investment upfront but the software and services are yours for a lifetime, and there are few complaints about this service. Just make sure everyone has Internet access or has it installed on each device for each participant and your meetings are reported to be flawless. You can even test it out for your personal use before you make the large investment. Team Viewer has the capability to control your work computer from home or vice versa. This is a huge benefit when it comes to those times you leave for home and forgot to edit something in your work document.
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Pricing
- Free for private use
- $809 Business (one-time payment)
- $1,689 Premium (one-time payment)
- $3,599 Corporate (one-time payment)
A Conference Call in Real Life [VIDEO]
Do you ever feel like this on online conference calls? Caution: this video is hilarious. Hopefully, the right video conference software will make your experience more pleasant than this one.
What’s the Best Video Conferencing Software?
Here’s the rest of the online meeting software pack. While they didn’t make our “best of” categories this year, some are viable competitors with unique features that may meet your needs:
AnyMeeting | BlueJeans | Calliflower | Click Meeting | FreeConferenceCall | Fuze | GoToMeeting | InterCall | Join.Me | MeetingBurner | MegaMeeting | RHUB | Skype | StartMeeting | UberConference | WebEx | Zoom
AnyMeeting Review
AnyMeeting is a great choice for all types of companies. With the free basic version, you get the same great perks as the paid version minus the ability to record your meetings. The free version also has ads. The maximum number of attendees is 1,000 for Webinar Pro and a maximum of 30 attendees for Meeting Pro.
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Pricing
- Free for basic version
- Meeting Pro – $18/month or $180/year
- Webinar Pro – starting at $78/month or $780/year
BlueJeans Review
BlueJeans is definitely a unique name for a video conferencing service. Their reasoning behind the name is that they want your video conferencing service to be as comfortable as your favorite pair of jeans. Blue Jeans runs in the cloud, so there is no hardware or software installation. They offer many features, but to get pricing information you’ll have to contact them.
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Pricing
You must contact BlueJeans directly for pricing.
Calliflower Review
Calliflower looks to have thought of everything. Callers can “raise their hand” so they don’t talk over others. You can also mute someone if there’s too much background noise. The dashboard shows who is speaking along with their photo to help you put a face to a name. Although you can share documents via Calliflower there is no video feature so you can’t actually see a person talking, only their photo appears.
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Pricing
Calliflower offers a 14-day free trial.
- Calli-Go: 4.5¢/minute for worldwide calling and 6.9¢/minute for toll-free
- Call500: $9.99/month for 500 worldwide minutes
- Call2000: $29.95/month for 2,000 worldwide minutes
- Call5000: $59.95/month for 5,000 worldwide minutes
If you go over your minutes, you are charged 2.9¢/minute for all plans except Calli-Go.
Click Meeting Review
Click Meeting’s selling point is its ability to hold international meetings. The software incorporated Google Translate, so you can communicate with others even if you aren’t a fluent speaker of the language. However, we all know how great Google Translate is so you may not receive the best translation.
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Pricing
All plans come with a 30-day free trial.
- My Webinars: starting at $25/month
- My Webinars Pro: starting at $35/month
- Enterprise: starting at $165/month
FreeConferenceCall.com Review
FreeConferenceCall.com is not a big name company but promises to do just that, provide free conference calling. There is very little information about them online, which is a concern of ours because that means few people use it. Their website has a minimum amount of information on it. The upside is that their service is free (hence their name). So, if you want to try them out all you have to do is enter your email address and name. If you don’t like it, you can cancel.
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Pricing
Fuze Review
Fuze (previously known as Fuzebox and Thinking Phones) is pretty quiet about what it offers. In previous versions of this article, we had tons of information on Fuze. However, Fuze has changed and with it, the company has stopped being transparent about its offerings. If you know anything about Fuze, let us know!
Pros | Cons |
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Pricing
Pricing is not listed online. You must contact Fuze directly for pricing.
GoToMeeting Review
GoToMeeting from Citrix is great for smaller scale offices that are looking for an easy to use online meeting platform. Starting a meeting takes only one click. Citrix’s GoToMeeting has many great features including screen sharing, keyboard/mouse control, VoIP and drawing tools. The downside is there is no way for attendees to “raise their hands” to ask questions and the meetings require access codes and pins, which opens it up for user error to access a meeting.
Pros | Cons |
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Pricing
All plans come with a 30-day free trial.
- Free for up to 3 attendees
- Starter: $19/month (10 participants)
- Pro: $29/month (50 participants)
- Plus: $49/month (100 participants)
InterCall Review
InterCall’s video conferencing service is called Unified Meeting 5. They also sell Adobe Connect, which is a little confusing. They offer many features, and offer a free trial, although we don’t know how long it is for since it is not listed on InterCall’s website.
Pros | Cons |
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Pricing
All plans come with a 30-day free trial.
- 10 participants: $25/month
- 25 participants: $39/month
- Pay As You Go: $0.17/minute per attendee
join.me Review
Join.me has many great features in its free version. These include the ability to share files, chat and give another participant control of your machine. The ability to screen share from a Mac to a PC or vice versa is a great tool for Join Me as well. This would be a great free choice for smaller offices.
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Pricing
- Free (up to 10 participants)
- Pro: $20/month per user (up to 50 participants)
- Business: $25/month per user (up to 250 participants)
MeetingBurner Review
We used to recommend MeetingBurner for large-scale companies. However, they no longer allow 1,000 people in a meeting, their maximum is 250. The ability to have 1,000 people in a meeting was a great feature that was available in the Premier version but is no longer. It definitely helped differentiate MeetingBurner from the others. You can try a 14-day free trial for the Pro or Premier version before you dedicate any money to Meeting Burner.
Pros | Cons |
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Pricing
Both of the paid plans come with a 14 day free trial.
- Free for basic version with a maximum of 10 people
- Pro: $39.95/month for up to 50 people
- Premier: $99.95/month for up to 250 people
MegaMeeting Review
MegaMeeting is a cloud-based video conferencing solution. So there is no installation needed. You can access a meeting on your browser or Apple and Android smartphone and tablet. They offer many features, but you may have to pay extra for them. If you’re a Mac user, you may not have access to all of the Mega Meeting features.
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Pricing
You must contact MegaMeeting for pricing. Their site does say, “Web & video conferencing plans as low as $39/month.”
R-HUB Review
R-HUB has an actual server that you purchase to use for your web meeting needs. You don’t have to pay the entire lump sum at once, but once you pay the necessary payments, the server is yours. These are extremely expensive, so it’s important that you are set on continuing online meetings, so it’s worth the money you spend. There isn’t tons of information out about R-HUB, so it’s hard for us to justify spending thousands of dollars on something we do not fully understand.
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Pricing
Pricing for RHUB is different from any other company in this article. We suggest looking at their site directly if you are interested in purchasing from them. They do offer a 30-day free trial.
Skype Review
Skype works well for smaller teams needing online video conferencing solutions, but once you get to larger numbers, you may experience some issues. Customers said they had issues with sound since more people means more background noise it became a problem. Skype automatically lowers the volume of other attendees and increases the volume of the speaker. However, if the attendees have a lot of background noise, this can mess up the entire call and make it impossible to hear the speaker.
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Pricing
Skype is free for meetings up to 10 people (up to 3 people after 60 days). Below are the rates for US calls.
- Skype Credit: $0.023/minute
- United States Unlimited mins: $2.99/month
- North America Unlimited mins mobiles and landlines: $6.99/month
- World Unlimited mins: $13.99/month
StartMeeting Review
StartMeeting is a division of FreeConferenceCall and is also vague on its offerings. In the past, Start Meeting has been pretty pricey and had no features that stood out from what we could see. However, we are unable to find pricing on their website currently, so we are unsure if they are still expensive.
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Pricing
Pricing is not listed on StartMeeting’s website.
UberConference Review
UberConference is used by many big name companies like Dropbox, Walgreens and The Weather Channel. They offer help through FAQs, email, phone and live chat. You receive your own dedicated number, so pins aren’t necessary. The screen shows you who is talking, so there’s no confusion on whose voice you’re hearing. Uber Conference may eventually make an appearance in our”best of” categories, but since they are still fairly new (2012) we want to do more research before bumping them up.
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Pricing
- Free for up to 10 participants
- Business: $10/month per participant
WebEx Review
WebEx from Cisco is an affordable choice for smaller-scale companies. The Premium 25 version is their most popular and has a good balance of key features. Web Ex is handy for companies that use multiple different operating systems because it works with Windows, Mac and Linux.
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Pricing
StartMeeting has unlimited free meetings for up to 3 people and offers the premium features free for 14 days.
- Premium 8: $24/month/host or $19/month for the annual plan with a maximum of 8 people
- Premium 25: $49/month/host or $39/month for the annual plan with a maximum of 25 people
- Premium 100: $69/month/host or $49/month for the annual plan with a maximum of 100 people
Zoom Review
Zoom was created by Cisco and WebEx engineers. This cloud service was created to “…improve the quality and effectiveness of communications forever.” This service was created in 2011 and has little user feedback, so it’s hard to decide whether it’s amazing or not.
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Pricing
- Basic: Free
- Pro: $14.99/month/host
- Business: $19.99/month/host
- Enterprise: Contact Sales
What’s the Right Video Conferencing Service for You?
Now that you’ve read about the different features each video conferencing service has to offer, how do you decide which is best for you? Think about what the purpose is for your online meeting. Is it just to touch base with others on a current project? Do you need to share a presentation? Or is it a monthly meeting to update employees about new policies? Different services may be right for you depending on your needs.
What’s your favorite online meeting service and what pros or cons can you share from your experience?
Leave a Reply
65 Comments on "Best Video Conferencing: Join.Me vs GoToMeeting vs WebEx vs BlueJeans vs Zoom vs Skype vs Adobe Connect vs TeamViewer vs UberConference vs AnyMeeting vs Fuze & More!"
Hi, Webex offer remote control, please, this point is very important in comparison.
Hi Kimberly, I work in the industry and notice PGi is not on your list. I would love to give you more info about us for audio, video, web, streaming/webcast/webinar solutions.
We will consider adding PGi in our next update for this article. Thank you!
It would be awesome if you could also compare the bandwidth usage of the various providers we’ve experienced significant difficulty with some of the free providers due to bandwidth hogging especially on mobile devices
Nice review! Where is Vidyo?
We have not heard of Vidyo. We will consider adding the company in a future update of this article.
I agree with you
join.me is the worst.
I work remotely from my company’s office, but I have a virtual presence with my colleagues by using Skype. This uses huge amounts of data though, around 10G per day. Is there an option within Skype/Skype for Business or another web conference application to reduce the video quality when it is not actively being used? Ideally I would want to have a switch that I can throw up for best quality, and down for reduced quality, without affecting the audio quality. Thanks for any help!
Are you in a Skype meeting all day? If you’re not using Skype to meet with someone then you should leave the meeting. Then it won’t use so much data and you don’t have to worry about the video/audio quality while you’re not in a meeting.
As stated, I am in a Skype meeting all day.
What is the best solution for Webinars of 3,000 to 6,000 participants?
Very interesting comparison, but can you please tell if for each application the attendee has to download some software and if this require admin privileges ?
For example, with Join.me the client can join a presentation without installing any software, only Adobe Flash Player is needed.
GoToMeeting you can join from web and no download required.
Great suggestion! We will look into adding that in our next update!
Thanks Kimberly. Have you heard of Business Hangouts? It seems to overcome some of the restrictions of Google Hangouts, but isn’t a Google product itself. I’m wondering if you have any experience with it?
No I haven’t heard of Business Hangouts before. Have you used it yourself? What did you like/dislike about it?
I haven’t used it. I was researching if others had. They seem to use the Google Hangouts API to overcome some of the limitations with Hangouts itself.
Thanks Kimberly for a great article. I have found it very useful to even understand where to start. The number of comments show the value you have provided.
Thank you for the kind words. That is our goal here, to help others out. If you have any questions about video conferencing feel free to ask and we will help in any way possible!
Hi Kimberly – What about BBM Meetings? It actually calls the participant when the meeting starts.
Hi Luke, thanks for the suggestion. We will consider adding BBM Meetings in the next audit of this article!
Everything’s fine but where is ClickMeeting? You don’t like this online meetings platform?
We haven’t done any research on ClickMeeting and in fact, I’ve never heard of the company. We will consider adding them to our article! Thanks for bringing it to our attention!
What is the best solution for Webinars of 50-150 participants?
JoinMe is not free– only for the first 15 days.
Jaime, yes there is a free version of join.me, as well as two paid versions, which are the PRO and BUSINESS. The paid versions have a trial period of 14 days. After this period is chosen to one of three versions. Thank you!
Jaime, to our knowledge at publishing this article there is a free version of Join.me that includes Instant screen sharing and video conferencing with VoIP, the pro version has a free trial but yes there is a monthly subscription after the trial is up! If anything changes, we’ll be sure to update as we try to keep all our articles as up to date as possible. Thanks!
Nicely written.
Under TeamViewer you stated that “Everyone using TeamViewer must have it installed on their device.” I called them today to ask about having to install Teamviewer on user’s devices and the rep stated that meetings can be viewed on a web browser. Have people had issues with viewing in the browser, or have they changed their policy since this article was written?
They have changed their policy since this was written. We did some investigating and it looks like you are right Kate. Thanks for mentioning this to us. We will update our article!
WebEx all day long!
WebEx for Linux doesn’t work. At least not for Ubuntu, which is probably the most popular distro. I’ve been fighting with it for weeks. None of the online solutions have worked. It’s driven me insane, and I’m here looking for another solution.
Hi, I see you updated this recently so I might as well chip in: FuzeBox is now called Fuze, and it seems like their Pro accounts have changed to $20/mo and Premium for $40/mo. Additionally, qualified non-profits can purchase GoToMeeting via TechSoup for a 50% discount on annual plans. It’s a fairly simple process, but there is a $10 administration fee for each new account opened.
Thanks for this article, super helpful!
Thanks so much. It’s very helpful when our readers update us on these types of changes. We have corrected the article to reflect what you’ve told us. Thanks again!
Hi Kimberly- Thanks for putting this together. The one service I don’t see mentioned that I find to be the best offering for features and price is UberConference, which has a free offering and a highly differentiated paid offering. Would be great to hear your thoughts on how they compare.
Thank you for mentioning UberConference to us. We will consider adding them in our next audit. What are some pros and cons to UberConference in your eyes?
$10/month for unlimited conference calls with up to 100 participants. No PIN needed conferencing with your own dedicated local number ($10 more monthly for your own dedicated toll-free number). Excellent integration with other tools, gmail, and other services. Finally, a great user interface and elegant tool which is both very productive yet simple. Thanks for replying to my comment!
Thanks for letting us know what you like about them! We’ll take a further look!
Hi, good work. I’m only missing a good feature list for all software. The most importend things are
Screen Sharing / VOIP / conference calling /recording. Maybe you can add these points to all pros/cons.
TeamViewer doesn’t have conference calling
We’ll look into adding those items in our next update for this article. According to this (http://www.teamviewer.com/en/res/pdf/TeamViewer8-Manual-Meeting-en.pdf) it looks like TeamViewer does have conference calling.
GoToMeeting DOES support multiple monitors on the Mac.
Thanks for pointing that out Amanda! We made the change in the article. Have a great weekend!
GoToMeeting also does support showing single/specific Applications on a Mac and is also available as GoToMeeting 100 for up to 100 attendees.
Thank you Peter. We have updated the content to reflect this.
Has Anyone heard of StartMeeting.com it’s a great service at half the price
Haha…Kimberly, it looks like you forgot to check out FreeConferenceCall.com. 25 seats for free, no downloads, free recording and an HD audio platform. Total game changer. Also StartMeeting.com, a division of FreeConferenceCall, which is the business platform for multiple account management and no contracts.
Hey Jackie, thanks for the information! I’ll be sure to add them to our next update of the article. It’s great when our readers update us on new competitors in this field. If I have any questions I’ll contact you since you work for them.
Thanks again!
Hey Kimberly, thanks for including Free Conferencing Corporation in the article. The two services I mentioned, FreeConferenceCall and StartMeeting are under a larger umbrella. We actually are the world’s largest privately held conference call provider.
Again, thanks for the mention!
GoToMeeting Non-Profit Discount: Citrix are users of the TechSoup non-profit program and provide a discount of 50% for eligable 501(c) registered non-profits.
I’m also curious why Skype is not included. It’s the Web Conferencing solution within Office 365, and it seems to work on a basic level at least. Does it lack certain features which disqualify it?
No specific reason why Skype wasn’t added to this article. In fact, we plan on adding it in our next update. Thanks for mentioning it to us!
Will be interested in everyone’s opinion of Skype for business which does come with Office 365. I’ve seen some frustration with the Android App (which is actually called Lync 2013). I’m more than a little concerned that MS hasn’t updated the name or the app for Skype for business since 2013.
All the above tools are good and work well, however, they are hosted services. I have discovered another alternative: RHUB`s remote support servers. It provides better security as it works from behind the firewall and one can deploy them on their own premises.
Thank you for bringing RHUB to our attention. We will add it to our review when we update it next! Thanks again!
-Kimberly
Also have a look at the OnlineMeeting solution of FastViewer – certified, secure and flexible
Hi Claudia, after looking further into FastViewer we’ve decided not to include it in our article. We are currently only reviewing US services at this time. Thanks for your enthusiasm though!
-Kimberly
Thanks Claudia! We’ll be sure to take a look at it and add it to our article on our next review. Thanks for reading and commenting!
-Kimberly
Toll free audio can be added to Adobe Connect from virtually any toll free audio provider. Adobe just doesn’t provide that, but they do provide free VOIP.
Tom Gunter-Kremers
Thanks for the information Tom. We have added the free VOIP to our article, but kept the no toll free calls under the cons because it is not a service that Adobe provides for the user. It’s something you have to go elsewhere for.
Thank you for reading and commenting. It is very helpful for us!
-Kimberly
Wow. Excellent updates. Your top three are arguable, but that’s what makes you-you. It would be sweet as time rolls on if you’d update the top three as well and keep an historical review of whys-and-wherefores of those changes.
Thanks for the suggestions Bruce! We update our articles regularly and do yearly audits. So our top 3 always have the opportunity to be changed. Glad you enjoyed the review!