We had been using WebEx at my work to allow us to hold online meetings. We are very small scale and only use it once or twice a month, but when we do it really comes in handy. Once a month or so we have a user group meeting with our 22 districts across Riverside County. If all our attendees came in person some of them would be driving over 4 hours roundtrip for a 2 hour meeting. Not fun nor economically and environmentally friendly. Online meeting software was definitely a requirement here.
WebEx was what I was used to and hadn’t seen anything better from GoToMeeting or the others. So we signed up with them. It works and we didn’t have any problem with it. It’s just a little sterile and complicated for non-techie users. Plus our vendor never returned our emails regarding renewing our contract. So much for that. We can’t even give them our money. 😐
One of my co-workers teaches an online class for USC. They use an online teaching tool that makes use of Adobe Connect. He really liked it so he told me to check it out since our WebEx contract was coming up for renewal.
After playing with it I really began to like it. It offers many of the same features as WebEx but it is just more fluid and has a much nicer UI. It is Flash based so it avoids many of the ActiveX or browser plug-in issues that WebEx has. Since Flash is pretty much installed on any computer it works out of the box. Also, Adobe Connect allows us to let guests enter a meeting just by connecting to the URL. This is really nice as users had to enter a password with WebEx. Password protected meetings are just one extra step to trip up non-techie users and completely unnecessary in our case.
Also, we can set a permanent URL for a meeting we hold regularly. This allows users to bookmark the meeting or bring it up from an old email. With WebEx we always pointed users to our general WebEx page. We usually only had one meeting on the calendar so it wasn’t that confusing, however, for larger organizations it can be a bother to sort through all the scheduled meetings. Having a permanent URL that connects you straight to the meeting is a nice touch.
And guess what? It’s cheaper for our account as well. WebEx basic pricing runs about $60 a month for an annual subscription, which is limited to 25 concurrent attendees. They will let more than 25 attendees connect but you will be charged for the overage. Adobe Connect basic pricing runs about $45 a month for an annual subscription and allows up to 100 concurrent attendees.
All in all Adobe Connect is friendlier, easier to setup and less expensive. Definitely a win for our needs.
If you are considering online meeting software definitely give Adobe Connect a look. Also, if you do go with Adobe Connect, consider MeetingOne as a vendor rather than contracting directly with Adobe. Check out my previous blog post about how their personal customer service really saved our day while also getting us a cheaper rate.
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