Online Meetings on a BudgetOnline meetings are a great alternative to business travel--if you can afford them, that is. Online meetings allow you to save gas, save time, and cut down on the hassles. Trouble is, a great many online meeting solutions are aimed at the high end. Little companies have historically gotten the short end of the stick. I've turned up a couple of new (perhaps) more affordable options since the last time I wrote on the topic ... Just today, Macromedia announced new service plans for their Breeze Live web conferencing product. A pay-per-use plan allows you set up online meetings for 32 cents per minute per user. That might not sound too high until you start doing the math. Let say you have ten folks at your conference and it lasts for an hour. Per minute, that's 10 x .32, or $3.20. Multiply that by 60 minutes and you're looking at a bill of $192.00. Cheaper than one plane ticket, to be sure ... but not all that much cheaper than Macromedia's 5- or 10-user starter packs, which go for $375 and $750 per month, respectively. Both the five and ten seat plans provide VOIP and offer "unlimited" usage. (If you go over the concurrent user limit at any one time, you'll be dinged for the overage on a per-minute basis.) Macromedia Breeze's big advantage is that it's based around the Flash standard. Because Breeze is based on Flash, the story goes, online meeting participants are not required to download and install an additional plug-in. The product is also notable for its conversion of PowerPoint presentations. Raindance
is offering a month of free meetings to try out their Raindance Remote
Meetings service. (It's not the first month free, however ... you'll
have to use the service for two months before you get the third month
for free.) Even better, the two-person Raindance Meeting Edition is
completely free, although it does not offer any audio integration.
The Raindance 5- and 10-user packs are priced at $274.95 and $399.95
per month, respectively. Audio conferencing is billed separately,
if needed.
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