Affordable Web Conferencing

Theoretically speaking, meetings and conferences done over the Internet are a great concept. Web conferencing allows you to save a bundle on business travel and still keep far-flung clients and employees engaged and up to speed. But once you place this concept into practice, you will find that most of the web conferencing tools available at there are still too expensive for small businesses to afford. What’s worse, many of these involve complicated set up procedures and systems that are just hard to master, thus contributing to increased frustration with the product.

And this is where affordable web conferencing tools come in. The term “cheap” might cause you to be skeptical as most “cheap” products available are either bootlegs of other highly successful commercial products or only include the bare essentials of a decent conferencing tool. However, it is important to realize that besides the industry giants in web conferencing, such as WebEx, Macromedia, and Microsoft, there are other developers out there that are dedicated to providing you with affordable web conferencing solutions.

One of these companies is Citrix Online, introducing its GoToMeeting software application. GoToMeeting is an affordable web conferencing solution hosted on a server which is managed and controlled by Citrix Online. If you notice, Citrix Online is the same people who brought you the extraordinarily effective and simple GoToMyPC that is a program that lets you access your PC from any Web browser. Using basically the same technology, Citrix Online allows you to access affordable web conferencing tool that is as cheap as it is simple.

What does affordable Web Conferencing Software do?

Most people use affordable web conferencing software for presentations, product demonstrations (i.e. software) and collaboration. But besides these stated uses, a majority of affordable web conferencing system’s potentials remain largely untapped.

A study conducted by the Yankee Group found that 89 per cent of affordable web conferencing solutions are used for application sharing, 12 per cent of annotation, and four per cent for white boarding. That doesn’t even remotely touch the wide array of uses that affordable web conferencing has. It can be used to facilitate distance learning, assist in training sessions, present ideas to the board, etc. etc.

“When it comes to web conferencing, less is more,” says senior vice-president of products and services, Brian Donahoo of Citrix Online. “We’ve stripped out the non-essential bells and whistles, making GoToMeeting easier to use.” The simplicity of their affordable web conferencing products allows for more customer confidence building because they can now master the service quickly, allowing for less frustration and letting them use it more.