In-House Vs. Hosted Web Conferencing

Hosted web conferencing has always been the trend ever since the technology emerged in the market. Basically, in a hosted web conferencing system, you access your conferencing service over the Internet through a server hosted by your vendor.

As a service, hosted web conferencing offers you two common pricing models – pay per use and pay per seat. In a pay per use basis, your hosted web conferencing vendor charges you for the amount of minutes it takes you to use the service. Pay per seat on the other hand refers to a software user-license basis of payment for your hosted web conferencing service.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each model and they serve to make the task of selecting the best kind of hosted web conferencing servicing quite confusing. Add to that a whole gamut of other factors which you need to take into account and you have a nightmare right in front of you. Price is not the only thing you need to pay attention when it comes to hosted web conferencing. You also need to consider the features offered, usability of these options, the reputation of the vendor, and so on.

But besides hosted servers, there is also a whole different side to web conferencing – one that doesn’t let you use an external server in order to start conducting your online meetings. Such system is called in-house web conferencing.

The main difference between in-house web conferencing and hosted systems is that with in-house systems, you can purchase the application outright and run it yourself. In-house web conferencing is not quite the trend just yet and for the leading platforms, such as PlaceWare and WebEx, hosted is still the way to go. But there are some highly reputable vendors that do offer in-house systems - vendors such as Sonexis, Linktivity, Centra, and eDial.

The foremost reason companies consider the in-house option is cost. But with problems pervading many of the hosted web conferencing services today, including risks in security, integration, and control, it looks as though the reasons for compelling such a choice does not only include money matters.

The Issue of Cost

In-house web conferencing solution allows you to pay for a software license or a preconfigured hardware/software device. Some vendors may even offer you a yearly maintenance fee. If you use a great deal of web conferencing, you may save money compared to large monthly service costs of per seat and per minute hosted web conferencing services.

Security

By moving the box in-house, you can protect all your in-house meetings behind your firewall and across your virtual LANs. There are certain special precautions that you can make which you would otherwise not be allowed to use with a hosted web conferencing service.