Quarantined communications: pros and cons of online conferencing platforms

Quarantined communications: pros and cons of online conferencing platforms | «Proekta»

Collect the largest number of participants, easily integrate a calendar into the platform, or get free features. Proekta has compiled and compared the top 5 online conference services.

Zoom

An old-timer of the online conference market who managed to combine the maximum number of interesting and useful functions. The product is really good for medium and large companies. Designing a conference room in a corporate design, collecting metadata about the participants, writing down notes and including them in the transcript of the recording, expanding the screen of several participants is an incomplete list of what Zoom can do. Do not keep up with the speaker? It's okay, a plugin for decrypting voice into text format is built into the platform.

From 2 to 1000 people can use the conference service, 100 people can host an event, and this is a record among online venues. There are private and group chats, unusual tools for the host, the ability to use the open API and record conference data to the cloud.

Prices for the paid version range from $ 16 to $ 20 per month, but all tariffs can be expanded with additional options (and you also have to pay for them). Some of them, for example, the ability to connect calls from mobile phones of other countries, and the truth may be needed.

Zoom provides a free version, but limits the number of participants to 50, and the conference call time to 40 minutes. But its capabilities are quite enough for small companies, which today are likely to think about cutting costs.

Microsoft teams

Incredibly advanced service from the IT giant Microsoft. Included in the Office 365 package, therefore, with a corporate subscription, all of its features are available at no extra cost.

The product has a set of classic options in the form of chat, notes, appointments and calendar. The program allows you to exchange data, store and use them for collaboration, and also integrates with other applications. Of the interesting features - the ability to conduct live broadcasts for 10,000 participants. Branding the service will not work, but the coronavirus pandemic has made the premium subscription free. This version can not be paid for six months.

Microsoft Teams will unite from 2 to 250 employees, you can use the service from any device.

What difficulties may arise with the application of your favorite Office suite? Oddly enough, the presence of the same package. The cost of the service depends on the volume of the Office package, the price starts from 3000 rubles per year. There is no free version. Not all employees use laptops with Windows products. Designers love macbooks with their own built-in programs, and privacy guardians prefer the Linux system. Therefore, if Office is not installed, then using the service separately will not work.

Mind

An exclusive product that demonstrates complex features that will be truly interesting to companies in the IT sector. Among the company’s proposals, we will need Mind Server and Mind Teams to be called, although other products are also interesting, just in their own way.

The service takes data encryption seriously, provides detailed reports on participants, makes it possible to send SMS, chat, activate voice presenter mode (automatically detected) and even conduct online testing and voting. But to implement the service will be more difficult.

Mind allows you to collect from 2 to 300 active speakers and up to 20,000 participants, and you can use the service from any device.

The cost of using the platform is from 880 to 16,000 rubles per month, but, unfortunately, there is no free version, as well as the opportunity to use the company's design in the design.

Meet Google Hangouts

An intuitive platform for small companies and people who are used to using modern IT capabilities to the fullest. It will be easy to work with users of search engine products (mail, documents, calendar ...). And there are probably most of them. A huge advantage for those who are actively chatting in Google mail (you can invite to the conference with one click), check the Google calendar (join the meeting directly through the event) and simply move between a laptop, smartphone and PC.

The service uses an open API and allows you to integrate with third-party applications (for example, Cisco). There is no opportunity to use corporate design. But there is a free format. The number of possible participants is from 1 to 10 people in the free version, and up to 150 people in a paid one. The cost of a paid subscription is in the range of $ 6-25 per month.

A significant minus of the online platform is that only gmail users can use it. If you exclude those who believe that the special services read the boxes of Russian companies, there will be ... A lot of users who have to create new mail, and this is really not very convenient.

MyOwnConference

Good service, which serves as a replacement for the product from Zoon and does not ask to install a flash player. Joke. Actually not, because sometimes the truth is annoying.

The platform is adapted for any mobile devices, helps to unite from 2 to 1000 employees and allows you to use the presenter mode for 10 people at a time. The service offers chat, makes it possible to add a logo and banner, record a conference and save conversation data to the cloud. Before the event, the platform will help to remind participants of the upcoming conference using the newsletter, and after that - provide a report and collect data about visitors.

The cost of using the paid option is from 25 to 208 € per month, but the free version also has a pretty decent set of functions. 20 participants, three presenters and even a recording. Why not?

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