Web Conferencing Software: What's Your Favorite?

So, as I mentioned in an earlier thread, I started a job recently working as an IT Specialist at a small, new, and globally growing company. Our CEO is all about cutting edge technology, and since we have people all over the place and out in the field, we do a lot of web conferencing. Recently, he asked us to get a halfway decent conference cam to replace the very basic one we had, so we ordered this thing, a Logitech CC3000E:

It's hooked up in one of our conference rooms through an Asus ChromeBox. The ChromeBox is a lower spec one with an Intel Celeron processor, but it seems to work well.

Up until now, we have generally been using Google Hangouts to do web conferencing, but the CEO has said that it's sometimes choppy and wants us to look into possibly investing in a better solution. He seems to think that it's more of a software issue than a hardware issue, so he wants us to check out other web conferencing services. Hangouts is great for what it is, especially since it's free, but when we get a bunch of people on a call, it can get hairy.

Since you guys know everything , what is everyone else using? I have looked into a couple of these, (and ruled out some, like Skype for Business), but they all seem the same to me. Enlighten me!

https://www.join.me/

Very intuitive and easy to use. Can start a live meeting in just a few clicks, with email links for users to join. Simple meeting setup, with options to make meetings password protected.

For more dedicated/scheduled/repeating meetings, my office uses Webex. Its a little more rigid than Join.me, and can have compatibility issues with corporate laptops (sharing/connectivity issues with out security). Im not sold one way or the other...kinda Meh on webex

I generally dislike anything where the user on the opposite end has to download, register, and log-in to something. Plus, Skype and GMail aren't going anywhere, so the user interaction with those products won't change drastically every time you're switching services.

Because of this I use the big three, Lync (Skype for Business), Skype or GMail.

We use gotomeeting. We also have some kind of cam/conference box setup. I'm fairly certain it's never worked. My cubicle is right next to conference room, I constantly hear "Just a minute, we're trying to get this to work" followed by "We can't get this to work so we're going to put you on speakerphone".

We also use GoToMeeting. I don't set it up. I just type the codes I'm given. It works ... mostly.

We use G2M, it's pretty good.. But we'll be switching to Skype for Business since we bought into the whole Office 360 gig. I do person-to-person skype pretty often, but never on a mass-meeting scale.

Hangouts/GVC/Google chat is actually really robust, especially for a free tool. I think it's only going to get better, too, especially in business settings. I do hear what you're saying about the choppy-ness. In my experience, that's directly related to connection quality/speed. If we're really having trouble with it, or just one location of a conference call, we have them go audio only and that usually helps immensely. The nice part about that is that if you've got people in (6) locations/stations, the one that has the crappy connection is the only one that has to audio only. If it always happens... you're the one w/ the crappy connection and should figure out where the problem lies (in house somewhere, or need a bigger pipe) whichever video conference tool you end up using.

In reply to bluej:

You are basically confirming some of the things I've been thinking. Here's the thing: I don't want the company to invest in subscribing to a web service if it's not going to solve anything. I personally like the intuitiveness of Hangouts. I was using it long before starting here, and it's easy to use across all sorts of devices and platforms. We even use it here to call over our VoIP, which works great as well.

I will have to see if we can find a way to monitor when the lag happens and where it happens. I didn't know if it was possibly because of the entry level ChromeBox we are using. I noticed some lagginess on my end when using my smartphone, and when I dropped off, it got better, so maybe one connection can bring everything down.

Zoom

We use it organization wide, and have even gotten other states in on it. It's free for 40 min at a time for up to 50 participants.

My company uses everything, iy seems. WebEx, BlueJeans, and some Adobe Connect thing. And Skype for Biz.

I favor WebEx, but BlueJeans is cool because it can communicate among room systems, laptops, tablets, etc.

My 2 cents

• Webex. It's really the industry standard and most people already have the plug in installed

• join.me / logmein same company, different technology

• go to meeting. Another young company, but seems to be doing well

• turbomeeting. A couple of our venders use this. Meh

• hangouts. Works well if everyone has gmail and doesn't mind using their personal account if the office doesn't use gapps

We used to use Go2Meeting until my boss decided that spending money costs...money...or something. It worked without too many issues. We then switched to Zoom, which is free for 50 minutes. It is a bit flakier and helpfully sends a reminder to everyone but the meeting organizer that it'll shut down after 10 minutes because the organizer is too poor to pay for a full version. We've since switched to Skype for Business.

We do video conferencing and screen sharing of presentations with collaborators.

Webex is expensive, but it really works well. I used to work for Cisco, and since we owned it we used it for everything. It's far better than go2meeting or google hangouts.

We use Gotomeeting at my job that seems to work well. We also use ClearSlide for trainings. I hear that we've made a switch to a company called BlueJeans the last time I used it, it seemed pretty solid.

Sounds like WebEx is the industry standard. I will look into that to get a better idea of what it does and the pricing structure.

I forgot to mention: our corporate email is Gmail-based. Everyone here uses Gmail, we all have Google Drive accounts, we utilize Google Docs for shared docs, etc. Its basically integrated into everything we do. It makes it super easy when a computer goes down; we can have someone back up and running in around 10 minutes! That's why we natively use Hangouts so much. If there was a "Enterprise" version, we would probably go with it.

I did look into some others, like BlueJeans, Fuze, Skype for Business, etc. They all seem to basically offer the same thing. That's why I'm asking you guys what actually works.

We use WebEx at work and after you get over the initial learning curve, it works well. Some people never get over that curve

I've had good luck with Webex. I dislike Lync/Skype for Business.

Do all of these tools support mics?

We have some AT&T system at work. Its a pile of E36 M3. Its cumbersome to use, choppy, and generally unintuitive.

It drives me nuts that to have a conference call, I need to enter a bunch of codes, then call on my phone and enter those same codes. Which system can I just click a button and it just works?

A conference call shouldn't take more than 10 seconds to setup IMO.

My previous employer uses WebEx and GotoMeeting. Both work OK with a decent connection.

IME Hangouts also works fine, as does Skype & friends. They may not be geared to having 50+ people in a virtual meeting so if you do that, look at the first two.

That said, I found most of these tools and especially Skype and Hangouts being very sensitive to the quality of the connection. If you or the other party is using Wifi to connect, that's most likely your problem due to the variable bandwidth and variable latency. Wire the hardware into the decent network and the quality should be noticeably better.

In reply to ProDarwin:

Most, if not all of the tools do. I rarely ever used the phone with WebEx or Gotomeeting if I'm on my own, I prefer to use a headset instead.

The web conferencing + phone dial in is really for conference rooms where people insist on using the conference noise maker, err, starfish phone. Those things suck even without an attached video conferencing software.

WebEx. I use it on my phone to take meetings while I'm just about anywhere. It is very reliable over 3G/4G and wifi with video and desktop sharing. I haven't tried to share anything FROM my phone but it theoretically supports it. People look at you like an shiny happy person when you are staring into a phone and yakking about database performance while everyone else is trying to fish or hit little white balls into a far away hole - but atleast I'm not trapped at a desk in my house.

GTM works pretty well for us. We had some free stuff at the last place I worked, a CHEAP SODAPOP COMPANY THAT MADE CHEAP SODAPOP.

Here's a question about WebEx: Do all the users need it to attend a meeting? I know with some other apps, like GoToMeeting, you send/receive a link with an ID and you sign in via whatever browser you're using, whether you are a paying subscriber or not.

In reply to SilverFleet:

You can call in or it gives a temporary app that you can download or a permanent app.

I use a bunch of different tools depending on who's hosting the meeting but when I'm hosting something, I use WebEx. We don't do video conferencing, but we use it to transfer files, take remote control of a system, to do demos, and/or to show presentations. Of all of them, I think it works the best and has the most professional feel. They've also got the mobile app down to the point that I can attend a WebEx presentation on my phone in the car if need be. Since we're sort of a telephone company, we have our own conference bridge that we use, but the built-in join-with-computer-audio does work pretty well.