Video Conferencing with Live Meeting

Webinars are a great way to spread knowledge about your services and products online, or connect to a wider online audience. They’re quickly becoming a primary way to share news and information with customers and suppliers alike. A webinar also has the benefit of being able to talk to several thousand people at once.

Some features of the best webinar software:

• Allow up to 3,000 people to attend your webinar
• Allow access via any web browesr (Linux and Mac users can join in)
• Set entry questions for participants
• Engage your audience with polls and surveys
• Stream your webinar through the Cloud (thus reducing your bandwith need)
• Totally secure, encrypted connection
• Save a copy of the webinar on the data server

How webinars work (example showing Live Meeting):

What are my options?

There’s plenty of Webinar software out there, so what’s the best? We’ve been reviewing several bits of software and this short list weighs up the relative merits of each one.

Webex

Cisco’s webex has the biggest capacity of all, allowing up to 3,000 participants to join your online webinar. And if you’re looking to host such a large-scale webinar, then keeping tabs on who’s attending could be extremely worthwhile. Webex allows pre-registration (or open access, depending on your needs) and you can set up a meeting page for members of the public to use to log into your webinar.

Webex Overview

Webex Review

Microsoft Live Meeting

Reliable and secure, Live Meeting can handle webinars up to 1250 participants using the professional license. With lots of features and a very good ‘back end’ that allows you to set up polls and surveys, Live Meeting could be a good choice if you’re thinking of running webinars.

Microsoft Live Meeting Overview

Microsoft Live Meeting Review

Dim Dim Enterprise

The Enterprise edition of the popular free DimDim allows you to host meetings with up to 1,000 participants. Although the features are not quite as broad as either Cisco or Microsoft, the web-based interface of DimDim makes it a very attractive prospect. It’s also incredibly fast and user-friendly. We like DimDim – can you tell?

DimDim Overview

DimDim Review

Citrix Goto Webinar

The solution dedicated to Webinar is GoToMeeting’s sister product, GoToWebinar which also offers access up to 1,000 participants. The features include on-page registration and a fast client – a web-based version is also available. Record and replay webinars and allow access to those who couldn’t make it. Buying GoToWebinar will include a subscription to GoToMeeting which is designed for smaller collaborative projects.

GoToMeeting Overview

GoToMeeting Review