Online meeting platforms provide a cost-effective way to connect and communicate with team members around the world. They can be used for webinars, product demos, employee onboarding and training, and other online events.
The right virtual meeting platform should support multiple types of meetings, be easy to use and manage, and have great video quality. It should also accommodate your team’s current size and future growth.
| Have you tried Meetn, the new online meeting platform? It’s turning out to become a decent alternative to Zoom and to the other major platforms. |
Skype
Skype is a free video conferencing and voice communication application that’s been around for years. Its simplicity and user-friendly interface have helped it retain its popularity.
The service allows you to make calls to other users using the Skype app on their computers and mobile devices. You can also use it to send text messages and share photos, videos, and GIFs.
The service operates on a peer-to-peer network, in which all connected computers share processing tasks and bandwidth. While this means that the network can scale quickly, it can also cause performance issues on certain computers.
Slack
Slack is a great communication app that helps teams communicate and collaborate in real time. It also provides a lot of support and a good community.
One of the most powerful features in Slack is its search function. It can search people, messages and files and it suggests modifiers as you type. It can show you related channels, team members and search history to help you find the information you need.
In addition, Slack allows you to upload files into your message stream. This can be helpful for distributing documents or images to the whole team.
Slack can also be used for video calls. The free plan supports one-to-one calls, but paid plans allow up to 15 participants.
BigBlueButton
BigBlueButton is a free, open-source web conferencing solution that supports audio, video, slides, chat, and screen sharing. It also lets users record and play back recorded sessions for later viewing.
BigBlueButton is available in versions for Linux, Mac, Windows, and iOS. It can be installed on a server or as a browser plug-in.
It can be used for online learning, enabling students to engage in virtual office hours and full online classes. BigBlueButton can also be used to record webinars and lectures for later viewing.
BigBlueButton has been downloaded more than 40 million times and is used by over 200 countries. It enables real-time sharing of audio, video, slides, chat, and screens, with multiple security mechanics in place to keep streams secure.
Adobe Connect
Adobe Connect is a popular online meeting platform that offers immersive, collaborative experiences for training sessions and webinars. It prioritizes engagement tools such as immersive screen sharing, surveys and polls, games, and note-taking.
It also has features for education, including breakout rooms that allow teams to collaborate in smaller groups for more specific learning. It’s mainly used in the educational and government industries, but it can be beneficial to many others.
Pricing starts at $50 per host monthly for Meetings and $130 per month for Webinars. The higher-tier plans add branding, event management and additional collaboration tools for larger meetings and webinars.
Google Meet
Google Meet offers a simple interface that allows users to create and join meetings in minutes. Its device-agnostic platform works on desktops, laptops, tablets and phones.
It also supports screen sharing, which makes it easy to collaborate on projects by presenting your entire monitor screen or a single Chrome tab. It also lets you instant message participants during a meeting, making it easier to share links and files.
The free version of Google Meet offers 100 participants and no time limit on meeting durations, although some features are available only to paid subscribers. These include US and international dial-in numbers, live streaming in-domain, intelligent noise cancelling functionality and the ability to save meeting recordings in Google Drive.