Many businesses are being globalized, and for all the small meetings, conferences, and for other things, you cannot visit everywhere. For example, if you have an office in New Delhi, India, and you are dealing with a client in the USA then it will be difficult to visit your client again and again in the USA for small meetings. In another case, one company has branches in different countries. So, the CEO may not always be able to visit all the branches when required. Then, there comes Online meeting/conferencing into the use where you use a software program to talk to multiple persons on video which gives the feel of sitting down in a room and discussing over some projects.
GoToMeeting is such a product that you can use for online meetings and conferences with your colleagues and clients who are far away. Such software programs are there for long, but in this Covid-19 pandemic, these are becoming like a day to day tool for every business owner and in fact for general people too to hang out with their friends on a call.
What is GoToMeeting?
GoToMeeting is a web conferencing and online meeting tool that offers both free and paid plans. Paid plans give you full access to all the features whereas free plan is good for basic usage.
Features of GoToMeeting:
- Screen sharing: No matter whether you are using Tablet, Smartphone or your Laptop, you can share your screen with another person safely.
- Conference Voice Calls: You can make voice calls using VoIP which will save your cost of calling from standard phone plans.
- Video Conferencing: Using any device mobile, tablet or laptop, you can make video calls with multiple people. It is like hosting a meeting.
- Recording and Transcription: You can record your meetings so that you can watch it later if you miss some important points that were discussed in the meeting. In fact, in the real-time, you can take notes, mark the action items, and share them with the team after the meeting gets over.
Pricing:
As you can see in the screenshot below. There is an option to Start for Free as well which you can try first before you purchase any plan.
Let’s now, talk about Alternatives to GoToMeeting.
8 Best Alternatives to GoToMeeting
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Zoom
Zoom is out there for long but in this global pandemic, it grabbed people’s eye and went pretty much popular. However, there so many talks about privacy issues about it. But, as much as I used it, I found it quite well, and I really enjoy using it when I have to do some online meetings.
Zoom offers both paid and free plans. In the free plan, you can host a meeting with 100 participants. If you have to do a 1 to 1 meeting, then you can do for unlimited duration however you can do a group meeting for 40 mins. There are a lot of great features you get for free, and if you are into a big business where the requirement is more, you can switch to their premium plans as required. You can read our Zoom tips and tricks article to be a power user of it.
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JioMeet
When Indian Prime Minister, Sh. Narendra Modi talks about being Self-dependent “Aatmanirbhar”, many companies come forward to create indigenous products, and Reliance is one of the frontrunners in that list. They Created, JioMeet, and many other products. Although JioMeet was criticized earlier due to making the UI exactly similar to Zoom, they came up with fresh UI and many new features. Currently, it is in Beta, and free for use.
You can use it for free for hosting meetings and doing conferences. Since this is an Indian product, I wish Indians must try it at least once, and see if they like it, they can continue with it.
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Google Meet
If you remember we used to make conference calls within Google Hangouts but, Google makes it separate now. Now, Google Meet is a standalone application from Google which you can use to make conference calls and host meetings. It is free currently, and you can make most of it as Google has its products made professionally. You can enjoy the calls in HD. It is an enterprise-level video conferencing software. In my opinion, this would be the best alternative to GoToMeeting.
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Webex Meeting
Webex is an enterprise-level video conferencing, screen sharing, and online meeting solution that comes as an app and software as well. American company Cisco owns it. Webex Meeting is one of their many products. It can be one of the best alternatives to GoToMeeting. I have used Webex when my son’s school asked to join a meeting through it, and I found it was good and can be used for small and big businesses. Although it is good, I preferred Zoom over this for my personal use. But, yes, Webex Meeting is a good alternative to GoToMeeting.
You can also check out Webex Alternatives.
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ClickMeeting
ClickMeeting is a good alternative to GoToMeeting which you can check out. It has some nice features for business web conferencing. You can host live webinars in integration with YouTube Live and Facebook Live as well.
You can host online meetings for up to 5 people, Webinars for up to 25 attendees, 5 audio feeds, 4 video feeds is free. If you require more than this, then you can subscribe to their paid plans.
ClickMeeting offers yearly as well as monthly subscriptions that allow you to buy this only for 1 or a few months as per the requirement. You are not bound to buy it for a year even if you don’t need it for long.
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Zoho Meetings
Zoho Meetings is another good GoToMeetings alternative that you can check out, and use it as per your requirement. One of the good things about this is, you can embed the meeting on any online web page while the meeting is going on. That is a great feature for website owners as they can show their conference or meeting on a website if there is a need. It offers a 14-day trial in that you can host with 3 meeting participants, and in a webinar, 10 attendees can take part in that. Another great thing about this is, that you don’t have to install the software on your PC, you can just use it in your browser.
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ezTalks Meetings
ezTalks doesn’t offer much in free version as you can host upto 2 participants, and you can host a group meeting just for 10 minutes which is quite less number. The paid version is lucrative, and you can go ahead with that if you have the requirement. Moreover, it has different plans and pricing for meetings, webinars, and events.
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BlueJeans
BlueJeans is another one and the best alternatives to GoToMeeting. It gives you the feel of having all the hosts sitting in the same room that you are in. It is great for business meetings/conferences. You can host webinars as well. The HD quality audio/video makes the conferencing experience to the next level. Although it is not free, you can try your hands by availing its 7 days free trial.
Conclusion
These are the best alternatives to GoToMeeting in my opinion. But, these are not only the players in the market, there are many such as Skype, Adobe Connect, and many others. There is a huge list of video conferencing software out there which you can check out. This list of alternatives to GoToMeeting is well sorted after using these tools. These are the front-runners for sure in the online meeting, webinars, and conferencing industry.
Thanks Atish for sharing. We often use only google meet as it free and may be secure too. After news camo out of zoom calls, we feel that Google meet is safe one.
Thanks for sharing Atish. Nice information. Out of these 8 the one that we use is Google meet. As, it comes with
-Share screen
-Send files through chat
-Free for everyone to use
-No additional fee for call-in participants
-Additional tools with G Suite subscription