Alternative to GoToMeeting

Updat­ed June 2016 I first came across Start­Meet­ing in late 2012/​early 2013. I was told by my con­tact there that they would be adding video con­fer­enc­ing in the late sum­mer of 2013. That did not hap­pen until now! Start­ing this month, video is includ­ed at no extra charge. This now makes StartMeet­ing less expen­sive and a great alter­na­tive than GoToMeet­ing and oth­er online meet­ing software.  …For web con­fer­enc­ing (screen shar­ing) and now video con­fer­enc­ing, Start­Meet­ing is easy and inex­pen­sive. Read on about my orig­i­nal post if you’d like or give it a tri­al… Orig­i­nal Post from March 2013:  For the last 4 years, I’ve basi­cal­ly used one online pro­gram for meet­ings and webi­na­rs, GoToMeet­ing. It real­ly is a pret­ty sim­ple prod­uct to use. The only real com­plaints I have regard­ing GoToMeet­ing are, 1) A lit­tle expen­sive for what I use it for and 2) My cus­tomers and I seem to always have to install updates. I tend to be coach­ing my clients on how to use GoToMeet­ing more often than not. A lit­tle frus­trat­ing, but on the oth­er hand, there was noth­ing on the mar­ket that was bet­ter. Webex was a good pro­gram but cost more than GoToMeet­ing. I tried every oth­er one I could find and chose to stick with GoToMeet­ing. Until…

Meet Start­Meet­ing

Recent­ly anoth­er online meet­ing tool sur­faced in my inbox. I used a con­fer­ence line com­pa­ny at times when I need it called Free Con­fer­ence Call. That com­pa­ny is a sis­ter com­pa­ny to the lat­est and great­est online meet­ing pro­gram called Start­Meet­ing (affil­i­ate link). I real­ly had no rea­son to switch from GoToMeet­ing to Start­Meet­ing but thought I’d con­tact the com­pa­ny and drill them about why their pro­gram was the same or bet­ter than GoToMeet­ing. I sched­uled a call with Greg Plum, VP of Chan­nel Devel­op­ment. He walked me through all the fea­tures and ben­e­fits of Start­Meet­ing and how it com­pared to GoToMeet­ing. I real­ly had no prob­lems using GoToMeet­ing, so I would not even con­sid­er switch­ing unless it was easy to use for my clients, had screen shar­ing, was cheap­er and fea­tured mouse shar­ing. Greg did a great job con­vinc­ing me about Start­Meet­ing and the vision of his com­pa­ny too!

Sell­ing Points That Are Mak­ing Me Switch

After close to an hour walk­ing through the pro­gram, I was very impressed. Start­Meet­ing was cre­at­ed to go to bat­tle against GoToMeet­ing. That is their main com­peti­tor. That is why it intrigued me! I want­ed the same prod­uct for less. I’m not being cheap. I just have a lot of small month­ly cost pro­grams, and I want to sim­pli­fy my expens­es! Start­Meet­ing offered some key sell­ing points for me: 

• The price point for 50 users was half of what GoToMeet­ing offers: $19.95.
• It allows for the user to have a com­pa­ny brand­ed ​“wall” which is where peo­ple can sched­ule a meet­ing or start a meet­ing. The back­ground and logo are ful­ly customizable.
• One Meet­ing ID and Phone Num­ber. I did­n’t like hav­ing to sched­ule a meet­ing with GoToMeeting…as some­times I’d be on the wrong call wait­ing for my clients who received a dif­fer­ent Meet­ing ID. So it keeps it simple
• Screen and Mouse Shar­ing: Most of my calls are to run mar­ket­ing meet­ings. Yet I do get involved ​“fix­ing” or set­ting up cer­tain pro­grams and fea­tures on my clien­t’s machines some­times. There­fore it is nice to have the mouse shar­ing fea­ture. If it did not have this fea­ture, I would not even con­sid­er switching.
• Video Con­fer­ence: This fea­ture is a lit­tle weak, cur­rent­ly, but the pre­sen­ter can show him­self using his cam­era. This is good for a webi­nar. The weak part is it does not allow a two way video shar­ing like GoToMeet­ing’s HD Faces. This is a fea­ture, Start­Meet­ing said they will be work­ing on. Again, for the price sav­ings, I’m switching…as I don’t use HD faces all that much. If I want to do that, I just use Google Hang­out which is free and sim­ple to use as an alternative.
• Down­load­ing and Upgrades: I’ve not used Start­Meet­ing much just yet, but they assured me that my clients and I won’t have to be con­tin­u­al­ly updat­ing my com­put­er with v1.3, v1.4, v1.5 etc. This sounds great!

So I’m mak­ing the tran­si­tion from GoToMeet­ing to Start­Meet­ing to keep the pric­ing and fea­tures sim­ple. If you are inter­est­ed in giv­ing it a shot for your busi­ness, the first 30 days are free. Let me know what you think. My refer­ral link is here: Start­Meet­ing. (same cost as going direct­ly through them.)