Web meetings and telephone conferences in times of corona

Seven cloud-based web conferencing services tested

At Publicare, in 2003, we began holding meetings with customers, suppliers and in our team, which has always been spread across the country, as online meetings and have closely followed the development of the market. Here are our latest recommendations for all organizations that now quickly need a practical and reliable solution to work together from home.

The market offers dozens of tools, all available on the market — that doesn't make the selection easy. Recently, our comparison platform presented assessments of 22 different providers. In times of shutdown, quarantine and millions of people working from home, however, there is no time for a broad benchmark. In this guide, we therefore show you the most important criteria that your future web meeting solution should meet and present you in a compact form the seven providers who, in our opinion, best meet these requirements.

What does a video meeting platform have to do when almost everyone is working from home?

• Support for video, audio or telephone conference via computer as well as national telephone dialing from all major industrialized countries, screen sharing and text chat
• Meeting participation via native app for Windows, macOS, Android as well as iOS and iPadOS (installation and execution without admin rights) or browser-based via a WebRTC-enabled browser such as Chrome
• Transfer the presenter role to other participants so they can share content on their screen
• Delegate control of your mouse and keyboard to other participants
• Drawing tools to mark or visualize content on the broadcast screen
• Optional password protection for meeting access
• Personalized meeting room with individual URL and fixed meeting room ID
• Record meetings and share the recording
• Integrate with Microsoft Outlook (Office 365)
• High level of distribution — this increases the likelihood that external participants have either used the provider apps before and are familiar with the tool's user interface
• Globally distributed cloud-based server infrastructure, so that even with the currently massively increased Internet traffic, online meetings take place without interruption and with high transmission quality

How heavy is the burden on your IT?

All solutions presented below are cloud-based, meaning they are not installed on your corporate servers. This means that they can also be set up and used without IT support, which relieves IT teams that are already heavily employed. Organizations with complex audit processes and major concerns about external cloud solutions should pragmatically examine the extent to which they can postpone fundamental reservations in view of the acute pressure to act.

What are your requirements for privacy-compliant online communication?

All software solutions described here can be met with regard to legal requirements in Germany (incl. DSGVO) in compliance with data protection regulations. (Note: Our assessment is based on available terms and conditions and data processing agreements; it does not constitute legal advice to which we are not authorized.) For users who also value a provider headquartered in Germany, Blizz of TeamViewer, Mikogo or Fastviewer (also sold as OpenScape Web Collaboration by Unify) be interesting.

What are your specific needs for web meetings?

What exactly do you need the solution for? Would you like to hold internal meetings with multiple people? Would you like to reach external service providers, customers and interested parties via video conferencing? Or a mix of both? If you need specific features, take a close look at the featured tools before you subscribe to any of them. In any case, we recommend using software that supports video calls. Especially in times of long isolation in the home office and social distancing, it is helpful to get to know colleagues and partners.

Isn't the company's internal collaboration platform also sufficient for video conferences?

If you already know that you only want to support internal meetings between two or a handful of people, it's worth taking a look at classic collaboration tools. Slack is the best-known example of this. With these tools, everyone in the team has a convenient overview of which colleagues are currently available and can contact them directly via chat, audio or video call. You can also smoothly switch back and forth between video, conference calls and screen sharing. However, as soon as you want to invite a larger group or external participants to your virtual meeting, a tool like Slack reaches its limits and it is recommended to look for a classic online meeting solution.

Overview of web meeting providers — our assessment

BlueJeans

• Is one of the younger providers of online conferences; tidy, modern interface
• Has grown strongly in recent years; however, it is not yet as widespread in Europe
• Features good audio quality
• When sharing the screen, very clear control buttons that catch the eye
• The whiteboard function is unique, which anyone can call up when needed to visually underline annotations
• A possibly confusing detail: If the whiteboard is suddenly used by participants other than the presenter, this automatically stops the presenter's screen sharing

Cisco Webex

• Very widespread, especially in large and medium-sized companies; global market leader in terms of market share in the 2000s. “Let's set up a Webex”: In many organizations, the Cisco platform was synonymous with “online meetings” for years
• In our experience, not quite as functionally reliable as Zoom or GoToMeeting
• Depending on the model and operating system, the video playback from external webcams sometimes appears faulty in our tests
• In view of the current pressure to act and time, it appears problematic that new accounts cannot be opened via an automated process, but can be activated manually by Cisco — and this can take time right now.

Google Meet

• Can only be booked as part of the Google GSuite package, i.e. including Google's Office programs
• If you already use the GSuite package, you don't have to pay any further fees for Google Hangouts Meet
• On PCs and laptops with the classic operating systems Windows, macOS and Linux, it can only be used in the Chrome web browser (as well as via support plug-in in Internet Explorer)
• Tight integration with Gmail, Google Calendar, and other tools from GSuite
• If you are not yet using GSuite, it is complex to set up and cannot be done without technical support, as, for example, your organizational domain must be verified

LogMeIn GoToMeeting

• Launched back in 2004 as a spin-off of the GoToMyPC remote desktop software — a true veteran, but constantly evolving and still modern
• Since autumn 2019 in a new guise and with new functions such as voice commands and a data-saving “commuter mode”
• At Publicare, we have been using GoToMeeting ourselves for many years and have had very good experiences with it overall
• Reliable SaaS infrastructure and excellent compression algorithms
• Dynamically adjust the resolution and compression rate of video playback and screen sharing for each participant depending on Internet bandwidth

Microsoft Teams

• Successor to Skype for Business (emerged from the rebranding of Microsoft Lync, i.e. the technical substructure is different from the Skype end-user platform)
• If you have an Office 365 subscription, you already have Microsoft Teams! If you haven't already done so, simply have it approved by your IT department.
• Conversely, if you don't have an Office 365 subscription, the technical introduction is likely to be too time-consuming and complicated for you if you only target “teams” in the end (for now)
• If you want to give your subscribers the option to dial in by phone, you need a paid add-on.
• The tool is free of charge for educational institutions and private users during the Corona crisis

TeamViewer Blizz

• The provider from Göppingen is the world market leader with the “TeamViewer” remote support platform
• Allows up to 25 participants and record web meetings
• Surprising in the lower tariffs with low license costs, but with drawbacks in terms of functionality
• In practical testing, there were delays in video transmission; the image often froze
• Attractive and intuitive interface
• Attendees can use arrows to point to parts of a split screen

Zoom

• Technologically relatively young platform; only came onto the market well after WebEx and GoToMeeting
• As a SaaS platform for video meetings, the distribution rate is probably now on a par with Webex and GoToMeeting
• Pioneer in providing a web conferencing solution that integrates with classic H.323 and SIP-based video conferencing solutions
• While with other solutions, the webcam and microphone are initially “muted” and must be activated by the participant when you enter the meeting room, these are switched on by default when you enter the meeting room — and must be actively switched off if, for example, you do not want to transfer your video image
• The video, audio and screen playback was of perfect quality in our tests despite the high system load

A question of money: Concurrent Users vs. Named Users

Especially in times of COVID-19, many companies are forced to go on austerity measures. It is important to know here: You do not have to purchase a license of the respective software solution for every participant in an online meeting, but only for those employees who set up and control web conferences as moderators. For invited participants — whether internal or external — the video meeting requires neither a license nor a customer account and is therefore free of charge.

However, all providers that we present here only offer so-called “named user” licenses. This means that each team member who should be able to organize a web meeting requires their own license. This can quickly drive up costs.

At this point, it is interesting to consider how meetings are organized in the physical world. If 100 people work on one floor, it is therefore not 100 meeting rooms that are required, but a maximum of five to ten. Not everyone who wants to organize a meeting has their own meeting room, but books one of the existing meeting rooms and invites participants there. Any number of organizers can therefore share a meeting room as long as they do not occupy it at the same time.

Unfortunately, the license agreements do not reflect this form of “economical” use of space in the physical world. In other words, it is technically possible for several people who invite to online meetings to share a meeting room with a fixed URL and meeting ID — as long as only one organizer is logged in at a time and uses the room for a web meeting hosted by him (which could be ensured by booking resources accordingly in the team calendar). However, the manufacturer contracts do not provide for this in formal law, so that calculated clever action would take place in a legal grey area.

Since all online meeting service providers are experiencing extremely high demand in the current situation, it should also be considered that a scalable server infrastructure with good backbone connection and responsive 24/7 system support comes at a price. Our recommendation is therefore not necessarily to go for the cheapest provider. With providers such as LogMeIn GoToMeeting and Zoom, which have a high level of distribution and a clear focus on technology, we believe that when in doubt, it is better to talk online without restrictions.

You've decided — now what?

If you know which solution you want to start with, we recommend taking three easy steps:

• Take advantage of the free trial, which all providers offer for a period of 7 to 30 days.
• For now, after the trial is over, only book on the basis of a monthly subscription — where available. Although this has an additional charge of 10 to 20 percent compared to an annual subscription, you are more flexible if you don't like the solution after a long period of use (or if you want to give up your virtual meeting rooms again after the corona pandemic has subsided).
• Only when you are certain after two to three months that you want to use the chosen solution permanently and know the number of licenses you need in practice, do you switch to a cost-saving annual contract.