Free Alternatives to GoToMeeting
A few days ago I set out to look for a free alternative to GoToMeeting after trying to evaluate it and finding out that I needed to enter my credit card to get the 30 day trial and I wasn't prepared to do that.
I managed to sign up with Yugma and within a few short minutes I was already set up and able to share my desktop with a colleague. The free Yugma service allows me to invite up to 10 attendees and thats more than enough for me and I think its a pretty decent web collaboration tool.
I had a quick look at two other tools that give free desktop sharing. The first one is Yakkle which competes very well with instant messaging tools and remote meeting and web conferencing tools. It would be interesting to hear from other
people who use the tool more often.
The other free tool that I came across is Vyew. No installation is required for this one and therefore
you are able to use it from any computer with a browser. I didn't get around to test it but I hope to find some time to give it a go.
There are probably a few other tools and if I come across them I will add them to the list.
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diggI've been using Yugma for a few months and found its just perfect for what I need. Super simple, fast, low cost (i think 10 bucks is a bloody steal). and I've been able to get things done with colleagues on different computing platforms. I highly recommend it. Plus I just got their newsletter this morning and just learned that they now have a Skype extra. I've got to check it out.
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Thanks Ajay. Good to hear from somebody who has been using Yugma for a while. I also got the new Skype add in e-mail and I think that can only make it better for collaboration.
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i ALSO am a Yugma fan. been using it for about 10 months. haven't strayed since i found them. and they are clearly working for the good of their customer...with the Skype integration and constant new features. seems like a feel good product and company!
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I tried dimdim today. It was pretty easy to use in IE (Couldn't get firefox to work, but I didn't try very long). It includes audio and video and allows for up to 20 people on the free version.
Best of all, it's open source.
Best,
Daniel
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Thanks Daniel for the heads up about dimdim, I will have a look at it and see how it goes. Cheers.
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Thanks for the information!! I tried GoToMeeting service. I like this...
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Thanks for the post. I didnt know about Yakkle and would take a look at the tool. I have written about a few other alternatives to Go2meeting on this post.
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I have visited the link in your comment and there is some helpful information there, thanks.
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Yugma apparently does not work with Remote Desktop Connection.
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Thanks LSA for that piece of information, I didn't know that and I haven't tried it. Thanks.
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I've found Yugma to be the WORST program out there. So far, at least 50% of my prospects cannot get logged on, their system is ALWAYS down, and after sending in 4 emails over 4 weeks requesting help, I went to their site to use the Live Help feature.
Thei tech support actually ARGUED with me and told me "It is not our policy to respond to requests for help if we don't know the problem. We don't know what's causing your problems, so we're not going to reply to your emails sir."
My jaw dropped... So no acknowledgment of help, no responses, just IGNORE your customers and hope the problem goes away? Yugma spent 15 more minutes arguing with me, and eventually this guy tells me that it's a waste of time to reply to customers if the issue cannot be quickly resolved!!!!
Really? GLad to know Yugma cares so little about their paying customers? Needless to say, that was all I needed to hear to make a switch to another service.
Thanks for the comment. That doesn't sound like a good experience for you Chad. I hope their tech support will get their act together quickly or people will just opt for another service like you did. I think I would have done the same in such circumstances.
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I got the free trial of gotomeeting (it gave me an option to sign up without a ccard) and I find it pretty good, but the open alternatives such as zoho and yugma are pretty good two also, i've found that a simple vnc install can work as a free and quick meeting tool
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Its good that you got an option to sign up without a credit card. Maybe they have changed they way they do things now.
Also recently I got an e-mail from somebody from Yugma who said that:
Yugma now offers a full-sharing Linux program (beta) and Outlook plug-in, you can check them out here.
The other big announcement is that Yugma Free now lets you invite up to 20 attendees into a session at once! All current Yugma Free subscribers will be automatically upgraded to the new service.
Also, there is now a \"view-only\" option that lets attendees join a meeting with out downloading anything. This options allows a person to see the desktops being shared and use the built-in instant messaging feature.
I haven't checked these options myself but when I get some time I will look at the site. Cheers.
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Thank you so much for posting this information. I tried using WizIQ but it didn't seem to allow desktop sharing. Just setup Yugma and shared the desktop with no problem. You saved me a lot of time! Thank you again!!
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Its good to hear that you found this post useful Kathy. Thanks.
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Many of us are familiar with LogMeIn, the free version. If you look at the pro version, you'll find the ability to share your desktop for $69/year! Not bad. Doesn't have all the bells and whistles of online meeting software but terrific for one on ones! I use it all the time.
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We had to do a presentation on Search engine optimization and needed something that either had no plugin or a very fast plugin.
Your recommendation for Vyew.com was spot on. While it is slightly (very slightly)
awkward to use the first time (when you go into desktop sharing mode, the dashboard goes
away, unlike GoTomeeting which floats its dashboard), there is no plugin at all!
For an additional $10/year, they also give a dedicated URL (such as vyew.com/chris)
so that you have something easier to tell prospects on the phone.
For collaboration, I still like GoTomeeting, but for sales presentations, where you are asking someone to get online and watch a presentation, I think Vyew is the best option.
Thanks for the tip!
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Good to see that you found the post useful Chris.
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As a Cincinnati Ohio Internet Consultant calling on the small and medium sized business market, I have to both use and recommend solutions. If the client is cost sensitive and only needs to hold one-on-one type meetings, I steer them toward logmein.com. Their FREE package supports simple desktop sharing which is all most people are doing with these meetings. Use the phone for the audio. You can't beat it and LogMeIn is a terrific service all around for both communications and support.
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We were using NeMeeting/Skype for ages. There had to be a batter way. After reading the thread here I chose Yugma Free/Skype to have conferences this week with 7 people in 3 different locations lasting for 12 hours over the week. Had a really excellent experience with Yugma (thanks for the tip!), it's a very good solution. Skype dropped a couple of times, Yugma maybe once.
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This thread is very informative so thanks for keeping it going. In my business we use GoToMeeting and make no mistake about it, the product is pretty awesome...right down to ease of use, sharing desktops, recording video & audio sessions.
The downside is the pricing. It is downright prohibitive for my personal use with my website friends (for poetry open mic sessions, etc). So I tried Yugma tonight and as luck would have it, it did not install cleanly on my computer -- I have a "screaming" Vista Ultra 64 bit HP computer and it warned of a drive incompatability and then at the end of the install informed me one driver could, in fact, not be installed (didn't identify the driver though). What a bummer -- I wrote to Yugma and am awaiting a reply -- I'll keep you advised.
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we tried using dim dim at my work, unfortunately the boss was too stupid to find where to enter the room name and decided the softwares fault. we then used a trial of gotomeeting until it ran out, and now we use yugma :)
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I just tried yugma and something weird happened. I set up a meeting and invited someone from the office. After that everybody got "Address Not Found" errors when trying to browse their site. Overnight it cleared up so I tried again, and again the site went dead. However we had no trouble browsing when we used a wifi connection outside our network.
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Great thread, good comments. I installed DimDim, and it works perfectly on FF. I had to install a small exe to enable sharing my desktop (2MB, very quick installation). Did not work (yet) on FF.
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A year ago I tried all the other free alternatives to GTM and found them all "wanting" in one area or another. So I have stayed with GTM until someone convinces me that the freebies can provide everything GTM does -- this is what I think the alternative must have:
1) Ability to provide a phone number to call that enables automatic audio in synch with the video
2) Ability to instantly make any attendee the "presenter" so that their screen can be viewed and used by either the presenter or the meeting organizer
3) The ability to easily record the full session (both audio and video in sync for easy playback in acceptable standrad playback formats.
4) A seamless invitation process to enable meeting attendees easy access to the session.
5) Number of attendees -- usually not an issue but I have had as many as 14 in a meeting at one time with GTM with excellent quality.
Look -- I don't like paying money if I can get the same product for less or even FREE. Thanks for continuing to post to this thread so I can hear if anything has changed regarding a viable alternative to GTM -- I would stay with GTM and am only "looking" because I think their price structuring should be based more on usage than just a blanket fee for all. I may use GTM 15 times a year whereas others may use it 100 times. Why should I pay so much as a limited-use owner??
Interested in hearing more from you folks --
Norm
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Thanks Norm for your contribution, you raised some interesting discussion points. I think it would be good for the freebies if they could do everything that GTM does as you say but I think its something that will take some time.
I also hope that the current alternatives will continue to improve their feature lists so as to match those offered by GTM for example.
Thanks.
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I rate Yugma - I was all set about to use goToMeeting when I came across it. After a bit more substantial use I will see if it lives up to the first experience!
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Hi all, I'm looking for a web conferencing software which run on Linux. So, but Yugma, is there an other one? Thanks.
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Eric, maybe you could have a look at WebHuddle https://www.webhuddle.com/ if you are still looking for a conferencing software that runs on Linux. I haven't tried it myself though. Also Yugma should work on Linux and there could be others too.
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Yugma offers a free trial but it is not free. You need to pay for it to use the version for a longer period of time. I'm going to give it a shot and try out.
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Sorry Weston, I made an error in the comment earlier when I eluded to in my earlier comment that Yugma trail is only free for some time. I found that Yugma still offers a free version with some restrictions like maximum of 20 participants and one audio bridge. There is a paid version which has some additional features. For small business Yugma would work.
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You may want to consider using a web conferencing appliance from RHUB to fulfill training needs. The appliance comes with free audio conferencing, recording and non-download guaranteed attendance functions ideally for training.
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I have been using yugma for quite some time. Phones are a pain, if you are hosting a meeting on Monday morning or at peak hours you and participants have to fight to get the meeting phone picked up.
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Since my last post, I have started using Vyew, I think it's awesome, they also provide a free meeting phone no. I have dumped Yugma since :).
Cool thing about Vyew is that the users do not have to download any viewer, this helps since sometimes you end up wasting lot of time to get not so techie meeting participants to install the software and at times some of these participants do not had admin privileges to install software, and they have to get the IT guy install stuff. I had to postpone meetings because of this at times.
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Thanks Shash for sharing your experiences, I am sure some people will benefit from that. Cheers.
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Have you tried Mikogo? Works GREAT http://www.mikogo.com
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It is very much helpful I will try it. Thanks
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