Five web-based conferencing apps

Hey. I have tried Megameeting and it is a very good tool for web conferencing. Alternatively, I have even tried using other webinar providers such as WebEx, gomeetnow, gotomeeting etc. and they are good too. One may even consider deploying on premise web conferencing appliance such as RHUB appliances in order to conduct webinars, web conferences etc.

I'm surprised this article/slideshow only featured commercial/proprietary closed-source paid web conferencing products when there are quite a few free open source projects available for the same purpose. This is especially surprising since TechRepublic has featured these in the past (http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/50-180774). Of course, these do require you to set up your own server to host the conference, but we're IT pros here, so that shouldn't be any problem.

I've set up two BigBlueButton (http://bigbluebutton.org) servers, one physical and one virtual, and both worked great. I've also played with OpenMeetings (http://incubator.apache.org/openmeetings/) and was quite impressed with its capabilities. Considering how tight most IT budgets are today, we are using more open source alternatives now instead of paid subscription services and saving a lot of money without sacrificing the essential features we need.

We use GotoWebinar for our large, public audience meetings. It costs us something close to $79 / month and works well for the purpose.

When we have smaller meetings with clients, vendors or other parties, we use Skype and are working toward Google+ Hangouts. The beauty behind these two platforms is that a lot of people already have accounts with Skype or Google, so they are not signing up for a new account for each meeting they participate in.

Skype is our preferred choice for one on one meetings, but Google+ Hangouts is becoming our choice, especially for meetings with multiple parties.