I gave my first webinar in a long time and things have really improved from a few years ago.

There are two components you need to provide: video and audio. Unfortunately, most of the services that combined video and audio also charge a premium over the individual services. So I ended up going with separate services.

There are many services available. Here are the best of the video services. Of course, I will always be glad to hear about other services that I may have missed.

Video conferencing

WebEx - the old standard. And old is right. I wouldn’t recommend this for anyone, it is just too complicated and ultimately too expensive. It reminds me of Norton Utilities - an application that was originally hot and cutting edge but now is a cash cow getting by on its reputation without upgrading.

Central Desktop Live - This looks promising. It has a nice calendar feature which is helpful and they provide a conference call number that you can use. Unfortunately, I had a lot of technical problems which were mostly my own fault for not understanding the software better. On the other hand, other packages were so easy that I assumed this one would be too. I will be giving this one another try. Support for the Mac is there but a little misleading. It definitely requires more set up time than the other apps I looked at.

Glance.net - This is what I ended up using and I would recommend it highly. It is simple to use as it just duplicates your monitor. There is a simple dotted line that shows you what is being sent out. It is simple for the incoming audience. All they need to know is the code to login and they are in. Glance uses Java and the client app is small and no one had any difficulties getting started, it was pretty much invisible. The pricing is $50/month for unlimited number of meetings for up to 15 attendees.

GoToMeeting - A spinoff of GoToMyPC, GoToMeeting lets you host an unlimited number of meetings for up to 10 attendees per meeting for $49/month. They have GoToWebinar which allows you to have an unlimited number of attendees for $99/month.

There are a number of different services that I chose not to mention for various reasons: no pricing freely available, excessive babble about “synergy” and “business strategies”, extremely high pricing or serious limitation (in my mind).

Recommendations

For the casual user, I would recommend Glance.net. It was extremely simple to set up and use and things went off without a hitch. I will be giving Glance.net another look.