A lot of us have been in webinars and web conferences. I have attended many and even presented in one. I really loved it and was amazed when they first came out with the concept back in the late 90s. I think it must have been 1998 or 1999. I am not sure if WebEx pioneered it, but they were the first ones.
So recently when a client asked for my help setting up a webinar he could host (it is his first time), I pointed him to WebEx. We went to the webex.com site together and tried to sign him up for a webinar. The web site was really good at giving some information. There were a myraid of options but fortunately it was easy to locate the section that talked about webinars. However, there was no pricing online. So, we decided to pick up the phone and call Webex. The person on the phone was nice and took down all the information - but was nothing more than a secretary. He could not give us pricing and had to setup an appointment for someone to call us back. Alright, I walked over to the client’s office again at the appointed time - but no one called. Finally, almost an hour later we got a hold of our appointed inside sales rep. He said it was a “consultative” approach to tell us what the pricing is. After answering some of the same questions as before here is pricing we got -
33 cents a minute for the web conference
20 cents a minute for the audio portion (which, btw, he shared only after we specifically asked about the audio portion)
Adding up to 53 cents a minute. I about fell out of my chair. Client is expecting around twenty attendes, for about 60minutes. That would be $636.00 for a one time webinar!
Ok, so it was time to shop around. We, Right On Interactive, use ReadyTalk from time to time. And have had good very experience with it. I wasn’t sure how much we paid, but I knew it wasn’t 53 cents a minute. So, next place to shop was ReadyTalk. A quick call to the ReadyTalk sales number told us that the rates were 13 and 8 cents for web & audio portion. Much better! That adds up to 21cents per minute per attendee, or about $252.00. Still expensive but cheaper than client driving out-of-town to present in person.
If you are interested in learning more about our authors, you can choose from the list to the right. An avid developer and technology leader, Amol helps marketers with CRM, e-mail marketing & automation. Most recently, Amol was responsible for an open API at leading email marketing firm ExactTarget. He is currently the VP of Technology at Right On Interactive. Read more from this authorRelated posts:
Categories: Uncategorized ~ Trackback
August 4th, 2007 at 10:07 am
Wow! 53 cents a minute… ugh.
I haven’t tried it yet, but I’ve heard some good things on GoToMeeting.
One note: The history on GoToMeeting is pretty cool. It spawned from GoToMyPC. Before that, the technology was created by HelpAlert - a company I used to work part time for. I used to sit at home and ‘alerts’ would come up on my desktop. I could respond to the alert and get paid to help folks with their PC. It was a cool system and a nice part time gig!
August 4th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
At Wild Birds Unlimited, where I work, we have been using GoToMeeting for a couple of years now and really love it. It’s a flat annual fee that is very resonable. (I believe you can pay monthly also.) The phone conferencing part is at no cost to us. Session attendees just pay their standard long distance rate. It’s very easy for non-tech savy users. I highly recommend it.
August 4th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
[…] Webconferencing tools « Life, living and Web 2.0 Adding up to 53 cents a minute. I about fell out of my chair. Client is expecting around twenty attendes, for about 60minutes. That would be $636.00 for a one time webinar! (tags: webconference) […]
August 5th, 2007 at 10:21 am
[…] Webconferencing tools « Life, living and Web 2.0 Adding up to 53 cents a minute. I about fell out of my chair. Client is expecting around twenty attendes, for about 60minutes. That would be $636.00 for a one time webinar! (tags: webconference) […]
August 5th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
i never trust sites that don’t have a straightforward pricelist; i get the feeling that often consultative equates to what they think you can afford to pay. thanks for the tips.
August 6th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Hi,
This is Austin from Yugma (www.yugma.com ). I invite you and your readers to take a few minutes to check out Yugma, our new free-forever web conferencing and collaboration program. For 20 attendees, you would pay only 29.95 for the monthly Premium-30 flat fee- up to 30 attendees, unlimited use for the whole month!
While other software companies have focused on hard-to-use software that only large corporations can afford, Yugma has taken a very different approach and has focused completely on offering a free and extremely easy service that works seamlessly between Windows, Mac, and Linux. We believe that collaboration should be easy, instant, spontaneous, and productive. You can leave Yugma on all day and share your desktop with one click of your mouse, as easily as any other IM like AIM, Yahoo, or Messenger. Or use Yugma for more structured situations like live presentations, webinars, and elearning.
Yugma = Instant and spontaneous collaboration
- Unlimited always-on use for up to 11 people per session
- Free forever instant desktop sharing
- Collaborate easily in any application
- Mouse and keyboard sharing
- Whiteboard with save feature
- Annotate with save feature
- Record and broadcast your user created content
- Private and public chat
- Built-in file sharing (great for large files)
- Cool customizable widget- embed Yugma anywhere
- Upgrades to handle up to 500 attendees
- No Spyware, Adware or Malware
We’re getting rave reviews (see http://tinyurl.com/yox5cg ). And we were just recently nominated by CNET for the 2007 Webware 100 award for best Web 2.0 apps! Try Yugma today. We hope you will be impressed with our vision, and that you’ll mention us to your community. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, we’d love to hear from you. Just email us at info@yugma.com. Thanks!
Best regards,
Austin
Yugma
http://www.yugma.com
August 6th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Interesting… I just went to this “Yugma” (how do you pronounce that?) - their site didn’t work in Microsoft IE6 — it was formatted crazy. Of course it worked in Firefox. That’s the problem with these newbie companies. They are optimized for the techno elite — the 10-15% of the population who swear by Firefox. If you want high quality service sometimes using the leaders like WebEx and Goto are your best bet.