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What's a good alternative to "Zoom meetings?" Thank you!
I prefer MS Teams. It's included with MS Office subscriptions, offers better security (my perception plus the conclusion reached in a number of articles I have read). Most importantly, Teams is a suite of tools useful for online collaboration (file storage, meeting notes, a OneNote notebook, Whiteboard, 3rd party apps, etc.).
In general, I try to steer all clients toward Teams as an online platform for collaborating on large (or small) projects.
Thanks for the points -- especially about security and file storage. Appreciated, Newell.
As the other commentor stated, Teams would probably be your best choice if you want to go to the next step or two upscale, with better security (some say Zoom is not the most secure, but I have had no negative experience in that regard), and still be budget friendly.
There are a few alternatives.
MS Teams is a good one, as Newell points out, especially for corporate situations where teams are working on projects as it provides an opportunity to organize information around project teams. The one downside is that only team members can access the information in a Team workspace, so something to watch out for if anything is needed by folks not on a specific team.
Free Conference Call ( http://www.freeconferencecall.com ) is another option. They've been operating on a pay what you can afford basis for a while and recently launched a traditional paid service. They provide integrated phone and video conferencing with an 800 number option and I've found the service to be reliable.
iLumina Tech One ( https://one.ilumina.tech/) is another option geared to teams. I've not used this, so I can't provide any feedback.
Will check these out, Joe. Thank you. Both Free Conference Call & iLumina Tech One are new to me.
@ Joe Magid - note you can add Guests to Teams (Guests have some more limited permissions, but can generally access files). Files can also be shared with certain "non-Team-members" as well, but it must be done deliberately. It's actually a feature (part of the enhanced security that makes sure you actively want to share something, rather than accidentally do so). I use this quite a bit with clients (sometimes I have an "in-house" ID & email, other times not; but have always been able to make it work for collaboration).
Yeah, I'm aware of the ability to add Guests to Teams and to a team.
I guess I also knew that you can share a folder of document within a team by coming in through the SharePoint front end, but definitely wasn't thinking about that! There's a level of complexity there that makes that a challenge to manage effectively over time.
Strong support for Teams. I have been using it for years and it is consistently getting better, particularly the video quality. The basic Microsoft 365 package is only $5/month. It's easy to set up too. One downside, as Joe pointed out, is that it is not as widely adopted outside of corporate environments, but it's fairly user friendly so not that hard to get newcomers on board. I know that mid-pandemic Teams was making big inroads into the market, so familiarity could well continue to rise.
Thank you, Neal. This is helpful. I will do more research. I want to confirm how many individuals can join a Team video conference at one time.
I use Teams as an alternative to Zoom as my most of my corporate clients use Teams. For high impact collaboration, I use XLeap (xleap.net), a platform formerly known as MeetingSphere.
I use Uberconference for conference calls, screen sharing and video calls. It is about $10/month, and I have a single personalized URL for the calls (e.g., www.uberconference.com/yournamehere). I also have a unique phone number just for me, which is in the area code where I reside (e.g., Minneapolis, 612-xxx-xxxx). You can easily record the calls and have the audio transcribed; the quality is decent, but certainly not perfect. Guests can join with just audio, either via phone or web, and don't need to install an application for it to work ... Uberconference recommends using the Google Chrome browser for the best results.
Hope that is helpful and best of luck finding your web conferencing solution.
Best,
Chad