True hidden costs of free virtual conferencing products could be more expensive than you expect.
Who has been never allured by free conferencing tools at least one time in life? Yet, you should remember that nothing comes for free: paid solutions can be expensive, but they have their pros. On the other side, it is a common misconception that the free version of a product must be as effective as the paid version. The reality could be far different: in this article, I will explore the most common flaws of free tools for virtual conferences.
Be aware of the phone bill
Free conferencing solutions are often based in the US, which means that users are charged for their calls. This could be very burdensome for your customers, especially if they have to call from abroad, as long-distance rates are decisively high. So, don’t be surprised if your foreign customers are reluctant to join your conference calls.
The missing functionalities
The usual marketing trick of most producers of virtual conferencing solutions is to provide users with a limited set of functionalities in the free version, so that they are enticed to shift to the paid version in a second time. So, don’t be too much surprised to discover that the function you desperately need is available in the paid version only.
On the other side, paid solutions are very rich in functionalities that greatly improve security and productivity, from speaker identification to reporting and recording. Naturally, you have to give something for some more comfort.
Free, but not scalable
When your business grows, a conferencing solution with limited features becomes a real bottleneck. Unfortunately, not every free product is scalable. And migrating from one platform to another is often a pain in the neck. It is better to spend something more and start immediately with an inexpensive, but scalable, paid solution, than regretting after.
The customer service that is always out of service
When something is free, money must be saved somewhere, mustn’t it? The somewhere is usually the customer support. So, don’t be surprised to get little, if no help with a free conferencing product when something goes wrong. In other words, free solution is not 100% reliable, which might be acceptable for private usage, but it is too bad for business usage.
The take away from this article is that free conferencing does not come really for free. You buy cheap, you buy twice. You’d better spend something more in the beginning in order to get a reliable and full service rather than trudging along with unsatisfactory, incomplete free software.
Are you interested in virtual conferencing? You are going to find more interesting resources on R-HUB`s blog at http://www.rhubcom.com