Choosing a teleconferencing provider is not easy. Just type the phrase "conference call" into Yahoo and you'll see lots of services. Fortunately, most of them differentiate their services on a handful of factors. Understanding these factors, and weighing their relative importance to the needs of your company, is the best way to make an informed decision. Research in the field indicates that there are five elements which typically enable a user to make a good decision. To help you make that decision, this article reviews these 5 areas.


1. The cost

All-conference calling systems cost at least something to use. This is true even of the ones that brand themselves as "free." Why is that? With the exception of an entirely VOIP based system (e.g. Skype), all-conference calling services require participants to dial a bridge number. In the case of services that provide toll-free access numbers, a per minute fee is assessed. The lowest fee you can typically get is several cents per minute and more likely you'll be paying five to ten cents per minute. This charge is assessed cumulatively. In other words, if there are 5 participants on a 60 minute call, a 300 minute charge will be incurred. Some services still charge legacy rates and of 20 or 25 cents a minute and these services are to be avoided! As mentioned earlier, some services are free with respect to the fact that there is no charge imposed by the provider. However, these services do not provide a toll-free number with their free services and thus users will incur normal long-distance charges to participate.

2. Scheduling ability

Services typically fall into one of two general buckets. Paid and high end corporate services often provide a scheduling interface which enables the organizer to arrange the call. For those services that have an Outlook integration or similar sort of functionality, a pin code and dial-in number can be automatically allocated to the user for situations where the user wishes to do her own call scheduling. The free conference calling systems typically provide only a pin code and dial-in number; the organizer of the teleconference call is responsible for sending individual e-mails and keeping track of individual replies. At this point in time, the sole free conference calling service available in the industry which offers both capabilities (scheduling and on-the-fly conferencing) as well as web based response management is Rondee.

3. Archiving and Recording

For a lot of users, the ability to store information associated with the call or even the call itself can be quite useful. Some services allow recording of the teleconference call in WAV format, GSM or both formats. Some companies provide this capability for free but typically it is found as included feature of paid conferencing services. The audio file is typically retrieved after the conference call is over through a link from the conferencing web site or a link e-mailed to the users. It is generally not possible to email the audio itself because of capacity constraints. Some services provide the agenda for the call to be archived. This capability is obviously not possible with services that simply offer a pin code and dial-in number but can be available for services that offer scheduling capability because the scheduling template records the call specific information.

4. Sharing Your Desktop

Sometimes a teleconference is not limited to audio. If your business necessitates visual sharing of information (e.g. PowerPoint presentations), desktop sharing will be a critical component of a successful conference call. Some users choose a best-of-breed approach and use different providers for their desktop sharing and conferencing. Increasingly, however, conference calling providers are moving aggressively to bundle desktop sharing capabilities into their core product. In the case of well-known brands such as GoToMeeting, this is part of a goal to capture both markets. In the case of conferencing calling companies, desktop sharing is being offered as a paid feature to generate incremental revenue.

5. Personalization

A frequent complaint from users of conferencing systems is the need to remember random dial--in numbers and pin-codes. In the last year, confluence of telecom and internet technologies is solving this problem. A handful of conference call services allow for users to personalize their PIN codes to something more memorable. There are some systems which also offer pinless access when users call from a registered phone number. These systems, however, do necessitate user registration to enable a matching of the user's phone number.

For most users, the ultimate choice of teleconferencing service will require weighting these (and perhaps other) factors according to your organization's requirements. The good news is that the increase of competition in this market is expanding the choices available to you.
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Mindy Carpenter has commented frequently about the free conference calling market. Carpenter works with services such as Rondee which are leveraging web-telephony integration to develop new phone offerings.