It's so much fun to watch companies take direct aim at each other! At least it's fun when you are standing safely on the sidelines and are not directly involved.
Today AnyMeeting put out a press release announcing "an aggressive campaign taking on WebEx and GoToMeeting in the small business market." According to the press release, any small business owner, employee, or independent professional can provide a copy of their most recent WebEx or GoToMeeting invoice and receive a comparable ad-free license from AnyMeeting. Usage is free for six months. After that, I assume you have the option to pay the normal monthly license fee, downgrade to an ad-supported free account, or cancel and try some other product.
AnyMeeting started life as Freebinar and I have occasionally reported on it in this blog over the past couple of years. It supports webinars and web conferences with up to 200 participants. Its most distinctive feature is the aforementioned ad-supported free license option. This is a great way for neophytes to try out webinars in their business with no technology costs. If you like the software and find that it works well for you, you can pay to turn off the advertising display in the console.
Other than that, the product has most of the features you would expect from any modern webinar technology. You can upload PowerPoint slides or share your desktop. You can run interactive polls, have text-based audience chat, record meetings for future playback, and show webcam video. I like the fact that AnyMeeting also has an integrated payment processing option, so you can charge for webinars as an integrated part of the registration process.
I am sure that if this campaign works, AnyMeeting will publish something crowing about how many people switched from competing products to their platform. So I'll keep an eye on this and report back if I hear anything more from the company.
