Recently one of the companies that I work with, Off Madison Ave, decided to start a webinar series on various marketing, advertising, and interactive topics. It was my job to get the technical aspects squared away. The first and most important item on my list was choosing a software and service package that would suit our needs without being overly complicates or breaking the bank.
The first product that we started looking at was GoToWebinar. There were people on the team that was working on the webinars that were familiar with this software so it looked like we had an easy decision. GoToWebinar is a related product to GoToMeeting, both are made by Citrix.
The person that had conceived the webinar series at the company had some preliminary contact with GoToMeeting, and had been given some pricing of $350/month for the GoToWebinar Product. I called up the sales contact that we had over at GoToMeeting to get pricing and a trial account. The pricing that I received came out to be $560/month and $560 one-time setup, for a total of $7280/year, with a one-year contract. They could not explain the price difference. So after discussing price, it looked like we were going to go with the software regardless, but we wanted to try it out before committing.
This is where some of the fun begins. Simply put, this was the biggest hassle I have ever gone through to get a trial account, demo product, etc. First, I requested it, then I had to send an email to the sales contact of what the criteria that we would be evaluating it on to the sales guy, then I received a link to a webpage that I had to fill out. The Webpage was the equivalent of 3 8.5”x11” pages. It was a trial agreement, that was automatically turned into the required one-year agreement at the end of the 14 days, unless otherwise canceled prior. After agreeing, against my better judgement, to the contract I received a confirmation that they received it. A few hours later, I got an email from someone else saying my account was setup and they would be my account contact. Great, all I wanted was to try the software out.
After we got the software up and running, we quickly realized how clunky their user interface was. While I am sure that GoToWebinar is a great piece of software, and has some great features, they are trying to do too much. Performing simple tasks like switching presenters required multiple clicks. Many of the features in the software we did not need and would most likely never use. So we went back to the drawing board and decided to look at other software packages.
We looked at Webex and Yugma. When I called Webex, it took me 3 calls and 3 different people to talk to anyone that knew anything, or thought they knew something. The first 2 people simply took my contact info so that someone could contact me, ugh, just let me talk to someone that knows something, now. After the sales person finally calls me back I start getting the typical sales runaround. I explain that what we are looking to do, and how many people we are expecting to attend the webinars, but he would not give me pricing, he kept saying he needed more info. When I got fed up with the questions, and said so, he suggested that perhaps he “should be talking to the sales manager because obviously we want it for sales leads and they would be able to help him better”, well that was not going to happen because Off Madison Ave does not have a sales dept, let alone a sales manager, I was who he needed to deal with. Ultimately I never got pricing, nor did I ever get an trial of their product.
Next was Yugma. After calling Yugma’s sales line, I got to talk to someone right away that could answer my questions, give me pricing, and set me up with a trial account. Wow, if their product was as good as their people we would be in heaven. To our delight, the software was great, it was simple and functional. While it lacked the more complex features of GoToWebinar, it had everything that we needed, and even some things that we wanted that GoToWebinar did not have (or we could not find). As it turns out, the price was better too. To get all of the webinar features on Yugma, we only paid $899 for the year, a savings of over $6000 for the year.
When I called the GoToMeeting sales guy to cancel, he was just as rude as the Webex sales guy. When he asked who we went with, and I told him Yugma, he actually laughed at me, and told me I would be back.
Well, I am proud to say that we used Yugma flawlessly for our first webinar, and are very, very happy with our choice. I can also say that based on the experience that I had with both GoToMeeting and Webex, I will never consider their products for any project ever again.
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