Online Collaboration Tools

CliqMeet is a new browser-based collaboration, conferencing and webcasting platform supporting up to 250 attendees without requiring any installation and setup and while integrating:

• Whiteboard
• Presentation sharing
• Screen-sharing
• VoIP
• Video-conferencing
• Dial-up conferencing
• Unlimited recordings
• Text chat

The platform works right out of the box, and you can start your first collaboration session in an instant after landing on CliqMeet home page. Just type the name you want to give to your conferencing room and you are in. Signup is not required to run a meeting.

The interface is very simple and straightforward, and requires zero time to be learned. Swipe your mouse to the left side of the screen and you get all the extra controls you may need.

ClicqMeet offers one of the best solutions for running a webinar or an online event with hundreds of people and with zero configuration and running costs. The key advantage is its simplicity, ease of use and intuitive interface. (It works with the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox).

Definitely worth trying.

Free (ad-supported version).

Try it out now: https://www.cliqmeet.com/en-us

Pricing and features: https://www.cliqmeet.com/pricing

Slack is a real-time private team messaging platform that integrates file-sharing, notifications, searchable archives and information tagging.

You can easily create channels based on topics, tasks or teams that allow you to keep messages and information among team members tidy.

Slack is both browser-based as well as being available on all smartphones (iOS and Android).

Slack wants to be a full be replacement for internal team emails, making it much easier and faster to deal and access internal communications and files.

Fially Slack fully integrates with a wide number of cloud services including Dropbox, Google Drive, Asana and many other useful ones.

A free version allows unlimited users, 5GB of storage, 10,000 messages and up to 5 external app integrations.

The $9/mo plan moves up the limits to unlimited messages, 10GB storage, and unlimited external app integrations. The more expensive plans ($19-99/mo) offer more storage space, stats and better support among other features.

For more info: https://slack.com/ 

Tour: https://slack.com/is 

Open Meetings is an open-source server-based web conferencing and collaboration platform that works on multiple operating systems and which integrates audio and video conferencing, instant messaging, recording, whiteboarding, calendar and groupware facilities.

OpenMeetings requires SUN/Oracle JRE 6.

Free to use. 

Find out more: http://openmeetings.apache.org/ 

Downloads: http://openmeetings.apache.org/downloads.html 

Installation info: http://openmeetings.apache.org/installation.html 

Commercial support: http://openmeetings.apache.org/commercial-support.html 

(HT Ana Cristina Pratas for discovering this gem)

TrueConf is a new free videoconferencing web app which provides three-way video conferences for OS X, Windows and iOS users.

TrueConf also integrates other additonal collaboration features, including:

• video recording
• whiteboard
• file transfer.

Paid plans integrate access to multipoint video conferences with up to 120 users and additional features like:

• remote desktop control 
• screen sharing
• presentation support. 

The UI mimicks the Windows 8 tiled interface and video windows support 1080p resolutions and a 16:9 aspect ratio across all video modes.  

More info: http://trueconf.com

Features: http://trueconf.com/videoconferencing-features/

Pricing: http://trueconf.com/purchase/

Download (Win, OSX, iOS, Android): http://trueconf.com/downloads/

Teambox is a web-based collaboration tool which allows you to plan and organize tasks, share files and documents, discuss in real-time, do screen-sharing and HD videoconferencing.

Teambox fully integrates with Google Drive, Dropbox and Box and allows you to use, upload, save and share any files you have on those platforms.

For real-time video conferencing it integrates with Zoom, making it possible to share your screen and video collaborate with 5 people or more.

Free plan available for up to 5 users. It includes 5GB of space, 5 projects and up to five team members.

Mobile versions for iOS and Android also available.

Pricing: https://teambox.com/platform/pricing/

More info: https://teambox.com/

Gruveo is a secure and free web app which allows you to easily start a video-conference session with anyone without needing to register, download, install or login anything. 

To start a video session you simply input a numeric code (of three or more digits) of your choice on the Gruveo home page and then communicate that code to anyone you want to video call. That's it. Your computer and the other device will automatically create a direct connection allowing your video conversation to start instantly.

An excellent solution for instant video calls that require zero set-up time and which may benefit from secure encrypted communication and anonymity.

Free to use.

Try it out now: https://www.gruveo.com/ 

FAQ: https://www.gruveo.com/faq/ 

Kollaborate.io is a full-featured real-time collaboration app which allows you to instantly meet with customers, students or teammates without needing to login, install or download anything.

Kollaborate.io integrates video conferencing, VoIP, whiteboarding, document and image sharing, text chat, as well as the ability to auto-archive content and to easily invite other people into a meeting.

Whatever you load, resize or move on the collaboration desktop is also resized and repositioned for everyone else. Everyone sees the same thing.

One unique feature of Kollaborate.io is its clutter-free interface, which completely disappears in the background when it is not needed. 

Definitely worth a try.

Free version available.

Pro versions ($9.99 or $29.99/mo) provide ability to have private and password-protected meetings and with the more expensive plan, to access the archive and schedule meetings.

Pricing info here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/spa/782adzfe036gp2y/arsptu5j.png 

Try it out now: https://www.kollaborate.io/ 

*It's not clear from the web site information how many people are effectively supported in a conference, with or without video.

MashMeTV is a real-time collaboration web app which allows you to create one or more persistent collaboration rooms that integrate the following features:
 

• video-conferencing for up to 12 people
• whiteboard
• Google Drive collaboration on docs and presentations
• SlideShare in-sync presentation viewing
• YouTube in-sync video viewing
• Google Maps co-navigation
• co-browsing
• text chat
• room visual personalization
• free storage of 2.5 GB

Rooms can be set to be public or private (with a password that you can share), official meetings can be scheduled and you can invite anyone easily from within MashMeTV.

A good tool for collaborating with your team or for presenting to a few people your ideas or project. Unique in its ability to bring together several "view-together" functions under one roof.

Free to use for up to 24/hr/mo and for a max of 5 people at a time.

Pricing: http://www.mashme.tv/page/pricing 

Find out more: http://www.mashme.tv/ 

Features: http://www.mashme.tv/page/tour 

FAQ: http://www.mashme.tv/page/faq 

(Added to Pinterest collection Top Free 20 Video Conferencing Tools 2013)

Sqwiggle is a new real-time collaboration platform which allows you to meet persistently and videoconference easily with your distributed team, as well as to have a group messaging stream that keeps you updated on everything happening.

Sqwiggle has been designed to be a persistent real-time collaboration tool, meaning, that it is ideally used to bring closer, as if they were side-by-side, teammates that work at different locations by remaining always-on and by making extremely easy to switch on the the audio-video communication.

This is why you can turn on Sqwiggle at 9am and switch it off when you go away, as it makes so easy for you to activate a video conversation with anyone of your teammates, while working at a distance.

My comment: I always thought that a persistent always-on collaboration space is the perfect way to work side-by-side when you have a distributed team, and so I wrote back in 2004 a short article entitled: Working side by side. It was 2004. Maybe I was a bit too ahead of my time. Sqwiggle may be much more in sync with the times than I was, and I would certainly recommend it to any team wanting to feel as if they were working at the same table.

N.B.: Sqwiggle comes both as a Mac app and a web-based service. 

Pricing info: https://www.sqwiggle.com/pricing ($9/user/month)

More info: https://www.sqwiggle.com/ 

Help: https://www.sqwiggle.com/help

Podio offers modular collaborative workspaces that can be customized to your specific needs by adding adn integrating your preferred collaboration apps, available in its dedicated app library.

The latest app addition is a free video and audio app which allows you to videoconference in real-time with any other Podio user (1-to-1).

From SmallBizTrends: "If you’re still searching for the right video conferencing service to interact with your business partners, your customers, and your suppliers, Podio has added a new Podio video conference feature you may want to consider.

Audio and video service was launched this week for Podio at no extra cost for users of the collaboration software whether you have a free or premium account. Anders Pollas, co-founder and product manager at Podio, introduced the new service recently on the official Podio blog.

There are at least 200,000 Podio clients already using the business collaboration platform. With the new video chat app, users will be able to interact with each other using video and audio. But that’s not all.

The workplace management and social site also recently added instant text messaging to go alongside its suite of other business apps already geared for group input and interaction."

Source: http://smallbiztrends.com/2013/07/podio-video-conference-app.html

Podio video conferencing features are available to everyone whether you have a free or Pro version of Podio. For now video-conferences support a maximum of two parties only.

Podio is free for up to 5 users.

More info: http://blog.podio.com/2013/07/09/audiovideopodio/

Free sign-up: https://podio.com/signup

Tutorials: https://developers.podio.com/examples

App library: https://company.podio.com/team

Added to section Workgrouping - Team collaboration workspaces

See more online collaboration tools: http://bit.ly/BestCollaborationTools2013

CuMeeting is a full HD videoconferencing, collaboration and conferencing software for Windows PC allowing up to 100 participants and up to 16 simultaneous video feeds.

CuMeeting also integrates:

• 720p and 1080p HD video support
• full screen sharing facilities
• remote control
• whiteboarding
• file-sharing
• text chat
• voting
• full event recording
• support for double-monitor
• multiple layouts available for conferencing space
• works across desktop and mobile devices
• secure 256-bit AES encryption

*Windows only.

Free 15-day trial. (no credit card required)

Find out more: http://www.cumeeting.com/

Pricing: http://www.cumeeting.com/pricing.html

Features: http://www.cumeeting.com/web-conferencing-software.html

Momentum, a hosted PBX provider, has just made available a new enterprise-grade web conferencing platform called Momentum Meeting.

The browser-based Java-enabled web collaboration solution integrates whiteboard, text chat, screen-sharing, audio, video and presentation tools for meeting sessions with up to 250 attendees.

businesses are adopting every year.

Additional key features include:

■   Synchronized Browsing and Screen Share
■   PowerPoint Presentation and Online Media File Sharing
■   Live Document Annotation and Interactive Whiteboarding
■   In-Session Polling and Survey Questions

■   Session recording

30-day free trial available upin request here: http://info.gomomentum.com/web_conferencing/

Plans start at $24.95/Month

Product tour: http://www.gomomentum.com/services_producttour.html

Find out more: http://www.gomomentum.com/services_webconferencing.html

N.B.: I have not been able to find detailed info about what other plans are available and what do they specifically offer.