From Enghouse Systems, Vidyo is a web conferencing platform that features video calling and instant chat capabilities. The platform integrates with most environments, networks, and devices.
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Whereby
Score 8.6 out of 10
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Norwegian company appear.in offers their flagship video conferencing platform to small teams, both in a free edition hosting up to 4 guests simultaneously in a session or a paid edition that supports up to 12 simultaneous meeting guests, among other features.
I've had HR professionals ask about using it for interviews. Gone are the days where we have to spend hundreds of dollars to fly candidates in or limit ourselves to phone interviews. Vidyo with it's high reliability has saved the organization thousands in travel costs with candidate recruitment. Business meetings that can often be troubling to get leaders and executive all in one room, Vidyo has functioned extraordinarily well in bringing in people from home, on the road, or the airport. Mobile capabilities are easy and fast. Quick daily calls and chats in the office are probably best suited for the free options out there as Vidyo is not a free service like others. Better yet general phone calls will suffice.
If you cannot use another more common solution on the market or are looking for an alternative to the known solutions, it is a great alternative. If you have other tools already, and just want to test [them], that's fine, but I think the better-known ones have a better chance of using, knowing, and the learning curve will be shorter.
I didn't have to sign up, I just need to log into the "room" I was supposed to, so unlike Skype or other instruments, I didn't need to spend time and create my own account.
To be honest, the largest online class I've attended had 10 people in it (besides the teacher), but it was a good quality connection.
I enjoyed the ability to ask questions or clarifications in the chat (without having to turn on my microphone, so that the teacher could answer the question when he/she finished the thought).
The paid version may have dial-in. But I have always used the free version. Dial-in is typically required for an "official" multi-purpose teleconference platform.
I did have some trouble with larger groups (5+) when it was Appear.in but almost always use it for small 1-on-1 or 3 person meetings.
We are using a larger tool suite that already includes video conferencing instead of our older approach of using different apps from different vendors. appear.in has a simple but great set of features but its pricing scheme is not as scalable as we really need in a 500+ employee company.
We have an internal tech team dedicated to setup and troubleshooting of Vidyo. This makes it very easy, because we have access to our own employees for help. Rarely have I or anyone I work with had to escalate something to Vidyo themselves, and we're lucky to have the internal administrators that run the show. Almost like Vidyo is ours and ours alone.
Never had to contact support, so we cannot give a rating for their overall support. When we noticed the audio was not always great quality, we simply educated our users to mute the mic and use the in-room conference phone which is connected via a dedicated VOIP link and had much better voice quality. The video performance varied by locations network speed and found it got much worse when the room size increased to over 4 connections.
Vidyo gives all of the competitors a run for their money. Since it works seamlessly, is easy to use, and has a clean UI. Screenshare could benefit from some work, like the ability to share multiple screens from different users at the same time. The search function could be improved, but overall, it's a great software.
I find Zoom more complicated to use and harder to use because a lot of people do not like having to download things to their computers or devices and Whereby is so easy to get connected with . I like that Zoom offers larger rooms, but at this point the cost is not worth the extra expense.
It did help us reach the objective of education - after a while, everyone had a chance to connect and the quality of video/audio once you're in is great. It's just getting there that isn't up to par (but hopefully would be changed in next versions).
