Join.me, once acquired by LogMeIn in 2019, was an audio, video, and web conferencing tool targeted at SMBs. Its software can be used across various devices and includes features such as one-click scheduling, personal links, interactive whiteboards, and presenter swapping. It has since been discontinued.
$10
per month
MaestroConference
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
MaestroConference is a web conferencing platform with the capability to run small break-out sessions within the main group. It incorporates voting and social capabilities.
I would neither recommend nor dissuade anyone from using Join.Me. When it first came on the scene, it was a game-changer as far as providing remote access to other authorized individuals and helped save a great deal of time trying to walk someone less proficient through all the detailed steps of computer repair. However, with the proliferation of Zoom and other conferencing products that also provide built-in remote access through its service, the need for a separate application is now limited and not as essential as its own product.
This is best suited for webinars where you want increase participant engagement. Maestroconference has helped us avoid the type of webinar where the presenter has no idea if people are listening and participants often lose interest and end up checking email. The interaction level can become extremely high leading to increased engagement, satisfaction and buy-in.
No need to download anything to get started. Once you sign up you can get started from within your browser. This is probably the single best feature, its a get up and go solution for video conferencing and you do not need any software for it to work.
The one click join a meeting URL is genius. Users who struggle with remembering passwords or invites can just click a link and immediately participate in a meeting which means one email and a couple of clicks and a meeting can start.
Good control features - As the main user, you have many control features including deciding who can speak, annotations, screen sharing easily.
Screen Recordings to the Cloud - This can save on time when you have had a long conference, you can save a recording to the cloud and download it later.
The number one strength of Maestro Conference is the ability for the host to create "break out" groups where members of the call can interact with each other in smaller groups as if they were in an in-person conference.
Another quality of Maestro Conference that I love is the fact that the host can then "weave in and out" of the different break out groups, listening in, providing support and getting feedback. It's an incredibly tool that Maestro offers.
Lastly I think Maestro Conference has excellent customer service.
There should be a complete guide to understand its features before installation because if one feature will be missed then, we can’t get them working properly.
Furthermore, there should be high-quality internet for getting its function and it won’t work without good network coverage.
I think its interface is a little hard for beginners and is not that user friendly.
The call sound quality was often pretty poor, and we had a lot of trouble with calls being dropped. Over the years I would periodically throw in the towel and go back to Free Conferencing just to have reliable quality. But they only have 3 of 4 breakout rooms and I couldn't conduct the rooms easily. Then I try MC again to see if the engineering had improved. It was like a wave. Sometimes better, sometimes worse.
The conductor interface has an annoying glitch wherein we could not change a persons attribute fields on the fly. I would interview my callers and assign them to one class or another based on their answers, and the partner up people into breakout rooms based on their answers. This meant editing the two attribute fields , and it just plain didn't work 75% of the time.
Maestro Conference repositioned its business away from small educators like me, to large organizations like political action committees. The price became too high for me, and it just no longer made sense. I repositioned my product to work with less expensive and less complicated solutions.
The add on features, like recording each conference room, were insanely expensive.
VOIP and MC didn't mix. The MC dialer never worked. Neither did Skype. This meant that my international callers were out of luck. This was FRUSTRATING to say the least. Now I just use Skype. A picture is worth a thousand words.
we have found no other company with the technology that allows us to conduct webinars with this level of interactivity. We've also been watching as the company has added on addtional functionality and are very please with how it is developing.
Join.me is one of the easiest programs I've ever used. It's so easy to get it set up and installed and even easier for someone to join a meeting. The controls are very intuitive and labeled appropriately. The UIX makes sense. It's been a reliable product in my app stack-I love it!
I honestly haven't reached out to their Support team. I get notifications of what they are working on which is good to see, but I haven't directly spoken with any of them. I think my main reason for this is that join.me gives me just what I need (not much more and not much less).
If you're looking for something basic that handles a little bit of everything when it comes to meetings, screen shares and remote desktop control join.me is a great options. If you're a super user and really wanting a lot of detailed features and rich user interfaces and money is not an issue you may want to consider use specific options.
Maestro Conference is the only service I know that allows you to create break out groups and allow participants to actively engage with each other and with the host. It is the most like an "in-person" event of any service I have used. And the customer service has always been excellent
Customer support solution - join.me has made it so much easier to quickly get with a customer and see their trouble and show them a solution. This saves lots of back and forth time and gives the customer more power over owning their solution.
More efficient communication - without join.me we would waste time going back and forth on emails or slack trying to get our message across. Join.me lets us quickly show AND tell others what's going on. I honestly don't know how we ever functioned without it.
When the monthly call with breakout rooms was working well I had a lot of good conversion. When it was not, because of sound quality of dropped calls, I was giving people a poor experience. Since I was using MC as the centerpiece of my TRIAL calls, it was a two edged sword.
