ClickMeeting Review
ClickMeeting is a competent, general-purpose video conferencing app for small businesses, but it excels in live events and webinars that seat a large number of attendees. Casual users will lament the missing transcription tool, and find the advanced features overkill.
PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing.
ClickMeeting Specs
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Free Version Offered | No |
| Multi-Language Support | Yes |
| Whiteboard Tools | Yes |
| Share Desktop | Yes |
| Share Mouse / Keyboard | No |
| In-App Messaging | Yes |
| In-App Private Chat | Yes |
| Calendar Integration | Yes |
| Audio Recordings | Yes |
| Video Recordings | Yes |
| 24/7 Phone Support | Yes |
| Social Media Integration | Yes |
| Cloud Storage | Yes |
| Virtual Backgrounds | Yes |
| Blur Backgrounds | Yes |
ClickMeeting differs from most of the other video conferencing software we’ve tested. Although it includes everything you need for general-purpose video conferencing, it doesn’t really excel in those areas. Instead, it shines as a tool for people who want to host online meetings, events, and webinars, where one or more presenters broadcast content to large attendee groups. In fact, it supports up to 1,000 people.
Unfortunately, that specialization will cost you. ClickMeeting’s pricing model doesn’t match its capabilities if webinars aren’t really your organization’s thing. If that’s the case, we recommend that you check out some of our Editors’ Choice picks for video conferencing, including BlueJeans (for multi-platform use), Intermedia AnyMeeting (SMB use), and Zoom Meetings (for general use). If your conferencing needs are broader and more central to your mission, and you have the pocketbook for it, take a look at Webex by Cisco, our Editors’ Choice pick for small to midsize enterprises.
ClickMeeting Pricing and Plans
ClickMeeting starts at $25.00 per month per host (billed annually) for the entry-level Live plan. This tier has six hours of recording storage, and 1GB of file storage. It hosts up to 25 participants per meeting, but the pricing scales up if you need more participant seats.
However, according to ClickMeeting, its most popular plan is the Automated tier, which ups the recording storage to 10 hours, and increases the file storage to 2GB. True to its name, this plan includes many automated features, such as thank-you emails, follow-up emails, and the option to auto-publish recordings to Dropbox, Facebook, or YouTube. This tier costs $40 per month per host.
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It’s worth noting, again, that unlike the other video conferencing solutions we’ve reviewed, ClickMeeting supports a veritable crowd of meeting attendees, scaling all the way up to 1,000 people per session. At that level, the Live plan costs $239 per host per month, while the Automated plan costs $279 per host per month.
All plans allow an unlimited number of online meetings, with up to eight cameras visible at a time. A free 30-day trial is available.
Getting Started With ClickMeeting
As with the other video conferencing software we reviewed, many attendees are likely to join ClickMeeting sessions through their browsers, via a web-based client. However, dedicated beta apps are available for macOS and Windows (ClickMeeting lacks a Linux app). On the mobile side, ClickMeeting supports Android and iOS. The clients feature similar functionality, with the exception of the browser-based version’s virtual backgrounds.
Once you sign in, you’ll see the typical options for selecting your mic and camera. Less typical, however, is the ability to prep the meeting prior to going live. That includes options for starting a presentation, situating your screens, and prepping a file. This is a feature that makes sense when you understand that ClickMeeting is weighted toward presentations. It’s critical for giving a good first impression in a webinar, because nobody wants to see you fumbling around as you try to get your slides ready.
ClickMeeting’s layout is a little different than the competition’s offerings. Along the left-hand side, you’ll see shortcut icons. The first is the standard AV view, where everyone is a talking head. For this, two layouts are available. Gallery view is the grid of boxes where everyone gets an equal share of screen real estate. Speaker’s view makes everyone but the speaker smaller. Along the right-hand side is where you’ll find a preview of your own video, as well as moderator controls that let you mute, unmute, control video, and grant presenter status.
Multiple Event Types
More interestingly, the last button on the right-hand side lets you set the event type. ClickMeeting’s UI emphasizes that it skews heavily toward events, in contrast to more general-purpose video conferencing clients like Google Meet.
By default, ClickMeeting is in webinar mode, which the company describes as "a seminar conducted on the internet." In this mode, you can share information, slides, screens, whiteboards, and surveys with as many as 1,000 attendees. That’s a lot more than is supported by the other video conferencing systems in our roundup, but bear in mind that while attendees can interact with presenters, this will primarily be via text chat, rather than live, two-way audio and video. The platform can only scale to so many live cameras and mics at once.
In addition to live webinars, ClickMeeting also lets you create two types of pre-recorded webinars. You can opt to create an on-demand webinar, which is essentially a playback of a webinar that you held earlier with a live audience. In addition, you can create an automated, prepackaged webinar that’s intended to run fully unattended.
ClickMeeting also supports an online Meeting mode, but that’s where the platform’s limitations reveal themselves. The company says you can start a virtual meeting that lets everyone can see, hear, and talk to each other, but it’s limited to a group of no more than 40 people. That’s inferior to what’s offered by Intermedia AnyMeeting and Webex by Cisco, traditional video conferencing apps that feature rooms that hold hundreds of users at a time. What’s more, ClickMeeting states that for a meeting of that size, "the CPU requirements will be very high for each attendee."
You can augment your webinars and meetings with what ClickMeeting calls "Edu mode," where the presenter must grant permission for attendees to speak (otherwise, the attendees cannot see each other). Although we understand the thought behind this feature, it feels redundant. Plus, you cannot enable Edu mode if your session includes more than 40 participants. We could accomplish all of these things in a standard meeting on any other platform, so Edu is a little gimmicky.
Choose Your Views
Just as you can choose from multiple event types, ClickMeeting also offers you a number of "views" that determine how you and your attendees interact. Two obvious ones are Screen Sharing and Whiteboard. Both work as you’d expect. When screen sharing, you have the option to annotate, much like you can in GoToMeeting. And the whiteboard is exactly that: a blank slate where you can annotate, type, place images, and draw.
Breakout rooms are a standard feature these days, but we appreciated ClickMeeting’s approach, which lets you create several rooms and then drag and drop attendees to them. Alternatively, you can randomly assign folks to rooms. It would have been nicer to name these rooms, much like you can with Webex by Cisco, our Editors’ Choice pick for small enterprises, Webex. Still, it’s a well-executed feature, and everyone comes back to the main room like clockwork as soon as a breakout session ends.
The Presentation view lets you share an image, presentation, video, or audio file. This is where that online storage comes into play. Once you’ve uploaded your materials, the attendees can make group annotations or edits. This is a unique spin on the presentation concept that doesn’t require creating a wiki or special room. There’s an icon that you can click to download a local copy, as well.
The Surveys view lets you quickly build opinion polls or tests. Each question can have one choice, multiple choices, or can be open-ended. Once everyone has responded, you’ll get statistics for the responses broken down by answer.
ClickMeeting has an exceptional Q&A implementation. During a meeting, attendees can use the chat window to ask questions. You can then select questions from this list and publish them to the Q&A list to gather answers. As you reply (or others reply) to those questions, you can publish the most meaningful answers. Its flow is near-perfect for most meetings.
One of the more unusual ClickMeeting features is Call to Action. It’s aptly named. The feature gives you the option, for a set number of minutes, of clicking a button to open a URL and perform a task. For example, this could be something like signing up for a mailing list or a trial. It’s one of those sales tactics that’s hard to pull off in a classy way, but if that’s what you want to do, ClickMeeting handles it well.
ClickMeeting supports integration with major social media platforms, including Facebook, and YouTube. Although ClickMeeting’s not the only video conferencing app that let you stream to those services, we thought it was the overall easiest to use. Alternatively, you can use ClickMeeting’s own live streaming service.
A Good Solution for Event Hosts
We can’t emphasize enough that if your organization has plans to rely heavily on video conferencing for webinars and events, you should check out ClickMeeting. It has a terrific, user-friendly interface; supports live streaming; and can scale to support 1,000 attendees.
That said, it lacks automatic transcription and closed captioning. This makes it a hassle to remember what everyone said, and puts the note-taking responsibility onto attendees. This oversight is especially egregious during a live event where note-taking could be a distraction. In addition, the Meeting and Edu modes’ 40-active-participant limit might sound like a lot of chairs, but it’s not a high mark these days. For example, Intermedia AnyMeeting and Webex by Cisco support participants in the hundreds.
All in all, ClickMeeting has several useful features, but it just hasn’t kept up with the competition. If you are an avid live streamer, it might be worth the subscription, but it’s a bit on the pricey side as a standard small business video conferencing tool. If the latter is what you want, look to our Editors’ Choice picks, including BlueJeans, Intermedia AnyMeeting, Webex by Cisco, and Zoom Meetings.
GoToMeeting Review
Despite a few quirks and omissions, GoToMeeting includes many tools that make it an useful video conferencing app, particularly if your company’s already invested in the GoTo ecosystem.
PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing.
GoToMeeting Specs
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Free Version Offered | Yes |
| Multi-Language Support | Yes |
| Whiteboard Tools | Yes |
| Share Desktop | Yes |
| Share Mouse / Keyboard | Yes |
| In-App Messaging | Yes |
| In-App Private Chat | Yes |
| Calendar Integration | Yes |
| Audio Recordings | Yes |
| Video Recordings | Yes |
| 24/7 Phone Support | Yes |
| Social Media Integration | Yes |
| Cloud Storage | Yes |
| Transcription | Yes |
| Virtual Backgrounds | No |
| Blur Backgrounds | Yes |
GoToMeeting is the video conferencing software offering from GoTo, which rebranded itself from LogMeIn in 2022. To its credit, the software has undergone a lot of improvement in recent years, particularly in regards to its user interface. GoToMeeting strikes a good balance between cost and feature set, but doesn’t quite rise to the level of our Editors’ Choice picks, a group that includes BlueJeans (for multi-platform use), Intermedia AnyMeeting (for SMB use), Webex by Cisco (for enterprise use), and Zoom Meetings (for general use).
GoToMeeting’s Pricing and Plans
Like most of its competitors, GoToMeeting offers tiered pricing (a free 14-day trial is available, too). The Professional tier is the entry-level plan, and it starts at $12 per month per organizer, billed annually. This tier supports 150 participants per conference.
However, if you want the distinctive features that truly make GoToMeeting a competitive platform, you’ll want to go with the Business tier, which is priced at $16 per month per organizer. In addition to meetings with up to 250 participants, this tier offers smart transcription, drawing tools, note-taking, unlimited cloud recording, and other useful features. Due to the inclusion of these many tools, GoTo tends to be a little higher on the pricing side than similar products, such as BlueJeans.
GoTo also offers custom packages for enterprise customers, but you’ll need to contact the company to get a quote.
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Getting Started With GoToMeeting
GoToMeeting is commendable for its broad platform support. Like BlueJeans, GoToMeeting clients are available for Android, Chrome OS, iOS, macOS, Linux, and Windows. As with its competitors, GoToMeeting has a browser-based client, too.
Once you’ve created an account, it’s easy to start a meeting. The fastest way is to simply hit the Start button under Meet Now. However, if you want to schedule a meeting at a later time, or you need to personalize the meeting by setting a color scheme and custom URL, then you’ll want to go the Create Meeting route.
The client’s layout is intuitive and comparable to competing products. Along the bottom of the window is a series of buttons that give you the typical meeting features, such as the ability to mute audio and video for when you need to hide away.
The People flyout menu is essentially the moderator control panel. You can mute or unmute audio and video for individuals, lock the session, and invite new participants. There’s also a Settings menu for when you need to adjust which camera or audio source you are using. This can be necessary if you swap out headsets mid-meeting. Fortunately, GoTo figures this out, and asks if you want to automatically make the change.
Screen Sharing and Chat
As with most video conferencing clients, GoToMeeting lets you share either your whole screen or a specific application. Once you’ve shared your screen, a presentation bar appears. This gives you controls to start or pause recording, annotate the screen, and hide or show various meeting aspects for yourself.
The screen-annotation tools are good, but not outstanding. You have a brush at your disposal that you can use to set color, size, and transparency, as well as a toggle flag for making drawings automatically disappear. There’s also a fading feature that causes whatever you draw to fade after a few seconds, so that you don’t waste time hunting for the eraser tool. One annoying omission is a true whiteboard. If you want a white screen, you must launch a blank page or application that offers that functionality.
You can also let another user request screen control. This is great for when someone else needs to drive the bus. The feature works so well that I’m inclined to say that it’s GoToMeeting’s best aspect.
You can access chat via a flyout window along the right-hand side of the screen. Unfortunately, the chat feature is basic at best. For example, it doesn’t let you use rich text or emojis as you can with Intermedia AnyMeeting, our Editors’ Choice pick for general SMB conferencing. That said, it gets the job done.
Advanced Conferencing Features
There’s a button on the leftmost part of the screen to control meeting recordings. Something to note about this feature is that, by default, recordings go to your pre-configured documents folder. Recording to the cloud has to be enabled by an admin. Beyond that, recording meetings works as expected. Once your meeting is over, you’ll have the ability to not only review the recording, but also get a full transcription and meeting highlights.
Like Zoho Meeting, GoToMeeting lets you trigger reactions. This is the virtual equivalent of raising your hand, thumbs up, thumbs down, clapping, laughing, and so on. Any reactions you post show up in the lower right-hand corner of the meeting area. This is a good feature, but arguably nobody does it better than Webex, our Editors’ Choice pick for small to midsize enterprises, which lets you trigger and record reactions by making hand gestures in front of your webcam.
One improvement over earlier versions is the ability to integrate GoToMeeting directly with Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 calendars. Although you can only sync one calendar at a time, this is a tremendously useful feature. It lets you immediately see meetings you create so that they can be shared with others. Add-ons are also available that let you add meeting invites directly from Google Calendar or Outlook.
However, a feature that has long been missing from GoToMeeting is the ability to set virtual backgrounds. GoTo has rectified this gap somewhat by providing a free license for ChromaCam Pro, a third-party app that lets you replace or blur your background without resorting to a green screen. Still, we’d like to see this or similar technology built into the base product, as it is with most competitors today. Even Google Meet, which is strictly browser-based, does a better job of this.
Competent Conferencing
GoToMeeting has leveled up its game since we last tested it, serving up a new UI and really effective screen annotation tools. However, it still lacks a true whiteboard, and virtual backgrounds still require you to install a separate app. Still, GoToMeeting best serves customers who use GoTo’s other products for webinars, contact centers, and remote IT management.
If, on the other hand, your needs steer more toward general video conferencing, we recommend our Editors’ Choice picks, including BlueJeans, Intermedia AnyMeeting, and Zoom Meetings. If you’ve got more sophisticated needs (and you have the budget), you should look into Webex by Cisco. Finally, if all you need is a simple system for the occasional, browser-based video conferencing get-together, check out Google Meet.