FreeConference.com vs. Skype (discontinued)

It's great for virtually meeting with people in other cities/countries. It's terrific how they provide so many international numbers for people to use!

Incentivized

Skype is an excellent choice for phone calls, both local and international, and is also one of the most affordable solutions for business office line. It is simple to use and get started with and provides a call experience on mobile that is similar to a regular phone call. It is not the ideal tool for team chat. For text-based team communication, a separate dedicated tool is still ideal

Incentivized

• Freemium model
• Easy to access website
• Helpful scheduling

Incentivized

• Perfect for chatting via text. Has emojis, file sharing, audio sharing, and even video sharing capabilities.
• Good for video chats. You can do 1 on 1 sessions with a good quality video.
• Privacy is also another important function they have. They allow for private conversations between users.
• Ability to delete conversations with sensitive information you may not want seen by users not authorized. Can share confidential information via Skype.
• Customizable profiles to fit your company culture.

Incentivized

• Early on (many years ago), I occasionally had some trouble getting everyone onto the same call. But that's only happened a couple of times many moons ago.

Incentivized

• Skype is a RESOURCE hog. People who have limited bandwidth will have poor call quality.
• It is hard to figure out how to use emojis and upload images in the chat.
• The background images do not fool anybody....it is clearly not your real background.

Incentivized

I have given this rating as this need to give more than that as it's very helpful for us and makes our work more efficient and fast.

Skype is not as good as Facetime in terms of ease to glance at it and figure out how it works. I think that's a result of Skype trying to be too many things at once. A lot of the menu and UI could be streamlined, and I would jettison some of the additional functions that have been tacked on over the years to simplify. That being said, while some options are slightly hard to find, they all work flawlessly once found.

Incentivized

I am not aware of the current support level for Skype for business, as I have never used even though I have the product. However, the support for Skype's personal paid users is not where it could be. Users who pay for Skype features do not have a clear path to reach out to support. So, rating 6, can be better as soon as I need to use Skype for business support and get a good experience. I will say that I will renew Skype for Business subscription, which is a significant inconsistency on my end. The explanation is that Skype for Business comes bundled with Office for Business, with no additional cost, so why not.

Incentivized

It can be used on the phone via mobile application as well as on the desktop by logging in to the website. Easily installed and ready to use.

Incentivized

Call quality is very similar to the above products. However, most of our community partners and collaborators are not aware of FreeConference and are thus less able to utilize it without prompting and sometimes assistance from us.

Incentivized

Selected Skype because it was the only platform that was available for such purposes for video conferencing or audio conferencing. Since Microsoft, the tech giant, backed it, it was assured that it would work great in terms of productivity, with utmost security measures for all data, conversations, work materials, and personal information.

Incentivized

• There is ABSOLUTELY no negative ROI because its free and you can't substitute a cost for time because it took no time lol. Great service all the way around.
• I am currently waiting for the contract to expire for our current payed provider so that we might permanently (company wide) switch to freeconferences.com.

Incentivized

• Skype has contributed to increased efficiency for remote collaboration, especially now due to the ways things are and having so many remote employees. Without this tool, or any collaboration tool, business could not move forward.
• I think Skype is the cost effective solution also between it and the other competitors out there. I'm not privy to the exact costs, but it strikes me as the cheaper option.
• The only negative impact I would say is its lack of functionality and customization for larger organizations or groups that have employees spread out or require inter-departmental collaboration.

Incentivized