Join.Me

Author: Jenna Vasquez

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The Good

• Features
• Support
• Customization

The company's remote access properties, including Join.Me, use remote desktop protocols that transmit via SSL. An SSL certificate is create for each device, making conferences with this amazing platform secure. For its low prices, Join.Me has some of the best features in the industry. Here is what we liked about Join.Me

• Access to either 5 GB or 100 GB of cloud storage (Depending on Package).
• Mobile app functionality.
• Integrated meeting scheduler that works with Outlook and Google Calendar.
• Customization for higher-paid service levels.
• Some robust leadership and meeting functionalities.

For its free product, also known as a "freemium," Join.Me has some robust properties. If you're willing to drop some coin, the Pro and Enterprise service levels open up worlds of possibilities, including:

• Meeting tools, including annotation and presentation swap. (These features are not available in the free service level).
• Unlimited audio.
• Customization, including a personalized URL and background.
• Meeting lock and share control.

We found that Join.Me also has support for iOS, Android, and Amazon. Amazon-powered apps are not commonly supported in the conferencing industry, so we were happy to see that Join.Me extends its service to Amazon Kindle users. The number of people that could participate in meetings related very well to the price. With other web meeting technologies, we found that only 15-30 people could participate in a meeting. But with Join.Me's Pro and Enterprise plans, we found that up to 250 people could participate in a conference, ask questions, and view presentations. Also, key players in a conference can control the flow of the meeting, something not found in the free level. A lot of businesses like to integrate their conferencing abilities into their CRM experience, and Join.Me helps users do this. We found plugins that let customers integrate their Join.Me experience into Outlook and Google Calendar. Also, we found that Join.Me lets customers use the conferencing with SalesForce, a leading CRM tool. Support for the different service levels are also pretty awesome. With other companies, such as TeamView, we found that support didn't extend much into the technical realm. With Join.Me, there is email and phone support available to help customers make the technology work on their devices. The customization features of Join.Me also lets a business owner make their conferences customized. A personalized URL and background make this a great branding tool for a business. Finally, there are some robust user tools for conference leadership, including meeting lock, share control, and more.

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The Bad

• Video
• Limitations
• Training resources

It's 2015...where's the video? We were hoping that Join.Me would have video conferencing as part of their online platform, but we found that video capabilities were only limited to screen sharing and presentations. In some ways, Join.Me is not much better than a conference call. There were a few things that concerned us about Join.Me:

• The lack of video.
• Somewhat clunky features with the free service package.
• Certain features that are only available in the Enterprise service level.
• The resources for training aren't perfect.

The Free service level, advertised as a "freemium" product to entice customers, lacks a lot of core key features found in other service. Sometimes, users in a web conference need access to documents that can be annotated. Also, the free service level only has email help at this time, which is rumored to be slow and not all that helpful. However, there is a free 14-day trial period for the Pro and Enterprise subscriptions, giving the user a chance to "get their feet wet." With Join.Me, there are some features that are only included in the Enterprise level, including:

• User and group management.
• Policy and permission management.
• SalesForce.com integration.

These are some features that we'd like to see unlocked in the Pro package. User and group management would be a great feature to include in all the service levels. Finally, the training resources aren't all that perfect. There were only a few videos for creating effective presentations. We'd like some more in-depth tutorials for basic functions, such as:

• Adding users to a conference.
• Making apps work in the Enterprise level.
• Sharing and annotating files.

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The Bottom Line

Overall, we really liked Join.Me, with the exception of no video conferencing. We feel like Join.Me would be a great sales presentation tool for small and medium-sized businesses. We feel that the free level is a little bit limiting, but it's a great product for trying out some of the basic functionalities of Join.Me. It would be nice to have better tutorials, better support with email help, better group and user management for the "Free" and "Pro" levels, and most customizable solutions to make the product a better overall fit with the paid subscriptions.