5 Of The Best Cheap Video Conference Solutions

Staying in touch with friends, family and coworkers via the internet has been in an almost constant state of evolution. The first ‘killer app’ was email; quick and easy, email allowed millions of people across the world to stay into touch without having to actually print or write a letter and post it. Soon after came IM, an even more efficient way to send small messages and conduct quick conversation.

The evolution of online communication stepped up a gear with VoIP technology, most commonly used as part of an IM client. More recently video chat functionality has also been added, making it possible to not only communicate over the internet via text and the spoken word, but also visually.

Individuals and businesses are turning to online video conferencing to communicate with others now more than ever, especially now that the price of fuel is so upwardly mobile. If you just want to have a face-to-face meeting, then you probably don’t need all the functionality (such as screen sharing) offered by one of the better known video conference services, however. Here are some of the best cheap video conference solutions available today.

• Sightspeed
  Looking to conduct a cheap multi-party video conference that actually works straight out of the virtual box? Then SightSpeed is worth a look. SightSpeed has been critically acclaimed as one of the best alternatives to Skype. One way that it trounces its main competitor is in the video conferencing area: Skype does one-to-one video calls only, SightSpeed does up to 4. SightSpeed is available on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, so there shouldn’t be compatibility issues.
• Skype
  This little application may be known mostly as the first mass-adopted softphone, but it also offers video chat as standard. Plain old vanilla Skype doesn’t (yet) offer support for video conferences with multiple people but when it comes to one-to-one video calls it is hard to beat. Especially when it’s free to download and video calls are free. It isn’t strictly a video ‘conference’ in that there is a presenter and attendees, but it will probably just do the trick!
• iChat
  Boy do I love iChat! Apple have been steadily adding features to their IM client so that it now handles text chat, internet calls, video calls, screen sharing and even document sharing. Best of all, it works with AIM, Jabber and Google Talk. I’ve found that calls, both voice and video calls, are of very high quality. If you need to setup a proper meeting with multiple people attending, who all use Mac OS X, then this is ideal. In fact, if Apple added some whiteboarding features it could even be considered a fairly basic competitor to WebEX, which is one of the best, if not the best video conference solution out there.
• Paltalk
  It may not be as well known as some of the other cheap video conference solutions on this list, but Paltalk is worth a look, especially if you just want to have video chats with friends. Paltalk allows you to setup a room and chat quite easily with good quality video and audio.
• MeBeam
  If you are anything like me, a telecommuter working from a home office, and even if you aren’t, which is perfectly fine, chances are you spend a significant amount of time online chatting on whatever flavour of IM floats your boat. It’s probably one of the best ways I can think of to ruin my productivity. So if you are a GTD freak and like to schedule a video meeting that doesn’t have any desktop-based client as a prerequisite then check out MeBeam. This web-based video conference tool lets anyone setup a room, which contacts can join and conduct a business meeting, brainstorm or just video chat for fun.

There are most likely other cheap video conference solutions, in fact, there are. However, these are your best bet. Enjoy!