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March 22, 2007

A Great WebEx Alternative: Zoho Meeting

Nick Gonzalez

42 comments »

Zoho just launched a private beta for Zoho Meeting, their new online meeting application that will overlap with the important features of WebEx (recently acquired by Cisco) - desktop sharing. They’ll be bleeding new users in - sign up on the home page to request access, or watch the embedded video at the end of this post to see a demo.

Zoho Meeting lets each member view (zoom in/out) and remotely control the host’s desktop, chat, add participants, email the host, and view meeting details. Sessions can also be recorded and downloaded by users (AVI format, Flash coming soon). Chat is handled with Zoho chat, which will soon have VOIP capability as well. Basically, if you want to demo something remotely, Zoho Meeting is going to be a very compelling choice.

To create a meeting, you create a meeting in your Zoho account, set a date, description, and invite participants by email. However, to broadcast your desktop, you also have to install an ActiveX controller (732 Kb), which makes hosting Windows only.

zohomeetingsmall.pngThey’ve gone to great lengths to make the viewer work everywhere by making three different flavors: ActiveX (Windows only), Java, and Flash. This means Zoho meeting can work across Mac, Windows, and Linux machines. The Flash client came with some latency, bobbing between 1.5 and 1.8 seconds, with the Java and ActiveX clients performing better.

But Zoho didn’t include a Flash viewer for just for kicks. The Flash viewer will let users embed meetings anywhere flash is accepted, such as a website. This embed will also work for Zoho Show, which will allow hosts to remotely demo to a large crowd of observing their show from within a slide containing the embed code. Meeting integration will spill over into other Zoho apps as well, through integration with Zoho Chat. Zoho users will soon be able to call a meeting with any Zoho user by clicking a link in their chat box, making it possible to not only say, but show what you mean.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 1:49 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

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Comments

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  1. webtech

    March 22nd, 2007 at 3:34 am

    ZOHO seems to be a good replacement for NetMeeting or WebEx. Even with WebEx we have to install something on the system to broadcast the desktop. I would assume ZOHO would soon release software for broadcasting Mac and other screens.

    I think ZOHO can become a serious competitor to Google’s online office suite. WebEx valuation of $3.2 billion is good enough to appreciate the value of this project. ZOHO houses most of its development team in India - around some 100 developers. This should drastically bring down their development cost enabling them to deliver more features for the same cost and spend more on marketing and other priorities.

  2. chrisco

    March 22nd, 2007 at 4:47 am

    Looks like a useful application… That video clip give a great demo. It was enough to get me over the hump and to finally move from the awareness stage to the trial stage. Nice job guys. Cheers, chrisco (founder of http://www.BuzzPal.com)

  3. nvsp

    March 22nd, 2007 at 5:31 am

    I would have appreciated a “Disclaimer: ZOHO is a major advertiser on this blog.”
    This leaves a funny taste in my mouth…

  4. Jay

    March 22nd, 2007 at 5:48 am

    I prefer Adobe Acrobat Connect. (http://connect.acrobat.com) A fully Flash/Flex based web app, x-platform, x-browser, no ActiveX or slow Java applets.

    It is really slick.

  5. Chad

    March 22nd, 2007 at 6:01 am

    We’ve been using JiveSoftware’s open source suite for a while and it has proven to be an excellent collaboration tool. With both OpenFire and Clearspace, we have online collaboration and secure internal messaging.

    Yes, the fact that there is Zoho ad immediately to the right of the article does call into question the validity of the positive comments.

  6. Why?

    March 22nd, 2007 at 6:05 am

    I won’t allow ZOHO active x install my pc. I won’t let them spy on my pc.

  7. Benedict Herold

    March 22nd, 2007 at 6:20 am

    Seems to be pretty cool… but when is available for public?

  8. Czaries

    March 22nd, 2007 at 6:23 am

    In this space, there is also GoToMeeting ( http://www.gotomeeting.com ) which is really very nice. We use it all the time at my work where we used to use WebEx. It does require that Java is installed on your computer, but it works on both IE and Firefox just fine.

    The flash embed feature for Zoho Meeting sure does look nice, though. Do you have any details on the pricing structure for Zoho Meeting?

  9. Ed French

    March 22nd, 2007 at 6:34 am

    I think cross platform is MUCH more important for communication tools than it is for stand alone applications; if 1 in 7 people are non-windows users then that’s roughly 1 in 3 conversations if 2 people are involved and 1 in 2 where 3 or more are involved which wont work.
    Therefore, even though I’m a windows guy I think yuuguu.com has some real potential- it’s cross platform but with no separate java install to worry about- and it’s free. (But I’m biased- I invested in them!)

  10. www.youtubesearcher.com

    March 22nd, 2007 at 6:35 am

    It’s called and ActiveX Control, not ActiveX Controller.

  11. Casey Edwinson

    March 22nd, 2007 at 6:57 am

    Hard to tell if it’s a good product since I can’t seem to sign up for a demo account.

    Casey

  12. rack pallet

    March 22nd, 2007 at 7:26 am

    Very nice product; I like the integration into a slide show where (1) slide could turn into a presentator sharing his desktop …

    - Also great that the shared desktop could be used via “Iframe” to anyone using a simple blog -

    - You could probably, start a blog (big corp talk here) … do pre meeting notes and chats about ideas, then - use that same blog to - show the live desktop example - … to the audience you’ve been building over the last couple weeks -

    Great!, Rbowles

  13. ls

    March 22nd, 2007 at 7:39 am

    I have to put another one out there for gotomeeting. I don’t understand why these guys don’t get more play in places like this. It’s a great product at a pretty fair price (Impressive even when you compare it to webex).

  14. Valerie Cruz

    March 22nd, 2007 at 7:52 am

    Is this the same zoho as the advertisement Zoho on the right?

    I think it is… where is the disclaimer? Oh.

  15. Darla

    March 22nd, 2007 at 8:47 am

    Looks comparable to the Webex product, but I still don’t like the download requirements. I love Netspoke Java only system requirements, no downloads & I can still desktop share/remote control/application share. Everything plus some extras.

  16. Sridhar Vembu

    March 22nd, 2007 at 8:50 am

    Thank you for your comments. I apologize for the private beta - we don’t like to do it, but since this particular service has fairly stringent and predictable server requirements (X meetings per server) we want to add users at a steady pace to make sure every user gets a responsive service.

    Thanks,
    Sridhar

  17. Rajeev Vashisht

    March 22nd, 2007 at 9:01 am

    Would it be cheaper than video or phone conferencing.

    http://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com

  18. Will

    March 22nd, 2007 at 9:09 am

    Yikes, no disclaimer on this? I realize that this is probably a legitimate thing to be writing about, advertiser or not, but like nvsp said… leaves a funny taste in my mouth as well…

  19. chrisco

    March 22nd, 2007 at 9:31 am

    After poking around the Zoho.com website and applications I am disappointed. Couldn’t even use the spreadsheet… every time I entered anything in a cell I got this error message: “The server encountered a problem and was unable to fulfill your request.”

    Also, Why are there so many ZoHo ads all over TechCrunch. Is TechCrunch fluffing this company for some reason? What’s the reason? A lot of questions… and a bad taste.

  20. walter

    March 22nd, 2007 at 10:11 am

    yeah, no offense but a disclaimer would have been nice.

  21. Zoho upsets me

    March 22nd, 2007 at 11:19 am

    I would totally walk away from Zoho innovations. I can’t trust Zoho either

  22. Sridhar Vembu

    March 22nd, 2007 at 12:16 pm

    @chrisco,
    Sorry you encountered an error in Zoho Sheet. We have a certain number of calculation engines provisioned, and on occasion that limit is exceeded (particularly on news days, alas). We are bringing new servers on stream.

    Sridhar

  23. Jeff Rubin

    March 22nd, 2007 at 4:40 pm

    We have used gotomeeting for over a year now and you can’t beat the price and the fact that is compatable for MAC users (at least the viewer is)… However, I am very interested in seeing what ZOHO has to offer and if it will be priced competitively…. Does anyone (or even a ZOHO rep) have any idea how long we will be waiting for accounts to be activated?

  24. Zaid

    March 22nd, 2007 at 5:10 pm

    If I was Zoho, I would take a step back from launching new stuff and make the already released apps in more usable state. I’m waiting to try out Zoho Projects soon as they move to their new infrastructure. At the moment, it takes 2-4secs to load a page within the app.

    They’ve marketing figured out. But I’m sensing that they’re shortchanging themselves on quality.

  25. Sridhar Vembu

    March 22nd, 2007 at 6:05 pm

    @Jeff,
    On pricing, yes we will be very competitive (that is almost religion here, to provide affordable pricing!). We expect the private beta to be relatively short, about a month, and then we should be able to open up. Contact us at support at zoho [] com if you want to test it before that.

    @Zaid,
    We are putting in a lot of effort on the performance side. The past 2 months, that is pretty much what most of our teams worked on. Zoho Projects is the only one yet to move to the new infrastructure, because of some code migration issues. We have resources working on each of the services, so we don’t shortchange one to launch another (in fact that cannot even be easily done, because of the time it takes to launch apps like Zoho Meeting, where there are a lot of moving parts). Please bear with us.

    Sridhar

  26. Mike

    March 22nd, 2007 at 6:08 pm

    WOW Techcrunch! Good stinking job. How does this post differ from one made by a Payperpost user? Can you say “hypocrites”?

    http://www.techcrunch.com/2006.....your-soul/

  27. JayDawg

    March 22nd, 2007 at 8:32 pm

    Do we really expect a disclaimer from TechCrunch at this point? Let’s be fair thigh, I found this review “fair and balanced.”

  28. Basu

    March 22nd, 2007 at 9:49 pm

    This is kinda nice, but I’m still waiting for Notebook to go public.

  29. Mike

    March 22nd, 2007 at 10:07 pm

    Good one, JayDawg.

  30. kat

    March 22nd, 2007 at 10:29 pm

    No disclaimer? And you run an ad for them in your sidebar? Isn’t this the same kind of thing you were discussing about pay per post?
    Hypocritical at it’s finest.

  31. brettbum

    March 22nd, 2007 at 10:35 pm

    Sridhar, You could get a better ROI on your advertising dollars and much more coverage if you advertised this through any of the paid to blog on lots of blog services as opposed to putting all of your eggs in one basket.

    You could hit tens of millions of eyes per week and not just the limited audience here at TechCrunch.

  32. Nik Cubrilovic

    March 22nd, 2007 at 11:21 pm

    hey its right there on the sidebar - zoho is a sponsor, just like all of you noticed

  33. nvsp

    March 23rd, 2007 at 1:55 am

    @Nik Cubrilovic:
    You can’t see the sidebar if you read via RSS.

    @JayDawg:
    How is this different from PayPerPost?

  34. Richard

    March 23rd, 2007 at 1:01 pm

    I agree with several of the people commenting above. I don’t find blogging about products that are sponsoring you distasteful in the least, but if you are going to harp on other companies and blogs the least you could do would be to put a disclosure comment at the top of your post mentioning that they are your sponsor.

    I post for sponsors quite a bit and have always put a disclaimer in there, but just recently added it to the top of my posts so that my readers can be made aware of it, and skip the post should they choose to do so.

  35. dustin

    March 23rd, 2007 at 2:09 pm

    It’s a bit hypocritical to bash PPP then go do the same thing. How much did you get for your soul?

  36. Paul

    April 10th, 2007 at 3:34 am

    @Webtech: I have settle on Yugma (http://www.yugma.com) for just that reason… it works great between PC’s and Mac’s. And they say Linux is coing out soon. I used webex for the last two years and since Yugma is free… and performance is great…and I get everything I need, I can’t see going back. I certainly recommend folks check them out also. And they don’t seem to advertize here…

  37. Carl Williams

    April 16th, 2007 at 12:04 pm

    My company recently interviewed and reviewed some Zoho services and our staff really liked it. You can check it out at: http://www.odinjobs.com/blogs/.....ll_the_end

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