It’s not easy to launch a successful WebEx competitor. Most businesses have long since established their “system” for dealing with web meetings, using old standbys like WebEx or GoToMeeting. And those businesses that are willing to venture into the unknown have had plenty of cheaper alternatives to choose from, like DimDim, for quite a while. But that isn’t keeping CallWave from launching one of its own, dubbed Fuze Meeting. And while it’s not going to be an easy space to compete in, Fuze Meeting doesn’t disappoint.
As far as startups go, the history of the company is pretty unique. CallWave was founded in 1998 and went public in 2004, trading on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol CALL. After reaching a peak soon thereafter of over $15 per share, the stock dropped steadily, dipping as low as 50 cents early this year. Deciding to cut its losses, the company delisted itself from NASDAQ on Monday after buying back shares from public shareholders at a 44% premium over the current market value and paying out a total of $10 million. CMO Patrick Moran says that the company did this on its own accord, and that its hand wasn’t pushed by any banks or VCs. CallWave will soon change its name to Fuze Box to reflect its new position as a startup.
While all of this has been going on, CallWave has been building the “fuze platform” that powers Fuze Meeting, which it’s pitting as a sleeker, lighter, and cheaper alternative to services like WebEx. Last fall, the company decided to show off an early version of the product to some press, perhaps prematurely (it was labeled as “incomplete” by CNET). Finally in May, a full eight months after making its public debut, Fuze Meeting finally became commercially available. And only now that the company’s financial wranglings are complete is it ready to really announce it to the public.
I played around with the complete version yesterday, and for the most part I was impressed. The application is slick and intuitive, and unlike some other screen sharing apps, Fuze Meeting requires no plugins — it should work on just about any browser, and also offers support for both the iPhone and BlackBerry. Screen sharing supports high resolution video sharing, allowing presenters to jump to any point in the video as each participant’s screen is updated in real time. Presenters can also annotate video frames, which will likely appeal to marketing organizations.
While the service is currently working on acquiring free users, it is going to operate under a subscription model of $29 a month, or 12 cents per minute for users who would prefer to pay as they go. This is substantially cheaper than WebEx, but other less well known alternatives sport similar price points, so cost won’t be the only thing Fuze can rely on to differentiate itself.
If you’d like to see a video of the service in action, check out the clip below. Warning: it features Moran’s kids, and may be too cute to handle.
Fuze Meeting from Patrick Moran on Vimeo.
So the company went private to launch a new product?
Delisting from Nasdaq is associated with deadpool in my mind…
Aside from the iphone version, http://tinychat.com does most of this (web based, screensharing, no software needed, etc..) – Granted the target isnt directly @ being a webex competitor and more of a “impromptu” chat.
I spoke about this recently- As bandwidth costs are coming down down down, co’s like webex are going to have to really worry as users will not expect to pay for something they can get for free.
Leonid – “Delisting from Nasdaq is associated with deadpool in my mind…” – I think it depends on situation. Being a public company costs a lot of money/headaches and taking a public company private sometimes offers a lot of upside. That said, this company likely faces challenges.
John, You’re correct, but $10 millions seems a bit excessive if you want to reduce cost.
I used to use CallWave to get voicemails transcribed and emailed to me. Now I’m a happy Google Voice user.
Interesting change of pace for this company. They used to position themselves as an add-on feature to telecommunication services. It was all about web-based visual voicemail before that started becoming more common directly on phones.
They had a freemium model but when they shifted some of the free features to paid, I bailed. I was even considering a paid plan before they did that.
Would love to see a comparison to Adobe Connect Now. It’s an unbelievable product that I’ve come to use almost daily, so if this can be compared in a positive way I’d definitely love to see the write up.
Best thing about the company: CW bought ultra-cool WebMessenger, whose mobile UC tech is ahead of its time.
Please. Could you at least indicate that you do PR for them ?
So Jason, when did you start working for callwave? Producing a video that looks like it could have been done by the vendor seems over the top for so-called independent reporting.
I didn’t make it, their CMO did.
I setup a dimdim account at the office and I’ve been very impressed with it. We use it for online training classes for up to 200 people at once.
I was literally just starting a search for a free/cheap alternative to GoToMeeting, and saw this article… unfortunately, Fuze has a limit of “3 attendees” for their free accounts. Which is bad enough, but some bug in their system has them thinking I’ve used up my free attendees with only the presenter logged in. FAIL.
I’ll be moving on to the next alternative.
The call wave commercial with that homely looking lady knocking on the screen saying “hello, hello” made me absolutely hate their company forever.
Good riddance.
Hi Brad (@zappoman) — sorry to hear you ran into a problem — If you don’t mind following up with me via email (pmoran at fuzemeeting.com), I am happy to make sure we track down the issue!!! I haven’t seen that problem with our customers yet, but certainly sounds like a FAIL somewhere! Sorry to disappoint.
@patrickmoran
Here’s how Fuze can be a billion dollar company:
1. Add recording feature to meetings
2. Reduce costs of live sessions per participant from $0.22/min (like Adobe, WebEx) DRAMATICALLY to ~0.02/min (on top of 25 free users per the subscription plan)
3. Open API
Adobe connect and WebEx are both pricey and dated products with VERY BAD customer support (Adobe in particular).
Fuze has huge opportunity here.
Hey Guy! GREAT Feedback and I am SO with you. We’ll be addressing each and everyone of those! Just watch us!
@fuzemeeting
@patrickmoran
I like the feature that you can call attendees into a meeting instead of the usual emailing them the phone number and access code. This alone helps my meetings start much faster. It would be useful though if they also put the meeting information prominently on their UI so that attendees have an easy access to it.
I loved how Fuze showed my video files in such a great quality. I wish there were more free seats though.
Just tried it out. I can’t do video synchronization with other services I’ve tried so that is cool. I wish I could have more participants for free, but again, no one is doing HD video synchronization like this.
Forgot to mention the “fetch” feature…”fetch me like a dog” as the cute kids in the video say. It IS cool. Don’t have to remember bridge numbers and passcodes. I haven’t seen that in other services. It’s a small feature, but notable differentiator.
I’m a Adobe Connect user but if this works as advertised, not for long. The mobile connectivity is exactly what I’ve been waiting for. I’ve done some limited testing and while the mobile experience has some lag, it is pretty impressive.
Not sure I’d trust a new company in this space.
I hope they actually innovate and do something with facebook and others instead of just copy WebEx. WebEx is old and tired. Time to innovate is now!
had the chance to test drive fuze meeting and it is NOT a WebEx killer at all. everytime i asked a question about features, the answer would either be we dont have that or its work in progress.
no recording, no polling, no testing, no voip, no webpage share, etc.
do we really need to have HD webcam feed? haha.
Ill stick to webex, they have all the resources available online, so if you are savvy and resourceful as you should be, there should not be a need to contact them at all, and it does rxactly what i want and when i want.
Nothing is perfect, Fuze is waaaaaaaaay far from good.
Adios.
Sounds like you work for Cisco.
Regardless, I completely disagree and I don’t think they need a Webex killer to convince a ton of people to drop their Webex accounts. That’s happening anyway since there are a huge number of people who aren’t “savvy” or “resourceful” enough to wade through it’s convoluted/confusing interface.
I signed up for a FUZE trial and had a meeting running with two friends in a couple of minutes – something that often doesn’t happen when I use my corporate Webex account. While I’m sure some people need the features you mentioned, I could care less about polling, testing, or webpage sharing, etc. What I care about is a program that makes my presentations look great and is a no brainer for those who want to join my meetings (I’ve been burned plenty of times on that front with Webex despite how “resourceful and savvy” I am).
I was very impressed with FUZE for a v1.0 product. If this is what they can do out of the gate, I’ll keep my eyes peeled to see what they do next.
Agreed on most of comments about webex.. except they rape you with fees for something that looks like crap and makes your stuff look like crap too.
The Best Product on the market is Attain Response owned by VM Direct. It makes all the other competitors look overpriced by compariosn.
As a former PlaceWare EE, I find it interesting that nobody has mentioned the fact only AdobeConnect offers the equivalent of a ‘clientless’ (flash OEM’d) install. WebEx, LiveMeeting (formerly PlaceWare – which was Java based until the evil empire re-wrote to .Net / WinTel) and GoToMeeting all require an ActiveX install. As a sales person, I can attest to the fact 10% of my GoTomeeting’s require reschedules b/c someone doesn’t have admin rights (at least at MANY fortune 250’s).
Any new product w/out a client install is welcome in my world. Good luck with FUZE…Oracle needs to give away a collaboration service and IBM could use a refresher there as well.