GoToWebinar's Limitations

GoToWebinar, an extension of GoToMeeting, has gained some buzz in the market, mainly because it's so cheap. Kind of makes you wonder 1) How Citrix is making money from it? 2) How good or reliable is the solution? The old adage, "You pay for what you get," certainly rings true with all the GoTo products and GoToWebinar is nothing short of this.

Example 1. When sending out email invitations to a webinar, the coordinator needs to manually forward the registration details and invites. Citrix recommends that you Bcc: all email addresses for added privacy. What if you forget to do this? Well, everyone just inherited a email marketing list that you spent years building.

Example 2: GoToWebinar lacks a custom registration page so the coordinator cannot track registration in stages: Pending, Rejected, Approved, Updated, etc.

Example 3: GoToWebinar  forces you to use their outsourced 3rd party solution, FreeConferenceCall.com (Click here to read details about Cingular, Sprint, AT&T battling this Citrix partner.) (Article 2) GoToWebinar does not offer Audio Broadcasting, Integrated VoIP, or dial-out to attendee capabilities. These three telco giants are looking to block all Citrix audio users from using FreeConferenceCall.com Do you want to be caught up in the chaos? Who do you think is going to win this battle?

Example 4: Speaking of block. GoToWebinar and GoToMeeting are notorious for "blocked URL's." Companies will block the GoTo URL's so their employees cannot join GoTo session, mainly because these GoTo sessions are not backed by any 3rd party security certifications which means companies run the risk of computer viruses, worms, trojans, etc.

Quinlan Eddy, CEO of StarAnalytics, switched from GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar to WebEx because his company had recurring issues where the companies they were trying to meet online with blocked the GoTo URL's. In one instance with Citibank, Citibank simply told them they were no longer interested in seeing the demo. Lost revenue???

Example 5:  If you want to record your webinar, GoToWebinar requires that you have an input device like a microphone connected to your computer and then configured to the GoToWebinar audio settings. (I'm already getting lost with what this all means and how to set it up...)  Click here for the full list of instructions. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just click "Record," and your webinar would be recorded?

Another thing to consider during the GoToWebinar recording. You are required to have 1 GB of available storage, download a G2M2 recording codec, and are expected to wait 45 minutes for a 60 minute recording to "convert." Citrix recommends that you do nothing on your computer during this 45 minute conversion since the recording/conversion process requires lots of CPU.

Example 6: GoToWebinar CANNOT support the following:

• Lead source tracking ID's
• Automated lead scoring
• Integration into CRM marketing campaigns
• Online calendar of events
• Custom enrollment email messages
• Production services
• Custom animations in PowerPoint
• Virtual whiteboard
• Video streaming
• Integrated VoIP
• File transfer
• Real-time communications as everything relies on their Citrix Metaframe Presentation Server

At the end of the day, with all the GoTo Products, you pay for what you get. If you are willing to risk a failed event, perhaps lost business, damaged reputation, it might be a viable solution. Otherwise, if you are like most companies who are looking to minimize their investment risk and want to do all the right things, go with a market leader, a trusted and proven solution.

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Thanks,
David Chao
The Web Conferencing Expert

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Comments

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[Kavya Srinivasan]

Hi,

Thanks for the wonderful explanation of the pitfalls of the GoToWebinar.

I am quite interested to know if this applications works fine on my nokia phone running on Symbian s60(V3) OS.

I dwelled a little over the Google to find this out. But no help.

Please share this piece of information if any of you guys know.

Thanks,
Kavya

[Paul-A Adams]

I conduct approx 2 GoToWebinars with 200 - 800 attendees a week using the VoIP Integrated system. The on hold green room with the latest GTW software is very very nice and helps with last minute logistics just before going live. Only issues I have with GTW is their billing for audio...... it makes it hard if you are charging per project and they can't even give you a breakdown of minutes by what date. Also, there are some real corky things that go on with the set up as far as scheduling another webinar from a prior set up, or schedule another webinar.... both of these do not work well with copying, often selections are dropped off which forces you to enter everything from scratch, lots of time wasted. The audio synch with slides works great with the Integraded system. Our track record of over 100 webinars a year has been very well to our attendees but it comes from putting a lot of inspection and double checks in the front end. We haven't botched one yet! ... good luck out there.
Oh yeah, one suggestion to the GTW system is for the presenter to see the polling full screen like everyone else can

[DrewZ]

Recording - the organizer can record the meeting using GTW codec or WMV. The organizer can then also store the source recording on their hard drive and use any number of post editing and encoding solutions to make it more accessible - Windows media encoder, Winff etc.

Currently my gripe with GTW is that
1) there is no option with a corporate account to prevent organizers from seeing all registrant data, and
2) There is no GTW API to automatically or silently register attendees from our site

[Braintiller]

I would like to recommend you guys RHUB remote desktop appliance for remote PC control. Since it is an appliance, it is much more secure than hosted solutions. You can connect to up to 1000 PCs remotely and you get free audio conferencing. File transfer can be done to a specific computer or to multiple attendee computers. Further, RHUB appliance combines web conferencing, remote support, and webinar, in a single appliance, which is highly convenient, and cost-saving for there will be no monthly add-ons.

[Albin Bronkhorst]

what's the alternative?

[Elizabeth Lennon]

So is there an alternative or what is the best bet for a small company wanting to run interactive training sessions globally from Australia via a Mac. I just had a completely useless Goto Webinar practice session, but it could have been Australia's unreliable broadband or my poor skills, but basically there was no way I could unmute the attendee and there were so many emails from GoToWebinar we got confused about what we were doing - Suggestions would be very appreciated?

Liz Lennon

[Craig]

I just followed your link to the instructions to meeting holders and looked up the recording instructions.

-----------------------------
Video - Allows you to select the meeting recording output format and destination for saving the file.

Note: Mac users can only view meetings recorded in Windows Media Player format.
------------------------------

That's in the manual. If the presenter doesn't catch that they WILL NOT be reminded of it in the program setup, which has the G2M3 video codec as the default setting. It only says that "users must install a video codec first to use". It does not warn the presenter that the recorded file will not work for their users on Macs!

[Craig]

As one that is subjected to a weekly GoToWebinar remote training presentation for the past year, this is what continues to make me very angry at GotoWebinar:

It is NOT mac friendly. There is an obvious clear choice on the part of the GoToWebinar people to make the default record settings using their proprietary Windows Media video codec (’G2M3′) that CANNOT be handled by Flip4Mac.

Now somehow apparently it is possible to configure the recording so the video format is Windows Media Video 9 Standard Codec. That can be handled by Flip4Mac. I have some examples of that in the past. The presenter figured something out and it worked beautifully. But now this year, something got reset and I am back to a black screen because of the incompatible G2M3 codec.

Unfortunately, but predictably, 99% of the time the Mac users subscribing to a webinar done on GoToWebinar are screwed if they want to receive the recording of the webinar either because they are unable to attend at the live webinar or for review, because the presenter doesn’t even realize that the default configuration is anti-Mac.

Once again today, I just downloaded a 500 MB file only to find out the presenter used the default settings and thus unintentionally treated all Mac users like myself as second class members who get only to listen to audio with a black screen.

I hate GoToWebinar.