So here's something fun and potentially kind of useful. In searching for a free conference call solution for work, I wanted to know when I had found the "best" option, but couldn't find any definitive reviews or recommendations as I routed through the internets. Unfortunately these services seemed to have saturated sponsored adds and their SEO to the extent that I couldn't come up with a search string that gave me reviews or comparisons of the services that we're at all comprehensive or satisfying. Most of the advice I found was anecdotal and seemed to be based on skin-deep experience. The "Best Answer" on
this Mahalo page actually gives some very interesting background on free conference call services - how they work, how they make money - but the conclusion is simply: "Don't use them, I don't like their business model." ...good points, but not an option, bub. Now I just feel bad about my search.
Before I continue, a bit about the use case and the need for finding a "best" solution. At our office we plan to start using Skype for our weekly staff meeting, connecting those of us in the national office with our field staff scattered around the country. Great solution, except from time to time one person
or more needs to call in but is not at a computer, and doesn't have Skype on their phone. Infuriatingly, Skype has no way to allow more than one phone to call in, as their Online Number solution can only connect you to one person at a time. Our work around is to call into a conference call service from our Skype call, so that if a few people do need to call in, they can call into that conference call service, which then routes them to our Skype call... exhale. We picked one and tested it (sans Skype) last week instead of our legacy paid service and: disaster. There was a noticeable delay on the call, so people kept talking over one another, which got worse and worse as people got more frustrated. It was a bad day.
I needed to find a free conference call service that has as minimal a delay as possible (and as a caveat, I need one that can disable the "hold" music that plays when there is only one participant, since sometimes no field staff call in and our staff meetings don't need a soundtrack). Which brings us to my search, the one that yielded no results. In the face of disappointment I resolved to conduct my own survey and comparison.
Methodology: I call in from my computer using gmail or skype (more on that later), and I call in from my office phone so that I can tap the reciever and hear that tap on the conference call service through my computer's earphones. I then tap at a quickening rate until I find the rate that matches the latency of the call, that is to say when the time between 2 taps is the same as the time it takes for the first tap to be heard through the conference call. Once I match that rate, I count the number of taps I can fit within 10 seconds. Dividing out, we then get a value for the delay on the conference call service.
| | | |
| Service | # of taps
per 10s | Delay
(in seconds) |
| Level 3 (paid-service used as baseline) | 28 | 0.36 |
| rondee.com | 28 | 0.36 |
| nocostconference.com | 20 | 0.5 |
| totallyfreeconferencecalls.com | 20 | 0.5 |
| freeconferencecall.com | 17 | 0.59 |
| Freeconference.com | 15 | 0.67 |
| freeconferencecalling.com | 20 | 0.5 |
So you can see that rondee.com was the best when it comes to having a small delay, matching our legacy paid service and registering almost twice as fast as some of the other services.
Here are some other random notes about these services:
- nocostconference.com annoying confirmation lady cannot call from gmail
- totallyfreeconferencecalls.com first call from skype answered with dead air, second call worked. After second line logged in, it took several seconds before the lines were connected cannot call from gmail
- freeconferencecall.com Email, said no a lot
- freeconference.com Email, very responsive
- freeconferencecalling.com 2-code step for host log in, but no music cannot call from gmail
Moving Forward: Interested? Have ideas about how to improve this study? Want to re-run these tests or conduct it on some other services (paid or not paid)? Know of another survey/comparison that renders mine irrelevant? Leave comments to share your thoughts or experience.
At this point, each of these numbers are determined from a sample size of 1, so there is plenty of room for people to duplicate these tests to see what numbers you get. It helps too if you do your tapping count a few times to make sure you're confident that you have the right tapping rate.
All for now, will update this later.
