Conference calling services are plenty but its hard to find the "right" conferencing service for your small or medium business needs. I have been looking for a business conference service and found a great free conference calling service which meets my needs, finally :-)
There are literally over 10-20 free conference calling services in USA and a few in other part of the world but the biggest obstacle in using these is obviously the "hidden cost". All these conference services provide "Premium" numbers to connect, which means you pay higher than normal charges to connect to their conference bridge and the whole idea of saving money on "Free conference call services" doesn't justify.
After using these services for over a year for my personal business venture, I have been looking for a better option and found United Conferencing.
UnitedConferencing.com is way better and different than others. The biggest advantage is they use geographic numbers in 16 countries for their conference bridge which was enough to grab my attention :-)
Now besides, the standard free international conference calling service, you can also use United Conferencing to make free international calls.
Lets first understand, how to make free conference calls via United Conferencing:
- They offer access numbers in 30 countries including the US, UK, Japan, South Africa, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Bahrain, Denmark, Israel, Italy, Hong Kong, Norway, Peru, and Sweden and most of Europe, which makes it the biggest free international conferencing calling service.
- In the United Kingdom, UnitedConferencing.com is the first free conference calling company to offer a London geographic access number (regular landline number). This is a huge cost savings over other free conference calling companies that use 084 range shared cost numbers. UK companies that switch their conference calling will save 5p per caller per minute. You can always use your existing BT or NTL plan minutes to dial the conference bridge and the call will be totally free for you.
- The service does not require any signup or scheduling ahead of time. A call organizer chooses a 6 digit access code and shares it with the participants. At the agreed upon time, everyone calls into the service over any of the international access numbers.
- United conferencing offers regular landline access numbers that do not charge any fees for calling in all of these countries:
- Argentina
- Bahrain
- Canada
- Denmark
- Greece
- Hong Kong
- Israel
- Japan
- Mexico
- Netherlands
- Norway
- Peru
- Poland
- Portugal
- Switzerland
- UK
- USA
- All other access numbers either use your mobile minutes or charge a per minute rate that is posted on the website. See their full list of international conference call access numbers for more information. These guys are working to offer more geographic numbers for rest of the countries.
- I was told by the United conferencing guys that they will be adding Brazil and Singapore in the coming week. I have a major client base in Singapore so this was a relief.
- As I mentioned before United Conferencing offers regular landline access numbers in: Argentina
Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, Greece, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland, UK, USA. Now, If you live in one of those countries and want to call anyone living in any one of those countries, just share a 6 digit access code, and call into the conference system at the same time. When prompted enter the access code and the two of you will be connected. From there you can take as long as you want just like it was a regular international call.
- I also noticed that their landline access numbers are open to VOIP phones that have free international calling to any of those countries. Please don't abuse the system but use it when its needed. If you are anywhere in the world and want to conference in from your computer, you should call the UK access number at (44) 20 3347 7777
For all those free international calling moghuls, this service doubles up as free international calling service. Do let me know if you face any issues with their service or provide feedback. I will try to pass the feedback on to them.
