My non-profit is seeking ways for low/no cost phone conferencing.
Please excuse if this is off topic and a bit of a “no-brainer” but appreciate any inputs.
Thanks & take care out there,
Roz
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I signed up for a Zoom account today. Comes out to about $12.50/month if you pay for it annually, and people can call-in from basically any phone.
If you can get everyone to use the Zoom app on their computer or smartphone/tablet, you can use Zoom for up to 40 minutes for free, with up to 100 participants, but you cannot use the phone-dial-in option with free accounts.
I think Slack has some sort of calling feature built-in but I’m not sure if it handles groups, and of course there’s always Skype.
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I use Zoom frequently and like its feature set. I, too, just upgraded to a paid plan, but the free tier could meet your needs. What number of people/duration/features do you need?
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we use skype, but guess it depends on your needs.
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there’s this tool too: Jitsi
I’s being discussed in a group of tech savvy lawyers I’m into, but I’ve never used it myself
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I was looking at Jitsi yesderday and I am going to install it to try it out.
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yes I’m going to check it out too.
I’m afraid it will suffer the “whatsapp syndrome” here in Italy: everybody uses Zoom or Teams (I mean, institutions and companies) and nobody will invest the time to explore alternatives.
we’ll see 
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Since most companies have a Microsofrt infrastructure (as mine does), Teams is the natural choice.
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Actually I believe the phone dial-in feature works with free accounts as well. It’s listed under the Free Video-Conferencing Features on Zoom’s pricing page:
The exception is numbers that require a fee-based toll. Though I don’t think these work on paid plans either unless you pay an additional fee. You’ll find a complete list of phone numbers here:
Calls would still be limited to 40 minutes if there are more than two people. Though, having meetings limited to 40 minutes could also be seen as a feature!
On a side note, there may be special pricing available for non-profits and charities.
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There’s a note when you login with a free account which says:
Important Notice:
Due to increased demand, dial-in by phone audio conferencing capabilities may be temporarily removed from your free Basic account. During this time, we strongly recommend using our computer audio capabilities. If you require dial-in by phone audio conferencing, please see our other package options.
I’m not sure what to do about the word “may” (which I had not noticed previously) but in my case I knew it was not something we could do without.
I tried to find out about that but have not been able to get ahold of their support folks. Ironically, I tried calling and the call stops ringing, but no one answers. Presumably they are currently drowning in almost-too-much success.
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Teams from Microsoft
Hangouts from Google
Facetime from Apple
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Thanks for the additional info, TJ.
It’s not surprising that Zoom is having to limit phone access to free customers…and that their support is slower than usual. I imagine a LOT more people are using Zoom these days and, as far as I can tell, their service is doing a surprisingly good job at keeping up with the dramatically increased load. Hopefully, they’ll be able to scale their support as well in the not-too-distant future.
I’ll be sure to post any info I find on discounts for non-profits and charities.
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Thanks for responding …there would be 12 people on our calls…
Appreciate!
12 people thank you - really appreciate
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Sounds perfect I’ll pass it to our ED.
Thanks tons!
Thank you everybody,
Here is my summary (complete?)
Zoom
Teams from Microsoft
Hangouts from Google
Facetime from Apple
Jitsi
And Free Conference
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The company I’m working with just moved all teleconferencing to Slack - I don’t have a lot of experience with it or the pricing model, but it has worked very well for collaborating in small groups so far (I’ve been using it for just over a week).
Have looked at Free Conference call? I have had lots of good luck with it.
I am surprised that no one has mentioned Uberconference. My place of work has our own conference lines, but many times their use has to be requested and/or they don’t work and I use Uberconference as a backup. Plus, it has cool features if people create logins to chat, save recordings, etc. that I would probably use if I had recurring conferences with the same people.
The free version allowed 10 callers and required a PIN to join, but because of COVID-10 it looks like they just bumped it up to 50 callers.