Web conferencing service unleashes competitive promotion

Upstart AnyMeeting has a message for small companies that are frustrated with web conferencing services originally designed for much larger enterprises: Switch over to our most comparable paid plan, and we'll give you six months for free.

The promotion, which runs through May 1, 2013, is specifically targeted at small or midsized businesses (SMBs) that are using paid services from either WebEx or GoToMeeting. To be eligible, your company just has to produce an invoice proving that you are using one of those other services: It will be mapped into a feature-comparable service.

AnyMeeting's paid plans include six-way videoconferencing, conference calling, building in voice over internet protocol (VoIP), screen sharing, presentation sharing, recording, and mobile support. The service also includes some things that are specific to small businesses, such as a persistent personalized meeting URL, personal profile pages, ticketing for running web seminars, and social media integration.

AnyMeeting offers ad-supported free conferencing services, and it counts approximately 300,000 small businesses as its customers. Its most popular plan is one that supports up to 25 attendees at once, priced starting at $17.99 per month.

"The larger providers serve a wide range of businesses, but AnyMeeting caters specifically to small business, and we're out to prove that we're a better solution for them," said Costin Tuculescu, president and CEO of AnyMeeting, based in Huntington Beach, California.