Webex Review, Pricing & Features

What is Webex?

Webex by Cisco is a tried and true video conferencing software that’s popular with businesses of all sizes. As of March 2020, the platform had more than 300 million monthly users, making it a very popular choice.

Webex offers Meet plans and Call plans, which means you can have video meetings, voice calls, or merge both with a combined plan.

Try Webex

Table of Contents

• What is Webex?
• Webex Review Summary
• Webex Pricing & Cost
• Webex Key Features
  • Hosting Meetings
  • Meeting Features
  • Insights
  • Webinars
  • Security
• Webex Customer Support
• Webex vs. Competitors
• Is Webex Right For You?

Webex Review Summary

Webex was founded in 1995 by Subrah Iyar and Min Zhu. The company was acquired by Cisco in 2007 and has been under Cisco’s larger umbrella ever since. In early 2020, Webex had more than 300 million monthly users.

Webex has all the features required for businesses to utilize video conferencing software, including screen sharing, video recording, chat, and end-to-end encryption. Because of the wide range of features and low monthly cost, this software provides a fantastic value for small corporations.

Overall, while Webex is not quite as advanced as Zoom, it is more feature-rich than Google Meet and is just about the same in terms of usability. We recommend Webex to most small businesses regardless of their size or industry.

Webex Pricing & Cost

Webex is very affordable, with pricing starting at $15 per month and ranging up to $25 per month. There’s a free plan that offers 50-minute video calls, up to 100 participants, and the ability to schedule meetings from Google calendar, Microsoft Outlook calendar, and Microsoft Office Suite 365.

For small businesses with no complex video conferencing software requirements, the free plan should be sufficient. If you’re searching for more advanced features, like recording transcriptions, adding alternative hosts, and in-meeting file transfers, the Meet Plan is an excellent step up.

The full details of Webex’s plans are found below.

Add-On Features

Some optional add-on features are described below.

Webex Key Features

This review walks through the main Webex features and touches on the product’s usability, as well as the customer service channels. We’ll mention how Webex compares with the other top players in the space. We’ll also include images of the software so you can see what it’s like to use the tool.

To learn more about how we research and rate software tools, read about SoftwarePundit’s review methodology.

Hosting Meetings

When you sign up with Webex as a host, you’re able to start a meeting immediately from your unique link, or schedule meetings in the future. These meetings can be recurring, one-time, or end after a certain number of meetings have been completed. Webex meetings look like this when they are in session.

You’ll assign a meeting topic for each meeting, which will be the meeting’s title. Webex will assign a randomly generated password, though hosts have the ability to change it to a password of their choosing.

Setting Attendee Privileges

While creating and scheduling meetings, hosts can edit the attendee settings before the meeting starts. This ensures that hosts control what attendees can share and participate in.

Meeting Features

The most important meeting features found in Webex are chat, screen sharing, and attendee participation.

Chat

You can chat both within a meeting and independently from meetings. The view below shows what the non-meeting chat looks like.

In chats, you can send files, emojis, and calendar invites. You’ll also be able to start a video call from directly within the chat.

Screen Sharing

Screen sharing is a feature that allows individuals to broadcast their computer screen to all meeting attendees. This is helpful for anyone who needs to demonstrate their work to their team or to demonstrate work to a potential customer. You can share:

Attendee Participation

With Webex, you can allow attendees to raise their hands and participate in polls. Depending on the security features you’ve designated, they’ll also be able to share their screens.

Additionally, hosts can create breakout rooms. Breakout rooms are smaller meetings that will hold a few participants at a time. This feature can be helpful if your company has different teams that need to brainstorm or ideate on their own, and then come back to the larger group meeting to present ideas.

Webinars

Webex Events, which are webinars, are an add-on feature that allow businesses to create wide-scale video presentations.

Webinars can hold up to 10,000 attendees. Participants can participate in moderated Q&A sessions, chat, polling, and can be placed into breakout rooms. There are also real-time translations in more than 100 languages.

Webcast Mode

Webcast mode is designed to broadcast to an even larger audience. Events can host up to 100,000 participants. The Stage View is what your audience will be able to see, and hosts can manipulate the Stage View to project exactly what they’d like.

Insights

There’s a tab in the Webex dashboard that will display insights about your meetings, like their duration, attendee count, and more.

Though we tested a couple of meetings, information did not populate within the insights tab. This was the only hiccup we came across while testing.

Security

Webex has many security features in place to protect its customers. While some of these features have already been mentioned above, we’ll give a quick overview.

Encryption

Meetings have end-to-end encryption, which should ensure the safety of all meetings.

Additional in-meeting security features, which can be manipulated and dictated by the meeting host, will be described below.

Waiting Rooms

If you lock your meeting, all attendees will be sent into a waiting room rather than instantly joining a video call. This makes sure that only participants you intended to be in the meeting can join.

Passwords

Webex assigns each meeting a password, which is a secure mix of random letters. Hosts can choose to keep this random password or can change it to a password of their choosing. Either way, this only enhances the security of every call.

Additional In-Meeting Security Features

For added individual security, the host can allow or disallow participants from sharing screens, using the chat function, unmuting themselves, starting their videos, and more. These capabilities prevent attendees from sharing unwanted content with the rest of the meeting.

Webex Customer Support

Webex has live chat on their website, which allows customers to instantaneously message with customer support. Customers can also contact support by phone, submit a ticket, or browse the Help Center articles for self-help options.

Webex Alternatives & Competitors

Webex is similar to many other popular video conferencing platforms. In terms of pricing and features, it is quite similar to both BlueJeans and Microsoft Teams. The full list of alternatives includes:

Is Webex Right For You?

Webex is an affordable and functional video conferencing software. We found it incredibly user-friendly—more so than Skype—and it’s less expensive than Zoom, albeit with fewer features. The main drawback is that meetings on the free plan are capped at 50 minutes.

If you’re not sure about implementing Webex right away, customers can simply sign up for the free account and test it before purchasing a paid plan. Based on the low monthly cost, we recommend that companies opt for the Meet Plan.

If you are interested in trying Webex, sign up here.