Macromedia Tunes Conferencing Pricing for SMBs
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The company unveils monthly pricing plans for Breeze Live, one for a set number of users and another based on usage.
Turning its attention to small- and mid-sized businesses, Macromedia Inc. on Tuesday introduced new monthly hosted and licensing plans for its web conferencing software. Macromedia, of San Francisco, launched two monthly pricing options for its Breeze Live Web conferencing software that is targeted to companies that want alternatives to annual hosting plans and traditional enterprise licensing. The first is a pay-per-use model based on the number of minutes used across all participants in Breeze Live meetings. The other option is a monthly hosted plan, where a business can choose either a 5- or 10- seat concurrent license for unlimited monthly use.Macromedia, which entered the Web-conferencing market late last year, decided to expand its pricing options following demand from smaller businesses and corporate departments for plans aimed at smaller deployments and where they could try Breeze, said Kevin M. Lynch, Macromedias vice president of e-learning and collaboration.
Click here to read about Macromedias release of developer kits to encourage enterprises to tie the Breeze Web conferencing platform into other IT systems.
Macromedias stable of graphic- and Web-design customers, for example, might use Web conferencing occasionally for showing project prototypes, but only want to pay for the actual use of the Breeze Live service, Lynch said.
Macromedia isnt alone in experimenting with new Web conferencing licensing and hosting options. Microsoft Corp. last month introduced three new subscription plans for its Office Live Meeting Web conferencing service.
The pay-per-use plan for Breeze Live starts at 32 cents per minute, while the hosted monthly option starts at $375 a month for 5 concurrent seat and $750 a month fro 10 concurrent seats.
With both plans, Macromedia allows meeting rooms created on Breeze Live to stay accessible for as long as 90 days so participants can join a previous meeting where they left off or to hold regular Web conferences such as sales meetings, Lynch said.
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As an online reporter for eWEEK.com, Matt Hicks covers the fast-changing developments in Internet technologies. His coverage includes the growing field of Web conferencing software and services. With eight years as a business and technology journalist, Matt has gained insight into the market strategies of IT vendors as well as the needs of enterprise IT managers. He joined Ziff Davis in 1999 as a staff writer for the former Strategies section of eWEEK, where he wrote in-depth features about corporate strategies for e-business and enterprise software. In 2002, he moved to the News department at the magazine as a senior writer specializing in coverage of database software and enterprise networking. Later that year Matt started a yearlong fellowship in Washington, DC, after being awarded an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship for Journalist. As a fellow, he spent nine months working on policy issues, including technology policy, in for a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He rejoined Ziff Davis in August 2003 as a reporter dedicated to online coverage for eWEEK.com. Along with Web conferencing, he follows search engines, Web browsers, speech technology and the Internet domain-naming system.
