RingCentral intends to earn some of the market share that competitors such as Zoom, Webex, Microsoft Teams and others have been claiming during this pandemic year 2020.
The Belmont, Calif.-based communications provider on Dec. 15 launched a new service called RingCentral Glip. This is a free, unlimited, easy-to-use package that offers high-quality and high-availability video and audio conferencing, integrated with team messaging, file sharing, contact, task and calendar management.
RingCentral calls this a “Smart Video Meetings” service, which includes pre-meeting, in-meeting, and post-meeting capabilities—all for free. Glip video meetings last up to 24 hours for as many as 100 people and provide an integrated team collaboration capability.
RingCentral said Glip supports teams with members working from anywhere. It starts with HD-quality video and audio and allows participants to create groups, share files and start a meeting right from a messaging thread.
“We’re moving to the hybrid world of work, where we transition from transactional and disjointed video meetings to collaborative experiences that address pre-, during- and post-meeting needs,” Anand Eswaran, president and chief operating officer at RingCentral, said in a media advisory. “RingCentral Glip has been designed to make video meetings smarter. It reduces wasted time and lets you focus on what matters. We’re launching a free version of RingCentral Glip so everyone can now experience smart video meetings with integrated team messaging for improved productivity.”
Long list of free features
RingCentral Glip comes with numerous free features, including:
- Unlimited meeting duration: The unlimited meeting duration keeps teamwork going and enables users to meet for as long as they need.
- Unlimited users per account: RingCentral Glip can be used by teams and companies of any size, for free.
- Up to 100 participants per meeting: RingCentral Glip enables organizations to host meetings with up to 100 participants simply by sending a link, email or text.
- One-click host and join: With RingCentral Glip, no downloads are needed. It’s even easier to hop on meetings right from within a browser or the app. Users can start meetings with a single click directly from their browser.
- App integrations: Leveraging RingCentral’s open platform, RingCentral Glip is tightly integrated with popular business productivity applications such as those from Google (Workplace and Gmail) and Microsoft (Teams and Office 365).
- Switch devices: Users can switch live meetings between any of their favorite devices and take their meetings on-the-go.
- Integrated team messaging: With built-in messaging, users can get more done before, during and after meetings. Using task management, users can nail down action items and keep teams accountable.
- Team connect: With this innovative functionality, users are able to easily and quickly create a new team messaging group for participants in any video meeting including people who haven’t used Glip before, making it convenient and quick to connect and collaborate with their contacts.
- Flip to Glip: Easily convert email threads to team messaging.
- Screen sharing: Users can share their screens and annotate so everyone can follow along with their work and dive more deeply into the details.
- Cloud recording: Users can save meeting recordings and highlights to the cloud for up to seven days.
- HD audio and video: With HD audio and video, users can feel like they’re in the same room with audio and video quality that’s always clear and reliable.
- Virtual backgrounds (currently in beta): Virtual backgrounds replace a participant’s background with any image of choice. People can use prebuilt backgrounds, which are offered as part of RingCentral Video, customized backgrounds by uploading images of their choice as their virtual background or blur their background, removing any chance of distractions.
- Closed captioning (beta): The new service automatically converts spoken words into captions in real time and populates them in a new section above the menu bar. Participants can also enable and disable this feature individually.
- Secure meetings: RingCentral Glip provides a number of features to keep your meeting safe and secure, including the ability to manage your participants with meeting passwords and authenticated join, and a virtual waiting room.
- Meeting host controls: As the host, users are always in control. Hosts can mute or unmute members and end meetings for everyone, as needed. In addition, hosts can also restrict participants’ ability to screen share and chat or local meetings to prevent random people from joining and disrupting the meeting.
- Waiting rooms: Any meeting can be locked with a password and includes controls in terms of who has access and when to ensure that meeting participants don’t get bombed.
- Join using any device: Users can join from anywhere and stay connected from their desktop, smartphone, or tablet and also participate via multiple devices concurrently.
- Dark mode: Dark mode enables users to focus on the information that matters the most: the content that’s immediately in front of them resulting in reduced eye strain. In addition, dark mode consumes less battery on a mobile device and enables users to differentiate their RingCentral experience from other apps on their desktop.
- Third-party cameras: In addition to RingCentral’s virtual backgrounds, users can now customize their meetings with backgrounds, filters and other special effects from third-party integrations. These integrations include XSplit, mmhmm, Snap Camera, ManyCam, OBS Studio and others.
- Noise reduction: Lower distracting background noise lets users focus on what matters.
- CCPA and HIPAA: RingCentral Glip is fully secure and complies with applicable data protection laws, such as CCPA and HIPAA.
Upgrade options for RingCentral Glip
In addition to the free features offered by RingCentral Glip Pro, there are a number of paid options offered in RingCentral Glip Pro+:
- RingCentral Glip Pro+ provides a range of additional video meeting and admin management capabilities including the option to host larger meetings for up to 200 participants, advanced analytics, single sign-on and much more. Go here for more information.
- Customers looking to add cloud PBX capabilities to RingCentral Glip can upgrade to RingCentral Office, which offers complete message, video, phone (MVP) experience combining video meetings, team messaging and a cloud phone system for integrated, enterprise-grade business communications.
For more information or to sign up, go here.