Dimdim launches v5, price cuts to beat WebEx, Go2Meeting

 Dimdim has beefed up its product and cut the cost of its service to steal market share from Cisco WebEx and Citrix GoToMeeting.

Dimdim5, which was announced today, offers enhanced screencasting, new webinar widegets, registration reports and significant number of performance enhancements.
The upgrade offers faster screen sharing and “zoomable” viewer that allows participants to view a presentation in full-screen mode from within their browser,” the Boston-based open source company said.

The webinar widgets ease the process of signing up for webinars, providing one-click promotion and registration for Dimdim Web events. “Widgets are automatically created whenever a user schedules a meeting and can easily be shared on any website, via Facebook or Twitter,” the company added.

The software also offers “faster and easier document sharing, automatic webcam/microphone detection, and more, providing much better performance with lower bandwidth requirements,” Dimdim announced.

Registration Reports, another new feature, allows users to “receive reports that list the name and time of every participant who registered for an event and whether they were invited or self-registered via a Dimdim webinar widget.”

Dimdim is trying to be very cost competitive. The new Dimdim Pro 50 version, for instance, enables meetings for up to 50 participants averaging roughly $19 per month. Dimdim claims that compares this to the $59 that WebEx charges for a 25-person meeting. The cost of Dimdim Pro 100 has been reduced from $495 to $468 per year “making this 100 person room the same price as a GoToMeeting 15 person room,” the company claims.

Dimdim Pro is available for $228 per year – or $19 per month - for an unlimited number of meetings of 50 participants. Monthly plans start at $9.95/month with no long-term commitment. Thee’s also Dimdim Free, a free, hosted service for meetings with 20 or fewer people.

Dimdim also moved its Pro offerings to a separate server farm from its free version to ensure top performance and availability for paying customers.
The existing software already offers screen sharing, voice and video chat, collaborative whiteboards, document sharing, instant messaging, multiple presenters, recording, audio conferencing, full support for Mac OS and SynchroLive Co-Browsing.