OmNovia Reviews

Editor's Star Ratings:

Reliability:
Security:
Features:
Ease of Use / Navigation:
Ease of Joining / Registration:
Customer Support:
Value for Money:
Overall Star Rating:

Membership Costs:

• OmNovia requires that you contact them for detailed pricing information, but plans start at $49.00 per month for 25 users
• Unlimited use plans available
• Alternatively pay for use in chunks of hours by the minute

Features:

• Customizable and secure web conferencing solution
• Host web conferences from your desktop
• Share your desktop with up to 5,000 attendees
• VOIP support for all your attendees
• Participants don’t have to install anything
• Runs in almost any web browser
• 128-bit encryption on all communications
• Authentication can integrate with LDAP services
• Support for multiple presenters working on the same document simultaneously
• Redundant and load balanced server technology for extra reliability
• Virtual whiteboarding capabilities
• Integrated webcam support for unlimited participants
• Instant polls and surveys to interact with large audiences
• Shared folder that all participants can access
• Send important messages via SMS to participants not in the meeting
• Telephone bridge to bring an outside telephone line into the meeting
• Fully customizable look and feel
• Interactive recording and playback facilities
• Free trial available
• Hosting is compatible with Windows and Mac systems

Editor's Verdict:

OmNovia is a professional and well developed online web conferencing service.  It provides a wide variety of features, including a few we haven’t seen in other applications, and an excellent level of security and reliability.  The service is well suited to hosting anything from small meetings to large scale webinars and the underlying technology runs impressively quickly and efficiently.

Omnovia is a fully hosted service which means there is nothing to download or install for either the host or the participant.  The Flash based application allows you to host meetings for up to 5,000 people and share applications, videos and sound from your desktop with them.  Participants join your meeting simply by visiting a custom web address and entering the password for the room.  Once inside a meeting there is a huge array of features available to both the host and participants in order to aid communications and provide interaction between the two.

Omnovia implements a few features that some other web conferencing tools haven’t thought of yet.  One of these is support for multiple presenters so that two or more people can co-present while working on the same document.  To facilitate this there is also a ‘close curtain’ feature so that, while the curtain is closed, the hosts can discuss things without the audience hearing or seeing anything.  Another unique feature is the ability to send out important messages from the meeting via SMS to participants who couldn’t make it.  Finally, although not unique, is the useful ability to create quick instant polls so that audience members can provide feedback to the presenters.

Support for up to 2000 people using VOIP is provided in Omnovia, which should be more than enough for most conferences.  An iBridge feature is also provided which lets the host connect the meeting to an outside telephone line so that, for example, a guest speaker who isn’t in front of a computer can participate.  As an addition there is also support for an unlimited number of participants to broadcast from a webcam attached to their computer.  The scale of these communication features is quite impressive and is much larger than many of Omnovia’s competitors.

Omnovia has been developed with security in mind.  Meeting rooms can be protected in a number of different ways with different authentication mechanisms which can be integrated with your existing LDAP services.  Communication during meetings is also secured with 128-bit SSL encryption to stop anyone intercepting the traffic.

Omnovia is an excellent service for hosting large scale webinars or small team meetings.  It scales excellently due to the robust underlying technology and is reliable at all levels.  The range of flexible price plans makes a subscription cost effective as you can pay for as much or as little as you like.  There is even an option to be billed by the minute if you don’t plan on hosting many meetings.  For a flexible and reliable web conferencing service Omnovia is a very good choice.

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