Intermedia AnyMeeting

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A core pillar in Intermedia’s Unite telecommunications suite, the once-standalone AnyMeeting video conferencing service offers a compelling mix of features in an accessible package. Among the highlights of the platform are automatic transcription, convenient integrations with popular productivity software, and dedicated apps. We also appreciate its always-available customer support. The service could use breakout rooms for webinars and simpler pricing, however, so it doesn't quite compete with the more focused and feature-packed or the enterprise-friendly , both of which earn our Editors' Choice award for SMB video conferencing apps.

Getting Started With Intermedia AnyMeeting

AnyMeeting offers a variety of ways to participate in video conferences, including a web interface and dedicated apps for Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows. If you need a desktop client for Linux, look into alternatives such as Zoom.

Once you launch the desktop app and log in, the first thing you'll notice is the stripped-down interface that's designed to be easy for even novices to use. The app immediately presents you with three options: schedule, start a meeting now, and join a meeting. If you select the first option, the app prompts you to specify whether you’re scheduling a meeting, webinar, or phone conference. The other two options are self-explanatory; they allow you to create a meeting or sign into an existing meeting.

As the account owner, you get a personalized URL that's always usable for impromptu meetings. This URL is easy to share and helps you avoid recurring meeting confusion. There's just one downside if you schedule back-to-back meetings: If someone tries to join early while the previous meeting is still in progress, they won't be able to.

For everyday use, you should leverage the available add-ons that let you integrate with the calendar features from the likes of , , Outlook, and . These make it far easier to invite large groups of people to your video conferences and help AnyMeeting become a part of your workflow.

In a meeting, users have several different view options. The Spotlight view shows the active speaker in the largest window, for instance, while the Gallery view displays everyone in the same-size box. An Alphabetical view for larger meetings helps you quickly find someone in a giant sea of faces (this is still in beta). A compact mode compresses the entire meeting into a small, single window that you can move anywhere on your screen. Finally, you also have the option to toggle whether you want to see everyone's webcam feed.

You can turn the microphone and camera on or off and share your entire screen or a specific app. One of the most unusual features is the ability to mute others, no matter whether you are the meeting administrator. You can turn this off if it gets out of hand, but it’s a positive thing for meetings in which someone is creating constant background noise. Sometimes, it’s easier just to shut them off and notify them via chat.

Screen Sharing and Chat

Screen sharing is an important feature of any video conferencing service, and AnyMeeting offers it from any of its apps, including the web interface on Chrome and Edge browsers. One of its highlights is a helpful annotation feature (look for a pencil-shaped prompt in the corner of the screen-sharing interface). It's not extravagant, but it offers several color choices and works reliably. You can see who made a marking when you hover over it, and annotations automatically erase over time. Another convenient screen-sharing feature is the ability to let the host share the keyboard and mouse with other participants.

In meetings, there's a chat and notes tab next to the list of attendees. We appreciate that the chat supports rich text, emoji, and the ability to “raise” your digital hand in a meeting. Similarly, the notes tab accepts rich text and provides several formatting options. You can email notes to all attendees after the meeting concludes. Both of these features are essential for any modern video conferencing platform.

Intermedia has gone to great lengths to ensure that attendees have most of the same capabilities as the host in any given chat. This level playing field is one of AnyMeeting’s greatest strengths. The single caveat is that it can be a little difficult to decipher who is speaking or typing if multiple attendees are in the chat or notes tab.

AI-Powered Virtual Assistant

To access in-meeting features like recording and virtual assistance, look to the toolbar that appears when you move your cursor into the meeting window. We like that Intermedia doesn’t cap the length or quantity of recordings you can produce. More importantly, the recording feature works in tandem with the Virtual Assistant if you choose to add it to your meeting.

The Virtual Assistant attempts to intelligently transcribe the meeting. It doesn't automatically email these transcriptions to participants, but it does make them available for the host to edit and distribute. In testing, the results were quite good. The Virtual Assistant was able to relay what participants said almost perfectly, as well as break things down into summary topics. Hosts have full reign over the edits they want to impose on the transcription; they can change who was speaking from a pool of attendees and what they were saying.

I also like AnyMeeting’s ability to identify action items during conversations. The AI automatically calls out dates so that you can add them to your calendar.

Webinars and Customer Service

For large group meetings, AnyMeeting offers a Webinar feature that’s available as a standalone product. When you schedule such meetings, the host can practice presentations in a virtual green room before the actual event. Prepping before a large-scale meeting is important, especially given the suite of options in AnyMeeting’s Webinar component. Polls, audience Q&A, and file sharing via a content library are all tools hosts can either prep before a meeting or take advantage of on the fly. There’s also a virtual waiting room where attendees can wait before the host clicks GO ON-AIR and begins the meeting. However, the lack of breakout rooms is a downside. This feature is especially useful for training sessions with small groups. Zoom One offers this capability, for comparison.

In both Webinars and regular video meetings, AnyMeeting users can always access a live assistant. During testing, we had a question regarding one of the features included in the service. This feature gives AnyMeeting an edge over competing Webinar-centric conferencing platforms, such as . The service instantly connected us to a human customer service representative who could join the meeting, run us through the feature in question, and answer any follow-up questions. After the meeting, we also received an email that outlined the issue and its resolution. In an age in which chatbots are the first line of defense for digital troubleshooting, it was nice to have a conversation with a human.

How Much Does Intermedia AnyMeeting Cost?

AnyMeeting is a part of Intermedia Unite, which has two tiers: Unite Pro ($27.99 per user per month) and Unite Enterprise ($32.99 per user per month). Both plans include AnyMeeting video meetings and conferencing, including meeting transcriptions, unlimited recordings, and screen annotation. The difference between the two tiers is in the number of participants you can have during a conference. The Unite Pro tier allows for 100 HD video participants, while Unite Enterprise allows for 200. This same split applies to screen sharing. AnyMeeting offers more bang for the buck than Webex by Cisco, though we appreciate that Zoom makes it easy to pay just for video conferencing services and has a free tier.

Note that when you browse the pricing breakdown for this service, there is a “get quote” button. When we spoke to Intermedia representatives, they mentioned that the company offers customizable packages that are tailor-made for a business. So, before pulling the trigger on the default package, it might be worth speaking with an Intermedia sales representative about what exactly your business needs from a telecommunications platform.

As mentioned, AnyMeeting’s Webinar feature is a standalone product. Pricing for Webinars breaks down into three tiers. The Lite plan costs $48 per user per month and supports up to 100 Webinar attendees. The Pro level costs $128 per user per month and bumps the number of attendees to 250. Finally, the Enterprise plan costs $298 per user per month and ups the maximum number of attendees to 1,000.

Verdict: Easy to Use and Quite Capable

With a user-friendly interface, good annotation and transcription abilities, useful host and participant controls, and top-notch customer support, Intermedia AnyMeeting deserves close consideration for SMBs in the market for a video conferencing service. We just wish it had breakout rooms and that group chats were a bit more organized. It thus falls a bit short of our Editors' Choice winners for the category, the more capable and conveniently priced Zoom and the corporate-focused Webex by Cisco.