Webex by Cisco

Webex is a longtime player in the video conferencing software field, having been founded in 1995 and acquired by Cisco in 2007. That makes it a little different from some of the newer, general-purpose video conferencing solutions we reviewed this year, such as our overall Editors' Choice, Zoom Meetings. Although Webex works in that capacity, it's also tightly integrated with Cisco's full ecosystem of conferencing tools and hardware, including its video conference room technology. Buying into that vision will cost you, but what Cisco offers is still comprehensive and compelling enough that it earns our Editors' Choice award for small to midsize enterprises. If you're not sure that's the right fit for you, be sure to check out our other Editors' Choice picks, including BlueJeans (for multi-platform video conferencing) and Intermedia AnyMeeting (for general SMB video conferencing).

Cisco Webex's Pricing and Plans

Like the other products in this roundup, Cisco offers tiered pricing for Webex. There is a free tier that provides meetings of up to 50 minutes for up to 100 participants. These meetings include most of the basic video conferencing features you'd expect, such as screen sharing, breakout rooms, and whiteboarding. Unfortunately, it lacks many of Cisco's more advanced, business-oriented features.

The Meet plan costs $15 per user per month, or $13.50 per user per month when billed annually. This plan ups the number of meeting participants to 200 and meetings can last up to 24 hours. It also adds features, such as 10GB of cloud recording storage per user, closed captioning, meeting transcription, background noise canceling, and file transfers.

The Call plan is similar to the free tier, except it adds a bunch of voice-over-IP (VoIP) calling features, such as hold and transfer, call forwarding, conference calls, and visual voicemail. This plan goes for $17 per user per month, but no annual pricing was available at the time of this writing.

The Webex Suite - Business tier costs $25 per user per month, and is equivalent to the Meet plan and the Call plan combined.

Sadly, the real-time translation add-on is only free for a 15-day trial. Once that's up, it's billed at an additional $25.00 per user per month, which is completely unreasonable considering that Google Meet includes this feature in its closed captioning at no added charge.

All of this makes Webex pricey compared to some of the other products we reviewed this year. For example, BlueJeans, our Editors' Choice for multi-platform conferencing, only charges $16.66 per user per month for its Enterprise plan.

Getting Started with Webex by Cisco

However you might want to use Webex, Cisco has you covered. Desktop clients are available for both macOS and Windows, and if that isn't your cup of tea, you can use a browser with no noticeable functionality loss. Webex also has apps for Android, iOS, and wearables. Unlike BlueJeans, Webex lacks a general Linux client.

Once you download the Webex app, you'll find everything you need to create and manage meetings. Similar to Microsoft Teams, there's a space for collaborators to use whiteboards, files, messages, and a variety of add-on integrations to third-party apps, such as Sketchboard and Smartsheet. All of this pairs nicely with the meeting portion of the app.

Once you start a meeting, you're presented with an unobtrusive interface that lets you focus on your work. Closed captioning is on by default, so you'll see a black bar with captions below the person speaking. If you want to toggle it off, the control is in the lower left-hand corner. 

Assisted Transcription

Once turned on, Webex Assistant transcribes your session in real time, and makes that transcription available after the meeting. In addition, it opens a flyout window: the Captions and Highlights panel. 

This feature is powerful because if there's a particular quote you find insightful, you can mark that as a highlight. Even though the full transcription won't be available until after the meeting ends, it gives you a quick way to jump to that recording section at a later time, as well as call it out for reference.

Assistants are becoming more prevalent, and I suspect that they will become a necessary element in video conferencing as participants engage in longer meetings. Webex is missing some of the pieces that Intermedia AnyMeeting, our Editors' Choice for general SMB conferencing, has—such as automatic identification of meetings and action items. Still, Webex Assistant solves the problem of waiting to see the transcription. This is a big benefit for people using the real-time translation feature, since you don't have to wait on your dedicated translator to see what is being said (though this comes at an added cost).

Meetings and Chat

Webex's in-meeting controls include the typical mute, stop video, share, and record that you'd find with Zoom Meetings, our general purpose Editors' Choice pick, and competing services. You can share a window, a file, or the whiteboard. If you choose to share your screen, you get a number of annotation tools, similar to how GoToMeeting works. Alternatively, you can open a blank whiteboard. If you spend a lot of time flowcharting, this is an invaluable feature. It's also a path that Cisco uses to push its smart board lines, which are amazing, if expensive.

The Reactions feature lets you signal a specific emotion during a meeting, in addition to raising your hand. Another nifty bit is the ability to use hand signals to trigger Reactions. A thumbs up to the camera gave me a thumbs up reaction, and clapping in front of the camera gave me a clap reaction. Overall, Reactions are responsive, but I accidentally triggered them on occasion.

Chat and notes are available, but not they're not particularly interesting. Notes lacks the rich text features you get with Intermedia, which was a bit of a letdown. Chat was similarly bland, and lacked emojis or the ability to express anything beyond basic notes. 

The Participants panel lets you mute or unmute participants, as well as control their video if someone is being distracting. You can force folks to be mute on entry, which is great for a webinar.

Webex includes Breakout rooms that you can initiate and end at a specific time to bring everyone back together into the main meeting. These are traditionally used for brainstorming sessions and webinars, and it's good to see that Webex factored these into the video streaming product.

Video Conferencing for Sophisticated SMBs

It's worth mentioning that Cisco doesn't push Webex in a vacuum. There's an entire hardware ecosystem that Cisco targets to every audience, from your home kitchen to the meeting room. While we'd argue that you don't need a dedicated device for every room in your house, some folks might like the convenience, even if it has an added cost. Still, a smartphone, tablet, or laptop is more than enough to get what you need out of Webex.

It's safe to say that Webex is all-encompassing from a features standpoint, but it has a few pricing surprises that could catch you off guard when trying to compare it to other products. Google Meet, for instance, includes real-time translation for free. To top it off, much of Webex's value is tied to the physical product ecosystem that Cisco advertises, so if you want the full experience, you can expect a far larger total cost of ownership.

That said, Webex includes fantastic collaboration features that are well organized and easy to use. If you can afford it, you can't go wrong, which is enough for it to continue to reign as the PCMag Editors' Choice pick for video conferencing aimed at small to midsize enterprises.