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According to statistics, almost 40% of U.S. employees meet once or twice a week. However, different time zones and busy schedules make hosting team meetings difficult.
Picture a dedicated project manager juggling a team spread across the globe, each team member swamped with a full task list. Coordinating these meetings has become a Herculean task, resulting in missed opportunities and delayed progress.
Luckily, the market offers various meeting management software that facilitate team collaboration and communication.
Whether you need help scheduling, organizing, or conducting meetings, there is something for you on this list. Let’s take a look at five solutions that can help you maximize productivity.
What is meeting management software?
Managing meetings gets time-consuming and challenging, especially when handling a multi-location team. That's where meeting management software comes in. These specialized tools help streamline and enhance the efficiency of organizing, scheduling, conducting, and documenting organizational meetings. Some options also support the distribution of meeting minutes, action items, and follow-up tasks or feedback.
Ultimately, such software optimizes the meeting lifecycle, reducing administrative overhead, improving communication, and fostering more effective and well-documented collaboration. In short – it saves time, reduces stress, and increases productivity.
How to select the best meeting management software solutions
Here's a list of important factors you should look for in meeting management software for maximizing productivity:
- Scheduling capabilities: Look for software that simplifies the planning process and seamlessly integrates with popular calendar apps, making coordinating meeting times easy. Scheduling automations are a plus.
- Live chat: Instant messaging facilitates more efficient communication, like notes or file sharing.
- Agenda management: Meeting plans help to keep the conversations focused and productive. It’s also a way to ensure you never forget key talking points.
- Collaboration options: Document sharing and collaboration features enable everyone to share files, work together on documents in real time, and access relevant materials during the meeting.
- Integration with other tools: Make sure the software integrates well with other essential tools you’re using, such as project management, collaboration, or customer relationship management systems.
Pricing: Evaluate the total cost of ownership for all users and balance it with the value you get. Assess whether the software can scale with your growth to meet increasing demands.
5 best meeting management software reviewed
Meeting preparation is stressful enough that you don’t want to worry about the tech part. Here are five meeting management tools to explore.
Calendly
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Calendly is an online scheduling tool that ensures all team members can join a meeting. It is suitable for your sales, marketing, and recruiting departments.
Calendly is easy to use and intuitive. Connect the tool to your Google, Office 365, iCloud, or Outlook calendars. With this insight, Calendly can organize your schedule. You share the Calendly link to allow team members to book a meeting time with you.
The entire team can use Calendly to schedule meetings. It supports team-based scheduling by including everyone’s calendars. You can book one-on-one sessions, in-person check-ups, and more.
Other useful meeting management features include:
- Automation – It automates follow-ups, reminders, and meeting notifications. For instance, you can automate a thank-you email that Calendly sends sometime after the meeting.
- Integrations – You can integrate Calendly with popular tools, including Zoom, Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, and Notion.
- Availability settings – Set up availability preferences to control your time. You can add buffer time or set caps.
- Admin management – Admins can manage all organization’s users on this meeting platform. They can also oversee scheduling processes from one location.
The available plans are:
- Free plan
- Essentials – $8 per seat a month
- Professional – $12 per seat a month
- Teams – $16 per seat a month
Google Meet
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Google Meet is meeting management software suitable for businesses of all sizes. It enables users to host meetings, webinars, and other sessions. This online meeting tool supports audio and video communication, screen sharing, and chatting. Also you can use an extension to record and transcribe meeting.
The key features are:
- Screen sharing – You can share your screen or an app with the attendees. This is especially useful when you hold a presentation.
- Whiteboarding – Team members can collaborate on documents, visuals, and other materials. The toolbar lets you write, doodle, or write on an empty canvas.
- Live chat – Send texts in real time or take note of your brainstorming sessions in the chatbox.
- Scheduling capabilities – Use Google Calendar to access anyone’s meeting schedule. You can book a session with team members in just a few clicks.
- Participant permissions – You can grant access to users based on role or specific group.
- Platform-friendly – Google Meet is available on a desktop, browser, or mobile app. The meeting management software is optimized to work on any device.
Here are the paid plans:
- Business Starter – $6 per user a month
- Business Standard – $12 per user a month
- Business Plus – $18 per user a month
- Enterprise – A custom plan
All paid plans are subject to a one-year commitment.
Zoom
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Zoom is a popular meeting management tool for hosting productive meetings. It offers a range of features to facilitate video and audio communication and connect you to your remote teams.
You can work from anywhere as long as you use video conferencing tools, like Zoom. It allows you to communicate with internal and external contacts, engage in calls, or schedule video meetings in just one click. The Zoom key features are:
- Video conferencing – The meeting management software supports high-quality video and audio meetings. Depending on the pricing plan, many participants can join the session.
- Recording – Your team members won’t miss important information if you record meetings. You can capture audio or video content for later distribution.
- Chat – You can use the chat to share links, files, or images with others.
- Breakout rooms – Create breakout rooms and split participants into smaller groups for discussions or brainstorming sessions. You can then bring everyone back together to present each group’s ideas.
- Scheduling – Zoom lets you integrate your calendar and contacts for easier meeting management.
- Collaboration tools – Multiple participants can share their screens or create meeting notes.
The enterprise meeting management software offers the following plans:
- Basic – A free plan
- Pro – €13.99 per user a month
- Business – €18.99 per user a month
- Business Plus – A custom plan
- Enterprise – Custom pricing available upon request
Microsoft Teams
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Microsoft Teams is an online meeting management platform. It facilitates teamwork and enables effective communication across your organization. Teams combines chat, video calls, and file storage and integrates with other Microsoft tools.
To ensure your online meetings go off without a hitch, it offers:
- Video conferencing features – This meeting management tool makes your meetings more interactive. Add captions, use a reaction button, record sessions, or share your screen. You can also follow up with participants because Teams provides the attendee list.
- Messaging – You can use individual or group chats to interact with others. Teams supports text-based messaging and emojis and has various formatting options.
- Transcription – The audio transcription feature converts speech into written text. You receive a separate document to go over the text.
- Webinar option – You can go beyond standard meetings and host a webinar to help you connect with your customers and partners.
- Microsoft 365 integration – It seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft 365 apps, including Word, Excel, and Outlook.
Its available plans are:
- Microsoft Teams Essentials – $4 per user a month
- Microsoft 365 Business Basic – $6 per user a month
- Microsoft 365 Business Standard – $12.50 per user a month
Fellow
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Fellow is a collaboration and meeting management app. It aims to ensure you hold effective meetings and maximize team productivity.
The key features are:
- Meeting agendas – You can work on a meeting agenda with your team. The feature also allows you to save meeting agenda templates for recurring sessions. You can use collaborative agendas to send notes after the meeting takes place.
- Action items – You can assign tasks and reorganize the to-do list. Check action items off once completed.
- Streams – These are digital notepads where you can write all your workload. Streams help you organize your workload and have a clear picture of your tasks.
- Feedback – You can request feedback on meetings or projects. Use the suggestions to improve your sessions and make them appealing to team members.
Fellow is a free meeting management software tool for teams of up to ten people, but it also has paid plans for bigger teams:
- Pro – $6 per user a month (for up to 50 users)
- Business – $8 per user a month (unlimited users)
- Enterprise – Custom pricing available upon request (unlimited users)
Best meeting management software: Comparison table
Take a look at our comparison table to explore the right meeting management tools:
Conclusion
Meeting software makes it easier to hold meetings, create agendas, and engage countless people. Going digital is a must, so investing in meeting management solutions should be your top priority.
We listed five platforms for scheduling meetings. Choose the tool that offers features your company needs. Your workforce will be thankful!
FAQs
What is a meeting management software?
A meeting management solution is a tool that lets individuals and teams schedule, organize, and conduct meetings and record results. It can offer task management tools, scheduling features, recording options, etc.
How do you manage business meetings?
To manage business meetings, follow these steps:
- Create meeting agendas in advance so your meetings have a structure
- Go over the attendee list
- Stay focused on the agenda
- Clarify and ask if anyone has questions
- Finish the meeting on time
Which software is best for meetings?
Which software is best for meetings depends on your needs. Each software has specific features, including scheduling and recording. We suggest you check the available meeting software and explore their functionalities.
How can you organize meetings more easily?
You can organize meetings more easily if you use meeting management software. It helps invite people to the meeting, create action times, and communicate in real time.
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