I happen to be in the process of seeing what is available too. It's important to know who your intended community is and what they need from technology. Do you only need message boards or do you need filesharing and calendars? Is your intended community already in contact with each other through physical gatherings, electronic mailing lists? What is their ultimate goal? Best practice sharing, mutual support, or a way to help you corral donors?

If you haven't have a chance to think about these things, I would recommend Nancy White's Online Community Toolkit and specifically, the Community Builders' Purpose Checklist which I use as a touch stone when I consider new features for my Foundation's community. You will also find a recent article near the top that outlines types of interaction and the technologies that support that kind of interaction which can help match the technology to your community.

Because I am looking for suggestions for vendors too, here is what I dug up in the past weeks. If anyone else has suggestions on top of this list let me know. (Note - don't judge the vendor by price, there are a *lot* of variables that can bring the price down. I happened to include the info because it's really hard to find this info and people tend to ask for budgets before you can even scope out a project.)

Name: Yahoo Groups
Maker: Yahoo.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/
Bare min Price: $0

Name: phpBB
Maker: (open source)
http://www.phpbb.com/
Bare min Price: $0

Name: Phorum
Maker: (open source)
http://www.phorum.org/
Bare min Price: $0

Name: UBB.classic
Maker: InfoPop
http://www.infopop.com/products/ubbclassic/
Bare min Price: $475 - $699 (bare min)

Name: UBB.threads
Maker: InfoPop
http://www.infopop.com/products/ubbthreads/
Bare min Price: $499 - $725 (bare min)

Name: WebBoard
Maker: Akiva (formerly ChatSpace)
http://www.akiva.com/products/webboard/index.cfm
Bare min Price: $1000 - $5000

Name: vBulletin
Maker: Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd
http://www.vbulletin.com/
Bare min Price: $160

Name: XMB
Maker: Aventure Media
http://www.xmbforum.com/features/
Bare min Price: $0 + varying fees to remove copyrights, gain support, etc.

Name: Prospero
Maker: Prospero
http://www.prospero.com/technology.htm
Bare min Price: Variable, looks like it's hosting services

Name: WebCrossing Express
Maker: WebCrossing
http://webcrossing.com/Home/products/
Bare min Price: $0

Name: WebCrossing
Maker: WebCrossing
http://webcrossing.com/Home/products/
Bare min Price: $3000 - $15000

Name: Web Wiz Forums
Maker: Individual Developer
http://www.webwizguide.info/web_wiz_forums/default.asp?mode=forum
Bare min Price: $30 - 100 for logo removal

Thanks for a great list of resources! I would add one more-- if you want to create a class environment, http://www.nicenet.org/ica/ica_info.cfm is free, offered by a nonprofit.

It's important to consider what degree of conferencing you want too. Do you want a simple text chat room (with/without moderation), voice, video, remote presentations / applications...? Since you're looking for "inexpensive", you can pretty much forget WebEx... You might want to consider things like AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN Messenger, along with the other suggestions so far.

Whups! You caused me to go back and double check the WebCrossing Express - looks like the free version is mostly content management but excludes discussions.

Well, that's definitely off my list.

Isoph, which works specifically with nonprofits, offers a number of learning and collaboration resources for nonprofits -- including discounted Web conferencing (both synchronous, a la WebEx, and asynchronous, a la discussion or self-paced courses). Please visit the Isoph Institute for more details, including links and resource:
http://www.isophinstitute.com

In addition, Isoph's free newsletter, "The Sophist," covered nonprofit Web conferencing and synchronous training in its last edition. Please see http://www.isophinstitute.com/sophist_no5.aspx.

Best regards,
Bill Tucker, Isoph Chief Knowledge Officer
bill.tucker@isoph.com

Pogosity, when you said, "Whups! You caused me to go back and double check the WebCrossing Express...", were you suggesting that WebCrossing Express and WebEx were the same thing? I don't think they are (but I could be wrong...)

Anthony, I did miss that you were talking specifically about WebEx and not WebCrossing at first. By the time I realized that you were talking about WebEx, I had already looked deeper into the WebCrossing Express (which is $0) and realized that it wasn't what I certainly needed.

So, a minor misintepretation leads to a better understanding. Regardless, thanks.

Oh, and yes, they are two separate companies with different tools for slightly different objectives.

-Scott

Hi team,

There are a great many resources that could be recommended for this function; however first a quick question... do you want the conference 'back-end' systems to be hosted by someone else or do you want to do this yourself?

Yahoogroups and phpBB are not the same thing... one is a free (to a point) advertiser supported remotely hosted conferencing service; the other a system you load, run and administer on your own servers (or on somebody elses)... there are literally hundreds (if not thousands) of a variety of similar services available.

Rgds, Don

If you would like all the services groups, webconferencing, profiles, votes, chat in one place you can go off the shelf with
CommKit. Or look at NetModular if you want a custom solution.

We have an entire resource list of online community building tools, here on TechSoup.

HTH,

Susan

Hi folks!
It seems that the term "web conferencing" means different things to different people.

If WebMama is looking for ways to hold real-time meetings via the web, ThinkOfIt.com has a great List of Web Conferencing Resources.

I believe most of these resources allow participants to call into a conference call while watching a presentation or tour on their computer screen. The presentation is controlled remotely.

Hope this helps!

~Lee

Lee LeFever
Online Communication Planner
Common Craft
www.commoncraft.com

See Gomeetnow provides multi-functional web conferencing for PC & Mac and is supporting attendees on Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix, or iPhone . One can try it free and is very inexpensive too.

Hi Andrew--

Welcome to TechSoup. What is your affiliation with this tool--is it a product you've tried or is this from a company you work with? Please note our Community Rules & Standards which prohibits self-promotion in the forums.

Thanks,

Megan

Ma'am its just I am using their product for over an year and am quiet satisfied with it ( May be there are other better in the market but this one was affordable for me then and am going well with it ) . Yeah also I didn't have my personal blog to link to ...and I mostly engage with friends through online conferences or on Yahoo chat... That's it..