Commercial web-based video conferencing platform

Question

We are looking for a platform that we can integrate into a website, where the platform is responsible for video conferencing and hosting the server-end of things.

Many of our customers are based in China, which often makes things quite difficult for us as China restricts access to a lot of services that are available elsewhere. So it's important that the solution works world-wide.

We also want to be able to control the access to the conferences, so instead of there being some sort of "lobby" where you select and join a conference, we would set up the rooms in the background and notify only the qualifying members that they can access the conference. This is because we want to be able to control the access in situations where the customer must have bought something from us (for example) before being able to access a certain conference.

Any suggestions on potential platforms or places we can go to look for advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

In addition to Webex I would also look at Big Blue Button, a Free/Open solution. Room creation, allowing access to rooms, etc. is all done via API calls, so you could have total control over how that process works. And, there are several hosting companies in the US and worldwide that support it, but it is super easy to set up and configure, the API for room creation, etc. is well documented and very easy to use.

Answer 2

Cisco Webex should suit your needs admirably you can video and audio conference with various numbers of people, have private, invite only, meetings, share desktop, etc., on a number of platforms.

I personally have been in webex conferences that included people from China so that shouldn't be an issue.