Amazon has decided it is time to further grow their cloud user base and make additional inroads with business and enterprise customers by offering their own voice and video conferencing service.
Amazon Chime is the companies communications service challenger to current products such as Skype, GoToMeeting, and Slack but buyer beware - it will cost a nice chunk of change compared to some of these other services.
For instance, look at Office 365 Business Premium from Microsoft that costs $12.50 per user (up to 250 users) and not only includes Skype for Business but also the full Office 365 suite and 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage. There is simply no comparison between this and Amazon Chime at the Pro plan level of $15 per user for just the communications software/service.
However, give them credit as they are attempting to match all of the normal features of its competitors offerings:
"Amazon Chime works seamlessly across your devices so that you can stay connected. You can use Amazon Chime for online meetings, video conferencing, calls, chat, and to share content, both inside and outside your organization. Amazon Chime frees you to work productively from anywhere."
There are three tiers of service with Amazon Chime:
Basic
- Video Calls for up to 2 people
- Chats
- Chat Rooms
- Message History - 30 days
- Cost - Free
Plus
Basic Plan features listed above plus:
- Screen sharing
- Integrating corporate directory
- Message History - 1GB per user
- Cost - $2.50 per user; per month
Pro
Plus plan features (and Basic) plus:
- Video meetings for up to 100 people
- Personal meeting URLs
- Message History - 1GB per user
- Cost - $15 per user; per month
Amazon is allowing new users to use the service for 30 days at no cost and then you either have to subscribe to the Plus or Pro plan or just revert to using the Basic free service. You do have to create a Chime account on Amazon.com and it is recommended you not use the same email address that you use for shopping. It took me less than 10 minutes to sign up and start the Chime software.
The app is available for download on the following platforms:
- iOS
- Android
- Mac OS X
- Windows
This gallery will show you the sign-up process and the software as it appears on Windows 10.
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