Audio Acrobat vs. Instant Teleseminar

One of the things I love about teaching marketing programs is the great questions we get from participants. On the discussion forum for our Law of Action program that wrapped up today, there was a great question that bears posting here.

What would be the advantage of InstantTeleseminar over Audio Acrobat? If we are able to access free bridge lines at places like FreeConferenceCall.com, why would someone pay $47/month instead of $19.95?

Good questions. We use both InstantTeleseminar and AudioAcrobat for totally different purposes.

In my view, they are apples and oranges. Yes, there is some overlap in features but for the most part they offer different functions.

InstantTeleseminar (IT) is about setting up and delivering teleseminars with the option of streaming live on the web for up to 2000 people. AudioAcrobat (AA) doesn't do this at all. You also get a 200 person bridge line with IT. Again, you don't get a bridge line with AA, but you can record though you have do three-way calling. We also love the IT feature of giving your audience the ability to submit questions that you manage behind the scenes. Keeps the lines quiet and you can control what gets asked and answered.

IT creates the pages you need to broadcast the teleseminar plus other features like providing a way for you to set up links to direct people to offers or special web pages. You can also use the replay page, but I don't do that because I want to clean up the audio before it gets distributed.

Yes, you could build this all your self (without the live streaming audio function). But with IT, the recording is automated and the files are created immediately after the call is complete. You get an mp3 file and an uncompressed .wav file which is higher quality.

AA is a great way to store and share audio files, create podcasts and have a testimonial line. But I would not use it for recording a teleclass -- too convoluted to set up. I do like the testimonial line, the podcast feature and the audio postcard, but don't use that very often.

We have numerous free bridge lines we use since we deliver a lot of teleseminars and meet with our clients on bridge lines so yes, we use free conference lines, but most are limited to 99 callers, which for most people would be fine. However, we consistently put 200+ in many of our teleseminars and recently had 1,000 people register for a call. The InstantTeleseminar system was perfect to handle that many callers.

IT is simpler and more powerful in my opinion, for delivering teleseminars. AA is great for hosting audio, because audio files have to be hosted on a server somewhere in order to be played and downloaded. Also there are additional charges if you go over the basic bandwidth allotment for AA. So if you creating a lot of audio and a lot of people are downloading or playing the audio only, it can eat up your bandwidth pretty fast and your charges will creep up.

I'm sure there are some people who will disagree with me or challenge my brief overview, but this is what works for The Blog Squad. How about you? What systems do you use for hosting audio and hosting teleseminars?