This article heralds the introduction of ROOM's new subscription plans, and will convey the features and the availability of added amenities defining each.
Generally speaking, there are certain things that have not changed: if you are invited to someone else's meeting, you can simply join through your Chrome, Edge or Safari browser without an account. There's nothing to download or install. The only action you need to take is to either click on a meeting link if you receive an emailed invitation to a given meeting; otherwise, copy the invitation link into your browser, if received by some other method.
You will need an account if you wish to invite others to your own ROOM meeting. Sign up for ROOM at http://room3d.com/ and try our Basic plan for free. If you like what you see and you'd like to experience ROOM with even more features and amenities, you can opt for the new Personal plan, a great way to congregate with friends and family. Here are some details on the ROOM plans:
- The Basic (free forever) plan, which features meetings of up to 60 minutes’ duration each, choice of many unique rooms, and the ability to host up to 4 participants. Group chat, file sharing, and screen sharing are also included (a user can upgrade to a paid plan with more features at any time).
- Trial plans, of which there are two, and each represents a 14-day trial. Users that select one of these trial plans cannot later select another:
- The Personal Plan: mainly for personal use, in a friends & family context, which has all Basic plan features plus no meeting time-limits. In contrast to the Basic plan, meetings can host up to 16 people.
- The Pro Plan: mostly for consultants and private contractors, which builds on the features found in the Personal plan by omitting ROOM brand watermarks and is licensed for commercial use.
3. The Business plan, recommended for small and medium-sized enterprises, contains a selection of features that includes all Pro plan benefits and more: stand-up meetings & workshop room with specialized tools integrated. Also included are a team management interface with status. Lastly, unified admin and billing. (15 EUR/ month per seat)
4. The Enterprise plan, priced and demo'd upon inquiry, comprises ROOM's large organizational solution offering, featuring all Business plan features are included, plus limited meetings for up to 24 hours, in which you can host up to 16 participants. Of special note are the customized feature set, customized rooms, and on-premise deployment focused on your brand and special business requirements.
Existing Founders' plan subscribers will be able to keep their subscription going indefinitely at the same rate of 6 EUR/ month, until/if they choose to cancel.
Please note that, as per the original offer, the Founders' plan will continue to be unique among all ROOM subscriptions, as the only one featuring the both the coveted Founder’s Room and the Founder’s Badge!
The graphic above depicts the new ROOM plans as seen on the The Settings/ Licenses menu after user login. It contains a small banner (not displayed on the ROOM website Plans Pricing page) to inform current Founders' plan subscribers of their status and prospective choices in canceling or upgrading their plan.
* Important!
When changing plans, we will prorate the subscription costs. For example, if you are on our 6€ monthly Personal plan and you are usually billed on the 1st of every month, then you execute a plan change to our 9€ Pro plan halfway through the billing cycle (in this case, mid-month on a monthly cycle – e.g. the 15th of the 30-day month), then you have already paid 6€ and used half of that (because you're in the middle of the month). So, when you switch to the new Pro plan which has a price of 9€:
- The unused portion of their current billing cycle is applied as a credit, in this case: 6€ ** (15 days unused / 30 days total) = 3€ credit.
- The cost of the new plan for the remaining billing cycle (i.e. the outstanding 15 days left in the month) is a debit of: 9€ (15 days remaining / 30 days total) = 4.5€ debit.
- The final prorated cost of switching from the Personal to the Pro plan is: +3€ credit – 4.5€ debit = -1.5€ charge.
This above charge amount will be added onto your upcoming recurring payment amount. If you’ve downgraded instead of upgrading, you will pay less, of course.
So, the next billed amount would include the prorated charge combined with (added to) the payment required on the new plan for the upcoming month. Thus, the next billed amount would be for a total of 10.5€ in our example (9€ for the upcoming billing interval, plus 1.5€ for the prorated amount from the plan change).
Below is the popup message that will display when you try to change your license from your Settings page's "Licenses" tab. It underscores our commitment to fairness concerning prorating costs when you change plans.
The Subscription Process walk-through
The next few images will provide a screen-by-screen walkthrough of the subscription process assuming you are not a current subscriber. Please note that for those subscribers that wish to change or cancel their plan, the flow is identical starting with the Log In process described further below.
Starting on our website's Home page you can select either one of the blue "Sign up for free" buttons to begin the process. Optionally, you can review the comparative plans at your leisure by clicking the "Price & Pricing" before proceeding.
Upon pressing the "Sign up for Free" (or "Try Now") button, you'll be taken to the free account registration page. As soon as you enter your email address and a password, an email verification message will be sent to said address without delay, although new subscribers won't be asked to confirm email addresses for one full month, and are immediately redirected into the room and presented with...
... the popup below (Meeting Participant Entry Panel), prompting you to provide a name for your "virtual name tag" in the meeting (this keeps multiple people with the annoying default name "anonymous" from appearing in the meeting). A live video feed of your encircled head should already be seen on this form.
This immediate action to redirect is to help immerse you into a real ROOM meeting venue. You can exit the unpopulated meeting any time you like, and if you prefer - navigate to the Settings page to get on with setting up your profile or review details of your account and possible upgrades.
To enter the meeting room (and all its tools, including the exit button), continue by choosing an alternate mic and camera (or leave the default choices) and click the ENTER ROOM button. The default room will be the New York City room.
A new popup overlay will replace the first, prompting you to invite some guest to test out your room (or simply skip this step to just proceed with exploring).
Once you've cleared all the pre-meeting popups, you'll have a "Tip/Hints" message that will briefly appear to help you out with navigation. You'll easily be able to pan the camera around the table by using your left/right keyboard arrows or by sliding your mouse left or right. Zooming in/out is done by using your mouse buttons.
When you finally decide to exit the room, you'll be redirected to the Dashboard page, from where you'll be able to select rooms/venues for any new meetings you create. The Dashboard page is the initial page to which you'll be directed any time you log on in the future.
Also, when you return to the website to Log In in the future, you'll arrive website's Login page/ panel, as seen below, instead of the first-time user's generic landing page in which you registered previously.
If you ever find yourself on the first-time user's generic landing page as see below (say, by being redirected from another website), simply click on the top "Login" link, directly next to the "Sign up for Free" button.
As previously mentioned, any time you log in, you'll be taken to ROOM's Dashboard page, which we'll now examine in detail. The top portion of the screen is dominated by a carousel featuring some of the most popular and novel meeting rooms/venues. The rest of the page will be revealed upon scrolling down and will display a broad selection of meeting venues, identifying which are available to subscribers of the Basic (free) plan as well as those reserved for other ROOM plans' subscribers.
As its name implies, all meeting rooms/venues can be accessed from the Dashboard page by selecting a room preview meeting card.
Due to its extensive collection of meeting venues and corresponding preview cards, the Dashboard's vast number of displayed rooms can be minimized to better match your requirements by using some of its filter buttons, located just below the "Rooms" section. These include filters for attendance capacity as well as for intended use or room style.
After creating an account, there are two things that you'll need to familiarize yourself with in order to make full use of ROOM's features:
1. Creating meetings: from the new Meet page and from the Dashboard page
2. Navigating to the "Settings" page to compare/modify subscription plans, or to manage your profile
1. Creating meetings
Unlike the above-mentioned new user's flow from the sign up page that directly places you into a pre-selected meeting room, when you create subsequent meetings, you will:
(a) Create instant (ad hoc) meetings from the Dashboard page
(b) Invite additional participants while inside your meeting room
(c) Schedule future meetings on the new Meet page
(a) Dashboard page meetings
If you scroll down the Dashboard page to the "Rooms" section you'll see a "Most Used" section which makes it easier to find a room/venue with the right number of seats as well as the right theme. This will be updated as you begin to schedule meetings in different venues.
To create an instant (non-scheduled) meeting from the Dashboard page, you have two options:
(1) First choose a room, and click on the blue "Copy Link" button displayed on the room's preview card. You can then share the auto-generated link by pasting it anywhere you choose (such as a messaging app, email or a shared calendar) to invite your friends or colleagues.
(2) Click on the desired meeting preview card to enter the room. This will immediately take you to the loading screen as shown below.
Once the room is fully loaded, look at the screen's bottom, the "Tool Tray", where you'll find several meeting-enhancing tools.
You'll have a choice of two buttons at the bottom of the screen to invite guests. These 2 buttons are:
(1) The blue Copy Invitation link is at the screen's bottom among the tools on the right.
(2) Alternatively, you can copy the link from the More button ("...") Participants' list as seen below and select Participants from the emerging list.
Whichever of the 2 buttons you choose, the same Participants popup panel will ultimately display, enabling you to manage your invitees and to copy the meeting link.
The Participants panel's bottom part contains several methods by which you can share the link: Gmail, your default email client, or Facebook.
Importantly, none of these links are automatically placed in your calendar of choice. If you want to place the meeting link in a calendar to (ideally) send it out as part of a third-party calendar-scheduled invitation, you'll have to copy the link and place it in a manually created calendar event.
(b) Meet page scheduled meetings
The new Meet page, whose nav icon can be found between the Rooms and Settings icons, will expose users to a familiar, intuitive way of scheduling future meetings using calendar tools.
Start the scheduling process by clicking on the "Book a Room" button or by clicking anywhere on the large grey field ("You have no scheduled meetings").
The emerging "Book a Room" panel will allow you to enter meeting-relevant data at the top, while the bottom section will prompt you for invited guests' email addresses. After each name you enter, you'll need to click on the "+" button to the right of the address field to move that address to the bottom list and clearing the text field for the next invited guests' email address.
The panel's leftmost section features meeting room thumbnails that you can scroll down and select at will. This means that - if you're not sure which room you really want to book, you can continue to select rooms, even after filling out your list of invitees. The invitees will ultimately be invited to the last room that you choose before pressing on the "Book Now" button.
If you look closely you'll see that there's also a counter to ensure that you don't invite more guests than you have available seats.
In the example below, you'll notice that the counter states, "4/4 No seats available", which simply means that with your registered plan only 4 participants are allowed (counting yourself), and all seats are taken, so you can't currently invite anyone else.
The date entry is very similar to what you'd find in most off-the-shelf calendar tools on the market, featuring a drop-down calendar where you can shuffle to future (and past) months before selecting a date.
By default, the time entry field can be populated within 15-minute increments.
If you try to close the calendar panel before clicking on "Book now" for any reason, you'll be prompted to ensure that you wanted to leave without saving any of the previously entered data.
Once you finish populating the calendar and hitting "Book now", the calendar overlay will disappear and you'll be able to see a new meeting card added to your previously empty Meet page (or added below your previously-existing meeting cards).
If you want to modify any of your meeting cards (by first clicking on the "..." icon on the card's upper right and selecting EDIT), a new Summary overlay panel will appear (see next graphic, below)...
... with all the existing data as well as some tools to let you add the meeting link to your/your invitees' Google, Outlook or other calendar with just one click!
Of course, you can always manually send the invitation by clicking on the COPY LINK button on:
- The Summary page's COPY LINK BOTTOM, at the screen's bottom
- Your meeting card(s) and pasting the link to your favorite email client, chat/messaging app, etc.
If, for whatever reason, you need to cancel the meeting while already editing, there is a trash can icon on the Summary page's upper right, which you can use for this purpose.
When you click on the trash can icon, you'll be prompted for confirmation.
After confirming that you want to delete the meeting, a "Meeting is deleted" message will be generated and a cancellation email will be sent to all your invitees that were emailed the invitation link through the ROOM system (not through the Google, Outlook or other calendars).
After you book a meeting, you will receive a similar email message to remind you in case you want to (eventually) paste/share it via other text apps, etc. If the meeting is cancelled you will also receive a cancellation email, along with your invitees.
The cancellation email is shown below.
IMPORTANT! A word on meeting creation
Neither the instant meetings created on the Dashboard page, nor the scheduled meetings created on the Meet page will appear on any calendar automatically.
These meeting invitations are usually just sent out by copying and pasting the invitation link to text apps, emails or social media tools, as mentioned before. Your intended guests will have the option of placing it on their own calendars by copying the link from the manually sent invitation email, text, etc. You may automatically help place it in your guests' calendars if you take the optional manual step of emailing them from your own calendar app into which you can paste the invitation link as part of the meeting's description.
2. Settings page: view & compare subscription plans, modify your current subscription plan or manage your Profile
In addition to creating meetings via the Default page and the Meet page, the third most common action performed by new ROOM subscribers to to review their license's details, hence this last walkthrough.
Please start by selecting the Settings page, as seen below. You will arrive at the Profile tab (page) by default.
In order to view the subscription plans' information, select the "License" text tab immediately under the Settings page title.
The following page will then be displayed from which you can manage your plan subscriptions.
For detailed related info pertaining to managing your Profile data (not just your licenses/subscriptions), please refer to the following article:
NEW! How can I change my profile data (Account, License, etc.)?
Please refer to these related topics for walk-throughs concerning related ROOM features:
Finding Your Way Around (Interaction, Navigation & Tools)
In-Meeting Mini Tutorial popup ("Manual")
NEW and Improved Camera Controls!
Do I need an account to use ROOM?
Do I need a software to host or attend a ROOM meeting?
What are the technical requirements to use ROOM?