Conference calls can often get bogged down by poor quality. Whether the problem is poor audio quality, issues with technology or simply a bad user experience, the best free conference calls services make delivering high quality service to their users a top priority.

Now, there are many different free conference calls services to choose from. A quick search on Google will scratch only the surface of the amount of conferencing solutions you can use without having to spend a penny.

But not all of these free services are the same. In fact, some are plagued with quality issues, while others provide only basic features in hopes of luring users toward a paid service. However, if you know what you are looking for, finding a high-quality, free conference call service is not impossible.

Conference calls are a popular way to do business

Though video conferencing is getting much of the attention, especially as of late, it has its own common issues that many users run into. Perhaps the most common of these issues – and the most unsettling – are issues of privacy and security that have been reported with Zoom, one of the most popular video conferencing services.

These downfalls of video are some of the reasons why audio conference calls have stuck around so long. In some cases, audio is just a better way to do business.

One recent survey shows this is true. In that survey, which tracked businesses in the US and UK, 68 percent of respondents said they had anywhere between one to five calls per week, while 20 percent put that number between six and 10 calls per week. Those businesses spent almost 100 billion minutes on conference calls.

Since conference calls take up a critical amount of time for businesses, finding a quality service truly matters.

Here’s how to find the best in a crowded field of service providers.

The service needs to be mobile friendly

In today’s world, nearly every service needs to be usable not only on desktop computers and laptops, but also on mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets.

According to Harvard Business Review, many people prefer to call in to conferences with a smartphone instead of a traditional landline phone. In fact, in a survey HBR recently cited, 64 percent of respondents indicated smartphones were their preference when they had to dial in to meetings and conferences with their colleagues.

This means that if a conferencing service does not play nicely on your team’s mobile devices, even if it’s free, then they likely will dread using it. Nobody wants to keep a landline phone around simply for conference calls.

Look at lists of features

When you are comparing free services of any type, you have to ask yourself what exactly you are being offered. Do the features still meet all your needs? What, if anything, is missing?

With conference call services, some free providers do not stack up when you compare the features they offer to those of the paid services.

Don’t just settle for free, though. Be sure to identify which free services offer the features your team needs to properly and efficiently communicate.

Let’s go over some of the features that every good conference call solution should provide to its users.

Cover the basics

Every conference call provider you might consider for your business needs to have the basic features, otherwise you are better off finding a different solution.

We’re talking about caller ID, ability to mute participants for a presentation mode, chat or question and answer features – that sort of thing.

Most services will have these, but it’s good to double-check.

The best free services have many free features

Here is where we start to separate the bad conferencing providers from the good and the great providers. Only the best free conference call services have long lists of free features that they never charge users for.

Plus, the top tier of free conferencing services offer HD quality audio that ensure clarity of speech for every caller on the line. Some services will go a step even further and offer echo cancelation, improving audio quality even more.

Other popular and common features to check off the list before you decide which service is right for your business include call recording, no caller number limitations and no time restrictions.

Find a free service with those features and your team is ready to rock its next conference call.

Why audio quality matters

Let’s go back to audio quality for just a moment. Poor audio quality is one of the most common complaints when it comes to conference calls.

There are ways to improve audio quality, but so much of this comes down to which service is in use. Make sure that the provider your business uses for its conference call needs emphasizes audio quality.

Free must mean free

We could put together a fairly extensive list of conference call services that advertise themselves as free, but in the end are not. Sure, they might offer a few limited features or lower quality calls for free, but if you want the more desirable features and higher quality, then they will make you pay a fee.

It doesn’t have to be that way. The best free conference call services do not sacrifice quality in hopes of making a buck here and there from their users. In fact, services like Conference Town offer every feature for free and never charge users.

There’s no catch either. You can enjoy quality conference calls and still expect to receive the highest level of service.

Start an instant conference call with Conference Town

Don’t just settle for free when looking for a better conference call service, expect the best. With ConferenceTown.com, that’s what you will get.

Start an instant conference or create a free account now to see the level of quality that a growing number of customers are raving about.