Expertcity transformed remote file sharing and personal computer remote control when it introduced GoToMyPC a few years ago. The ease of use and power of GoToMyPC delighted users, including me, but irked corporate information technology departments when they discovered employees surreptitiously installing the software on their office machines.

Now Expertcity, which was acquired by Citrix Systems six months ago and has been renamed Citrix Online (www.citrix.com), is hoping to redeem itself in the eyes of corporate IT departments with a new service called GoToMeeting which promises to cut the cost and complexity of holding web-based meetings.

In fact, as I discovered, GoToMeeting is an excellent tool not just for big companies but also for small businesses and connecting friends and family.

Web conferencing services let groups of people share documents, presentations and other information over the internet. The worldwide market for web conferencing services is expanding rapidly and is expected to be worth about Ł1.5bn by 2009, according to Frost & Sullivan, a consulting and market research firm.

Currently the market is dominated by WebEx Meeting Center (www.webex.com) which has a share of about 60 per cent, but there are other services on offer from, among others, Microsoft, Genesys and Raindance. They all support features such as web-based presentations, document sharing and annotation as well as online chat, but they take different approaches to other features, for example meeting management and integration with telephone conferencing.

GoToMeeting distinguishes itself by embracing a flat-fee subscription model dubbed "All You Can Meet", so groups can use the service as often and as long as they like without incurring additional costs. Citrix Online believes this predictable cost will be attractive, particularly to smaller companies.

Two versions are available: GoToMeeting is aimed at individual professionals and small businesses and supports up to 10 meeting attendees, while GoToMeeting Corporate is designed for organizations requiring central reporting and administration of multiple accounts. The corporate version provides a minimum of five user accounts, with a maximum of 25 attendees at each meeting.

Currently Citrix Online is offering a free preview of GoToMeeting and GoToMeeting Corporate which can be downloaded from http://www.gotomeeting.com, so I decided to take a look at the basic GoToMeeting.

To download the small software application that powers the service you need to register and set up a user name and password. No configuration is necessary - setup is automatic and you can host your first web conference immediately with just a few mouse clicks or schedule an online conference for later.

Users can set up meetings through the GoToMeeting website by sending an e-mail via Microsoft Outlook and through instant messenger applications such as AOL Instant Messenger or MSN Messenger - when you open GoToMeeting you are given a choice of how you want to contact meeting attendees.

Those you invite to attend a meeting do not have to be GoToMeeting registered users themselves, but they do need to download the software the first time - if you invite them via an e-mail, the message contains an automatic link to the download page so all they need to do is click on the link and wait for the download to complete.

To test the service, I sent an e-mail invitation to another of my e-mail addresses, called up the e-mail on my portable PC and held a web conference with myself between my desktop and portable machines.

The service itself lives up to its promise of being easy to use yet powerful. GoToMeeting includes all the basic web conferencing features such as desktop sharing, keyboard and mouse control, chat, audio conferencing, and reporting and tracking tools.

Once up and running, your PC screen appears in front of all attendees. They can use the internal instant messaging screen or a conference phone call - set up automatically - to exchange comments. During a session you can change presenters or give control of your keyboard to another conference participant with a single mouse click, using buttons at the top of the GoToMeeting window that pops up on the right-hand side of your screen.

With GoToMeeting, you can deliver presentations, perform product demonstrations, collaborate on documents and securely share confidential information online from anywhere at any time in real time. Your meetings can be one-to-one or you can meet with several people at once.

Having used several web conferencing services in the past, I found GoToMeeting to be generally simpler to use. This should make it particularly appealing to beginners in this field.

Citrix Online also claims that GoToMeeting is the most secure web conferencing service - offering true end-to-end 128-bit encryption. It is also compatible with existing network infrastructures and firewalls and, because it is a managed service, installation and administration costs are minimal.

But probably the most attractive feature of this new web conferencing package is its flat-fee structure which, if successful, may force other vendors to reconsider their pricing models.

The free trial lasts until the end of July. After that, GoToMeeting will cost $49 a month or $468 a year per web conference organizer.

Eventually, web conferencing is likely to become just another feature within other PC-based productivity software applications. But if you want to explore the potential of web conferencing today, Citrix Online's GoToMeeting service is an excellent starting point whether you are an individual user, small business or larger company.

paul.taylor@ft.com